Truth in Television: this is called 'false awakening' and happens a lot. This troper once had a dream in which she entered her room in a castle, locked the door, and fell asleep. When she woke up and the castle room was full of people, she decided it must be a dream, and 'woke up' again in the room, this time properly alone with the door locked and proceeded on with the dream...until she woke up for real.

This troper once dreamed that she got up and hit the snooze button - and switched the alarm off - and unplugged the alarm clock - but the buzzing noise just kept going.

This Troper had one where he dreamed he woke up at 1PM, panicked for a second, then realized it was Sunday so sleeping in was ok. Then he woke up for real at 7:30AM and it was Wednesday. Dammit.

This Troper once dreamed she woke up with sleep paralysis. Yeah.

This troper woke up and went to the restroom, but still felt like his bladder was full. And then he woke up for real. Furthermore, his brother dreamt that he was being attacked by dolls and stuffed toys in his room. And then he woke up and saw that Ronald [=McDonald=] was delivering a pizza and had joined forces with the dolls. And then he woke up to find that the dolls had killed Ronald. And then he woke up for real.

This troper once woke up too late and missed the bus. Then she woke up and missed it again. And again. And again. Then she woke up for real.

Did you miss the bus in RealLife?

No, thankfully.

This troper once had a dream that she missed a concert her friends were picking her up for later. When she woke up for real and it was an hour before the concert, she was right confused.

This troper has had numerous dreams like this. But he can't recall which ones.

This editor had a NightmareFuelUnleaded nightmare, where she found herself in SilentHill esque building and found there a child that constantly was repeating the sentence "Nothing is real. I'm a shadow. You'll become one too." Then, suddenly the girl ''started to melt'', revealing some kind of grotesque ghost-monster, what grabbed me and started ''to suck my soul out'' Then I 'woke up' in my bed, seeming that it would've still be evening. I wandered to kitchen, where my mom still was and I told I had a terrible nightmare. She took me to her embrace and said in eerie CreepyMonotone "Yes, we all fear them. But we can't fight them. Someday you'll be next. They suck out your soul and we'll be nothing more but damned corpses, doomed for eternity..." I looked over her shoulder and I saw the monster, grinning horrible 'smile' and trying to get through the window. Then I woke up for real and que me snapping the lights on and being scared because every single snap and tick for few weeks on at night.

Your attempt to scare me... worked.

This troper had a dream in which she was about to be told the secret of the universe, then woke up in the nude with her best (girl) friend in bed beside her equally nude and singing 'This Ain't A Scene' by Fallout Boy. She went back to sleep and woke up again, this time fully dressed in bed next to a British man in a suit and bow tie saying "Jolly good!" before she was thrown upwards through the roof, eject-button style. Then she woke up once again on the floor of her sister's room. She went back to sleep thinking it was another dream, but woke up in the same spot and concluded that she'd been sleepwalking. So she got ready for school and everything was fine, until she got on the bus and noticed the bus driver had nine tentacles growing out of his crotch. And THEN she woke up for %100 real. Unless, of course, this is all a dream too.

Tentacles, or prehensile penises?

This troper, at a very young age, had a dream where his father turned into an EldritchAbomination. This went through at least four iterations before he finally woke up in a cold sweat, paralyzed in fear that it would happen ''again.'' Luckily, it did not.

This troper took this to a whole new meta level. He dreamed falling asleep, then falling asleep again, then again five more times, then woke up seven times. What was he drinking?

This troper experiences this fairly often, but one was particularly odd. He went through a series of false awakenings where he would wake up in his bed, but with something wrong, like weird mobiles hanging off of the ceiling, people singing songs in multiple languages just out of reach, or the time when a man walked by the foot of his bed, turned to the bed and said, "wrong house" before disappearing. Then, he woke up in a hotel room. Except that when he tried walking about it, he found that it only looked like a hotel room, but he was bumping into furniture from his apartment. Seeking to shock himself out of his dream, he throws open the door to the hotel room while in his boxers, revealing one ''very'' surprised groundskeeper. And then, he actually woke up, in his apartment, this time with no mobiles, foreign choruses, or strange disappearing gentlemen. Either that, or he's still in that last dream iteration...

Possibly related, he also has the bad habit, upon waking, to fall back asleep to "wake up" from reality, which seems more the dream than where he just came from.

