Dream Walker

Nancy: What I learned in the dream clinic. That's what I'm trying to prove, Mother. Rod didn't kill Tina and he didn't hang himself. There's this guy. He's after us in our dreams.
Marge: But that's just not reality, Nancy.

— A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Sometimes, in fiction, the dreamer isn't the only one seeing his or her dream. Sometimes another character sees the dream or can enter it and become part of it. Sometimes it's played straight, other times for laughs, with a statement like, "Hey, this is my dream!" or "Hey, it's your dream."

Sometimes characters do this for malevolent reasons, seeking to terrify and/or harm the dreamer for their own purposes (like Freddy Krueger); others devote their abilities to protect dreamers from such threats (like Doctor Strange). If a shared Dream Land exists that dreaming minds are drawn to, Dream Walkers will typically be the ones to be consciously able to head to this dreamland, seek out places within it, or move between different dreaming worlds. A Dream Walker may also be capable of taking other people along when moving between dreams, even if these can't do so on their own. If the Walker hares off while their tagalongs are still in someone else's dreamscape, then they'll likely remain stuck there until everyone involved wakes up.

Compare/contrast Dream Weaver and Dream Stealer, which can overlap. Also compare/contrast with Shared Dream, where characters all have a shared, collective dream. Not to be confused with Dream Spying. See also Talking in Your Dreams. If a Dream Walker is able to take objects back into the waking world, see also Taken from a Dream.

Not to be confused with the webcomic of the same name.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• 18if: Protagonist Haruto Tsukishiro, by virtue of being trapped in a Dream Land, can enter the dreams of others.
• Ayakashi Triangle:
  • Ayakashi are spirits that can enter humans' dreams by possessing them. When an ikon possessing Lu drains her life until she loses consciousness, it tries to attack her in her dreams to take the rest. Suzu can effectively enter dreams as well via creating an omokage Remote Body, but this also seems to connect things to her dreams, and thus her subconscious.
  • Matsuri is a more complicated variant. When he exorcises an ayakashi from someone, he sends a fragment of his spiritual power into them, and if they're dreaming it appears to them as Matsuri's Residual Self-Image. However, while this fragment acts as Matsuri would (though it seems incapable of speech), the actual Matsuri has no awareness of what is sees and originally didn't even know it existed.
• This is Yuko's primary demonic power in The Demon Girl Next Door, overlapping with Dream Weaver. Yuko can enter the dreams of basically anything capable of dreaming, as long as she and her target are both asleep, and while there, she can manifest into being virtually anything she can imagine. Thing is, she doesn't have a very good imagination. She initially thinks that it's a pretty lame power to have, until her initial uses of it show that her dream manipulation is just a Required Secondary Power for what she's really capable of: manipulating the subconscious mind of the dreamer, as dreams are the window into the subconscious. When she finds she can do things like plant unconscious suggestions, create phobias or cravings, or even overwrite emotions to make bitter enemies into grudging friends, she realizes her abilities are a lot more dangerous than she thought and is disgusted with herself, even though her friends remind her that all she had ever used her powers for is to bring happiness to the people around her.
• Doraemon: Nobita's Three Visionary Swordsmen have Nobita and Doraemon having adventures in the dream world of Yumemiru, and feeling lonely, Nobita actually convinced Doraemon to use the machine to drag his friends Shizuka, Suneo and Gian into his dream. Much to the annoyance of the latter two, since Gian is dreaming about holding a global concert while Suneo's about to dream of going to a vacation in Mars.
• Uta∽Kata starts off its main plot with the protagonist seeing a girl come out of a mirror and settle into her life; but she realises the same girl appeared in her dreams, and recalling how those dreams went becomes an important piece of foreshadowing.
• In X/1999, Hinoto's sister Kanoe is more of this than a Dream Weaver (save for the TV series). Also Hokuto Sumeragi straddles the line: she can enter other people's dreams, alright, but has very few actual influence on them and can only do it when she herself is asleep, while the others can do it when awake too.
• Why the Hell Are You Here, Teacher!? has a chapter where Mad Scientist Nanjou-sensei invents a machine to do this to Tadashi. Of course being the genre that it is, it's an Erotic Dream.

