Characters / Dream SMP: Dream

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The Greater Dream SMP (Dream) | The Badlands | Boomerville | Snowchester | The Eggpire | Kinoko Kingdom | The Syndicate (Technoblade) | Las Nevadas (Quackity) | Unaffiliated (Jschlatt, TommyInnit, Wilbur Soot) | Tales from the SMP

Dream

"I care about your discs, 'cause that's what gives me power over you and your friends, and EVERYBODY you care about!"

In-game name: Dream
Preferred name: Dream
"If I can control the things that people are attached to, then I can control the server again! Because this isn't TOMMY SMP, or TUBBO SMP, this is DREAM SMP!"

The former leader of the Dream SMP faction and owner of the server. Having previously fought L'Manburg to stop them from declaring independence as a new nation, in the era of Emperor Jschlatt, Dream switched alliances from Pogtopia to Manburg after Jschlatt offered him something he couldn't refuse. During this time, he also helped Wilbur in planting bombs with the goal to destroy Manburg, even coming to a deal with Wilbur that whatever happened during the final battle, the bombs would be detonated.

After Tommy robbed and accidentally burned George's house down with Ranboo, Dream gave L'Manburg an ultimatum to exile Tommy as punishment, which Tubbo eventually complied to after Tommy deliberately went against him. During Tommy's exile, he abused Tommy until he fled to Technoblade. Eventually, during the Green Festival, Dream teamed up with Technoblade and Philza to destroy L'Manburg once and for all in the Doomsday War, then fled to avoid retribution.

Dream later gave Tommy an ultimatum to come fight him one last time for his discs, and won the battle at the designated meeting place. It was during this time when Dream revealed his true intentions and beliefs and planned to kill Tubbo, who had fought alongside Tommy in the final battle, and imprison Tommy in Pandora's Vault, but was stopped by most of the server coming to the rescue, during this confrontation Dream was killed twice by Tommy and only lived due to his possession of the revive-book (the item that Jschlatt had given him) and was hauled off to prison instead.

During his time in prison, Dream was visited in order by Tommy, Bad, Sapnap, and finally Tommy again, who was there in an attempt to get closure for his trauma. During Tommy's final visit, the prison went under lockdown after an unknown assailant exploded the roof of the prison, trapping Tommy with Dream for over a week against prison policy. After Sam informed them that Tommy wouldn't be able to leave despite the week containment period being over, Dream and Tommy, both at their wits' ends, had a massive argument about whether the revive-book was actually real which ended with Tommy's death at Dream's hands. Two days later, Dream brought him back to life to prove that the revive-book exists.

Dream was tortured daily by Quackity for about three months, and has resurrected Wilbur as a response to Tommy trying to sneak into the prison to kill him once and for all. During a visit by Quackity, Dream was threatened into writing Technoblade a letter that would invite him into the prison. After Techno received the letter and entered the prison, he was then arrested by Sam due to the fear that he would help Dream break out. Dream and Technoblade were living together in the same cell for three months until Technoblade was warped out of the prison by Philza.

Eventually, Dream was broken out of Pandora's Vault by the Syndicate because Techno still owed Dream a favour, which allowed him the opportunity to torment Tommy again. Currently, he has taken control of Pandora's Vault, the fortified prison that was used to contain him, and used it as his base of operations.

Dream is deceased in the current iteration of the Dream SMP world. He lost his first two lives to Tommy in his own vault and his third life to Tubbo in Pandora's Vault. However, he was brought Back from the Dead by Punz soon after the third death with a single life. He lost that life in the detonation of Project Early Dawn. At some point during the revival book experiments, Punz killed and revived him an unknown number of times.

---

Dream himself

# – H

• #1 Dime: Subverted. Dream appeared to care a lot about the leather dropped by his dead horse, Spirit. However, when Tommy tried to use it as leverage, Dream revealed he doesn't care about it at all, and that Tommy had banked all his hopes on a useless piece of leather.
• Adaptation Species Change: According to a Reddit AMA by Wilbur, Dream is a humanoid but not a human. However, most fan depictions of Dream depict him as a human wearing a mask and green hoodie. To add further confusion, Dream's Distaff Counterpart, Mamacita, does wear the iconic mask and hoodie for her skin, and even Dream himself has confirmed that he wears a mask canonically.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Once he realizes Quackity is about to torture the information on the revive book out of him, Dream freaks out and starts begging Sam to help him.
• Animal Lover: Dream is shown to be a lover of animals, although this is somewhat limited to wild animals and the pets of himself and his friends. This is most clearly seen through his close bond to his deceased horse, Spirit, the remains of which Dream highly valued for most of the SMP's history. As wars and conflict progress on the server, however, Dream denounces all attachments, including Spirit, because he sees them as a weakness. Another example is during Tommy's second prison visit, one of the hotel guard cats was accidentally un-sat by George causing it to teleport into the cell, where Dream became attached to it.
• Apparently Powerless Puppetmaster: In the strictest definition, the King is the ruler of the Greater Dream SMP and Dream isn't in a position of power, but in actuality, he's The Man Behind the Man, being able to crown and dethrone the King at his will and being powerful enough to demand Tommy's Exile from L'Manburg, and then personally Exile Tommy from not just the Greater SMP, but literally everywhere other than Logstedshire. It's also because of his lack of governmental title that causes Techno to not regard him as "government" but rather as "just some guy".
• Arch-Enemy: To Tommy. Tommy wants Dream dead for the constant torment he puts him through and the danger he poses to the server as a whole; however, Dream doesn't find Tommy an enemy, per se, but instead sees him as a toy or a pet of sorts and enjoys tormenting him and breaking his spirit to satisfy his Control Freak tendencies.
• Asshole Victim: Dream is an abusive, tyrannical jerkass who made Tommy's life a living hell to satisfy his own Control Freak desires (as Tommy actively rebelled against his 'rule'), and planned to take over the entire server by stealing people's most valuable pets and belongings and using them as blackmail. However, after his plans were foiled, he was stripped of his power and locked up inside a tiny box for months, while being regularly starved and deprived of human contact. For about three months of his prison sentence, he was horribly tortured on a daily basis by Quackity, at first for information on the revive-book, but later on as a form of revenge and punishment^*though there may also be some element of enjoyment and schadenfreude that leans into Quackity's own hatred and vengeful streak, reducing Dream from a smug, confident chessmaster to a screaming, terrified shell of a human being.
• At Least I Admit It: While mocking Sam in the prison in Season 4, Dream calls him a villain and cites that at least he admits he's done morally reprehensible things and doesn't regret them. Considering Sam's own penchant to brush off or push aside blame for various morally dubious things he has done, Dream isn't entirely wrong about this, though also considering Dream's own track record, this can be a case of pot calling the kettle black, and Dream notably downplays or outright refuses to acknowledge most of his more horrific crimes and the fact that he committed many of them with far less reason than Sam.
• Back from the Dead: While Dream himself is a Necromancer and is able to invoke this on those who have lost all three of their canon lives, he himself eventually loses his third life to Tubbo while chasing down him and Tommy in Pandora's Vault, and has to be brought back by Punz.
• The Bad Guy Wins:
  • In the L'Manberg-Dream SMP War, Dream wins handily and proves his rule superior. The only reason that L'Manberg was able to keep its independence was because of Tommy striking a deal and giving up his two prized discs.
  • In the Manburg-Pogtopia war, he eliminates both a political threat in Jschlatt and a physical threat in a good 80% of L'Manburg's territory. In fact, he's pretty much the only major player in the L'Manburg Civil War to end the war in a better position than he started.^note On Pogtopia's end, L'Manburg has been devastated and Wilbur has died after committing assisted suicide. On Jschlatt's end, he's been Killed Off for Real with his regime dismantled. On Dream's end, his nation's biggest threat has been dealt a crippling blow and his biggest political rivals are dead. And neither the Dream SMP nor Dream himself suffered any major losses during the war save for Dream's crossbow "DEFINITELY NOT PENIS", which ended up in Tubbo's possession.
  • In the Doomsday War, with the help of Techno and Philza, Dream finally destroyed L'Manberg to the point that pretty much everyone agreed that there's no point in rebuilding it again.
  • A Double Subversion occurs with the Disc War Finale. While most of Seasons 1-2 had been preceded by Dream's victories after victories, it initially appears that Dream had finally been defeated by the server banding together to confront him for the crimes he'd committed against them, and is Put on a Prison Bus as a result of this; however, once Dream escapes from prison, it's revealed that the confrontation is staged between Dream and Punz, with no one else in the know.
  • In the Lockdown Arc, after spending a week together, Dream snaps in a fight with Tommy, finally taking his last canon life by beating him to death with a potato.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: In Season 1, Dream opposed Schlatt's pointless sadism at least on a pragmatic level and his worst actions were brutally logical more than anything else. In the following seasons, Dream rapidly jumps off the slippery slope and by the end of Season 2, he's engaging in torture and murder at the drop of a hat, and in many cases, does so for fun.
• Berserk Button:
  • Techno's persistent prodding over Dream's apparent homelessness is apparently another one, as after initially taunting him over it, Dream wanders off to a nearby beach to build himself a new house.
  • People who challenge against him enrage Dream a lot, this is especially demonstrated how wrathful he is towards Tommy, who constantly challenges his power and authority.
• Beyond Redemption: During stars tour of the server's history with Eryn, Eret personally cites Exile as what proved Dream to be "evil" and takes him to the remains of Logstedshire as evidence.
• Big Bad: For the first half of Season 1 and all of Season 2. In the former case, it's due to him being the de facto leader of the Greater SMP faction, from which L'Manberg was trying to gain independence against. In the latter case, it's because he was trying to stop and take down L'Manberg, from the inside or outside, as well as being directly in opposition to Tommy over the Disc War and being his abuser in Exile. After the Jailbreak, it's indicated that Dream may act as the Returning Big Bad for Season 4 and onward.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: He and Techno serve as the main antagonists of the Doomsday War.
• Big Good: Subverted. Dream loves to style himself as a benevolent peacekeeper who keeps everyone in order, but even before the founding of L'Manburg, Dream was a Control Freak who constantly enforced the rules he had made while breaking them whenever he saw fit, and he quickly enters morally dark territory the second a challenge to his rule (L'Manburg and Wilbur) emerged — and Wilbur and Tommy are only inspired to actually rebel because of how overbearing Dream's rule is. Even as his quest to gain total control over the server results in him falling increasingly into villainy, Dream will still try to spin himself as just trying to make things peaceful again when it's plainly clear he's just doing it to satisfy his power-hungry nature.
• Big "YES!": He screams one when Wilbur obliterates Manberg.
• Blaming the Victim: Exceptionally prominent in Sam's 3 February 2022 imprisonment stream.
  • First, Dream laid the blame on Tommy for Exile by saying he had nothing to do with it and that it was rehab from Tommy going around blowing up and destroying things... while completely discounting that Dream himself did set up Exile (see Frame-Up for more details) and that the purpose of Exile was quite literally to abuse Tommy into submission, not to mention the whole Why Did You Make Me Hit You? incident in the Exile Arc finale with the destruction of Logstedshire.
  • Dream then later claimed that Wilbur blew up a country (Manburg) and cited that as evidence that Wilbur was no better than himself... while completely discounting two facts: 1) Dream was the one that gave Wilbur the TNT to blow up Manburg in the first place, and 2) Wilbur was trying to kill himself with the TNT at the same time.
  • A more subtle one happens after that, in that Dream said that if Quackity got his hands on the revive-book, he'd keep the book to himself (as opposed to sharing it with Sam and/or others, as Sam himself speculates) and use it to revive Schlatt. While the "reviving Schlatt" part was likely based in some degree of truth, it was possibly the result of Quackity losing the bet to Glatt in the first place, and Quackity personally didn't want to revive him at all... and the kicker is that Quackity himself was an abuse survivor courtesy of Schlatt when he was alive, making Dream's speculation uncomfortably close to victim-blaming someone for having Stockholm Syndrome.
• Break the Haughty: His arc in Season 3 sees Dream, now imprisoned, left with few allies and almost none of his previous power, but still smug and planning something. His imprisonment gradually starts taking a toll on his mental health, and Quackity's torture of him (partially as retribution for his murder of Tommy) further breaks him down, resulting in him becoming a fearful shell of his former self.
• Can't Take Criticism: Dream refuses to tolerate any kind of criticism thanks to being an egotistical Control Freak. In the first season, he responds to being called out on his actions with half-assed justifications or in one case just sulking off like a pouty child once Skeppy refuses to buy his insistence that his handling of the L'Manburg Revolutionary War was totally justified. It gets worse in later seasons as his ego reaches increasingly titanic heights, to the point he he beats Tommy to death for giving him a massively justified "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
