Lucid dreaming in popular culture

This is a list of cultural references made about the phenomenon Lucid dreaming.

[edit] In Movies

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The movie Abre los ojos (Open Your Eyes) and its Hollywood remake Vanilla Sky is partly about lucid dreaming.
The Nightmare on Elm Street series directly involves lucid dreams as a plot device by which the villain threatens the heroes.
The movie Dreamscape A government funded project uses psychics to enter people's dreams and help cure the President of his nightmares about nuclear war.
The movie The Cell A psychotherapist journeys inside the mind of a comatose serial killer in the hopes of saving his latest victim.
The movie Mulholland Drive can be interpreted as a study of lucid dreaming and dream interpretation.
Waking Life is a movie by Richard Linklater where the main character is in a persistent dreamlike state and explores lucid dreaming.
In the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind the main character, Joel Barish, experiences a lucid dream while having his memory erased.
In the movie The Golden Child, Eddie Murphy's character has a lucid dream in which he is visited by Sarda Numspa.
In the movie Old School, Will Ferrell's character Frank has a lucid dream after he is tranquilized and as he is drowning unconsciously in a pool.
In the film MirrorMask, the main character Helena cannot wake up from her dream world until she finds the MirrorMask, and a window into reality to save her mother (who is the Queen of Light in her dream world).
In the movie Boxing Helena, Dr. Nick Cavanaugh dreams all of his deeds.

In the The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horror VI", Groundskeeper Willie murders children in their dreams. In order to stop him, Bart and Lisa have to fight him in their own dreams (in which they realize they are dreaming). It should be noted that this was a parody of the Nightmare in Elm Street Movies, not an original reference.
In the Star Trek: The Next Generation 4th season episode "Night Terrors", Counselor Deanna Troi uses lucid dreaming to communicate with an unseen vessel that is trapped in a space anomaly with the Enterprise D and another Starfleet ship, cooperating with the other crew to destroy the anomaly and free all the ships.
In the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Waking Moments", Chakotay used lucid dreaming and the image of Earth's moon, in order to wake himself from a deep sleep state induced by an alien culture.
In the episode of the TV series Futurama entitled The Sting, the entire episode revolves around Leela having lucid dreams about Fry, who had apparently died earlier in the episode.
In SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Sleepy Time", SpongeBob is aware that he's dreaming and he also visits others' dreams.
The episode "Captain Lucidity" of Ed is based almost exclusively within a lucid dream.

In Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time book series many characters, specifically women, practice and acquire lucid dreaming abilities.
In Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth novels, "Dream Walkers" were created by dark wizards as living weapons.
In H. P. Lovecraft's short novel The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath the majority of the story takes place in a lucid dream and even describes the main character descending seventy steps to the border of the dream world, which is reminiscent of one technique used in Wake-Initiated Lucid Dreaming.
In the novel The Word for World is Forest, by Ursula le Guin, there is an alien race called the Athsheans who can consciously slip in and out of a lucid dream state.
The manga Hikaru no Go features a lucid dream in chapter 148.
The computer game Dreamfall is based on the concept of lucid dreaming.
The book The Reality Bug from the Pendragon series involves a whole world living in lucid dreaming by a machine.
The book Last Guardian of Everness by John C. Wright has a plot that centers around a fantasy world visited by lucid dreaming.
The book Only You Can Save Mankind by Terry Pratchett is mostly set in a videogame world accessed by lucid dreaming.
In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix , Harry has frequent lucid dreams about a series of hallways, later revealed to be the Department of Mysteries.

The song "Silent Lucidity" by Queensrÿche, a top-ten hit in 1990, was about the benefits of lucid dreaming.
"Catching the Butterfly", a song by The Verve from their 1997 album Urban Hymns, tells the story of catching a butterfly using lucid dreams.
The music video for "Everlong" by the Foo Fighters features lucid dreaming, in which lead singer Dave Grohl uses lucid dreams to save his girlfriend from a nightmare.
The former avant-garde metal band maudlin of the Well claimed to have used lucid dreaming as a means of helping compose their songs.
The Norwegian alternative rock band Rover's former band name was Lucid Dreams
The hit song "Higher" by Creed is about the power of lucid dreaming.
Electronic music artist Aphex Twin has said that he used to use lucid dreaming to write music in dreams and to remember them, claiming that such practice enhanced his creativity.