Comic Books

• Anderson: Psi-Division: Both the Sisters of Death and Judge Death have invaded Judge Anderson's dreams on separate occasions.
• Bone: Those with a powerful dreaming eye have the ability to influence or invade the dreams of others. Dragons are naturally powerful dreamers and seem to have this ability as a rule, which comes in handy when the Great Red Dragon is forbidden from directly interfering with the war, as he can still guide Thorn and Fone Bone through their dreams.
• Doctor Strange has occasionally entered the dreams of clients to help them. His enemy, Nightmare, can control dreams and gain power through them.
• In Lucy Dreaming, Lucy and her friend Welsey enter the same dream more than once. Not only that, in the first issue, Lucy encounters someone else who is having the same dream, who she later suspects is Welsey's missing father.
• As originally established in the show, Princess Luna from the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW) has this ability. She's even described as the "Protector of Dreams".
• The New Universe character Nightmask has this as his superpower.
• In Poet Anderson: The Dream Walker, the Dream World and its hub city of Genesis is explained as the result of the collective dreaming subconscious of humanity. Lucid dreamers are able to experience the collective dreams of everyone else given form as a specific place.
• Rising Stars: One person has this power.
• The Sandman (1989):
  • In "Sandman: The Doll's House", Rose Walker can do this during her brief time as a dream vortex.
  • Dream himself can also do this, of course (being the Anthropomorphic Personification of dreaming) and regularly uses this ability throughout the series. Special note must be made of the time he hijacked a car that was being used as the set for an Erotic Dream and drove to London in it.
• Ramona Flowers from Scott Pilgrim.
• A little-seen mutant in the X-Men comics named Rem-Ram has this as his power, as a sort of telepathy which works only on the sleeping. He can contact the mind of a person who is awake, but that causes him severe pain and possible neurological injury.
  • A more powerful but just as discreet mutant is Fontanelle, the daughter of the villainess known as Black Womb, whose power consists indeed of walking into people's dreams and finding whichever she needs for intelligence.

Fan Works

• Cave Dancers Pretty Cure: In Episode 4, Cure Dream enters a shared dream between Gobo and Red Fraggle to encourage them not to give up on their search for the Dance Crystals. She mentions she came because Cure Mint, who had the prophecy about the Cave Dancer Cures in the first place, can't walk in dreams.
• Davion & Davion (Deceased): Hanse Davion(circa 3052) has a dream with his ancestor John Davion(circa 2760). But for Hanse, it's a Dying Dream, and John wakes up in the morning with Hanse's ghost haunting him.
• A Diplomatic Visit: As in canon, this is one of Luna's Duties, per her Role as the Lady of Dreams, helping ponies who are having bad dreams so she can help them work past whatever problem they're having. Her Opposite, the Lord or Lady of Nightmares, also has this ability. In the epilogue of the third story, Luna and Pharynx begin training Moondancer to dreamwalk as well, via Luna sharing her Mantle to make Moondancer the first of her Dreamguards, and the two (and Pharynx) soon discover that Luna and Pharynx's foal is likely to have this power naturally as well, via tapping their Mantles.
• Half Past Adventure: Robin has this as part of zhir Combo Platter Powers, much like zhir great-grandfather Jake.
• Hero Chat: The Goat Miraculous grants the power to enter one's dream. In their debut chapter as the Goat Hero Capricorn, Marc uses it to enter Marinette's dream and help wake her up when she and most of Paris are trapped in their sleep by an akuma.
• hush now, little one (Turning Red/Encanto crossover): Bruno visits Tae-young's mind during a nightmare.
• Karma Circle: Judgement: Daan Yel has the power to reach into people's minds and dreams. He does so to numerous people that Gaz has hurt in real life, including her brother Dib, and shows her how they really feel about her by letting them take out their anger on her in a dream.
• The Many Worlds Interpretation: Dream-walking is a part of Discworld magic, as both Wizards and Witches know. Unseen University even teaches how to do it to suitably inclined student Wizards and describes it as Walking The Astral Planes. Witches tend to pick it up informally and call it Stepping Out. Ponder Stibbons has to do it to rescue Sheldon Cooper from a trap set by a lurking multi-dimensional peril. In a later tale, he has to rescue a daughter from the Dungeon Dimensions. ^note He discovers his Witch daughter is perfectly capable of extracting herself. Later, his Witch-daughter meets a deceased Ancestor in a dream, who takes advantage of being outside time to show her some History. Bekki uses this knowledge to annoy her History teacher.
• Moonlight: Luna enlists Scootaloo's help for this to combat the nightmares induced by their mysterious opponent. Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom later join her to help.
• The New Adventures of Invader Zim: Dib spends most of Episode 9 doing this, using a spell he's found to explore the dreams of all the other main characters. Interestingly, the trope is Deconstructed, as everyone tells Dib that wandering into other people's minds without their consent is immoral. Comes into play again in Episode 21, when he uses it to free his friends from the Lotus-Eater Machine that Norlock put them in.
• Past Sins: Glimpses 2: "Dreams": Twilight travels into Nyx's dreams.
• Pokémon Reset Bloodlines features a few examples:
  • Agatha's Gengar often wakes her up this way, using a milder version of Dream Eater, which also enables to talk to each other.
  • MissingNo, when not causing Ash to have weird dreams, often walks into his normal dreams to torment him.
  • Anabel discovers she can do this when she tries to force herself to sleep in Chapter 41. She ends up entering the dreams of Ash, Delia, and Iris.
• A Shadow of the Titans: One chapter features Jade, as an extra credit assignment, using a spell to visit the dreams of her teammates. Then, she tries to see what happens if she enters her own sleeping body, and ends up in her subconscious, where she finds Tarakudo screwing with her head, though she passes this off as a dream.
• Steel Soul Saga: Steel Spirit: In the first chapter, "Sparks of Faith", when Sweetie Belle thinks about Luna's powers to do this to stop nightmares, but she's not exactly a pony:
  She wondered why Luna never visited her in those nightmares... or even if she could.
• Tantabus Mark II: Combined with Dream Weaver; as in canon, Luna travels the dreams of her subjects to help them with their nightmares. The fic starts because Luna decided she needed some backup and repurposed her old Tantabus project to help. Then it started calling her Mom, and after an initial Freak Out she was happy to have a child with her own powers and purpose. The Tantabus ends up teaching a couple other ponies how to use dream magic.
  Tantabus: You are currently the third most skilled dream mage in Equestria. Granted, there are only three dream mages in Equestria, but still.
• Us and Them: To get back at the author of the erotic novel based on her and Sephiroth' relationship, Aeris enters her dreams and basically gives her a "Reason You Suck" Speech.