• Character Development: Of the negative kind. While Dream starts off as a ruthless, controlling dictator, initially his worst actions are motivated by brutal pragmatism, he demonstrates a few scruples in spite of what he does, and he's ultimately willing to cut a deal with L'Manburg when he could easily crush them. As time goes on, his quest to take back total control of the server causes him to become increasingly cruel, and his manipulations become increasingly personal and despicable. By the end of Season 2, he's engaging in psychological torture and destroying nations for the fun of it, and by Season 4 he's motivated by little more than sadism and revenge against those who crossed him.
• The Chessmaster: On top of being a Manipulative Bastard, Dream is also known for orchestrating and manipulating events in his favour, to the point that he is heavily associated with the game of chess itself. It's deconstructed, as the series goes out of its way to show that the only reason Dream is able to go through with these schemes is because he is genuinely unable to see the people whose lives he's playing with as people, and by the end of Season 2, almost the entire server has realized he can't be trusted and finally has enough.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Dream will happily sell out his allies if it benefits him in any way. He betrays all of his allies at one point in Season 1 alone, and he's willing to murder them at the drop of a hat, as shown when he contemplates using Phil as a test subject for the revival book and intending to murder him permanently after. He only abandons it because he realizes Phil's friends would come looking for him, thus jeopardizing his plan.
• Classic Villain: With his main vices being Pride (most prominently seen in the god complex he develops in Seasons 2 and 3) and his Virtue Is Weakness attitude. A masked man associated with the colour green who manipulates and hurts other members of the server (and especially Tommy) in order to maintain the status quo of the server — himself being the ultimate power on it, with no major factions or rebels to threaten his rule. He almost succeeds in this with the annihilation of L'Manburg in the Doomsday War and eventually the Disc War Finale in his vault in the shattered savanna. However, this is where his Virtue Is Weakness attitude became his downfall, as he cut off all of his friends and potential allies due to said attitude, who turned against him alongside Punz, who was a mercenary willing to betray Dream as soon as Tommy (who also happens to be characterized by his attachments, which Dream shuns) paid him more. This ultimately ended with Dream being carted off to the prison he built for potential 'dissenters', with two of his canon lives lost to the teenager he abused. This ultimately turns out to be a subversion as it's later revealed that the Disc War Finale was staged by Dream and Punz in the first place, and that Punz was a Fake Defector.
• Cold Ham: He always keeps a calm tone, even when he's making grandiose and violent threats.
• Color Motif: Green, the main colour of his skin and the complimentary colour to red, Tommy's Color Motif.
• Control Freak: Dream considers the entire server to be his property, in a sense^note Though this is somewhat justified by the fact that it was his server to begin with, albeit in a Divine Right of Kings sort of way. He declared war on the L'Manburgians after they attempted to declare independence and ban all non-Europeans from the country (though the latter decree is never actively enforced). Later on, this aspect of Dream gets considerably worse, from siding with Schlatt in the Manburg-Pogtopia War to obtain a book that could bring people back to life, to having Tommy exiled because he's the only person who never listens to him, eventually culminating in his plan to take control of every attachment (usually pets and precious items) on the SMP as blackmail, so that everyone will be forced to listen to him and he can return the server to how it was before L'Manberg existed.
  Dream: If I can control the things that people are attached to, then I can control the server again! Because this isn't TOMMY SMP, or TUBBO SMP, THIS IS DREAM SMP, right?! So I can control the server if I have everything that everybody cares about! That everybody's EVER cared about! I can control everything, alright? I can turn the server back to what it USED to be.
• Cool Mask: He is almost always portrayed with a cool white mask with a simple smiley face on it in fan art and merch, and it is also confirmed that he wears one in canon as well.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Skeppy points out that Dream could have avoided the entire L'Manburg War for Independence and everything after if he just let L'Manburg branch off peacefully, since it wouldn't have cost him anything in the long run except swallowing his pride and giving up just a little bit of control. True to form, Dream insists he did the right thing and leaves when Skeppy is unconvinced.
• Crazy-Prepared: He is shown to have several backup plans during the L'Manburg Civil War.
• Cruel Mercy: After Dream threatens to kill him if he enters the Nether Portal leading to the main Dream SMP, Tommy, completely defeated, walks to the edge of the walkway and stares down into the lava, clearly contemplating whether or not to jump. Dream, who sees him doing this, punches him away from the edge.
  Dream: It's not your time to die yet, Tommy.
  Tommy: (quietly) ...It's never my time to die.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Dream deconstructs being a Manipulative Bastard and The Chessmaster. His habit of Playing Both Sides and manipulating the people around him frequently nets him what he wants, but it gradually alienates him from his friends as it becomes clear that the reason he's so comfortable with manipulating people is because he is genuinely unable to see the people around him as anything but tools. By the end of Season 2, he's burned so many bridges that pretty much everyone realizes his true nature and he's imprisoned as punishment; the only reason he's not outright killed is because his knowledge of resurrection makes him too valuable to kill.
• Decoy Protagonist: He, for all intents and purposes, was the initial protagonist of the story during the server's earlier days. Once the Disc Saga began and the focus shifted on the newly arrived Tommy and later Wilbur, Dream took on the role of the Big Bad.
• Dehumanization: Dream always considered himself to be above others on some level, however, it's not until the end of Season 2 that it becomes obvious he's stopped seeing the people around him as... well, people.
  • Exile is perhaps the earliest example of this. At the start of the Exile Arc, Dream describes Tommy as an annoying bug in his room, and that by exiling him, he's just putting him outside. Over the course of Exile, Dream subjects Tommy to all sorts of horrible, painful and humiliating abuse, like forcing him to destroy his armor every time he visits, beating him with an axe when he doesn't comply, encouraging visitors to join him in bullying Tommy, and seeming entirely unconcerned with Tommy's rapidly deteriorating mental state. He actively reinforces Tommy's false belief that his friends have abandoned him, brushes Tommy off when he tells him he's suicidal and says he needs Tommy "alive and well", and on the final day, outright admits he was just there to watch Tommy, which ultimately makes Tommy realize that Dream never saw him as a friend and prompts him to run away.
  • One of the display cases in the Vault of Attachments is a 1×1×2 cage, labeled "Skeppy". Tommy and Tubbo are horrified when they see it, and Dream casually clarifies it's because Skeppy is what (not who) Bad is most attached to. For context, the pens for Henry, Friend and Carl (a cow, a sheep and a horse respectively) are 3×2. Skeppy, a whole person, was going to be locked up in a cage so small he wouldn't even be able to lie down properly, for the sole purpose of being used as blackmail, along with a bunch of weapons, rare items, and farm animals with cages six times bigger than he would've had.
  • Dream's entire reasoning for killing Tubbo during the Final Disc War is because he doesn't consider him valuable or entertaining enough to keep around. He also openly describes Tubbo as a pawn, and tries to justify him killing Tubbo by telling Tommy that, if he wants to be a hero, Tubbo's death can be his tragic origin story.
  • When Tommy asks Dream why he's sad during his first prison visit, Dream responds, "'Cause I lost my friends. And all my stuff. And my server. And you." While he doesn't lump Tommy in with his stuff, he doesn't include him with his friends either, instead giving him a category of his own. This, paired with his treatment of Tommy so far and a lot of the other things he says about him, implies that Dream sees him as more of a tool, toy, or trophy, rather than a friend, or even a fully-fledged human.
  • After reviving Tommy and definitively proving the revival book works, Dream declares himself a god and refers to the rest of the server as his puppets. He also toys with the idea of reviving Wilbur for the sole purpose of getting Wilbur to break him out of jail, and obtaining the secret to immortality by experimenting on Tommy.
  • While mocking Sam in prison in Season 4, Dream refuses to give Sam any food, despite blatantly seen holding steak on several occasions. When Sam points this out, Dream said that it wasn't his food and claimed that he would give Sam kibble. As in pet food (specifically, fish or dog food, as Dream later clarifies). While calling it "karma".
• Demoted to Extra: Subverted. At first, it seems like the Big Bad of the L'Manburg War of Independence will be reduced to a mere benefactor who supplies Pogtopia with loot. However, this changes as Dream begins to fight directly alongside Tommy and Technoblade, becoming a vital teammate and some much-needed muscle during the L'Manburg Civil War. And even moreso once his true motives are revealed, as he becomes someone who can secure the war for either side based solely on who can placate his desires for power more.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • Dream built massive walls around L'Manburg, forced the cabinet to exile Tommy, abused him to the point where Tommy tried to kill himself on multiple occasions, and proceeded to stalk him for days after Tommy ran away. All because Tommy mildly vandalized George's house.^note To be fair, Exile had been Dream's game plan from the start as he had been framing Tommy for griefing other people's bases before the incident with George's house even happened. Tommy's griefing only provided a golden opportunity for him to carry out his plan while helping him turn the L'Manburgians against each other.
  • Dream murdered Tommy, trapping him in the Afterlife for what was two days in reality, but to Tommy felt more like two months, an experience Tommy described as being trapped in a dark, soundless void, while having his body stretched, ripped into pieces and ground up into dust. All because Tommy yelled at him and called him a liar when he said the necromancy book was real.^note The only part of this series of events that Dream can't be blamed for is that he genuinely had no idea of the conditions in the Afterlife or the Year Inside, Hour Outside nature of it.
