Web Video / Dream

2 Following

These are Manhunt videos considered part of the "core series," introducing people and concepts that become a core part of Manhunt.

• "Minecraft Speedrunner VS Hunter (FIRST EVER)" (Dream VS George)—Winner: George won the first-ever Manhunt.
• "Minecraft Speedrunner VS Hunter (SECOND EVER)" (Dream VS George)—Winner: Dream triumphed this time, making for his first-ever win.
• "Minecraft Speedrunner VS Slayer" (Dream VS BadBoyHalo)—Winner: The slayer, BadBoyHalo.
• "Minecraft Speedrunner VS Full Diamond Juggernaut" (Dream VS Sapnap)^note This is the only "main series" Manhunt with a gimmick—Sapnap is decked out in full diamond gear to use against Dream, and he doesn't lose the gear if he dies—Winner: Sapnap triumphed over Dream.
• "Minecraft Speedrunner VS Hunter (Again)" (Dream VS George)—Winner: Dream won this round, but barely.
• "Minecraft Speedrunner VS 2 Hunters" (Dream VS George and Sapnap)—Winner: With skill and a lot of luck, Dream won against both of the Hunters.
• "Minecraft Speedrunner VS 3 Hunters" (Dream VS George, Sapnap, and Bad)—Winner: The Hunters won this round with the right trap at the right time.
• "Minecraft Speedrunner VS 3 Hunters REMATCH" (Dream VS George, Sapnap, and Bad)—Winner: Dream won against the Hunters, but only barely.
• "Minecraft Speedrunner VS 3 Hunters FINALE" (Dream VS George, Sapnap, and Bad)—Winner: The Hunters won this round.
• "Minecraft Speedrunner VS 3 Hunters FINALE REMATCH" (Dream VS George, Sapnap, and Bad)—Winner: Dream won against the three hunters again.
• "Minecraft Speedrunner VS 3 Hunters GRAND FINALE" (Dream VS George, Sapnap, and Bad)—Winner: It took the upper limits of his skill and ingenuity, but Dream managed to defeat the hunters at their absolute best.
• "Minecraft Speedrunner VS 4 Hunters" (Dream VS George, Sapnap, Bad, and Antfrost)—Winner: In a rather confusing turn of events, both Dream and the dragon die within five seconds of each other, lending credence to both sides claiming victory. Dream insists it was a draw for this very reason, while the hunters argue that they technically won because Dream was the first to die. In the Extra Scenes clip, Dream concedes defeat.
• "Minecraft Speedrunner VS 4 Hunters REMATCH" (Dream VS George, Sapnap, Bad, and Ant)—Winner: After a tense series of confrontations and maneuvers, Dream manages to eke out the win.
• "Minecraft Speedrunner VS 4 Hunters FINALE" (Dream VS George, Sapnap, Bad, and Ant)—Winner: Dream wins after possibly the most back-and-forth battles of the series.
• "Minecraft Speedrunner VS 4 Hunters FINALE REMATCH" (Dream VS George, Sapnap, Bad, and Ant)—Winner: The hunters managed to take the round after Ant unexpectedly unleashed an onslaught of harming potions.
• "Minecraft Speedrunner VS 4 Hunters GRAND FINALE" (Dream VS George, Sapnap, Bad, and Ant)—Winner: Dream took the round, and the 1v4 saga as a whole, after one of the hunters' best rounds yet.
• "Minecraft Speedrunner VS 5 Hunters" (Dream VS George, Sapnap, Bad, Ant, and Awesamdude)—Winner: Continuing the trend of the hunters winning the first round of each saga, the hunters somehow revive the dragon even though it hadn't died yet, with George killing Dream soon after.
• "Minecraft Speedrunner VS 5 Hunters REMATCH" (Dream VS George, Sapnap, Bad, Ant, and Awesamdude)—Winner: Using a flying machine, Dream ended up with an Elytra and full diamond gear, granting him enough of an advantage to decimate the dragon.
• "Minecraft Speedrunner VS 5 Hunters FINALE" (Dream VS George, Sapnap, Bad, Ant, and Awesamdude)—Winner: Dream took the victory by using an Ender Pearl stasis chamber to enter the End miles ahead of the hunters and a water pillar to trap the dragon when it perched, allowing Dream to snipe at it without fail.
• "Minecraft Speedrunner VS 5 Hunters FINALE REMATCH" (Dream VS George, Sapnap, Bad, Ant, and Awesamdude)—Winner: The hunters take the win as after Dream made a misassumption and accidentally wasted time trying to destroy an obsidian casing around an already destroyed End Crystal, Bad takes an opportunity to kill Dream with Crystal Combat (Using End Crystals to damage players, an EXTREMELY powerful but dangerous strategy), killing the speedrunner in one swift action and one single explosion.
• "Minecraft Speedrunner VS 5 Hunters GRAND FINALE." (Dream VS George, Sapnap, Bad, Ant, and Awesamdude)—Winner: In the Grand Finale (thus far) of the Manhunt series, Dream pulls out all the stops and several tactics from past videos to emerge the victor after a long struggle.
• ''Minecraft Speedrunner VS 0 Hunters'' (Dream Vs George, Sapnap and Sam) Winner: Dream loses this manhunt. It is important to note that this was an April Fools Day Special
• ''Minecraft Speedrunner VS Hunter REVIVAL'' (Dream Vs George) Winner: Despite making this specific Manhunt more challenging by not allowing himself to wear any armour, Dream handles George rather easily and wins this manhunt, letting him move on to 2 Hunters
• ''Minecraft Speedrunner VS 2 Hunters REVIVAL'' (Dream Vs George and Sapnap) Winner: Dream wins this manhunt, letting him move on to 3 Hunters
• ''Minecraft Speedrunner VS 3 Hunters REVIVAL'' (Dream Vs George, Sapnap and Bad) Winner: Dream wins this manhunt, letting him move on to 4 Hunters
• ''Minecraft Speedrunner VS 4 Hunters REVIVAL'' (Dream Vs George, Sapnap, Bad and Ant) Winner: While Dream successfully defeats all the Hunters in The End, he dies in an attempt to kill the dragon with a single hit using the mace. He ultimately lets the viewers decide through a poll if he should move on to 5 Hunters or do a rematch of 4 Hunters, in which 5 Hunters won
• ''Minecraft Speedrunner VS 5 Hunters REVIVAL'' (Dream Vs George, Sapnap, Bad, Ant, and Sam) Winner: After a long and arduous manhunt, Dream emerges victorious, winning the Revival series lead-up to 6 Hunters
• ''Minecraft Speedrunner VS 6 Hunters'' (Dream Vs George, Sapnap, Bad, Ant, Sam and Puffy) Winner: In the first Manhunt of the 6 Hunters series, Dream manages to achieve a close and tough victory.

• ''Minecraft Speedrunner VS TITAN'' (Dream vs Titan) Winner: Dream loses to the titan before he can even get to the Nether. Several times
• ''2 Minecraft Speedrunners VS TITAN'' (Dream, George VS Titan) Winner: The Titan Wins Once more, but the speed runners get to the Nether
• ''3 Minecraft Speedrunners VS TITAN'' (Dream, George, Sapnap VS Titan) Winner: The titan wins once more, but the Dream Team makes it to the End before they fall

• "Minecraft Survivalist VS 3 Hitmen" (Dream VS George, Sapnap, and Bad)^note Time limit of 60 minutes—Winner: Dream survived the full hour after a close match.
• "Minecraft Survivor VS 3 Hitmen" (Dream VS George, Sapnap, and Bad)^note Time limit extended to 90 minutes, with built-in grace periods every 10 minutes—Winner: After a particularly tense match, Dream manages to hold out for the full 90 minutes.

• "Minecraft Speedrunner VS Assassin" (Dream VS George)^note The gimmick of this video is that George can one-shot Dream, but can't move if Dream is looking at him—Winner: George, who was the Assassin, won.