Films — Animated

• Dreambuilders: Minna, upon discovering the dream world, uses it to interact with other people's dreams, particularly Jenny's.

Films — Live-Action

• The Haunting Of Silver Falls: The hauntings start with Holly invading Jordan's dreams in an effort to get the ring back.
• Inception: This is something technically any one can do if they have access to the technology. However, the film is set 20 Minutes into the Future, so the technology is limited to mostly military and those lucky few who can get their hands on it.
• The Knight Before Christmas: The mysterious quest giving "Old Crone" who send Sir Cole from 1334 to 2019 is also able to reach into his dreams to remind him that he needs to complete his quest, though she still only drops hints in riddles.
• The Last Witch Hunter: Chloe is one of rare witches gifted with this skill. It's considered a Dark gift and Kaulder tells her that the dreamwalkers used to be the Witch Queen's deadliest assassins (Your Mind Makes It Real is in effect), but Chloe uses it for the light side.
• A Nightmare on Elm Street centers on this type of thing. The villain Freddy Krueger, an undead serial killer, can enter anyone's dreams at will and manipulate them as much as he wants, using his powers to torment and slaughter his victims in increasingly creative ways. Any damage he does in a dream crosses over into the real world, making for some truly horrendous scenes.

Literature

• 100 Cupboards: One of the powers of Green Men; Henry is particularly good at it. At one point Henry and Monmouth dreamwalk to have a conversation despite being in the same room, because Monmouth's head injury won't hurt in a dream...until Henry notices it isn't there and can't imagine it away again.
• Astral Dawn: Caspian is quite the dream walker early on. Caspian literally walks through his dream on a bridge made of glass within a cloud where he soon meets Ixchel, the Mayan goddess of the moon. Caspian later follows her beyond the mortal plane into the astral plane, taking his dream sequence to an unprecedented level.
• The Chronicles of Dorsa: Joslyn's Ku-sai (sword master) was able to create a dream chamber and keep a part of his soul there then communicate with her in it, drawing Joslyn inside his dream then speak with her there together. She was to be taught this as well, but ran off and joined the Imperial Army instead before her training had completed. Later she starts learning on her own to create dream chambers and enter others' dreams, while shaping hers.
• Chronicles of the Kencyrath: This is common:
  • This gives an interesting twist to Erotic Dreams. If both people are in the dream as themselves, in control of their own actions, would dream sex be considered real? Timmon tries many times to have an Erotic Dream with Jame Once he's kicked out of the dream, in favor of another lover.
  • Dreaming of Times Gone By dreams are pretty common, and the dreamers are placed in the bodies of the people in the historical scenes. Seeing as these scenes are often tragic, this can be pretty upsetting for the dreamers.
• Cthulhu Armageddon :The ghoul Richard Jameson possesses this as one of his abilities. John eventually develops the power himself. The Dreamlands are one of the rare places humans have an advantage over the Great Old Ones and similar beings as whoever has the strongest imagination triumphs.
• The Dresden Files: "The Nightmare" from Grave Peril, the third book in the series, is a malevolent example. He's a ghost who enters people's dreams for the purposes of Mind Rape and murder.
• Dragon Calling, N. R. Eccles-Smith's High Fantasy series:
  • The mysterious boy, known only as Opal Eyes, enters Laeka'Draeon's mind in dreams as a way to communicate with him.
  • The sphinx, Riine’tae, is an actual dream-walker (in the series); her abilities being inherent (and very rare). She enters Laeka’Draeon’s dreams to sniff out his motives, but instead accidentally witnesses a Beacon Throne premonition.
• Dream Rovers: The dreamrovers can visit and manipulate others' dreams. It becomes unpopular to say the least when other people realize how the power could be abused
• Firefly: In the novel “Ghost Machine”, River steps into the characters’ dreams attempting to wake them before their ship crashes.
• Jessica Christ: Jessica gets visits from her half-brother Jesus (yes, that one) in her dreams... specifically, in her sex dreams, since she drops her mental defenses when having those and that's the only way he can get in touch with her to deliver instructions for her divine destiny. Neither of them is especially pleased with the arrangement, needless to say. She later learns that she can pull an angel into her dream at will, which becomes useful for getting around her father's ban on premarital relations between Jessica and her angelic boyfriend...
• H. P. Lovecraft: The Dreamlands can be accessed by those who know how to descend the Steps of Deeper Slumber and pass the Cavern of Flame, thereafter becoming a Dreamer who can traverse the Dreamlands, and encounter both the native people and beings of this world and other Earth-natives going through their own second sleeping lives. Powerful Dreamers can bring entire landscapes into being. It is mentioned on occasion that a well-developed Dreamer can survive in the Dreamlands even after their physical body dies, although they will lose the ability to return to the waking world.
• Malazan Book of the Fallen:
  • K'rul appears in Kruppe's dreams because he can't fully manifest in the real world at the beginning of the series. He uses him as a connection to everyday mortal life in the waking world, informs him of happenings far away and even steers him to influence the power players in the city of Darujhistan. He also uses his dreams to organize the complicated rebirth/soulmeld of Silverfox, which involves not only dream walking, but Time Travel as well.
  • Played with in the dreams of Udinaas. He does not himself walk in other people's dreams, but others, especially gods and those seeking power, are drawn to his dreams like moths to a flame, sharing information with him, trying to seduce him to join their side or trying to spy on him. Udinaas eventually learns to banish anyone he doesn't want inside his dreams but just the fact that he has to guard against them means many a sleepless night for him.
• Murder for the Modern Girl: Ruby is able to enter the dreams of other people through her mind-reading ability. There, she can explore the dream world with the dreamer. She mainly enters the dreams of her sisters when she can't sleep.
• Portent, by James Herbert: Numerous psychically buoyant children project their minds to a vast, lush garden, watched over by the similarly psychic "Dream Man."
• Rachel Griffin: Zoe can enter people's dreams as well as travel to their physical location, a useful talent if someone is possessed: she can Flash Step up behind them and belt them with a war club.
• Ravenor: Gideon Ravenor's psychic powers let him enter people's dreams, and he can take a dreaming person with him into another person's dream. He visits most of his companions this way near the start of the second book in order to ask them an important question.
• A Shadow Bright and Burning: Magicians have the ability to enter the dreams of others. Jenkins Hargrove visits Henrietta this way after she fends off Korozoth's attack on London. R'hlem, one of the Ancients, has this ability as well, as he visits one of Henrietta's dreams this way too.
• Sonja Blue: This is one of the powers of vampires. When Sonja is in an insane asylum, and her human side is being suppressed by anti-psychotic drugs and sedatives, her vampire side goes dream-walking at night, making the other inmates even more insane than they were to start with.
• Sword of Truth: Dream Walkers were gifted people altered by magic so they had an ability to enter others' dreams and so take control of their minds. Over time they grew in strength so that their ability extended to waking life also, but the name was retained.
• Vampire Academy: Adrian Ivashkov can visit the dreams of other people.
• Voyage To The Bunny Planet, by Rosemary Wells: Janet the Bunny Queen can visit to any sleeping bunny's dreams. Mainly to comfort them after having a bad or rough day. She would usually bring them to her home planet and show them a dream where the bunny she brings is having a very happy and peaceful day time.
• Warrior Cats: Jayfeather can enter other cats' dreams, as can the members of StarClan and the Place of No Stars. This ability is revealed to have been revoked in Bramblestar's Storm after the spiritual battle between StarClan and the Dark Forest had been concluded.
• The Wheel of Time: Dreamwalkers can, among many other things, visit the dreams of others if they are so inclined. However, they are generally careful not to as once inside the dream they are subject to the dreamer's will and may be unable to escape. Also, if a Dreamwalker feels intense love or hatred for a given individual, they may be drawn into that person's dreams. Dreamwalkers spend most of their time in the Dream Land.