This troper woke up to his alarm clock and attempted to turn it off. It was still ringing. He woke up again and attempted to turn it off. It was still ringing. He then woke up yet again to try and turn it off, only to find it was still ringing. This happened about 5 or 6 times before he finally woke up for real. This happened a total of three times.

This troper had a friend who'd sometimes dream that a black monster would come and chase him through his house. Once, in a dream, the monster came into his room, but he didn't mind much because he knew it was a dream, so he fell back asleep in the dream. He dreamed that the black monster loomed above him, and then he woke up and found he was inside the monster's stomach. Then he woke up for real.

ThisTroper had a rather interesting case of this a while back. Every one of the dreams took place in his house, but each "layer" had the house changed in some strange manner-- for instance, living room furniture in the bathroom, or the door to the master bedroom leading outside. In addition, at one level of the dream, there was a puzzle that my mind must've gotten straight out of ''SuperMario 64'': to escape all the levels of the dream and return to the top level, I needed to look directly at a representation of the sun on a TV screen. It was rather weird.

This troper woke up, everything seemed real, got up, ate something and.. woke up again. The same thing repeated for about 20-30 times until he finally woke up for real. Because the wakeupping being so real, he wasn't sure to be really awake for about 5 hours, always in fear of waking up again. Also, when he was about 7 years old, he dreamt that he woke up and webt to the bathroom to empty his bladder - only to be waken up for real by the feeling of warm fluid soaking the mattress. He's still embarrassed of that to this day.

This troper's getting married in... wait, wrong meme.

This troper woke up in the middle of the night to peer out the window and see a meteorite fall and hit the earth a few miles away. Then she woke up, and wasn't entirely sure if she'd dreamed the whole matter or had really seen it and fell back asleep. So she got up and went to the computer to see if anyone was talking about a falling meteorite online. After that, she woke up for real.

This troper had a dream where she dreamt about aliens. Then she woke up (still in a dream) and saw a bunch of UFOs outside, and she said "Cool! I better post about this on the forums!"

This troper had a dream where he chipped a tooth. He then "woke up" to see Yuuko Ichihara, who told him that the chipping of the tooth in the dream represented the loss of the penis. Then he woke up for real.

This troper woke up only to find that he was in the same house (away from home) as in the dream-within-the-dream, and it this time it was in zero gravity.

This troper had for a long time developed a means of waking up within dreams he realized were dreams. He would close his eyes in the dream, and then open his eyes in the real world, thus waking up. Well, it seems that his dreams got wise of this method of escape, and decided that that would not work anymore. The first time he had a false awakening, it was the longest dream of his life, and he likes to imagine that it was in fact a never-ending dream that he simply only remembers bits and pieces. It started with the most mundane way of noticing it was a dream, as this troper noticed that the towels he put in the dirty laundry were back on their hanger. He then woke up to find smell a wonderful smell coming from the kitchen, with his uncle cooking something. He asked his uncle if he was still dreaming, and the uncle said, "Why, yes. Yes, you are." He then woke up in a area of only yellow colors, where yellow demons came and attacked him. He then woke up on a street, where seemingly normal people attacked him. He then woke up on a plane, tried jumping out the plane thinking that because he could dream he could fly, and then fell all the way to the ground (hurting a lot). Climbing up out of the ground he came upon a decrepit mansion, which served delicious sausage. He then false woke up again in his bed, freaked out that he could not successfully wake up, and then tried to email his English teacher for advice. That's all he remembers, but he's sure there's more.

On a trip, I once had a dream that I went out of my sleeping bag, to a specific bush, and pissed. I went back to my sleeping bag, and went to sleep, then "woke up", went out of my sleeping bag, to that bush, and pissed, then back to the sleeping bag, awake, for about seven times. The time I really got up it was already force of habit and I didn't check to see if there was a bush there - it was 3 AM - and there was a person there. Who luckily was still sleeping, although he probably had a much more interesting morning than I did later. Small fact: it was sub-zero temperatures outside, so a lot of things froze.

I once dreamt about myself going to sleep (and dreaming). Does that count?

I have a strange example, I daydreamed about my boyfriend within a dream about my friends and I in a MegaMan level. Or does that count?