• "Minecraft Speedrunner VS Hunter" (Dream VS George)^note The gimmick of this video is thatDream is the one hunting George, who is trying to speedrun—Winner: Dream won as the hunter instead of the hunted.
• "Minecraft Speedrunner VS Assassin ft. Notch" (Dream VS Notch and George)^note The gimmick of this video is that Dream is the hunter, and must kill Notch while George is protecting and helping him—however, despite the billing, the gimmick from the assassin video does not carry over into this video—Winner: Dream killed Notch while they were in the Nether.
• "Minecraft Speedrunner VS Assassin (Again)" (Dream VS George)^note Repeat of "Minecraft Speedrunner VS Assassin"—Winner: George won this round, being the Assassin in this video.
• "Minecraft, But The Mobs Are Controlled By A Player..." (Dream VS George)^note This video is not officially listed as a Manhunt, but the core premise is the same. The gimmick of this video is that George can take control of any mob he needs in order to hunt down Dream—however, this means he can't attack Dream if there aren't any mobs around—Winner: George, who controlled the malevolent mobs, won against Dream in this video.
• "2 Minecraft Speedrunners VS Terminator" (Dream and George VS OoogaBoooga/AI, not officially listed as a Manhunt but the core premise is the same)^note The gimmick of this video is that Dream and George team up (for the first and only time in the Manhunt series) to speedrun the game as a Minecraft-playing AI named OoogaBoooga hunts them down—Winner: The OoogaBoooga/AI robot character won.
• "Minecraft Speedrunner VS Hunter LIVE" (Dream VS George)^note The gimmick of this video, aside from it being livestreamed, is that there are two rounds, one with Dream as the hunter and one with George as the hunter, potentially allowing a tie if one player wins one round each—Winner: Tie (both players won one round apiece as the hunter)
• "Minecraft Random Item Challenge VS 2 Hunters" (Dream VS George and Sapnap)^note The gimmick of this video is that no items drop from any blocks, making harvesting resources impossible, but every two minutes each person gets a pile of a random item or block in Minecraft. Any block or item. They can't pick up each other's items and must try to kill the other with the items they get. —Winner: Dream, after getting TNT from the random item drop and lighting a huge amount buried underground and towering up with observers.
• "3 Minecraft Speedrunners VS Hunter ft. MrBeast" (Dream VS Jimmy, Karl, and Chandler)^note The gimmick of this video is that Dream is the hunter and must kill the three members of MrBeast before they beat the game—if any one of them dies, they can continue to help the surviving members, but Dream does not have to kill them again to win—Winner: Dream won the round against the MrBeast trio.
• "Minecraft Speedrunner VS PRO" (Dream VS IlluminaHD)^note The gimmick of this video is that there are two rounds, one with Dream as the hunter and one with IlluminaHD as the hunter, potentially allowing a tie if one player wins one round each—Winner: Tie (both players won one round apiece as the hunter)
• "Minecraft Speedrunner VS 2 Assassins" (Dream VS George and Sapnap)^note Same gimmick as the other Assassin videos, but this one is with two of them.—Winner: The Assassins won, as George used a Nether Portal link-up trick.
• "Minecraft Speedrunner VS $1,000,000 MrBeast Challenge" (Dream vs. George, Sapnap, and Bad, ft. Jimmy)^note The gimmick of this video is that Dream will give away a pot of money that starts at 1 million dollars and it goes down $69 every 1 second and the amount that's left is given away to a random subscriber, but if Dream isn't quick enough and it goes down to the negatives, he owes the negative amount to his 3 friends.
• "3 Minecraft Speedrunners VS Herobrine" (Dream, Sapnap and George VS Herobrine/AI)^note The gimmick is similar to "2 Minecraft Speedrunners VS Terminator", but Sapnap joins Dream and George, and the OoogaBoooga AI has added mechanics that are associated with Herobrine.—Winner: The Herobrine/AI robot character won.
• "Minecraft Speedrunner VS $100,000 Bounty Hunter" (Dream vs. Daquavis)^note The finale to Dream's duel with Daquavis with the same gimmicks as a normal manhunt, but the loser has to pay the winner $100,000—Winner: Dream won against Daquavis, making him the winner of the manhunt and the overall Dream VS Daquavis Duel.