    Dream: You didn't believe me! I was proving a point!
    (Beat)
    Tommy (high-pitched, horrified) You killed me just to prove a point?! Dre– Dream! You put me through that–
    Dream: You didn't believe me!
    Tommy: (voice cracking) YOU PUT ME THROUGH MONTHS, MONTHS, OF AGONY, AND STRESS AND PURE TRAUMA, JUST TO PROVE A POINT?!
  • After being tortured continuously by Quackity in prison, once Dream escapes, he makes plans to do the same to Quackity... and also to kill him (most likely canonically), lock him up in Pandora's Vault, destroy everything he cares about from existence, and also kill everyone he cares about. Admittedly, torture is a horrendous crime, but even that's overkill. Ultimately, this is not how Dream's plan plays out; instead, he opts to team up with Purpled to get revenge on Quackity, by gaslighting Charlie into betraying Quackity, locking him in Pandora's Vault, and having Purpled take over Las Nevadas.
• Divine Right of Kings: Played with in a very meta sense. Dream believes that he should be the ultimate authority of the server because it was his server to begin with and sees the infinite lands of the SMP as his property, and considers L'Manburg's secession from the "Greater SMP" as an act of tyranny. However, the lands of the SMP have existed long before Dream came into the picture (e.g. various Tales episodes) and the SMP is only Dream's in the sense that Dream the content creator is the one running it, so the closest approximation for Dream the character's opinion on the "ownership" of the server would be this trope, perhaps with a slight dash of his god complex thrown into the mix.
• Does Not Know His Own Strength: Despite boasting about his ability to raise the dead, he's genuinely surprised when it actually works on Tommy. However, this was later revealed to be a lie — Dream did know the revive-book worked, through means that are just as sinister.
• Emoticon: Dream's Minecraft skin is basically a living smiley face. He's often portrayed as wearing a smiley face mask, and is usually associated with the ":)" emoticon.
• Enemy Mine: He starts as this to Pogtopia during the L'Manburg Civil War. Even though he and Wilbur were on opposing sides during the war, Dream recognizes that Jschlatt is a way bigger threat than Wilbur could ever hope to be. While he can't help directly, he does support Pogtopia's rebellion by delivering them gear. It doesn't last.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Dream may have been willing to fight a war to keep L'Manburg under his control, but he at least has enough of an open mind to acknowledge the good Wilbur has done as its leader. When Jschlatt takes over and immediately begins dismantling everything L'Manburg stood for in favor of conquest, Dream writes a letter denouncing Jschlatt and all he's done before announcing his full support for Tommy and Wilbur, providing them gear and supplies. All this has to be done in secret, however, as Dream by law cannot go against Jschlatt.
  • Despite all of his villainous actions, even he recognizes the Egg and its Blood Vines are an abnormality.
  • Another example shows up during the L'Manberg Revolution, where after the events of the Final Control Room, Dream and his team store the L'Manbergians items in chests for them to reclaim. When Wilbur expresses his surprise, Dream responds with, "We aren't savages."
• Fatal Flaw: Dream's ego and controlling nature both propel him further into villainy and are his biggest handicaps. Had he respected the truce of L'Manburg, he could have kept full control of most of the server, yet his inability to let anyone live outside his rule and his arrogant belief that the server needs his ironclad rule means that he increasingly escalates the situation, leading to much death and misery that ultimately leads to his imprisonment. Even after he's imprisoned, he's unable to comprehend that he can't get away with his usual behavior, and trying to pull another one of his mind games on Tommy results in him being subjected to torture for days on end by Quackity.
• Faux Affably Evil:
  • Dream can be incredibly kind and civil when situations are calm, even going as far as to acknowledge or even offer peaceful alternatives to his supposed enemies. There are times where he genuinely feels like a nice guy who just has to put his foot down when his server gets too rowdy. However, his perceived kindness is part of the reason why his manipulation tactics work so well. This is most evident during Tommy's exile, where Dream is so charming and nice that Tommy starts to consider him his best friend, despite the fact that Dream destroys his belongings every day, gaslights him into believing nobody cares about him, and sabotages his connections to his friends behind his back.
  • Another display of this is during the Pandora's Vault lockdown. Dream cheerfully welcomes back Tommy to the realm of the living, and asks questions about the Afterlife (since, as Dream points out, Tommy's the only one who's seen the afterlife and lived to tell the tale). While it's implied that Dream's curiosity is actually genuine, it gets significantly more uncomfortable when one remembers that Dream is the reason Tommy died in the first place.
• Foil:
  • To Jschlatt. Dream would have been considered a dictator, but when the war ended, he gave L'Manburg independence despite having no reason to (as he'd won) and respected the terms of the peace treaty, with the only conflict with him afterwards being provoked by others (namely Tommy). Jschlatt, however, blatantly ignored this treaty and actively generated conflict wherever he went (a 0% Approval Rating will do that). Dream's dictatorship was more subdued and quiet, but he's a lot smarter and more rational, being a fairly significant direct threat but being even more dangerous in the long run. Jschlatt favored a much more bold approach and while he was definitely the bigger immediate threat, he was also an idiot and borderline insane. Jschlatt shines brighter but burns out faster, and come the end of the civil war, he was drinking himself to death in the Camarvan. Dream shines less but lasts far longer, and come the end of the civil war, he's sitting comfortably from Dream SMP territory, having gotten exactly what he wanted with next-to-no personal losses.
  • To Tommy. Tommy is an energetic Large Ham who holds personal attachment to a lot of things and ideas, while Dream is a Cold Ham who shuns attachments because he sees it as weakness. Tommy is someone who is consistently dealt a bad hand but tries to make friends in spite of it, while Dream is on top of the world and shuns friendships in order to protect himself. Tommy's friendships eventually come to benefit him, while Dream's lack of friendships results in his downfall. And lastly, both Dream and Tommy are responsible for each other losing all the lives they have lost so far (Dream having killed Tommy three times and Tommy having killed Dream twice), and each of them lost their first two lives one after another (Tommy lost his second life within a few days after losing his first, while Dream loses his first two mere seconds apart from each other).
  • To Foolish. Both are powerful, influential members of the server, but the similarities end there. Dream is one of the server's founders, while Foolish is a more recent addition. Dream is responsible for all of Tommy's deaths and trauma, Foolish is a loving father to his son, Foolish Jr. Dream develops a god complex after he learns he can successfully resurrect the dead, Foolish is an actual god of undeath. By the Banquet Aftermath arc, more foils can be seen in the L'Sandberg conflict with Foolish; both Dream and Foolish have had portions of their land claimed by outsiders who created their own rules and laws that were unfairly biased against others (banning all non-Europeans in the case of L'Manburg, and taxing the rightful owner of the land in L'Sandberg). Notably, the main difference between the two is that Foolish avoided violence at all costs, attempting to negotiate with BadBoyHalo, who created L'Sandberg, while Dream's first response was to declare war on L'Manburg.
  • To Quackity as well. Both men are very manipulative and good at controlling arguments, with Quackity often being able to keep up Dream in verbal confrontations. Though when it comes to actual fights Dream is leagues better. Both aren't afraid of doing horrible things to get what they want, such as Dream threatening to kill Tubbo in order to control Tommy and eventually killing Tommy to prove he can revive the dead, and Quackity torturing Dream originally for the knowledge on how to resurrect people but now as a twisted form of revenge and punishment. At the same time, like Dream, Quackity isn't afraid to manipulate those close to him, he's easily able to put aside personal feelings when it comes to business as shown when he manipulated Awesamdude by striking at his guilt over Tommy's death, and later with him targeting Fundy's insecurities to convince him to join Las Nevadas. However, Dream believes that force is the ultimate method to controlling the server, while Quackity relies much more on forcing people into relying on him; Dream was once attached to his friends, but ultimately cuts off the attachments in order to keep himself from being controlled, while Quackity openly cares for his friends and gets easily attached to his builds, and is deeply sentimental even when hiding it.
  • To Techno. Dream prefers to manipulate people from behind the scenes, while Techno brute-forces his way through most situations. While both are trying to topple governments, Techno does it because he genuinely believes that governments are inherently evil, while Dream does it because he believes he should be the one in charge. At the same time, Techno sees his friendships and attachments as a strength and is extremely loyal to those that he cares for, but Dream views them as a weakness and actively tries to cut them off. However, at the same time, these attitudes turn out to be their respective Fatal Flaws.
  • To Wilbur. Both are competent rulers, but how they rule is quite different. Wilbur ruled through kindness and pacifism, while Dream rules through pragmatism and necessary evils. They notably remained foils during the L'Manburg Civil War. While both Wilbur and Dream sought the destruction of L'Manburg and the end of Jschlatt's reign, how they do so differs. Dream formed alliances, negotiates, and overall took a much more calm and collected approach. Wilbur, however, closed himself off from outside help out of sheer paranoia, with his approach being unhinged and unpredictable. They also serve as foils in terms of success. While both succeeded in getting what they want, Wilbur died a broken man while Dream not only survives, but also completely evades culpability.
