14 Most Insane Video Game Dream Sequences

2. Super Mario Bros. 2 / Link's Awakening

Links Awakening
Nintendo

Ending your story with the last line "and it was all a dream" is something you're told to never do since as far back as your school days. With the technique rendering just about everything that happens in your story redundant by design, its easy to see why movies and TV shy away from including such a lazy conclusion. 

However, video games aren't only about the stories they tell, and an emphasis on mechanics and gameplay means that a last minute twist revealing a title to be nothing more than a dream of the main character doesn't land with the same thud as it would in a big budget movie.

So, when it turned out that both The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening and Super Mario Bros. 2 took place entirely in the head of their respective main characters, no one batted an eyelid, and it even proved to be an entirely unexpected plot twist in its own right. 

Until then, no game had really tried to pull this type of last minute revelation off, yet both of these titles had enough charm and humour to turn a usually maligned storytelling cliché into a memorable gaming moment.

Contributor

Josh has over 11 years of experience as a published writer, having worked nine of those years as a full-time content producer at WhatCulture. In that period he has created hundreds of articles, videos and podcast episodes for multiple WhatCulture channels, specialising in gaming, horror and film & TV. He now primarily works as a senior content producer and presenter on WhatCulture Gaming where he co-hosts the WhatCulture Gaming Podcast, a top 3 UK most listened to gaming podcast that he co-created in 2018. Over the years he has reviewed several high-profile gaming releases, covered industry events with on-site reporting, opined on breaking news, and even kicked off his interviewing career by chatting to childhood hero, Tommy Wiseau.