"To sleep, perchance to dream."
—Hamlet, Hamlet
Dreams and dreaming are ubiquitous in storytelling. There are many, many dream-related tropes: here are several. See also Sleep and Wakefulness Tropes.
Tropes
- Acid Reflux Nightmare: Nightmares brought on by The Food Poisoning Incident or eating too much.
- Acting Out a Daydream: A character acts out what he's imagining.
- Adventures in Comaland: Dreaming while in a coma rather than regular sleep.
- All Just a Dream: The events of all, or most, of an episode are revealed to have all been a dream at the end.
- Anxiety Dreams: A character dreams that something they worry about happens.
- Awkwardly Gay Dream: A character has a homoerotic dream despite being straight — awkwardness ensues.
- Baku: A tapir-like Youkai that eats bad dreams.
- Based on a Dream: A work that was based on a dream.
- Bedtime Brainwashing: Communicating with a person in sleep-like state to influence their dreams or actions.
- Bizarre Dream Rationalization: Character tells themselves they're dreaming to explain away the weird things they're seeing.
- Blank Book: A character picks up a book, but it's blank or just has gibberish in it.
- But You Were There, and You, and You: Dream characters look like and/or act like the waking-life characters, even if they are not.
- Cannot Dream: An inability to dream.
- Catapult Nightmare: After a nightmare, a character falls out of bed or sits up abruptly.
- Crapsack World, Escapist Sanctuary: The real world is objectively awful, so a character finds refuge in an imaginary world.
- Crashing Dreams: A dream and a real-world event that happen at the same time are similar.
- Daydream Believer: A character believes that a Show Within a Show is reality.
- Daydream Surprise: Viewers think that something was happening, but it turns out to be a character daydreaming.
- Delicious Daydream: When a character has a daydream about food.
- Delusion Conclusion: Audience members believe that the supernatural elements of a story are due to it taking place in a dream.
- Dream Apocalypse: An apocalypse happens because the world was All Just a Dream and the dreamer woke up.
- Dream Ballet: Dreaming about ballet.
- Dream Deception: A character lies to another that they're dreaming.
- Dream Emergency Exit: Doing this in a dream will automatically wake you up.
- Dream Episode: An episode centered around one or more characters dreaming.
- Dream Intro: The intro was All Just a Dream.
- Dream Land: Another Dimension where all the dreams are taking place.
- Dream People: Characters within dreams.
- Dream Reality Check: If this is just a dream, then one may wake up and get out.
- Dream Sequence: A character's dream takes up a scene.
- Dream Spying: Dreaming about something that is happening somewhere else.
- Dream Stealer: Somehow stealing or destroying someone else's dream.
- Dream Sue: Dreaming about being The Ace.
- Dream Tells You to Wake Up: When dream characters tell the dreaming character to wake up.
- Dreamville: Dreams, VR scenarios, artificial realities and other imaginary events set in suburbia or small towns.
- Dream Walker: A dreaming character becomes part of another person's dream.
- Dream Weaver: Being able to do cool things via lucid dreaming.
- Dream Within a Dream: A character dreams about dreaming.
- Dreaming of Things to Come: Dreaming the future.
- Dreaming of Times Gone By: Dreaming about past events, despite not having experienced them.
- Dreaming the Truth: Dreaming allows a character to realise something.
- Dreams of Flying: Flight in dreams.
- Dreams vs. Nightmares: Heroic individuals who support good dreams fighting evil individuals who spread nightmares.
- Dying Dream: Someone has a dream before they die.
- Dying to Wake Up: Dying in a dream instantly wakes you up.
- Elderly Future Fantasy: Character has a dream where they and other characters are elderly in the future, often with having a current conflict in the story that's still going into old age.
- Erotic Dream: Dreams about sex and/or other erotic stuff.
- Fantasy Keepsake: An item that came from a dream or a daydream.
- Fantasy Sequence: Daydreaming.
- Fever Dream Episode: Nightmares or hallucinations caused by fever take up a whole episode.
