All Just a Dream/Playing With

Basic Trope: The whole story was all just a dream.

• Straight: Near the end of an episode of Alice and Bob, Alice is suddenly awake, confused, and convinces herself that it was all a dream.
• Exaggerated:
  • A few episodes in a row were all dreams.
  • The whole season was all just a dream.
  • The whole series was all just a dream.
• Downplayed: Only a few minutes of the episode was a dream, and it doesn't have much impact on the plot.
• Justified:
  • Alice is volunteering for a dream-simulator program.
  • It was all just a dream.
  • The Big Bad uses the Lotus Eater Machine to keep Alice away from defeating him.
• Inverted: The episode continues on the cliffhanger when Alice and Bob is fighting Emperor Evulz. Then Bob calls Alice off for daydreaming, and they were really trapped inside a prison by Emperor Evulz.
  • Alternatively, Alice turns out to be someone else's dream.
• Subverted:
  • It wasn't a dream after all - Alice had been convinced that it was by Emperor Evulz's magic or whatever.
  • Alice wakes up, holding some artifact present in the dream, hinting that it might not be a dream after all
• Parodied: Alice wakes up from a Dream Within a Dream, which was a Dream Within a Dream as well...
• Zig Zagged: See 'parodied'.
• Averted: The whole episode is real.
• Enforced: "I have got a way to let Bob's actor be absent for this episode and not mess up the story line!"
• Lampshaded: "What? So it was just a dream, huh?"
• Exploited: Alice knows that she was dreaming, and uses this knowledge to do things she would normally be called on, such as eating all the cookies, playing pranks on her classmates, and kill all the people she hates, including some innocent passers.
• Defied:
  • During a dream storyline, everyone involved is up front about the fact that it's a dream, and doesn't want the viewers to be deceived into thinking it's real.
  • A character wakes up from a dream and starts doing everything they can to make it really happen because they don't want it to be just a dream.
• Discussed:
• Conversed: ???

---

Back to All Just a Dream