This Troper used to have these where the dream was based on reality (see TroperTales/AllJustADream), but recently had what may have been his personal record. He woke up, waited for his alarm clock to go off and switched it off, typed out the dreams he'd had on his laptop, woke up, typed out the dreams he'd had on his laptop, woke up, typed out the dreams he'd had on his laptop... At least a score of times, if not two dozen. Since he has a habit of turning off his alarm in his sleep, it's impossible to know if it was AllJustADream, or if he fell back asleep without noticing between switching off the alarm and picking up his laptop. (What really made it annoying: He usually forgets his dreams the first time he types it, but because he's been working on making sure not to until he's almost definitely awake, he lost only one or two significant details per five or so iterations... then lost almost all of the second major dream when he woke and sat up for real.) (Incidentally, if the DataVampires didn;t get it, the last time he posted on this page must have been the outer shell of an example in itself.)

Oh man, I have this kind of situations one day before any important date or event (A job interview, a big test, etc...)

This troper once used to have a recurring sequence of dreams where he would continually wake up in his room, initially noticing nothing amiss, then realizing his right eye was closed shut. These false awakenings would go on and on, making them more dreaded than any nightmare. This troper once woke up for real in a cold sweat after waking up in his "room" twenty times befor.e

This troper has had several (that he remembers and is certain he's had far more that have been forgotten), but the one that takes the cake lasted for an entire week. To this day this troper is not 100% sure he's awake, especially given how time seems to slip away sometimes or not pass at all other times.

This troper had one that distressed her greatly. She dreamed that her whole family was going on a boat ride, and since, both in RealLife and in the dream, she has SuperDrowningSkills, she wasn't terribly happy about this.... but ItGotWorse. Since her father has a tendency towards penny-pinching, both in-dream and out-of-dream, the whole family ended up sharing one tiny little room with tiny little bus-stop-bench-esque beds. This troper is intensely territorial. Naturally, she woke up horrified, and then told her brother about it. He laughed at her, and got cussed out for it... and then this troper woke up for real, badly confused.

When my father (the one from Stop Helping Me, sorry) died, I dreamed that he was alive, then got up to check out and indeed he was ... and then I woke up for real. Damn you, dreams.

I recently had a long dream which I can only remember the end of, but my mom was telling me that she had a lot of dreams; the last one she mentioned involved an evil clown. Then I suddenly woke up. I thought it was real, until I tried to get out of bed but couldn't. I remembered mom's mention of the clown earlier and somehow knew that there was a MonsterClown standing outside my bed (though I couldn't see him). I looked out the side of my bed, getting ready to kick him whenever he appeared, but he never did, so I went back to sleep; and woke up a few minutes later. Now I'm convinced that the reason I couldn't get out of bed in the dream was my mind keeping that dream from becoming a nightmare.

I once had a dream where at the end I arrived home late from school. 7:30 to be exact, and both me and my parents weren't particularily happy, leading me to BigNo myself awake. I then woke up in my room, and when I looked at the clock, it said 7:30, at which point my mother suddenly came in and said "Why are you late?". Cue another BigNo. This repeated a few times, with various different people, including ''my cat'', berating me for being late until I actually woke up for real.

This Troper once dreamed that she was on the Titanic while it was sinking. She then woke up... in a stately home, and was relieved to find out that she was not going to drown. Then she woke up in her own room... only to wake up again, this time for real.

I've never had the typical "false awakening" type dream (at least not that I can remember), but I did once have a bizarre dream where I was looking at myself asleep in a corner, with a thought bubble containing the same thing, DrosteImage style.

This troper once dreamed that her sister was throwing a car around in her garage. She grabbed her sister and started to scream hysterically "THIS IS A DREAM! THIS IS A DREAM!" and then she woke herself up. She went downstairs from her bedroom and started to watch a movie, but then suddenly found herself lying down in her bed. She assumed that she had woken up, and got out of bed. Her sister was waiting outside her room, so this troper told her sister "I think I just had a dream within a dream." Then this troper woke up for real.