• "Minecraft Speedrunner Swap VS 2 Hunters" (Dream and Daquavis vs. George and Sapnap)^note The gimmicks is that Dream and Daquavis swap the role of Speedrunner every minute, sharing the same inventory, health and hunger, with the swapped-out Speedrunner being unaware of what the other is doing until they are swapped back in.—Winner: Dream and Daquavis won.
• "Minecraft Speedrunner Swap VS 2 Hunters" (Dream and Baablu vs. Bad and Fantst)^note The same gimmick as the first Speedrunner Swap, but this time the other speedrunner is Baablu while the hunters are Bad and Fantst.—Winner: Dream and Baablu won.
• "Minecraft Speedrunner Swap VS 2 Hunters" (Dream and DrDonut vs. Daquavis and Skeppy)^note The same gimmick as the previous Speedrunner Swap videos, but this time the other speedrunner is DrDonut while the hunters are Daquavis and Skeppy.—Winner: Daquavis and Skeppy won.

• "Minecraft Death Swap" (Dream VS George)^note The gimmick of this video is that players swap positions every five minutes and must devise traps to kill the other when they swap — Winner: Dream won by turning George's Nether trap around on him with nothing but an enchanted golden apple.
• "Minecraft Death Swap 2" (Dream VS George)^note Repeat of "Minecraft Death Swap" — Winner: Dream won again, this time using gravel to suffocate George.
• "Minecraft Block Shuffle" (Dream VS George)^note The gimmick of this video is that players are assigned a random block every five minutes and must stand on that block before the next block is assigned, or else they lose — Winner: Dream won after George failed to craft and stand on a jukebox.
• "Minecraft Ultimate Tag..." (Dream VS George)^note The gimmick of this video is that the players are set in a bordered area. One player (who has a compass that tells the Y coordinate) must tag the other by hitting them within 2 minutes. If they succeed, they get a point. If not, the other player gets the point. This alternates every round. — Winner: George won the most rounds in this video, ending when George tags Dream for the last time.
• "Minecraft Death Shuffle..." (Dream VS George)^note The gimmick of this video is that players have five minutes to die in the manner specified by chat. If both players fulfill their death tasks in time, the timer resets and new death tasks are given. This repeats until one of them fails their death task. — Winner: Dream won after George is required to die to a Pillager's crossbow, which the latter failed because he couldn't find a Pillager outpost in time.
• "Minecraft Hostage Simulator" (Dream VS Sapnap and George VS BadBoyHalo)^note The gimmick of this video is that BadBoyHalo is a hostage who is trying to keep himself from being sacrificed to the Ender Dragon, and Dream is playing against George and Sapnap to drag Bad to the End. They are able to attach Bad to a lead and drag him around, but are each trying to prevent the other team from bringing Bad to the End first. — Winner: George and Sapnap bring Bad to the End before Dream, winning the challenge.
• "MISSION: PROTECT THE CHICKEN" (Dream VS George)^note The gimmick of this video is that Dream has to protect a chicken and beat the game while George tries to kill the chicken. — Winner: George succeeds in killing the chicken.
• "20 YouTubers VS Titan (In My Real Life House)"^note The gimmick of this video is that 20 YouTubers have to survive a hide-and-seek game in a minecraft version of his house, while being hunted by the Titan played by his father. — Winner: Dasnerth is caught but succeeds in being the last one to survive.
• "XRAY Hacker VS Fly Hacker"^note The gimmick of this video is that Dream uses X-ray hacks while Sapnap uses fly hacks to try and kill the other player first. — Winner: Sapnap kills Dream and wins the challenge with half a heart left.
• "Dream VS Daquavis $100,000 PvP Duel" (Dream VS Daquavis) ^note The first section of Dream's duel with Daquavis. There are 3 different PvP kits and the first to 5 wins is the winner of that kit. The best of 3 kits wins the PvP Duel. — Winner: Dream wins both Axe PvP and Sword PvP while Daquavis wins Modern PvP, making Dream the winner of the PvP Duel.
