The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
Of course “Newhart” falls in the “it was all a dream” category, but how about “St. Elsewhere”? That one was “all the fantasy of an autistic child.”
eta: I would suspect that the hard standard of *‘narrator states at end that it was all a complete lie’ *is not often met. We humans are fascinated by deception, but deliberate deception on that scale–a claim, in essence, that we’ve been made fools of for the entire length of the work–would meet with so much resentment that the work in question might not find a publisher/filmmaker.
St. Elsewhere would’ve been my contribution to this thread if it wasn’t someone else’s already.
The Big O isan anime set in a town where no one can remember the past. In the final episode, it is revealed that the whole thing is actually… a TV show? A movie? I watched it, and it was very weird. Wikipedia claims “…that the universe is a simulated reality created by advanced virtual reality technology by Angel.”
Whatever exactly it is, the whole series you’ve just watched wasn’t real. Unfortunately, I found it annoying instead of intriguing.
There was Train of Life.
Apparently, Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov fits that description.
Then there’s the Tommy Westfall Universe:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Westphall#The_Tommy_Westphall_Universe_Hypothesis
It’s revealed at the end of the series St. Elsewhere that it’s all a dream in the mind of the character Tommy Westphall. There are many TV series that can be connected to St. Elsewhere by cross-overs (where the same actor plays the same character in both series) and are thus in the same universe. So apparently all of those shows were in the mind of Tommy Westphall. One of those those shows in that cross-over universe was The Bob Newhart Show. As we learn at the end of the show Newhart, it was merely a dream in the mind of Bob Newhart’s character in The Bob Newhart Show. So the show Newhart (and several other shows which cross over with it and are thus in the same universe) are just a dream in the mind of Newhart’s character in The Bob Newhart Show, which is just a dream in the mind of Tommy Westphall.
There’s the movie Invaders from Mars, where it’s revealed about a minute from the end of the film that it’s all a dream in the mind of the main character. Then a few seconds from the end of the movie, it’s revealed that all the events of the movie are going to happen to the main character who’s just woken up. Perhaps this means that he’s not really awake, and we can then expect that there will be an endless chain of him waking up after experiencing the events of the movie again to discover that it’s a dream, but it’s not a dream.
Sorry, misspelled that name in one sentence of my post. I meant to write:
> Then there’s the Tommy Westphall Universe:
Even leaving that aside, the pilot episode’s hard-to-explain events – and the mundane ones, too – get this ending: no, our hero didn’t visit a diner before walking up the street to a movie theater; he’s been hallucinating in a little room this whole time.
Roseanne.
In the final episode, it is revealed that the entire show was a novel written by the real Roseanne, loosely based on “real” events, but with a few things swapped around.
Going after Cacciato by Tim O’Brien.
A US infantry squad tracks a deserter from Vietnam to Paris, on foot. At least, that’s what you think until you read the last few pages…
Yep, which is why I asked. Didn’t expect it to be a terribly common trope, but I can imagine a cynical / absurdist / surrealist author getting away with it. It seems like something Vonnegut might have done in a story that was getting away from him.
Sounds vaguely Monty Python-ish. “And then, fortunately for our heroes, the illustrator suffered a fatal heart attack.”
I believe the New York’s Finest Taxi Service because I’m sure Chazz Palmenteri had Dan Hedaya checking facts as Verbal was telling the story. The stuff that couldn’t be easily corroborated (like Redfoot) was surely made up. But as we see in the ending, Kobayashi was real, so much of the rest of the story was probably real as well.
Interesting. I’ve never watched St. Elsewhere, but immediately thought of Homicide: Life on the Street and Det. Munch. That means all the shows that Munch has appeared on like the Law and Order franchise and the X-Files were in this universe. I clicked on the link and that was the example they listed.
Ah, but Tommy didn’t dream it all while he was asleep (he was autistic and lived in his own little world). At the end of Newhart, Bob woke up next to Emily in their Chicago bedroom; he HAD been asleep the whole time.
Very different!
Daniel J. Travanti guest starred in an episode of Newhart as himself. That means that Hill Street Blues is a television show within a dream of a character within the imagination of Tommy Westphall.
Would Sophie’s World fit? It’s a novel: the main character is a teenage girl who takes philosophy lessons. She and her teacher are revealed to be fictional characters created by a father teaching his own daughter about philosophy via a story he’s writing.
Big Brother, by Wally Lamb. Did not see that coming at all.
All the shows that John Munch is in are part of the Tommy Westphall universe. Here’s the definitive guide to (American) television cross-overs. The universe with John Munch and Tommy Westphall is Group 2: