Lucid dreaming in popular culture

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

Contents 1 In Movies 2 In Television 3 In Fiction 4 In Music

[edit] In Movies

• Waking Life is a movie by Richard Linklater where the main character is in a persistent dreamlike state and explores lucid dreaming.
• 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.
• In the movie Deep Impact, one of the astronauts on the mission to destroy the comet describes a wake-initiated lucid dream.
• 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.
• 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 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 Matrix trilogy, Neo (played by Keanu Reeves) is a freedom fighter in an age where machines have all but wiped out the human race. In order to beat the machines Neo and his companions must practice, what is essentially lucid dreaming, within a virtual reality developed by the machines as a power source. In his training Neo is told that he must "free his mind".
• In The Science of Sleep the main character spends much of his time exploring dreaming, sometimes lucid dreaming.

[edit] In Television

• 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. The episode also incorporates false awakenings.
• 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.
• In Ed, episode Captain Lucidity, Ed spends a whole episode experiencing a lucid dream, and uses it to try and find out why he is unsuccessful in love by visiting all of his past relationships.
• In Alias, episode Conscious, Sydney enters a clinical drug-induced lucid dream state in order to solve the mystery of her missing two years.

[edit] In Fiction

• In Ramneek goes to Bollywood - Ramneek has series of dreams she described as "R-rated Dreams" about Finy.
• 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 K. 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.
• In The Stand by Stephen King, several of the main characters have lucid dreams about either Randall Flagg or Mother Abigail, and they have a hand in the character's decision on who to join (the 'bad' followers of Randall Flagg or the 'good' group centered around Mother Abigail)
• The Book A Wizard Alone by Diane Duane has the main character Nita talk normally with an autistic wizard through lucid dreams.

[edit] In Music

• 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.
• Alternative rock artist Brandon Boyd from the band Incubus practices lucid dreaming.
• The song "The Dreams Of Swedenborg" by the Classical Metalband Therion is about lucid dreaming.
• The band Fields of the Nephilim often have lyrics dealing with lucid dreaming. An example of this are the songs "For Her Light" and "Sumerland (What Dreams May Come)".