10 Movie Characters Who Discovered That Their Universe Didn’t Exist

We all like to think that we have our world figured out, that everything we say, do and even think has meaning and value.

Well I’m here to tell you that those things DO have meaning, because your choices determine who you are and therefore who you will become, regardless of all outside circumstances. But in the world of fiction those outside circumstances can often get pretty wonky. People realize that everything they thought was real really wasn’t real, really, I’m for real on this one.

Sure, we as the audience know this because when we watch a movie or a television show, we’re watching a fictional world. And then, out of the blue, the character realizes it, too. This is typically called breaking the fourth wall, but I’m not going quite that far in this article. No, my intention here is to show you examples of characters pressing against the fourth wall and even pressing through, but not making it as far as reaching the audience. They discover that their world is the creation of a larger, more real world, but which is, itself, the world of the movie. If this is still confusing, it’ll make more sense as we go along.

Before we begin our list, there is one honorable mention. In Season Six, Episode Seventeen of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, entitled “Normal Again,” the titular character begins to suffer visions of a mental hospital where she’s told that she’s suffered from hallucinations for the better part of a decade. She eventually comes to the decision that her whole vampire-hunting life is merely the creation of a delusional mind struggling to find its way back to reality.

However, this is ultimately revealed to be the scheme of a demon trying to get her to murder her friends and stop hunting monsters, so this turns out to be a false world trying to convince her that it’s the real world while the real world is false. It really flips the whole topic on its head, but technically earns a spot on this list.