Basic Trope: A character has dreams about things they have suffered.
- Straight: Alice wakes up screaming, having dreamed of her family's massacre.
- Exaggerated: All of Alice's dreams are about past events.
- Downplayed: Alice occasionally wakes with the memory of the dream lingering.
- Justified: Truth in Television.
- Inverted:
- Alice dreams about pleasant things.
- Alice wakes up almost dying of laughter after a funny dream.
- Alice's family gets massacred after she has a dream about the massacre.
- Subverted: Alice's dreams seem agreeable.
- Double Subverted: But after, she dreams of her family's massacre.
- Parodied: Alice often wakes up screaming due to once slipping on a banana peel.
- Zig Zagged: Sometimes, Alice dreams hot dreams, sometimes pleasant dreams, sometimes bad dreams, sometimes annoying dream, sometimes she didn't dream.
- Averted:
- Alice didn't dream;
- Alice has annoying dreams like only people sit on chairs.
- Enforced: "We need a way to display Alice's Dark and Troubled Past, but Troubled Backstory Flashback is so overused." "Hmm.... how 'bout she dreams about it?"
- Lampshaded: "Wow, Alice must have gone through some pretty horrific stuff to wake up screaming."
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: Beth reminds Alice of the massacre the night before a big competition. She hopes to ruin her night, so Alice ends up sleep-deprived and ends up performing worse at the event.
- Defied: Alice takes sedatives that sends her straight to a deep, dreamless sleep instead of the upper-level REM sleep where dreams are made.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed:
- Alice dies in her sleep from the events being horrifying.
- Alice suffers from chronic insomnia, trying to avoid the dreams.
Back to Past Experience Nightmare