Live-Action TV

• Behind Her Eyes: In the past, Rob and Adele learn to enter each other's dreams. In the present, Adele teaches these techniques to Louise.
• Charmed (1998): One of the only non-magical threats the sisters faced was the Dream Sorcerer, a human scientist who found a way to enter and control women's dreams. He used it to terrorize and murder (a la Freddie Kruger) women who rejected him.
• The Really Loud House: After most of the sisters eat a cursed cheesecake that traps them in their nightmares, Lucy gives Lincoln and Clyde the means to enter their dreams to rescue them. This involves giving them a necklace that they must keep on at all times, or else the nightmares will follow them back to the real world.
• Roswell: Isabel has this ability, and she seems to need a photo of the person to touch to be able to do this. Whether this is actually needed, or just because Isabel hasn't had proper training in the techniques is not clear. In the books that inspired the series, all the aliens can do this, and they can also bring humans into other people's dreams by holding their hand while they enter the dream.
• In an episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Sabrina gets a part time-job as a Sandman, which involves her using magic sand to help mortals sleep. She soon discovers that while she wears her sandman uniform (robe pajamas with a sleeping cap) she can enter the dreams of others. She soon learns the dangers of eavesdropping on other people's dreams.
  Zelda: I can't believe you were dreamdropping.
  Sabrina: I can't believe there's a word for it.
• The Sandman:
  • Morpheus, as the lord of the dream realm, can enter and affect the dreams of any sleeping person.
  • Rose Walker gains a similar ability when her status as a Dream Vortex manifests, although (at least at first) it's limited to the dreams of people in close physical proximity.
• In the Stargate SG-1 episode "The Changeling", Teal'c experiences near-death hallucinations after he and his mentor Bra'tac are the sole survivors of an ambush, alternating between a seemingly normal day at Stargate Command and a life where he is a firefighter preparing to give his stepfather a kidney transplant. The firefighter hallucination features Daniel Jackson (who is currently an Ascended being) acting as a hospital psychiatrist, who helps Teal'c realise what is happening to him. It is ultimately revealed that Daniel was truly appearing in Teal'c's dream at this point, bending the Ascended's rules against interference to offer his friend emotional support until the rest of the team could rescue him.
• Supernatural:
  • Angels can enter dreams to speak with the dreamer and deliver messages if they need to. This is sometimes the only way angels can communicate with Sam and Dean, who are often warded against (via hex bags) or physically marked against (via writing etched onto their ribs by Castiel) angels finding them personally. Castiel regularly visits Dean in his dreams, enough to that Dean has gotten used to it, but he's unnerved when Castiel says that it's not a secure space and they need to find a more private place to talk.
  • Played for Laughs when Fallen Angel Anna walks in on an Erotic Dream Dean is having (involving two strippers in angel and devil costumes) much to his embarrassment.
  • Azazel, the yellow-eyed demon, is also shown to be able to communicate with people this way, though he can sometimes also influence the dream.
• The Twilight Zone (1985): In "Dream Me a Life", Roger Simpson Leeds is unwillingly drawn into Laurel Kincaid's dream by her late husband so that he can help her to come to terms with her overwhelming grief which caused her to enter a catatonic state.

Music

• In David Byrne's song "The Dream Police", there's an entire justice system to prosecute crimes committed in sleep.
  Everyone has the same dreams, on different days of the week.
  We are the watchdogs of your mind, we are the dream police.

Myths & Religion

• A recurring notion in mysticism is that two people can and will share a dream if they are sufficiently connected, ideally emotionally so, in real life. The kicker is that the active dream world, the "Astral Plane" of the mystics, stands outside time and space. Just because Bob dreamt that Alice entered his dream and they interacted in a "real life" sort of way does not mean that they both had the same shared dream on the same night. Alice might remember having that dream ten years ago — or she may not have it for another twenty years. Illuminatus! creators Bob Shea and Robert Anton Wilson described dreamspace as the MorgensHeuteGesternewelt — the "tomorrow-today-yesterday world".

Podcasts

• This is Rose's ability in The Bright Sessions.
• The horrifying power of the main character in The Magnus Archives. At first it seems like his bad dreams are a reaction to trauma, but it is eventually revealed that they don't belong to him at all. When the Archivist takes a statement from a victim, he causes them to have constant nightmares of their own trauma, which he then enters in order to watch them suffer. Over and over and over. And here we thought that the Archivist's patron, the Ceaseless Watcher, was the fluffiest Eldritch Abomination in town.

Roleplay

• In Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues, Zia can view other people's dream as a result of her telepathic powers. The downside being that it prevents her from getting a good night's sleep.

Tabletop Games

• Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine: Sosunov magic is focused around dreams, including the option of walking into one to communicate with people or defend them from Outside-spawned dream horrors. The Dream-Witch character is also capable of this, despite not being a Sosunov or, for that matter, human (technically speaking).
• Dungeons & Dragons: The 3.5th edition supplement book Heroes of Horror supplies ideas and optional rules to create dream (or nightmare)-like sessions. This includes purposeful or accidental entry of a dreamworld from the waking world. It's only natural that it also features certain feats based on interpreting and entering the dreams of others, called Oneiromancery.
• In Nomine: Angels of Blandine (Archangel of Dreams) and demons of Beleth (Demon Princess of Nightmares) do this as a matter of course. It's also possible for others to learn to do it.
• Pathfinder: Dream and nightmare dragons, night hags and alebrijes can pass through the Material Plane, the Ethereal Plane and the Dimension of Dreams at will, entering and exiting dreaming minds as they please.
• Promethean: The Created: One First Edition supplement introduced the rare "Dreamborn" Prometheans; rather than being made in the traditional way (i.e. digging up corpses and bringing them Back from the Dead) these Prometheans were instead created from people's dreams of doing that, sometimes intentionally, sometimes by accident. They consequently have a Bestowment that allows them to enter the dreams of people nearby (whether they want to or not) and their Wasteland effect causes a plague of nightmares, with the Dreamborn Promethean as the boogeyman they all share. Unusually however, the Promethean can't interact with the dream or dreamer at all, and is instead a powerless observer; Prometheans being what they are, they're denied any connection with humanity, even on that basic level.

