It’s built more of fantasies and a writer’s plotting as he’s lying gravely ill and often semi-conscious in hospital, but the BBC miniseries The Singing Detective almost fits here. The writer passes the time as he drifts in and out by working on a novel featuring himself as a lounge-singer/private-eye character.
Yes, in MWC Peg and Marcy’s pregnancy was just a dream by Al–a device used to recover from a real-life tragedy (Sagal’s daughter Ruby died at seven months gestation and was stillborn).
In Reno 911!, Jonesy and Dangle played a practical joke that went horribly wrong when the ditziest deputy overreacted and shot everybody to death, inclduing herself, and excepting Jones. That was the s1 cliffhanger. Then in the first moments of s2, Dangle woke up gasping and grateful it was all a dream until he realized he was in bed with Kenny Rogers (played by Kenny Rogers, a good sport). THAT made another deputy, Garcia, wake up gasping–he was the one who had dreamed it was all Dangle’s dream. Great stuff.
Well there was the episode of southpark where they were trapped in the schoolbus on the edge of a cliff and they couldn’t go outside or a big scary monster would eat them! There were many retellings of old southpark stories, all featuring ice-cream. Then the bus fell into a huge pile of ice cream. Then one of the kids wakes up and his mum reassures him that it was a just a dream. Then she tells him to eat some “delicious beetles”. Then another one of the kids wakes up and it turns out he had been dreaming the whole thing.
There’s the Y2K episode of family Guy when the world blows up and all sorts of craziness results. Then it turns out it was all the dream of Victoria Principal, who tells her husband Patrick Duffy about it. He tells her not to worry, and then asks her “What’s family guy?” dun dun dun… I’m sure this is a reference to something, but I don’t know what…
And then there’s the end of the book The Athenian Murders by Jose Carlos Somoza. Weirdest. Ending. Ever. I can’t really explain it, it’s too weird and convoluted, but anyone who has read it will agree. It’s kind of Sophie’s Worldish.
Do video games count? (Super Mario Brothers 2 – the American version)
I never made it through to the end. Did Chevy Chase wake up and find out that he’d never actually made that movie, and his career hadn’t actually tanked as a result?
There was also an episode in the third season of Northern Exposure where Joel’s twin brother, Jules, comes to Cicely, havoc ensues, but it all turns out to be Joel’s dream. This episode comes with a Wizard of Oz ending where Joel awakes in bed and is surround by town residents. Just watched the ep this weekend on the newly released third season.
Didn’t Spider-Man’s comics do this? I recall reading they wrote themselves into a hole when Aunt found out
Peter Parker is Spider-Man
How about the Dick Van Dyke episode with Twilo (Danny Thomas)? The entire episode is a dream, but then they wake up, and that’s a dream, but then they wake up and that’s a dream.
Actually, there’s an episode of Spongebob Squarepants that has even more levels of dreams-within-dreams.
There’s an episode of Futurama, in which Fry dies due to be skewered by a giant bee sting, trying to prevent Leela from being stung. He keeps appearing in her dreams, so she is certain he’s alive… but he tells her to wake up, and she does.
Eventually, it turns out that in fact she’s been in a coma, and Fry is fine… he’s been by her bedside, asking her to wake up.
Avoid this turkey like the plague. Even shots of the stunning Rebecca Romijn (I can’t bring myself to write Romijn-[sub]Stamos[/sub]) does not make this incredibly stupid thriller tolerable.
You remember right. I consider “Son of Rosemary” to be the worst sequel of the best book.
**The Princess Bride ** had that great dream sequence where Buttercup marries Prince Humperdink (ending with the old woman screaming, “Rubbish! Filth! Slime Muck! Boo!”)
There was an Episode of the X-files where Murder and Scully was investigating some Mushrooms in North Carolina. Eventualy, they figure out that it has hallunigentic effects, and that in actually, most of the episode is a fantasy where they’re acting being slowly digested inside a cave by a giant piece of fungi while they’re happily drugged and halluncinating.
Okay, that didn’t quite come out right.
Wasn’t the remake also a dream until the very end?
The famous Dan Quayle episode of Murphy Brown opens with a dream-within-a-dream sequence.
Batman: The Animated Series had a full episode where Barbara Gordon dreamed she died and her father took Batman out.
Both of these had me fooled for a bit.
The head good Little Person, Rollo Sweet, wakes up and he’s still back in the diner in Nowhere. But the studio bus to Hollywood (to go to the making of WoO) is about to leave and he rushes to make it.
Note: The reason I know this is not because I am a fan of the film, but because I am a fan of the late Corky Hubbert, who played Rollo. Saw him regularly around campus in our college days. Once almost tore a street preacher a new one. Go see “The Ballad of the Sad Cafe” with Vanessa Redgrave, Keith Carradine and Rod Steiger instead.
The Kids in the Hall’s "Pear Dream".
Anyone remember this one?
He gets shot at the end of the movie. And, of course, wakes up in the bathtub… never having even started his day.
Ooh yes and there was another episode where Mulder was captured by a cogniscent computer and had mad sexy dreams about nurses with big boobs chopping his limbs off. And there was another another episode where Mulder was given a load of drugs and dreamt about marrying Fowley and having kids, in an almost too-obvious to bear ripoff of The Last Temptation of Christ.