• Frame-Up:
  • Zig-Zagged during the Exile Conflict. After the Manburg-Pogtopia War, Dream roped Puffy into griefing several people's builds, and placed signs to make it look like Tommy did it, likely as an excuse to force L'Manburg to exile him. But, while some people were very angry (BBH threatened to burn the disc Skeppy still had in retaliation), none of them chose to pursue legal action. However, about a week later, Tommy set George's house on fire, which Dream used as an excuse to force him into exile. In doing so however, he heavily exaggerated events to make it seem like Tommy burned George's house down to the ground in an act of petty vandalism, while in reality, Tommy and Ranboo pranked George's house by building flaming netherrack dicks on his lawn, immediately stopped and put out the fire once they noticed it had accidentally spread to the roof, and in the end, only burned about five blocks.
  • Played straight with the Community House. Dream blew up the Community House and claimed it was Tommy to justify demanding Tubbo give him back the disc. Tommy was hiding nearby and was able to defend himself however, and during the Final Disc War he admitted it was him, at first to only Tommy and Tubbo, then after he was caught, Tommy forced him to admit it to the rest of the server as well.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: To the Syndicate (who freed him), and really out of necessity, be it from shared goals that need achieving or repaying debts. While he has worked with them (or to be precise, Techno and Phil) in the past, fairly amicably, most of the Syndicate share the same mutual dislike for the guy for his actions, with Niki and Philza only helping to free Dream by proxy since Ranboo was imprisoned by Sam and to support Techno. Even Techno, arguably one of the few that remain to have a mostly positive relationship with Dream, only frees Dream to repay his debt. Once the jailbreak is over, Dream is given the boot back at the Arctic Commune and is forced to give back the armor Techno gave him.
• Friendly Enemy: In Season 1, Dream could be rather civil and polite with his enemies. He was often affable to Wilbur to the point of refusing to steal his and his subordinates' items after slaughtering them in the Final Control Room, and was willing to temporarily call a truce with Tommy after the events of the first season finale and simply chat with him like an old friend. This vanishes in later seasons as Dream becomes increasingly cruel and depraved; by the end of Season 2, any overtures of friendliness Dream presents are clearly a manipulation tactic and entirely feigned.
• Gaslighting: He inflicts this on members of the server to manipulate them. A notable example (among many) during Tommy's Exile is when he tries to convince Tommy that Mexican Dream died from a drug overdose... right after murdering M.D. in front of him.
• Genius Bruiser: Not only is he a mastermind strategist that's able to manipulate entire wars in his favor, but he's also a fighter with skills that reach Technoblade's level. It's telling when Jschlatt losing his partnership during the final battle with Pogtopia singlehandedly costs him the war.
• A God Am I: Dream has always been quite prideful, but during his time in prison, it exacerbates into the form of a god complex revolving around his ability to revive people from the dead, and the protection it provides him, since the only reason he gets imprisoned instead of getting Killed Off for Real at the end of Season 2 is due to his knowledge on resurrection.
  Dream: Tommy, your life is literally in my hands. Does that piss you off? Does that make you mad? Does that make you so mad that I– that you can't kill me? I MIGHT AS WELL BE A GOD, TOMMY! YOU CAN'T KILL ME! AND I CAN KILL YOU!
• Green and Mean: He's primarily associated with the colour green and is the Big Bad of the L'Manburg War of Independence Arc, as well as the SMP's Big Bad overall.
• Hate Sink: Following his horrific abuse of Tommy during the Exile Arc, Dream has been portrayed as a firmly irredeemable, manipulative, callous, hypocritical, and insufferably smug monster who is constantly hurting the people around him just so he can satisfy his own controlling and grotesquely selfish nature.
• Hated by All: Downplayed. While there are some on the server who sympathize with Dream, especially those who joined the SMP after Dream's imprisonment and thus are mostly oblivious to Dream's atrocities, the rest of the server loathes him. Even Techno, the guy who broke him out of prison, starts to hate him when he shows his complete apathy at Ranboo's death.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: At first, it seemed that Dream genuinely wanted to restore L'Manburg. However, during Wilbur's Sanity Slippage, it is revealed that Dream simply wanted whatever will let him keep his power, and is even willing to help Wilbur destroy L'Manburg if that's what it takes. Dream later revealed himself to be on Schlatt's side due to Schlatt having a book that could revive people. However, Dream claimed that he was on the side of "chaos" and only doing whatever helps himself in the end. This is proven to be true when he ultimately turned on Jschlatt, seemingly aiding Pogtopia, only to then reveal that he's orchestrated Manburg's destruction from the beginning.
• Hero Killer: He's directly responsible for the loss of all three of Tommy's lives and the last two of Mexican Dream's lives. Exaggerated when it turns out that he killed LazarBeam and Vikkstar numerous times to test his revive book.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • Dream commissioned Sam to design and build Pandora's Vault for him, to imprison all the people who would try to take power away from him. The first prisoner of Pandora's Vault ended up being Dream himself, after his attempt to murder Tubbo and imprison Tommy was thwarted.
    • It's also later revealed that all the aspects of the prison that make it so inhumane were put in place because Dream wanted them. Sam initially had a courtyard where prisoners could have some leisure time under the sun, and had plans for a cow farm so they could be served steak. However, Dream shot all of this down, with the result being that he had spent the entire duration of his stay eating raw potatoes, unable to ever leave his cell or see the light of day.^note Though with The Reveal that Dream planned the Disc War Finale in the first place, this raises many more questions in hindsight.
      Dream: ...Well, I didn't know I was gonna end up here.
      Sam: Right, right, so it was okay as long as someone else was eating the raw potatoes!
  • In a more abstract sense, Dream's plan to cut his own attachments to prevent himself from being controlled while taking the things people care about in order to gain control backfired immensely. The fact that he cut his friends out of his life means the only ally he had left was Punz, a mercenary who was Only in It for the Money. Plus, his plan to steal people's most treasured belongings and kidnap their pets, meant that about half the server — including people like Jack and Niki, who hated Tommy so much at this point that they were planning to nuke him — came to Tommy's rescue, if only to make sure that Dream would not be able to hurt anyone again (or at least, that was the impression they were under).
• Holier Than Thou: Early in the first season, Dream has a noticeable self-righteous streak. He's clearly very much convinced in his own moral superiority over L'Manburg and spends a lot of time waxing rhapsodic over how much better the Greater Dream SMP is in both skill and ethics. His self-righteousness becomes less pronounced as he becomes increasingly unfettered, though he will occasionally claim to be morally superior to his opponents both as a manipulation tactic and because of his rampant Moral Myopia.
• Hope Crusher: Dream utilizes this very often to squash dissent against him. This is most prevalent in how he treated Tommy during the Exile Arc — Dream isolated him from his friends, and then systematically abused and gaslit him into believing nobody cared about him anymore, except for Dream himself.
• Horrifying the Horror: Dream is rarely ever phased by threats, because he has utter confidence in the fact that, no matter what, they can't kill him. That is, until Quackity tells him that, while people do need Dream alive, they don't need him unharmed, while he's holding a sword and an axe. Dream immediately backs away in terror, and starts screaming for Sam to come help him.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: For the bulk of Season 3, Dream went from the most powerful man on the server and the Big Bad to a malnourished, tortured prisoner with very little to no actual influence. When he breaks out, he "upgrades" to a fugitive on the run.
• Hypocrite:
  • In the third "Las Nevadas" stream, Dream yells at Quackity, horrified that he's only torturing Dream for his own amusement... which is extremely rich coming from a guy who has both physically and mentally abused Tommy and targets everyone he loves because, according to him, "it's just too much fun".
  • While mocking Sam in prison in early Season 4, Dream accuses Quackity of being The Sociopath... but Dream himself fits far more criteria for the trope than Quackity ever has. Several members of Sam's canonical chat call him out on this in response to this accusation^*though some seem to agree with Dream, making this a case of "pot calling the kettle black" at most.
    cherrychxi: SAYS DREAM
    applespiderss: THE EMOTIONAL DAMAGED DUCK?
    yam_330: LIKE YOU????
    ElishaLovesTea: and you arent dream?
  • In Sam's second imprisonment stream, Dream 'calls out' Sam for not including allowing his one-year imprisonment and torture on the list of bad things [Sam] has done to make people hate him, citing it as something that Dream himself hated him for, unless Sam didn't see him as a person. Of course, this is very rich coming from Dream of all people, who has had a nasty track record of dehumanizing everyone around him on the server and only seeing them as pieces in his game.
  • Later in Sam's second imprisonment stream, Dream sums up Sam's "list of crimes" through a "The Reason You Suck" Speech which ends with him claiming that even he had standards, and insinuating that (and later outright stating that) Sam was as bad as, if not worse than him. Other than said "speech" involving him lying about him not having tortured anyone (through the Resurrection/Death Loop he put Vikk and Lazar through, if not Exile), Dream also blatantly omits several of his more overt crimes — planning, carrying out and leading the massacre of a pacifist nation, later nuking that same nation to bedrock because he thought it was "just too much fun", abusing and gaslighting a teenager to the point he almost ended his own life, previously encouraging the spiral and subsequent suicide of another person, plotting to blackmail the entire server with their attachments so that he could control the server again, etc.