Video Games

• Kaname Date, the protagonist of AI: The Somnium Files, is a detective who can use a special machine to "psync" with people, allowing him to see their dreams in order to extract clues from their subconscious. But given how dreams are, the information he gains this way can be somewhat unreliable.
• The title character of Alundra, as well as Meia, has this as their main power and use it to free people from the nightmares created by various dream demons.
• In Animal Crossing: New Leaf Animal Crossing: New Leaf and Animal Crossing: New Horizons, this is implied to be an ability of your character as you can share your town/island and enter the towns and islands of others via the Dream Suite. And these shared locales are explicitly stated to be dreams.
• The Hunter of Bloodborne is one, he travels across the land of Yharnam to seek a solution to halt the source of nightmare brought by the Great Ones.
• Da Capo: Protagonist Jun'ichi has the ability to view other people's dreams when he sleeps. He doesn't like it much, saying that in practice, most people's dreams don't make any kind of sense, are often very boring, and the whole thing just leaves him not getting as much rest as he'd like. Also, it happens whether he wants it to or not.
• Dragon Age:
  • The Fade is where all races (barring the Dwarves) go when they sleep, though only Mages are capable of remaining self-aware whilst in the dreamworld. Because of this unique ability, they developed certain magical rituals involving lyrium, allowing them to enter the Fade whilst awake, enter another person's dreams, or allow them to release people from demonic possession, by attacking the demon at the source. Mages who attain full Dream Weaver status are known as "somniari" to the elves, though those are incredibly rare.
  • Dragon Age: Inquisition has Solas, an expert on the Fade who regularly visits it just to hang out with spirits. He doesn't appear to be a Somniari, but at one point has a lengthy conversation with the Inquisitor while they're both dreaming. Given his real identity, he might as well as one of the somniaris, the oldest and original ones in fact.
  • Physically entering the Fade, as opposed to lucid dreaming, is nigh-impossible without extremely potent magic such as the Eluvians or the Anchor.
• Alice Drake, the heroine of Dreamkiller has the ability to enter and exit dreams at will, and she uses her powers to infiltrate her clients' nightmares to purge them of their phobias by destroying the monsters inside their dreams.
• The Dream Machine includes the main character, Victor, and his landlord, Mr. Morton, and the machine itself.
• While trapped in Storytime in Dreamfall Chapters, Zoë learns to enter other people's dreams and to manipulate them—and extension of her Dreamer powers that she demonstrated in the original Dreamfall.
• Elona has a wizard that can randomly show up in your character's dreams by accident. To make up for bothering you, he teaches you a random spell, including some potentially rare ones.
• In Farnham Fables, the dreamgivers Ethrea and Althea are spirits who can travel into people's dreams. Althea the Nightmare mostly uses these abilities to Poke the Poodle, like in Episode 4 where her "evil plan" basically consists of making Theresa do a Fetch Quest. The ending of that episode also reveals that Ethrea can link people's dreams together, which she does to Andrew in order to put an end to Althea's mischief.
• Final Fantasy VII has a segment where Tifa dreamwalks inside Cloud's dream.
• The playable character in Hollow Knight gains the ability to enter dreams with a Dream Nail. For the most part this is merely used to invade the dreams of slain bosses so that you can fight stronger versions of them, but it is also a very plot important key ability used to enter the White Palace of the Pale King, which was transported into the realm of dreams and sealed within the void of a Kingsmould, as well as the dream of the titular Hollow Knight wherein you can confront the True Final Boss.
• In Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance], Sora and Riku are tasked with diving into the dreams of sleeping worlds to reawaken them. A late-game development also reveals that the Drop mechanic and the Dream Eater emblem on Riku's new outfit were because Riku had actually spent the whole game in Sora's dreams.
• MARDEK had a dream reality in Chapter 3. It's not exactly walking through someone's mind, but it's shaped by human thoughts.
• This is the main gameplay gimmick of Mario & Luigi: Dream Team. Pi'illo Island has many magical pillows on which Luigi can fall asleep, creating a portal to the Dream World that Mario can enter. It's not just Luigi's dreams you can enter either. If you fall asleep next to someone, you end up in the same Dream World as them. Hence how you get to enter Big Massif's dream in Wakeport and Bowser's Dream in the final dungeon.
• Entering other characters' dreams is required at certain points in the Neverwinter Nights 2 expansion pack, Mask of the Betrayer. The shaman Gannayev-of-Dreams has this power innately, and One-of-Many can learn to do this, depending on the player's actions.
• Pathfinder: Kingmaker: Used when Linzi, a bard who can send messages via dreams, and the Storyteller concoct a spell that allows her and the Player Character to enter the Big Bad's dreams.
• In Piglet's Big Game, the titular Piglet has the ability to visit the dreams of other Hundred Acre Wood denizens while they're fast asleep through a magic telescope, and the goal of the game is to help his friends with their problems within their dreams and fending off Heffalumps and Woozles along the way.
• In Sable's Grimoire, both Eris the succubus and Raphael the angel can enter other people's dreams. They both enter Sable's dreams once during the common route, with Eris doing so more frequently in her own route.
• Twisted Wonderland: Silver's unique magic allows him to travel into the dreams of people close to him. The magic can only be used during sleep and he can't control whose dream he ends up in.
• Wild ARMs:
  • In Wild ARMs, Cecilia was able to dream walk once in order to battle a dream demon named Elizabeth who had been keeping Rudy trapped in his dreams.
  • Wild ARMs 3 has The Saint who appears in the dreams of the leader of the Arc of Destiny, as well as the Dream Child from Shane's dreams. In reality, they're both the Dream Demon Beatrice, using her dream walking powers to manipulate people for her ultimate goal of creating a Filgaia where she could live in.
  • In Wild ARMs 4, the seller of the Black Market is implied to be a dream demon, with one of the NPCs in the city receiving nightly visits in his dreams by someone who tells him to go buy stuff from the Black Market. This would certainly explain why the Black Market deals in levels rather than money.