This Troper had a rather terrifying experience with this. She had recently been having trouble breathing, and feeling very light headed for no apparent reason. Having just got home, she sat on the couch, and her breathing got worse. To the point that she wanted to get up and let her mother know something was wrong, but she couldn't stand. Then she fell asleep/passed out. In her dream, her two cousins came to visit, which was odd because the oldest one had just recently died. Then her oldest cousin and her mother left, while her remaining cousin just went and did something. Sitting on the couch, she started having trouble breathing. She wanted to get up and let her mother know something was wrong, but her mother wasn't there. She couldn't get her voice loud enough to reach her cousin. Then she woke up. She was still on the couch only barely awake, and she was determined to get up before she fell asleep again. So, she got up and slowly made her way to her mother's room. When she got there, her mother didn't seem to notice her. So she tried and tried to tell her something was wrong, but nothing happened. Then she woke up. On the couch again. She got up quickly this time, and almost ran to her mother's room. She fell onto the bed and proceeded to fall asleep. Then she woke up. An hour had passed, and she could breathe fine. Worst dream This Troper can remember.

When This Troper is aware that he is dreaming he starts doing different stuff in each iteration(for example if at first I go to the bathroom because i feel sleepy and want to wash my face and suddenly wake up again with the same sleepy feeling, I instead go outside or something like that) this... well let's say the glitches start getting crazier by the iteration until i wake up for real. It's like doing something diferent get's a {{DivideByZero}} error...

I had a dream that I was one of my friends. I then woke up, and realised that was a dream. I woke up again, because that was also a dream. I told my friend about it, and realised a while later that I had never told my friend, and THAT had been part of a dream, too. I had a dream within a dream within a dream. Easily one of the most confusing things that ever happened to me.

I had a dream sequence last night where I was trying to accomplish some task (seems it had something to do with fixing a game controller or something), and I kept falling asleep in the dream. When this happened, the dream within a dream kept going as it had been before I had fallen asleep in the dream, then something would go wrong, and I would wake up from the dream within the dream, and keep doing the task. This kept happening throughout that sequence. There may have been a part where I realized that I could control the dream within a dream, and I started doing really weird stuff, but it's all kinda sketchy. It seems to have been related to a dream the previous night, where near the end of it I was playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater on an XBox with friends, and then all the buttons went away so I could only ollie. I asked them about it, and they said they didn't do it, so I realized that I was dreaming, and promptly woke up.

This troperette's friend says he had a dream within a dream, and he dreaded going to the 4th Level like in {{Inception}}. Then there was a seperated conversation on multi-verses and 7 to 11 dimensions stacked like cups yet happening around each other without ever knowing each other are there...heh, astronomy geeks.

I once had a fairly freaky one, followed by an incredibly boring one. I woke up, picked up my iPod (which I was using as an alarm) and to turn to off and it didn't. So I looked at the screen and saw the words "Wake Up Jack". Then I did. I sat up, turned my alarm off, turned my light on, lay back down. Then I woke up, noticed my alarm was still on and my light was off...

I had one of these today. I woke up, tried to get out of bed but couldnt move, then realised it was a dream when I woke up again, then woke up again and again and again, but I couldnt move, or couldnt move much. I tried to pinch myself to see if I was dreaming, when I had the energy too, and then I woke up again into another dream. Eventually I woke up for real.

This troper's Mind Screw moved into High Octane Nightmare Fuel territory. I dreamt that the pool I work at was frozen over in the middle of summer and nobody had any idea why. I woke up, and turned off my alarm. I then saw that my green LED alarm clock was didplaying bizarre, non-English symbols in green and red. I proceeded to go partially lucid, (realizing I was dreaming). All the doors in my house led to the wrong places. I turned a corner, and landed myself FACE TO FACE WITH SLENDER MAN. I then woke up to sleep paralysis. GAH.

I've had false awakenings or sleep paralysis episodes where I can't open my eyes, as if they are glued shut.

My first memory of life was this. I can remember the dream kinda, it was a series of several false awakenings. The scary thing? I don't remember actually waking up.

This troper, a few years back, had lots of these. I don't quite remember what the first dream was about, but the second one went like this: I woke up. I tried moving, only to find out I was completely stuck and couldn't lift off bed. My neck starts hurting and my head turned to the kitchen and I saw a shadow looming over me. Then I woke up, usually panting. There were also these dreams when I was a small kid when I got locked in dark, inside my bedroom with... something(Which was VERY scary because my mother usually slept on a bed by my side). I "woke up" once and it was morning. I heard my mother calling me away from the back of the house because "something was coming". I heard something "breathing" and tried running, but I would move out of place; in fact, I was being pulled by some invisible thing. Suddenly, the dream ended. And, as much as it may sound as a nod to Inception, there was a dream where, suddenly, my entire family turned up and chased after me out of nowhere. Considering certain things I've been learning about my family, these dreams might actually be prophetic.