• "Dream VS Daquavis $100,000 Skills Duel" (Dream VS Daquavis) ^note The second section of Dream's duel with Daquavis. There are 10 different skills challenges and the best of 10 wins the Skills Duel. — Winner: Dream wins Lava Boat Freeze, Parkour Race and Bow, while Daquavis wins Elytra Race, Ice Boat Race, Speed Building, Water Race and Speed Bridging. They tie in Water Drop, making Daquavis the winner of the Skills Duel.
• "Minecraft Task Master" (Dream VS Sapnap VS George) ^note Dream, Sapnap and George each have a secret task to complete before the others. Like in Speedrunner Swap, they periodically swap control of the player, sharing the same inventory, health and hunger. The first person to complete their task wins. — Winner: George wins by completing his task of falling from the surface onto bedrock and dying of fall damage.

• Minecraft, but XRAY is always on (#1) — The first video in the X-Ray series. Features Dream, George, and Sapnap trying to play Minecraft with X-Ray permanently on, meaning they can't see most blocks except for ores.
• Minecraft, But Mobs Double Every Minute — A challenge video with an exponentially-increasing number of hostile mobs. Features George, Sapnap, and BadBoyHalo.
• Beating Minecraft Without Turning Off Xray Challenge #2 — The second entry in the X-Ray series.
• Beating Minecraft With Xray Challenge #3 — The third entry in the X-Ray series.
• Beating Minecraft With Xray Challenge FINALE — The fourth and final entry in the X-Ray series.
• Minecraft, But Item Drops Are Multiplied Every Time — Dream and George try to beat Minecraft with item drops multiplying explonentially every time they break a block.
• Minecraft, But Item Drops Multiply Challenge FINALE The second and final video of the Exponential Item Drop series.
• Minecraft, But Bedrock Slowly Fills the World... — Self-explanatory.
• We See Our Minecraft World For The First Time... — A sequel to the X-Ray series. Dream, George, and Sapnap finally turn off X-Ray and explore what their world looked like the entire time.
• Minecraft, But Speed Rises Every Second — Self-explanatory.
• Minecraft, But Speed Rises Every Second AGAIN... — Sequel to the above video. Ends with everyone ragequitting.
• Minecraft, But The World Changes Every Time...
• Minecraft, But The World Changes Every Time AGAIN...
• Minecraft, But Item Drops Are Random And Multiplied...
• Minecraft, But It Rains Mobs — Dream and George try to survive with tons of hostile mobs raining down around them.
• Minecraft, But It's Confusing... — Dream coded Minecraft to change a bunch of small things, and then had George play with the modification.
• Minecraft, But Blocks Attack You... — Blocks have been coded to move and attack the player who tried to mine them. Has a sequel on the Dream Team Youtube channel here.
• Cursed Confusing Minecraft Full Of Confusion — Despite the name, not an entry in Dream's "cursed" Minecraft series. Rather, this is a sequel to Minecraft, But It's Confusing..., except this time George is the one who changed random things and Dream has to play through the game with them.
• Minecraft, But Gravity Flips Every Minute...
• Minecraft, But Gravity Changes Randomly — A sequel to the above video.
• Minecraft, But Millions Of Bees Attack Us... — Dream and George try to survive with large swarms of angry bees spawning on one of them, picked randomly, every minute.
• Minecraft, But Item Drops Are Multiplied Every Time... AGAIN — A sequel to the previous Multiplied Items video.
• Minecraft, But Everywhere We Look Explodes... — Self-explanatory. Ends with everyone ragequitting.
• Minecraft, But We Can Swing Like Spiderman
• Minecraft, But We Are Stuck Together — Dream, George, and Sapnap try to beat Minecraft with an aura centered around their average location. If anyone leaves the aura, everyone dies instantly.
• Minecraft, But Two People Control One Player — Dream and George attempt to beat Minecraft while linked so they act as one player. Dream can move but can't break blocks or craft, and George can break blocks and craft but can't move.