Webcomics

• In Alice and the Nightmare, the oneironauts, one of which Alice aspires to be, have this exact ability, to enter people's dreams and harvest their energy.
• Archipelago has a number of dream walkers:
  • Prince Paollo is a highly skilled one as the crown prince of the Eastern Continent, where this and dream weaving is a very respected talent.
  • Snow does this as well, by stealing Paollo's power. He uses it to induce nightmares in his enemies.
  • Credenza turns out to be a dream walker, as well. She doesn't have a proper mentor, but Tabitha and later Olivia give her tips and encouragement by dream conversations.
• Champions of Far'aus:
  • Hypnoron, an Arcane god with Dream Weaver powers, is able to enter peoples dreams.
  • Rougery, a trickster spirit, has the ability to magically “trance” a dream version of herself into the Dreamscape Hypnoron controls.
• Alps like Tony and Yiska have this ability in Charby the Vampirate.
• City of Somnus is the sequel to Archipelago set in Paollo's native land of Majestan. Apart from him, there's a lot of new Dream Walker characters, as pretty much everyone in Majestan can do it to some extent.
• Dreaming Freedom: Siyun lucid dreamed so much he fell into a coma, and now he walks people's dreams to keep himself entertained.
• In The Dreamwalker Chronicles Kyle first meets his future wife in a dream and it is also where he starts to learn about Flint's true nature.
• In El Goonish Shive, a wizard enters Grace's dreams repeatedly in order to deliver an important message.
• Homestuck:
  • If a Sburb player's dream body is dead, then any time they sleep, their consciousness travels to the Dreambubbles in the Furthest Ring. This shared dreamscape also doubles as the afterlife for Sburb players—from every parallel timeline in existence. That makes a lot of folks capable of stepping into one's dreambubble.
  • Wayward Vagabond is not a Sburb player, so he gets normal dreams when he sleeps. Somehow, god-tier Vriska Serket was able to jump into one of his dreams and talk to him (in Morse code) anyway. It probably has something to do with Vriska's psychic mind-control powers.
• Lovely Lovecraft: Anyone who enters the Dreamlands. Prominent examples include Carter, Howard, and Hildred.
• Kill Six Billion Demons: Incubus is able to do this. Unusually, it appears to be a power entirely unique to him and not caused by his Key or his training — it is simply something he can do. He uses it to drop in on Allison in her dreams and play the role of Evil Mentor to her.
• Legend of the Blue Diamond: Dream Dwellers are wolves that go into the dreams of wolves near them. Briar is a Dream Dweller.
• An example appears starting here in The Mansion of E, though it's not clear who exactly is doing the walking.
• In Yokoka's Quest, Copycat was able to enter Mao's dream and converse with him, though Mao recognizes that he's an intruder, and who he is from his eyes. Copycat implies that other people might either have accepted his appearance as being a regular part of their dream, or might have forgotten him after waking.

Web Animation

• In the GoAnimate video Dora's 2nd Nightmare, Caillou enters Dora's dream to find out why she's scared. He finds that she is in a nightmare where she is uncontrollably floating around a black void where logos play from out of nowhere. Eventually, Caillou gets scared and leaves the dream when an edited Feature Presentation bumper shows up. Later, in the video Dora's 3rd Nighmare, we see that some guys, including the Author Avatar, are giving Dora the same kind of nightmare on purpose. They use some kind of dream computer system, which ends up getting hacked by a demonic Big Bird.