I – Z

• In-Series Nickname: He has been referred to as "Green Boy" on multiple occasions, most notably when Wilbur was signing L'Manburg's "Decree of Independance", and Tommy and Tubbo shouting the same when Dream was "defeated" at the end of the Disc Confrontation during the Season 2 finale.
• Innocent Bigot: When Mexican Dream started chasing and swearing at him in Spanish, Dream (in panic) started running and asks if Mexican Dream was putting a spell on him.
  Tommy: Dream, you can't say that!
• Insane Troll Logic: In Sam's 3 February 2022 imprisonment stream, Dream claims that Techno breaking him out of prison was good because even though Sam explicitly recalls that it was by general consensus to lock Dream up, Dream cites that Techno didn't take part in the decision, which somehow automatically means it was an unfair decision and the Jailbreak was a good thing. This completely discounts that a unanimous decision is often extremely difficult to achieve, especially in a cast as diverse as the members of the Dream SMP, and over half of the living members of the SMP at the time (14 out of 25) were there to 'agree' to lock Dream up^*Sapnap, Sam, Ponk, Bad, Tommy, Tubbo, Punz (in the 'staged' act), Eret, Jack, Niki, Quackity, Antfrost, Puffy, and Ranboo... and most of the ones who didn't agree other than Dream himself (in the 'staged' act) were either inactive in the lore at the time (George, Callahan, Purpled, Skeppy, HBomb, and Connor), new to the server (Foolish and Hannah), or barely cared about people outside of their own social circle (Phil and Techno).
• It's All About Me: Dream's motives are always purely self-serving, and he will never deliberately get into a situation where the outcome leaves him worse off. He's willing to betray his friends if it benefits him, then when everything is over, he just pretends nothing happened. He also very blatantly does not respect anyone's autonomy, constantly speaking over them and hijacking their personal squabbles to use them for his own benefit (shown most blatantly with George; Dream never told him his house was vandalized by Tommy, instead immediately went over to L'Manburg and started demanding Tommy's exile. Then when George did find out and asked what exactly his plan was, Dream just told him to stay out of it and that he had it handled). When Sapnap and George eventually had enough of this and cut him out of their lives, Dream made it sound as if he deliberately ruined their friendship because of his Virtue Is Weakness mentality. Even when Techno is breaking Dream out of jail, Dream repeatedly tries to protest against Techno going the hard way around the prison to break Ranboo out as well, but Techno refuses to comply to this.
• It Amused Me: Dream's reason for continuing to mess with Tommy. In his own words, Tommy is just "too fun" to not continue toying with. When Tommy asked him after the Doomsday War why Dream didn't just burn the discs instead of completely destroying L'Manburg, Dream answered that destroying L'Manburg would be much more fun.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Dream frequently tries to style himself as having good intentions, but any time he shows evidence of any redeeming qualities, it's either a manipulation tactic or part of a lead-up to him kicking the dog.
• Jerkass: Beneath the Faux Affably Evil mask, Dream is frequently shown to be a sadistic, callous, self-serving, arrogant Control Freak.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Dream can, at least initially, be seen as a Well-Intentioned Extremist who believes he's doing the right thing. However, over the course of the SMP, his methods become more and more extreme, with Season 2 being the jumping off point as he abuses Tommy, destroys L'Manberg permanently, and plans to kill Tubbo and imprison Tommy.
• Karma Houdini:
  • Dream actively participated in the destruction of L'Manberg after the Manburg-Pogtopia War, aiding Wilbur in his efforts to destroy L'Manburg. However, due to the members being otherwise occupied (Techno's Face–Heel Turn, Wilbur being Killed Off for Real, and rebuilding L'Manburg), he gets away with everything. Somewhat subverted later, when the Butcher Army plots to have Dream executed at a festival because of his actions, but he also gets away with it when he reveals that the Community House is destroyed, distracting them from actually carrying out the deed.
  • This happens again during the Doomsday War after Dream carpet-bombed L'Manberg to the point of bedrock. However, this is invoked; by that point, most of the server are starting realize how dangerous he is, and Tommy and Tubbo are mobilizing to take him down, so he leaves the Greater Dream SMP to avoid immediate retribution.
• Karma Houdini Warranty:
  • It runs out the moment he tried to kill Tubbo and imprison Tommy, with him being outnumbered by a horde of SMP players and Tommy taking two of his lives. Even if it turns out that it was an act and Punz helped him stage the whole ordeal, the feelings and grievances from the rest of the server are genuine, and he still lost two of his canon lives to his abuse victim.
  • After killing and reviving Tommy just to prove he could, Dream thought he could get away with it since he was already imprisoned in the maximum security cell of Pandora's Vault. Despite this, karma still manages to catch up with him in weeks as Quackity, fueled by vengeance and with a little inside help from Sam, visits Dream to torture the knowledge of resurrection out of him. And he's planning to do this every single day, which he is shown to go through with.
• Kick the Dog: His psychological and physical abuse of Tommy in the Exile Arc. It's horrifying, cruel, and Dream treats it all with a trivial levity, as if it was for fun. Later statements also show that he looks back on Exile fondly, and imply that he did genuinely enjoy abusing Tommy.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover:
  • Very heavily played with. Outside the walls of L'Manburg, he placed a sign on a grass block which read, "If you break this sign, you don't love Patches", referencing Dream's cat in real life (the sign was destroyed on Schlatt's orders). However, as the series goes on, Dream is revealed to be the Big Bad and cuts off his attachments because he sees them as a weakness, which leaves it extremely ambiguous to whether his incarnation in the series still loves Patches, or Patches's current whereabouts in-universe.
  • Ultimately, this is turned against him in Pandora's Vault while Tommy is imprisoned with Dream. Through a mechanic glitch, Tommy's cat teleports into the cell, and Dream gets very attached to the cat, actively blocking it with his own body to prevent Tommy from hurting it or leading it into the lava. After Tommy forces Dream to admit he loves the cat, Tommy kills the cat in front of Dream. However, it should also be noted that Tommy's mental health was rather compromised at the time due to being stuck with Dream in jail for the past week or so, and Dream was imprisoned in the maximum-security cell of Pandora's Vault in the first place for a reason.
• Knight of Cerebus: While earlier plotlines had touched on darker elements such as Wilbur's suicidal spiral and Tubbo's execution, nothing came even remotely close to the actions committed by Dream's character to Tommy's during the Exile arc, and the tone of the series has never been the same since then.
• Know When to Fold Them: As fearsome as Dream can be, he knows when the fight's not looking good. Between being outnumbered by the advancing Pogtopian army and the sheer idiocy of Jschlatt, Dream doesn't bother fighting any longer and surrenders, offering to make a deal to assassinate Jschlatt. Of course, being Dream, he's managed to work even his unconditional surrender into something that benefits only him.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Happens to Dream throughout the end of Season 2 and most of Season 3.
  • Dream is a ruler of the server and a massive Control Freak, who abandoned all attachments with his friends, destroyed peoples' homes, isolated and abused a teenager, and planned to steal many peoples' possessions in order to maintain power over them. By the end of Season 2, he's left alone, in a maximum-security cell that he intended to put said teen in, with his only regular company being his jailer, who, on top of isolating him for months, is feeding him uncooked potatoes (on his own orders to feed any prisoners raw potatoes) and cutting down his rations for any perceived step out of line. Also, Puffy blew up his house during the tail end of Season 2. His only 'friends' now are simply people who either owe a favor to him or are just that devoted to him.
  • Dream then kills someone only to bring him back to life just to prove he could. This backfires almost immediately as not only is he deemed too powerful to live, but Quackity catches wind of this and wants the knowledge of it for himself, making his time in prison much more miserable than if he had just let Tommy go. It gets to a point where Quackity's visits to Dream, right down to how Dream reacts to him, scarily mirrors that of his visits to Tommy when he was in exile.
• Laughing Mad: According to Sam, Dream was laughing right after brutally beating Tommy to death with a potato.
  Sam: By the time that I realized that Dream was... attacking him, I headed back there to try and stop him immediately, but then... When I got to the main cell he'd already done it... (Beat) And I was standing... on the other side of the lava, just screaming at him, and he just laughed...
• Leitmotif: Occasionally, whenever other members tell Dream and Mamacita to think, the iconic Minecraft Manhunt song starts playing.
• Leonine Contract: He secures one with Technoblade by helping him escape from his execution by the L'Manburgian Butcher Army. Techno repays the favour by helping him escape from Pandora's Vault.
• The Man Behind the Man: Even though George (and Eret before him) is the official king of the Dream SMP, it's clear as day that Dream is the true leader. While George is building houses and generally being a Clueless Boss with no interest in politics, Dream is making and breaking alliances for the sole benefit of himself and his nation, representing the Dream SMP in war, and in general making the decisions around the land. Notably, L'Manburg refers to Dream as their main foe after the L'Manburg Civil War, but doesn't even factor in George despite him being the king.
• Manipulative Bastard: Dream's entire reputation across the SMP, largely due to his ability to manipulate seemingly any situation to his advantage and rarely face consequences.
  • The most noticeable example is during the Exile Arc, where Dream psychologically abuses and manipulates Tommy into believing that Dream is his friend and the only one who actually cares for Tommy, in an attempt to gain control over Tommy.
    dreamwastaken: (on Twitter, replying to a fan) c!Dream liked the feeling of power and control that c!Tommy's friend exiling him gave him. He wanted c!Tommy to feel so isolated that he eventually viewed c!Dream as his only friend, and would help c!Dream's goals
    