This troper had a nightmarish version of this last night; it was a repeated theme in my dreams last night that I was waking up from dreams within them, and I literally lost track of when I when I was really waking up and when it was just part of the dream that I was. That wouldn't be so bad if not for how even within the dream, I was sometimes "waking up" in an unusually realistic version of my real-life bed. Where does the "nightmare" part come in? As a type 1 diabetic I'm supposed to check my blood sugar when I get up (low blood sugar can easily be mistaken for the tiredness of waking up) and during some "wake-ups" within the dream (or possibly outside of it) I'd be "awake" but it'd be a struggle to '''get''' up. Not just in the elementary-school sense, but really, physically "struggling" to even move. If that were an instance of really waking up and struggling to get up, if my low blood sugar were low it would have been possible that I might have ended up going unconscious, and possibly dying, from low blood sugar.

This Troper once had a night where I had a very hard time falling asleep. I then managed to have a dream in which I was unable to sleep for a long time, but finally managed to, which may or may not have translated into waking up for real. The next morning I was very confused and had no idea which parts were when I was awake and what was a dream.

This troper once had a dream where she woke up, got out of bed, and tried to fly. It didn't go well, she fell down at once. Then, she went back into bed, and that's all I remember from the dream. I was pretty confused when I woke up.

I've had a bunch of dreams where I have one really strange dream, I wake up, tell my mom about it, and then I ''really'' wake up.

This troper has dreamed more than once about waking up with sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis is one of the most frightening nighttime experiences for her, so in her dream she would imagine herself flailing around or desperately trying to ''move'', eventually succeeding in at least checking her alarm clock or touching her bedframe to assure her that she's really awake, only to then wake up and realize that no, she never actually checked her clock and her bedframe doesn't feel that soft. She tends to be wary about falling back asleep after this kind of experience.

This Troper once experianced an unusual variant. I don't usually know when I'm dreaming, but one time I "knew" that I was having a nightmare where I relived MyGreatestFailure, and deliberately didn't wake up, as I wanted to have a second chance. I managed to fail even worse then the first time- or so I thought. When I woke up, I realized that the situation I was in was very differerant from my actual greatest failure. So I drempt that I had been having a nightmare flashback to something that never happened.

This troper's most recent dream involved carrying around a PASIV for Adrian Veidt. She then "woke up" from that dream to post on the internet in another dream that she met Ozymandias in a dream, then went back into the original dream. Yeah.

This troper had an odd experience with this last night, as seen here. Linked because it was a long dream.

Once, I had a dream-- the details are rather muddled now-- that I was fighting monsters that bled black oil (HilariousInHindsight, considering I'm a big fan of New Phyrexia). I then woke up in my bed and realized it was a dream. And then I woke up in my bed-- for real this time. I think.

After watching Inception I had a dream that is pure ParanoiaFuel. I will put in a few commas so you can see the levels easier. I went to sleep, and dreamed that I went to sleep, and dreamed that I woke up, and then I woke up for real, fell asleep again, dreamed that I was awake, and then woke up again. I just read until dawn after that. Damn you Inception!

This Troper (Flareth) had a dream where I went into this dream chamber thing, had a dream with lots of fluffy clouds, woke up from that dream, and then woke up in real life.

This Troper had a dream within a dream that he was being chased by two shadowy figures. It got to the point that I ended up jumping off a cliff to get away before I hit the ground I woke up in my room but on the floor. Annoyed I tried to get back in bed but I was paralyzed, I figured I was suffering from sleep paralysis so I waited a few seconds but still couldn't get up. I started to panic and yelled for my parents but I couldn't hear my voice. This time the shadowy figures (a man and woman) appeared and walked in slow motion towards me and reached down to grab me before they did, I finally woke up in my own bed, scared to death, I refused to move or even go back to sleep that night.

This troper had a nightmare when she was a bit younger about these creepy monsters with Jigsaw-style masked faces (she was about eight - blame her curiosity and addiction to Wikipedia). She woke up, glad it was all a dream... and then one of the monsters appeared at her window. She woke again very, very scared indeed.