Web Original

• SCP Foundation: SCP-990 is a shadowy man dressed in the most suspicious clothing possible, who seems to like appearing in the dreams of members of the SCP Foundation. In an interview, he mentions an SCP with a ten-digit number as being the bad guy when accused of threatening the Foundation, implying Time Travel.
• Whateley Universe: Characters which have a connection to the Astral, a.k.a the March of Dreams, both names for a kind of dream realm, may be able to do this. The Dream Team of Whateley Academy works to protect the dreams of the students from malign forces like evil spirits and other such things.
• Lucids: Basically, what a Lucid is; the main characters can pretty much all go between other people's dreams and either observe or influence the dreams. They can even leave the dream that originally created them.

Western Animation

• The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius: In "I Dream of Jimmy", Jimmy journeys into Carl's dreams to help his friend deal with a recurring nightmare. As it turns out, Carl wasn't kidding when he warned Jimmy "My dreams aren't as logical as yours."
• The Aladdin episode "As the Netherworld Turns" had Abu and Iago use an enchanted crystal that appears to grant them the power to walk through walls, but actually sends them to the Netherworld. This is a big problem, because due to their intangibility, Aladdin and the others cannot see or hear them. Fortunately, with the help of Sultan's late father, who still haunts the palace, Iago and Abu learn that the only way to communicate to Aladdin and the others is to enter their dreams while they sleep.
• American Dragon: Jake Long had an episode where Jake was in the dream realm thanks to a magical relic. He initially used it to date Rose while the two were forced apart. Then he wandered to other dreams, depicted as doors in a hallway.
• In Danny Phantom, Danny discovers during Season 3 he can overshadow (possess) a person to enter their dreams, while battling a ghost who want to feed off dreams for power.
• Bill Cipher of Gravity Falls is a two-dimensional inhabitant of a Void Between the Worlds called the Nightmare Realm, who interacts with the dimension Earth is located in by appearing in people's dreams. Whenever he appears before someone, the surroundings turn black and white, and when he leaves, people act like they've come out of a trance. When the Author first met him, it was while he was taking a nap after reading an incantation to summon Bill, and Bill shows up to harass him in his dreams several times after that. Worse still, Bill has Reality Warper powers within the dreamscape and may even inflict Demonic Possession on those who foolishly make a deal with him. Ironically, his ability to enter minds is also his greatest weakness, because if he enters a mind and it gets wiped at the same time, Bill is erased along with it.
• Jackie Chan Adventures: The sheep talisman possesses the power of Astral Projection, which lets one leave his body and become a spirit and also lets one enter dreams, which comes in handy several times on Jackie's adventures.
• Justice League, "Only a Dream", Martian Manhunter can enter people's sleeping minds.
• In the Looney Tunes short "The Big Snooze", Elmer Fudd has quit his position as Bugs' patsy and takes a nap, dreaming sweet dreams. Bugs decides to get in on it, goes to sleep, and enters Elmer's dream, turning it into a wacky, loud nightmare.
• Princess Luna from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, first shown in the episode "Sleepless in Ponyville", has the ability to enter into the dreams of anyone who's having one. One of the duties of being Princess of the Night is to protect sleeping ponies from their nightmares, and to help them face the fears that are causing those nightmares. In "For Whom the Sweetie Belle Toils", Luna is shown as able not only to enter a pony's dream, but redirect it to help them learn An Aesop.
  • "Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?" shows that Luna is capable of pulling an entire town into a Shared Dream. It's also shown that Luna created the Tantabus, a creature of shadow and nightmares to punish herself for her actions as Nightmare Moon.
• In the Poet Anderson: The Dream Walker short film, all dreams play out within the Dream World, which means that Dream Walkers can be involved with the affairs of other Dream Walkers. However, threats specific to one Dream Walker, such as Poet's Night Terror, can't be confronted by other Dream Walkers. The definition of a Dream Walker in the short film and the comics is different from here, treating a Dream Walker as a Guardian type Lucid Dreamer.
• The Powerpuff Girls discover that they have the ability to enter each other's dreams in "Dream Scheme" when the entire planet is forcibly put to sleep by a malevolent Sandman. They later use this power again in "Power-Noia" after HIM traps them in their own worst nightmares.
• One Rick and Morty episode had Rick and Morty go into Morty's math teacher's dream. The results are... bizarre, to say the least.
• SpongeBob SquarePants had an episode called "Sleepy Time", where SpongeBob's dream self falls out of his dream bubble and begins entering the dreams of the other characters, wreaking havoc along the way.
  Squidward: Don't we get enough of you during the day?!
• In Steven Universe, Steven eventually discovers he has the power to enter other people's dreams. He first discovers this power when he makes telepathic contact with Lapis Lazuli/Malachite in "Chille Tid", and he uses it deliberately in "Kiki's Pizza Delivery Service". Later on, this is implied to be done via Astral Projection.
• Toopy and Binoo:
  • In "Diaper Dream", Toopy enters Binoo's dream to figure out what's causing his nightmare.
  • In "Dreamland", Toopy enters Binoo's dream to figure out what's making him so happy.

Real Life

• As shown on Livescience and in the journal Science, progress is being made on the decoding and imaging of dreams.

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