- Flashback Nightmare: Nightmares of bad memories.
- Girl of My Dreams: Meeting your future Love Interest in a dream.
- A Glitch in the Matrix: A hint that an event is a dream.
- Guilt-Induced Nightmare: A nightmare caused by guilt.
- Hatsuyume: The first dream a person has in the new year is prophetic.
- In the Dreaming Stage of Grief: Devastated character copes by convincing themselves it is/was just a bad dream.
- Irritation Nightmare: Someone has a nightmare about something which annoys them.
- I Was Having Such a Nice Dream: Someone is annoyed to be woken up from a good dream.
- Living Dream: A character exists because someone dreamt them up.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: A dream world meant to trap someone from reality.
- Mad at a Dream: A character is mad at something that happened in a dream.
- Mad Dreamer: An insane person mistakes dreams for reality.
- Marshmallow Dream: A character dreams they are eating something, which leads to them chewing on their pillow.
- Mental World: A place that exists in a person's mind.
- Mind Virus: A bug like a Computer Virus but it infects peoples' minds.
- Near-Death Clairvoyance: Someone astral projects before they die and look around. Alternatively, an already-dead person looks around.
- Nightmare of Normality: A supernatural character is made to believe they are mundane, popularly through an illusion of an ordinary life.
- Nightmare Sequence: A character has a nightmare.
- Nightmare Weaver: Tormenting people in their sleep with bad dreams.
- "Not Wearing Pants" Dream: Nudity or Comedic Underwear Exposure in dreams.
- Opinion-Changing Dream: A dream changes the dreamer's opinion.
- Or Was It a Dream?: It looks like the character only dreamed the events of the story, but then it's hinted that what they supposedly dreamed about had actually happened.
- Past Experience Nightmare: Nightmares about bad past events.
- Plagued by Nightmares: A character is tormented by repeated nightmares.
- Prefers the Illusion: Character chooses to keep living in an illusion or dream.
- Psychic Dreams for Everyone: Anyone, including non-psychics, can have psychic dreams.
- The Pursuing Nightmare: A nightmare or other imaginary threat that operates by stalking or chasing down dreamers.
- Real Dreams are Weirder: In fiction, dreams aren't "supposed" to be surreal.
- Recurring Dreams: Dreams that happen more than once, which (usually) make them important.
- Recursive Reality: Reality or non-reality has different "layers".
- The Sandman: The mythical Lord of Dreams, nothing less.
- Schrödinger's Butterfly: The distinction between reality and non-reality is left ambiguous.
- Shared Dream: Two or more characters share the same dream or nightmare.
- Shattering the Illusion: A character is under an illusion, but then the illusion breaks.
- Sleep Paralysis Creature: People who suffer from the nightmarish hallucinations associated with sleep paralysis often imagine seeing some sort of creepy monster.
- Simulated Fantasy, Post-Apocalyptic Reality: After the apocalypse, virtual reality becomes a haven for survivors - or a hell.
- Taken from a Dream: A character brings something from a literal dreamworld into reality.
- Talking in Your Dreams: Communicating via dreams.
- That Was Not a Dream: Character talks about a dream they had and is then told that they weren't dreaming and what they described actually happened.
- Tragic Dream: A character has a wish-fulfillment dream that cannot come true.
- Virtual-Reality Interrogation: You invoke All Just a Dream via virtual reality.
- Virtual-Reality Warper: Controlling virtual worlds, the digital cousin to the Dream Weaver.
- Vision Quest: A character visualises their thoughts in order to discover themselves.
- Visions of Another Self: The same actors play different characters in the past and future vision scenes.
- Weaker in the Real World: A being can do anything in dreams, but not so much in reality.
- Win to Exit: Characters must win somehow in order to exit a virtual reality.
- Your Mind Makes It Real: If you do something in your imagination, it comes true.
- Your Worst Memory: A character revisits the worst moment of their life, often through dreams.