    Would have worked if it wasn't for c!Techno living nearby
  • Less well-known examples include him convincing Eret to betray L'Manburg for a position of power that was ultimately powerless; possibly taking advantage of Quackity's naïvety and ignorance at the time to work with Schlatt in order to further his plans of taking down L'Manburg for once and for all, while breaking down two idealistic politicians who could potentially have the power to oppose him; and holding up his promise of taking down the obsidian walls he built around L'Manburg and acknowledging the country's independence to Tubbo in exchange for him exiling Tommy, and further playacting nice to him to try and gain his trust.
• Meaningful Name: Fitting for his name, Dream's weapon and armor set are called "Nightmare".
• Moral Myopia: Dream has no problem with ruining lives and killing people all for the sake of furthering his own pursuit of power, but the second anyone hurts or even simply inconveniences him, it's suddenly a heinous crime. The most notable instance is how he repeatedly condemns Sam and Quackity for having tortured him and at one point has the gall to claim that even he would never stoop to that, while conveniently ignoring both his psychological torture of Tommy out of petty spite during the Exile Arc and how he tortured Lazar and Vikk to death simply to test an experiment.
• Morton's Fork: During the Final Disc War, Dream took Tubbo hostage and gave Tommy a choice: either give Dream the Mellohi-disc, or Dream would kill Tubbo. Tommy ultimately chose to hand over the disc, only for Dream to reveal that the disc was a fake, force them both to drop their armor, and after taking them to the Vault of Attachments, revealing that his ultimate plan was to kill Tubbo and lock Tommy up in prison forever. Even if Tommy had chosen the disc over Tubbo, the outcome would've been the same, with him being Forced to Watch Tubbo die, before being locked up in Pandora's Vault for the rest of his life. That is, if Punz and the others hadn't stepped in.
• The Most Wanted: With his escape, Dream has effectively become Public Enemy Number One on the server with everyone except the members of the Syndicate up in arms trying to find and kill him. Even members of his own nation have ostracized him.
• Motive Decay: By Season 4, the torture he's undergone in Pandora's Vault has resulted in Dream's motives declining from wanting to take over the server to restore it to "one big family" to getting revenge on anyone who crossed him, particularly Tommy.
• Necromancer: Dream managed to become one after gaining the Book of Revival from Schlatt, being able to bring the dead back to life using it. His ability to do so ends up saving his life in the Disc War Finale, because if he had been unable to use Wilbur (who was dead at that point) as a bargaining chip, he would have been killed off permanently by Tommy instead of being locked and contained in the prison.
• Never My Fault: Dream's ego is so great that he refuses to accept responsibility for anything he's done because that conflicts with his own personal view of himself as the Big Good. Whenever he's called out on his numerous and often downright heinous crimes, Dream always rejects responsibility by either dismissing it as necessary or resorting to victim-blaming, making sure to downplay his own culpability every time.
• No Sense of Personal Space: During Tommy's prison visits, Dream became increasingly touchy-feely, especially once Tommy became trapped in his cell with him. Most notably, Tommy stands facing the lava for a few minutes while begging Sam to let him out, and when he turns back around Dream is standing inches away, practically breathing down his neck.
• Not Me This Time: Zig-Zagged. There's no denying that Dream absolutely killed Tommy and sent him to the afterlife, but the fact that Tommy had to endure two months there was not planned — the Afterlife has Year Inside, Hour Outside properties that Dream was genuinely unaware of and was actually surprised to learn about. That said, he's still responsible for sending Tommy there in the first place.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: He often claims that he's simply keeping the server in order, but it becomes clear after a while that his motives have degraded into just wanting power over everyone to satisfy his Control Freak nature and power for its own sake.
• Obliviously Evil: A downright horrific example. Dream is so arrogant and narcissistic that he's deluded himself into believing that he's the good guy, even as he engages in torture, murder, and the destruction of nations out of little more than petty spite. Any attempt to call him out on his actions leads to him insisting that he was totally justified and that his victims were the ones really at fault.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Even at his lowest point, Dream has always had this air of triumphant smugness about him. Nothing really seems to phase him, and even when he's trapped in a maximum-security cell, he still constantly acts like he's won. That is, until Quackity enters the cell, pulls out a sword, and tells him in no uncertain terms that, while he can't kill him, it won't stop him from making Dream's life a living hell. Within seconds, Dream is backed up into a corner of the cell, screaming for Sam to come help him.
• Pet the Dog: Subverted. When Wilbur starts his mental spiral and begins believing himself to be the bad guy, Dream starts reassuring him that he isn't and that deposing an incompetent tyrant like Schlatt would actually be a good thing for everyone on the server. However, once he realizes he can exploit Wilbur's mental state to get him to destroy Manberg, Dream quickly shifts to encouraging it and egging him on.^note Another suspected "bonus" for Dream for egging him on at all is that he can more easily torment Tommy once Wilbur, his older brother-figure, is out of the way.
• Pick on Someone Your Own Size: Dream (starting at age 21) is absolutely obsessed with Tommy (starting at age 16), and while his conflict is mostly with L'Manburg in Season 1, in Season 2, he starts viewing Tommy as the key to obtaining total control of the SMP, and goes out of his way to make his life a living hell to try to beat him into submission.
• Police Brutality: One of his alter egos, Cop Dream, appears whenever he sees someone commit a crime, and ruthlessly attacks the person immediately when the crime is committed.
• Pragmatic Villainy: More than willing to do good if it benefits him. The prime example is the end of the L'Manburg Civil War, where he aids Pogtopia only to reveal that he's done so to convince Wilbur to blow up Manburg.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: A villainous example. When Tommy screams that Jschlatt is dead and that there is no way to bring him back, Dream says, "Why don't you go see him then?", and proceeds to beat Tommy to death.
• Put on a Prison Bus: At the end of Season 2, Dream gets locked in Pandora's Vault, temporarily preventing him from interacting with the story. Subverted by the fact that it is later shown that Dream still holds incredible power over the server even when locked away, not just because of his knowledge on reviving people from the dead, but also due to the other members' fear and trauma induced by him and his actions. Later on, Dream does break out of prison in the Season 3 finale and acts as the Returning Big Bad in Season 4.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • He gives a particularly scathing one to Tubbo after being given the other disc:
    "Well, uh, thank you for giving me the disc. I just wanna say that you're an idiot. You. Are. An. Absolute. Idiot. You have no power and you are the worst President that has ever been elected– you're no President at all! You're not even President! Quackity is more President than you. I'm more President of L'Manburg than you! You listen to– You get pushed around by everybody on the server! Because YOU. ARE. AN IDIOT. You are a buffoon! You are a fool! You fall for everything! You just gave me the ONE thing I needed to DESTROY L'Manburg! I don't CARE about the L'Manburg, I don't care about anything! I've said this before! The only reason I did not destroy L'Manburg is because you had the disc! ... Ranboo is a traitor! One of your most trusted advisors is a traitor! You can't even run your own nation right, Tubbo! L'Manburg is weaker than it's ever been, and it's because of you!"
  • He gives another one to Sam during the latter's second imprisonment stream in Season 4... which eventually dissolves into Dream being a massive hypocrite to make Sam look worse:
    "Okay, so... you've murdered for the greater good, you've kidnapped for the greater good, you've tortured for the greater good, you've taken hostage for the greater good, you have mutilated for the greater good... um, and you've stolen for the greater good. That's like the holy trinity of horrible. I– I've– To be fair, I haven't even gone quite that far. I have not tortured... or mutilated. Maybe, like, mental torture, potentially^*This is a lie — remember the Resurrection/Death Loop he put Vikk and Lazar through? That arguably classifies as physical as well as mental torture, but mutilation? Come on. I've murdered, sure, I've stolen... I mean, I don't know! You're gonna say I'm a bad guy, I deserved to be locked up in here, then... maybe you should be here. I mean, we can be roomies."
• Refuge in Audacity: The reason Dream was able to get away with abusing Tommy during exile in the way that he did, was that the possibility of anything like that happening was so horrific, Tommy's friends didn't even consider it as an option. Even Quackity, Tommy's closest friend after his relationship with Tubbo fractured and the person most determined to get him out of there, saw exile as a purely political move against L'Manburg, and believed that the best course of action would be to eliminate all threats against the country before going in to rescue Tommy, and that he'd be fine in exile. The idea that Dream had orchestrated exile to isolate Tommy specifically, for the explicit purpose of abusing him into compliance, never even crossed anyone's mind.
• Revenge Myopia: He clearly wants revenge on Tommy for imprisoning him after he breaks out of Pandora's Vault, ignoring that Tommy had only done it to punish Dream for having, among other things, subjected him to a campaign of physical and emotional abuse for the purpose of at best breaking him and at worst almost driving him to suicide and had orchestrated L'Manburg's destruction twice.
• Rivals Team Up: He and Technoblade (who have done a duel hosted by MrBeast) team up in...
  • The Battle of the Lake, with both having supported Pogtopia's efforts for quite some time.
  • The Doomsday War, where they both realize that they share a common interest — L'Manburg's complete and utter annihilation. With their combined powers, they turn the nation into a crater.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Dream doesn't just serve as an Orcus on His Throne during the wars of the server. He's up close and personal during the fighting, and is arguably the best fighter on his side.
• Sadist: He gleefully admits that he loves tormenting Tommy because he finds his suffering fun.
• Sanity Slippage: Arguably, Dream has been on a steady decline in mental health throughout the course of the SMP, although it became most noticeable during the Disc War finale. Since he began serving time in Pandora's Vault, however, the inhumane conditions and torture have undoubtedly caused his worst qualities, such as his control issues and god complex, to amplify and worsen by a thousand-fold.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: Being the owner of the server, Dream tends to get away with breaking his own rules on the SMP, even before L'Manburg declared independence.
  Tommy: He contradicts his own rules! He says "no stealing", then he goes and steals from me! He says "no griefing", then he ruins the entire– look at that! (points at a massive crater in the ground) That is Dream! That is Dream! (Beat) So here's what we're doing today. We were sick of it, you see, chat. We were sick, so we moved to a new home. L'Manburg, alright? [...] L'Manburg, oh, how it was superior, and Dream didn't like that. The power left his grasp!– one might say. So now he's gone– he's gone insane.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: After his defeat at the end of Season 2, the other server members decide to lock Dream inside Pandora's Vault instead of killing him, hoping to eventually learn the secret of resurrection from him. Even before his escape, he has still managed to cause quite a bit of trouble while imprisoned, and when the Syndicate releases him back into the wild, one of the first things he does is attempt to resume abusing Tommy.
• Serial Killer: Dream had killed four people (Vikkstar and LazarBeam, Tommy, and Ghostbur) in relation to using the revive-book on each of them, over the course of at least several months. What makes this worse is that he committed the last two of those murders while in prison while the two were each visiting him (for various reasons).
• Signature Laugh: While his Evil Laugh isn't that remarkable, Dream's normal laughter consists mostly of loud, teakettle-like wheezing.
• Slowly Slipping Into Evil: Well, further into evil. Dream starts off as a heavy-handed Control Freak who can't tolerate any challenge to his rule, but he seems genuinely well-meaning and he lets L'Manburg stay a country despite having won the war and having no reason to do so (admittedly, he does this in exchange for Tommy's discs and makes sure to humiliate him during the peace treaty). As time goes on, his "the ends justify the means" mentality results in him becoming increasingly amoral and manipulative in his efforts to regain total control over the server. His abuse (both physical and emotional) and gaslighting of Tommy marks the point where he remorselessly cannonballs off the slippery slope and spirals into downright monstrousness and depravity.