• I Get Shocked When I Lose Hearts in Minecraft... — Despite the first-person name, this video is about George getting shocked when he takes damage, via a dog shock collar they linked to Minecraft.
• Beating Minecraft, But All Blocks Have Gravity... — Dream and George attempt to beat Minecraft, but all blocks have been programmed to fall like sand when a player approaches them.
• Minecraft, But It's Raining Molten Lava... — Dream and George attempt to beat Minecraft with lava falling from the sky, which sets trees on fire and damages them. They ragequit after dying in the Nether.
• Minecraft, But A Massive Tornado Grows Every Minute... — Dream and George attempt to beat Minecraft with an in-game tornado chasing them.
• Minecraft, But A Black Hole Grows Every Minute — Dream, George, and Sapnap attempt to beat Minecraft with a black hole growing exponentially and pulling them towards it.
• Minecraft, But Mobs Are Random Sizes... — Self-explanatory.
• Minecraft But Every Chunk Explodes... — Dream and George attempt to beat Minecraft while every chunk^note A 16x16 area of the world that goes from the bottom of the world to the top they enter explodes from the bottom to the top.
• Minecraft, But Three People Control One Player... — A sequel to the two-player video, but now with Dream, George, and Sapnap all controlling one "player". Dream controls movement, George controls breaking and placing things and what they're holding, and Sapnap controls attacking. They win and kill the dragon.
• Minecraft, But It's a Zombie Apocalypse — Dream and George attempt to survive with tons of zombies constantly spawning around them. They win and kill the dragon.
• Minecraft, But The Ender Dragon Is Our Pet... — Dream and George try to beat Minecraft while having their own Ender Dragon that they can ride around that will instantly break the blocks in front of it. They win and kill the other, non-pet dragon.
• Beating Minecraft Without Leaving The Nether... — Dream, George, and Sapnap attempt to beat Minecraft which has been modified to include everything they need to completely beat the game within the nether, including the stronghold and dragon fight. They win and kill the dragon.
• Minecraft, But We Can Only See One Chunk... — Dream, George, and Sapnap attempt to beat Minecraft while only being able to see the chunk^note 16x16 area with infinite height around them.
• Minecraft, But It's Pitch Black... — Dream, George, and Sapnap attempt to beat Minecraft with the game extremely dark, making it hard to see.
• Minecraft 100 Floor Survival... — Dream, George, and Sapnap play a challenge map involving a giant elevator with different "floors" that spawn different enemies. Features the return of the "sentient" blocks from the "Blocks Try To Kill Us" video They die at floor 54 after being overwhelmed by sentient bedrock, vexes, and a baby Ender Dragon.
• Speedrunning Minecraft Twice At The SAME TIME... — Dream, George, and Sapnap attempt to beat Minecraft twice at once, with all game inputs registering in both games. They ragequit.
• Minecraft, But Every Mob Is A CHICKEN JOCKEY! — Dream, Sapnap, Graser and BTMC attempt to beat the same while every mob is riding a chicken, based on the popular meme from A Minecraft Movie. They succeed.
• Minecraft, But It's 5x Speed — Dream, George, and Sapnap attempt to beat the game while the tickrate has been increased to 5x. They succeed.
• Minecraft, But We're Chained Together — Dream, George, and Sapnap attempt to beat the game while chained together, based on the game Chained Together. They ragequit.

• Unsolved Mystery of Minecraft Monday
• Unsolved Mystery of Sven — A video analyzing whether or not PewDiePie's Minecraft dog Sven could have actually survived being trapped underwater, or if PewDiePie spawned in a new dog.
• Unsolved Mystery of Minecraft Dupe Accounts — A video discussing Minecraft accounts with duplicate names.
• Unsolved Mystery of Minecraft's Longest Jump
• Unsolved Mystery of Illegal Minecraft Accounts
• Unsolved Mystery of Minecraft Sharks — An analysis on why Mojang will never add sharks to Minecraft.
• Unsolved Mystery of Herobrine — An overview of the fandom-created Minecraft creepypasta character "Herobrine". Currently the last episode of the series.

