All Just A Dream



Your surefire plan to make your audience hate you.

When a character is about to die, has an experience too good to be true, or things shift into an otherworldly setting, it's likely that the whole situation will end up just being a dream somebody was having, thus ultimately rendering it all false. All Just A Dream is mainly used as a means of showing things that either cannot happen in this world or non-canonical occurrences like someone having their whole family murdered or two people get married. All Just A Dream can be Negated if we're shown the dreamer falling asleep before the dream begins so then we know from the beginning that their future experiences are, in fact, only a dream.

On UnTrash Wiki, All Just A Dream is used as a Measurement Ball for pure, low-tier Brain Acid UnTrashes like this or this as it's believed to be the lowest of low standards by manyundefined. We also call it the prime example of an Eye Roll UnTrash as no other UnTrash can generate nearly as many eyerolls as All Just A Dream could.

The reception of All Just A Dream is terrible to an ungodly degree. There are many claims that state All Just A Dream is an extremely cheap Plot Ex Machina trick that any writer could pull in their work. And it is. All Just A Dream can be a quick fix to any situation a person cannot get themselves out of, such as a Near-Death Experience, using time-efficient or possible means. It doesn't need to make sense, it needs no explanation, and it's easy to write in.

It's simple how All Just A Dream works. First, you have Guy running through a forest holding, say, a valuable gem that acts as the forest's heart. Without it, the forest will surely die. Guy is running away from the forest's natives who want to seize the gem and restore life to their slowly dying home. Guy continues running up to a point where there's a Death Valley standing in his way. Even though it's a long fall that would certainly end him, Guy could still make it to the other side by mustering all the jump power he can. All he has to do is believe in himself and he'll masterfully glide over to the other side of the canyon. Guy, after looking behind himself and seeing the natives are closing in on him, decides to make a Leap Of Faith. He's going, he's going, he's... plunging towards his inevitable demise. Guy only has seconds before he becomes Guy stew. The ground's getting ever closer, the air's rushing faster... jeez, were those jagged rocks at the bottom always that jagged''? ''It doesn't matter because Guy is just Mere Moments Away from facing his deathundefined. And, and, aaaaaand... Guy springs awake in his bed, being the Morning Screamer he was destined to be. He looks around his room and realizes that he was just having a bad dream. Unless...

Now you can show your precious character going through a perilous adventure without putting them in harm's way. Let's forget that Guy could have miraculously been saved by Ex Machina by having his friend Hugo swoop in from a vine or come in on a ladder to a helicopter and save his life, keeping Guy from being killed and allowing the story to be part of the canon. That would have been annoying, sure, but not as annoying as pulling an All Just A Dream moment on your audience.

All Just A Dream-type scenarios may end with the dreamer waking up and looking around them to see the people who made an appearance in their dream surrounding the bed they rest in. They'd say something along the lines of, "I just had the wildest dream. And you were there! And you! And you!". Note that they'd likely be pointing to the people as they're saying "and you".

There may be instances when All Just A Dream does not involve an actual dream. The experience may turn out to be a coma, simulation being ran by a simulator, or a showing of an alternate timeline that could happen if a character is to do something that changes the futureundefined.

All Just A Dream Plays
Basic: All of a person's recent experiences turn out to be no more than a dream they had.

Reinforced: All Just A Dream In A Dream. Bonus Points if the scene has Layers And Layers of dreams within dreams.

Downplayed: It's unsure if it was truly all just a dream as the scene is confusing and makes the "waking up" part unclear if it was All Just A Dream or not.

Negated: The dreamer is Aware Of The UnTrash as it's being played (meaning before they wake up), we're told or shown (or both) that what we will soon see will be no more than a dream, or another All Just A Lie UnTrash interrupts All Just A Dream and makes this All Just A Lie even more of a lie.

Inverted: --

Justified: All Just A Dream somehow gets parodied or Lampshaded.

Gleeful: --

Dismal: The dreamer wakes up and finds that it was All Just A Dream In A Nightmare.

Zip: Someone having an experience only to find that it was just a dream they had. Later, it's revealed that their waking up was All Just A Dream In A Dream, but that waking up in the second dream from the first dream was part of the first dream all along. This could possibly Zip into the dreamer waking up again and thinks It's Finally Over, but it turns out that this was a third dream that they were having. This could go on and on with them waking up in new dreams or returning to old ones. When this madness finally ends, the dreamer might not believe the dreaming is over and believes that Reality Is All Just A Dream.