• Smug Snake: A high-functioning example. Dream always has a smug sense of superiority no matter what, and he can back it up through both physical strength and cunning. However, he finally overplays his hand in Season 3 when he kills Tommy, believing he can manipulate his way out of it as usual, and quickly finds out that while his knowledge of resurrection makes him too valuable to kill, it doesn't mean he can't be punished in other ways…
• The Sociopath: For lack of a better trope name, Dream pretty much fits this to a T — he wants to reunite the server under his rule ("justified" by a sketchy Divine Right of Kings excuse that can only really apply on a meta level), and is willing to do anything to do this, including plotting the massacre of a pacifist nation, manipulating every other person around him, nuking an entire city-state to bedrock, and abusing and gaslighting a teenager to the point said teen almost killed himself. Practically everything he does is self-serving or for his own amusement, and as of Season 3, he has a god complex to boot and dehumanizes everyone involved in his plans to serve his own goals, including to his former best friends, who both eventually stood up to him and turned against him from how toxic he was.
• Stalker without a Crush: Dream has always been weirdly fixated on Tommy, to the point where, in the era before L'Manburg, he would hide in his walls to spy on him, and built tunnels under his house to steal his beloved music discs. This only got worse in Season 2, when Dream became convinced that Tommy was the source of all attachment on the server, and that controlling him would allow him to control everyone else. He constantly keep tabs on Tommy, from having him exiled, trapping him on a remote beach and trying to abuse him into compliance, to conducting searches of Techno's house after Tommy ran away even after he knew for a fact that Tommy was hiding there, to trying to capture him and lock him up in prison, while claiming the only issue with exile was that Tommy could physically leave. Even after being jailed, Dream's obsession with Tommy didn't waver in the slightest, to the point where he excitedly offered Tommy immortality if he helped him study the revival book by letting Dream kill him over and over. Sam even cites this obsession as the reason why he felt somewhat safe leaving Tommy locked up with Dream. The first place that Dream goes after escaping prison is Logstedshire, and when Tommy goes there to retrieve the Axe of Peace (and fails, since Dream got to it first), Dream welcomed him home in Exile.
  Sam: He admitted himself that he needed Tommy. The only thing he would talk about when he was in there alone was Tommy, Tommy, Tommy.
• Tested on Humans: According to his January 2022 lore video, Dream first tested the revive-book on Vikkstar and LazarBeam, before killing them both off permanently after succeeding to keep the book a secret.
• Token Evil Teammate: To Pogtopia. He was actively working against them and only sided with them because he wanted Jschlatt gone more.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: While Dream started off as ruthless and manipulative, he was opposed to Schlatt's blatant sadism at least on pragmatic grounds, genuinely seemed to care about Sapnap and George, and at times came off as a Friendly Enemy towards Tommy and Wilbur. In Season 2, his newfound Virtue Is Weakness attitude leads to him engaging in increasingly pointless sadism, with the most notable instance being his psychological torture of Tommy during Exile. By the season's end, all of Dream's redeeming qualities are gone, and his behavior becomes increasingly abhorrent afterwards until it's clear he's nothing but a remorseless monster.
• Ungrateful Bastard: He suggests to Punz that they use Phil as their guinea pig for testing out the revive book, even though Phil had helped him demolish L'Manburg during the Doomsday War.
• Unreliable Expositor: During Sam's 3 February 2022 imprisonment stream, Dream recounts several incidences across the history of the SMP to Sam... except every single incident recounted involves a heavy amount of lying or victim-blaming for the sake of making Dream look better, and so that Sam might trust him more.
  • Dream's recounting of the Disc War has him claim that he won the war "fair and square", and that they were his discs from that point onward, and Tommy had been the one trying to steal them. Literally anyone who rewatched the old VODs would be able to tell you that Tommy and Tubbo won the initial Disc War, and that Tommy gave up his discs to Dream in exchange for L'Manburg's independence — how would the discs suddenly be Dream's? And even then, if Dream "won" the discs through the War of L'Manburgian Independence, was plotting and carrying out a massacre of a nation of pacifists a "fair and square" victory? Tommy didn't even try to get his discs back for pretty much the rest of the season, and only tried again in Season 2 in the face of Dream's manipulation and later abuse.
  • Dream laid the blame on Tommy for Exile by saying he had nothing to do with it, that it was rehab from Tommy going around blowing up and destroying things, and that he was only there to keep an eye on him... while completely discounting that Dream himself did set up Exile (see Frame-Up for more details) and by "keep[ing] an eye on [Tommy]", he meant being there to "watch" him (as Tommy recalled Dream saying himself) and induce Stockholm Syndrome. Oh, and the child abuse, don't forget about how he completely glossed over the Refuge in Audacity-levels of child abuse that occurred in the Exile Arc.
  • Dream later claimed that Wilbur blew up a country (Manburg) and cited that as evidence that Wilbur was no better than himself... while completely discounting two facts: 1) Dream was the one that gave Wilbur the TNT to blow up Manburg in the first place, and 2) Wilbur was trying to kill himself in the process.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: Stated in- and out-of-universe to be Dream's motivation and way of thinking. In a conversation with Punz, he claimed that he has always wanted the server to be "one giant family" and during the Disc Finale, he makes it clear he believed the server was better before Tommy joined or L'Manberg existed and is willing to do absolutely anything^note including but not limited to killing Tubbo and imprisoning Tommy, destroying L'Manberg with TNT down to bedrock, and commissioning the construction of a inescapable prison to contain anyone he sees as a threat to "the peace" to return the server to its previous 'factionless' state with himself as the supreme authority. cc!Dream has also confirmed in a conversation with a fan that this is character Dream's canonical motivation and he has a "means justify the ends" type of mindset.
  Dream: The Dream SMP… you know, always, this is something I've talked to you about before is that the goal has always just been that one united server, that everyone follows the same rules, there's no countries, there's no you know any of this: there's just… one giant family.
• Villain Decay: Intentionally played out in Season 3. While he's nowhere near harmless, he's lost much of his influence and is nowhere close to as powerful as he used to be, while his mental health is on the decline due to his imprisonment and torture.
• Villain Has a Point: He's unnecessarily cruel in how he points it out, but he's not wrong when he calls Tubbo such a pushover that even as L'Manburg's president he let his own citizens manipulate his every move.
• Villain Protagonist: The Dream SMP short "The Revival Book...." is from Dream's perspective, where he tests his revival book on the poor residents of Boomerville by killing them in painful ways and reviving them again before permanently killing them when the Revival Book's effectiveness is confirmed.
• Villain Respect: In Dream's letter to Tommy revealing his Heel–Face Turn, it's all but stated that Dream has this for Wilbur. Although he may have been a rebel, Dream eventually came to respect his peaceful rule over L'Manburg.
• Virtue Is Weakness: He sees having attachments (e.g. pets and prized weapons) as a weakness and starts cutting them off, so that he could not be controlled through them, as they have arguably been by other members of the server (e.g. the Pet Wars started over Sapnap being a Chronic Pet Killer, which pissed off the owners of the pets, among other things). Unfortunately for him, this doesn't work out when half the server teams up to confront him during the Season 2 finale, discovering that he was trying to control the SMP through everyone else's attachments, which leads to his arrest and imprisonment.
• We Can Rule Together: After figuring out that the revival book works and declaring himself a god, Dream excitedly asks Tommy to work with him to figure out a way for them both to become immortal. Tommy is horrified and rejects this immediately, mostly because his role in the whole studying immortality thing would be getting killed and revived over and over.
  Dream: Maybe I'll send you back and, y'know, get some knowledge– I wanna figure it out, I wanna know... I wanna know how it works, I wanna know about death, y'know! We can study it! We can study it together! We can become immortal, together!
• White Mask of Doom: Most fanart and official depictions of him shows him wearing a white mask with his signature smiley face on it.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: The only person that noticeably disturbs Dream is Mexican Dream.
• Why Did You Make Me Hit You?: After finding Tommy's secret stash of items (which Dream never explicitly said he couldn't have)^note Although Tommy originally made the secret stash at the beginning of his Exile as a way to retain items that might help him to possibly fight Dream, by the time Dream discovers it, the manipulation he has put Tommy through meant that Tommy believed Dream was his friend, and no longer wished to fight him. At this time, the secret stash consisted of mostly valuable or sentimental items (diamonds, paintings of his friend and L'Manberg), Dream blows up the entirety of Logstedshire, bars Tommy from the Nether and forbids him from having any visitors. He then scolds Tommy for betraying him, saying things like "I thought you were my friend", with Tommy frantically apologizing the entire time.
• Wild Card: One of the biggest ones on the server, matched only by Techno. Dream will side with anyone he has to in order to secure his own power, but he'll also betray someone within minutes of making an alliance if it benefits him. Even when his alliances stick, expect Dream to manipulate said alliances to heavily favor him and not-so-much his "ally". Trying to anticipate what Dream's going to do is futile, as he's just that unpredictable. Notably, the sole exception to this seems to be Techno himself, who Dream has mostly had positive interactions with and whom Dream goes to great lengths to try and keep on his side, even to the point of not attacking Tommy when he is in Dream SMP lands because Techno allied himself with Tommy at the time.
• Would Harm a Senior: His first Season 4 lore video reveals that he abducted the (relatively) elderly members of Boomerville and subjected them to various cruel and unusual deaths to test his revive book. He initially thinks of using Phil as the guinea pig, before Punz points out that his friends and son will look for him if he suddenly goes missing.
• Would Hurt a Child: Pushing the limits of the trope, but it debatably applies with the context of helplessness. Dream puts Tommy (16 years old at the time) through absolute hell in Exile, abusing him physically as well as psychologically. He does so again when Tommy gets trapped in the prison with him during the lockdown, by murdering him brutally and bringing him back to life.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Dream seems to genuinely believe he's the Big Good bringing the server back together, even as he's committing horrific crimes and even murdering the people he claims to care so much about. The only times he actually cops to being a bad person is when he's actively trying to psychologically torment Sam, and even then, he accuses Sam of being the eviler of the two while ignoring the fact that Dream himself has tortured and murdered people with the barest of provocations.
• Xanatos Gambit: Dream's final ploy during the Manburg-Pogtopia War. If Jschlatt wins the battle? Dream's on his side (even if only for his own gain), so he wins too. If Pogtopia wins the battle? No worries, he'll just feign surrender and negotiate to get a favorable outcome without Pogtopia realizing. A Pogtopian victory also eliminates Jschlatt, by far the biggest threat Dream has to his own rule, thus negating the need to have him and Jschlatt negotiate further. The latter is exactly what happens as Dream makes a deal with Wilbur to destroy L'Manburg, getting one last laugh over his enemies, and securing the Dream SMP proper as an unopposed empire with Jschlatt's death.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness:
  • Dream first tries to pull this with Tubbo during the Disc War finale. Needless to say, it doesn't work out.
  • In early Season 4, after finding out Sam has been locked up in Pandora's Vault, Dream makes the prison his new base and promises to visit Sam and interrogate him about people around the server and where their most prized possessions were, before killing him once a year was up. When Sam tries to refuse this, Dream cites the reason that he'd kill him.
• Zero-Approval Gambit: He had a plan in the works to make everyone on the server hate him, and was also planning a staged falling out with Punz so that no one will go after him, making it easier for Punz to act as a spy in L'Manburg. This plan later turned out to be the complete and utter annihilation of L'Manburg, after which he tells Tommy that he's leaving to avoid the "frustration" that he will have caused.

Other

Spirit

Dream's horse, who was accidentally killed by Sapnap.

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• Non-Human Non-Binary: According to Dream, Spirit is non-binary and uses singular "they" pronouns.
• Posthumous Character: Spirit dies early on in the SMP timeline, but their leather (and subsequent item frame) is used as a trading bargain in several treaties and deals between players.

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