• Last To Leave Circle in Minecraft Wins $1,000 - Challenge — A multiplayer Minecraft challenge video. Notable for showing Sapnap in his old skin, as well as George playing on his old account GeorgeeeHD, also with an old skin.
• Mining Diamonds with Fortune 200000 — Made to celebrate Dream reaching 200,000 subscribers. George's first appearance with his current GeorgeNotFound Minecraft account and current skin.
• ''hi, I'm Dream.'' — Dream's face reveal video.
• The Duel — A music video set to Dream's song "Until I End Up Dead", made in remembrance of fellow Minecraft Youtuber Technoblade's passing due to cancer.
• Dream House Tour — A video where Dream gives a tour of his real life house in both Minecraft and real life.
• I added humans to Minecraft... — A showcase video showing technology Dream has been producing that allows for real-time 3D projection of a person into Minecraft, in a way that lets them interact with the game with their real body. Features George and Sapnap, as well as appearances from BadBoyHalo, CaptainSparklez, Skeppy, AntVenom, and a cameo from Dream's younger sister "Drista".
• I might not ever play Minecraft again — Dream talks about his fractured wrist and his worries in regards to how it will affect his future gaming skill.
• How Minecraft Manhunt is Made — Dream talks about the process of filming manhunt videos, including scouting seeds and the rules.

• Aborted Arc: Dream announced in the "5 Hunters Grand Finale" that they were planning a real-life Manhunt if the video got two million likes, but by the time it reached that total, Dream had undergone a fair bit of controversy regarding his Manhunts being allegedly scripted along with inappropriate interactions with fans. By the time he more-or-less redeemed his image, circumstances were such that the real-life Manhunt was impracticable.
• All There in the Manual: Dream said that sometimes, he and his friends have to record several Manhunts before they find one suitable for a video, as he had many times been cornered and killed before even getting gear—and it wouldn't exactly be entertaining for the audience if a Manhunt video was just three minutes long. As such, there's a grace period during the beginning of each Manhunt where the group restarts if Dream dies^note In fact, Dream revealed in an analysis video that he took advantage of this and, upon restarting after a death, he immediately fled before the hunters even entered the world. However, to incentivize the hunters to actually try and kill him during this grace period rather than just let him go, the hunters are financially rewarded for every time they manage to kill him and force a restart.
  • Notably, both sides are not above exploiting said grace period. Dream has revealed that he's much more likely to take risks at the start of the Manhunts because of said grace period. The hunters, meanwhile, are most likely to just cut their losses and prepare for the long game if Dream becomes too unkillable, as even if they succeed it'll just be redone.
  • In Dream's analysis video on the "4 Hunters Rematch" video, Dream's Nether roof trap actually working wasn't because of Dream just getting lucky that none of the hunters had a Flint & Steel despite George having one earlier, which many critics accused Dream of being unable to truly know. In actuality, a cut clip from before the trap reveals that George outright says his Flint & Steel broke while using it, and Dream only decided to use the trap upon learning this, correctly predicting that none of the other hunters had one of their own based on the previous encounters with the hunters, where only George seemed to use one.
• Alpha Strike: In the "3 Hunters Grand Finale" video, After the three hunters fortify the End, Dream sets up his TNT to go through the portal, the first ones being set to explode a split second after being teleported. The attack causes a Total Party Kill.
  • Happens again in the "4 Hunters Grand Finale" video, as Dream uses TNT to blow up half the stronghold before launching a volley of fireworks at the hunters.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different:
  • "Speedrunner VS Full Diamond Juggernaut" with Sapnap, "Speedrunner VS Slayer" with BadBoyHalo, and "Speedrunner VS Pro" with speedrunner Illumina are the only three Manhunt videos^note not counting the MrBeast video, which was a unique one-off without George (the usual hunter) in them.
  • Across both Dream and George's channels, "Speedrunner VS Detective" is the only Manhunt in the entire series where Dream is absent, with the episode instead focusing on George and Bad.
• The Anticipator: The hunters can track Dream wherever he goes and don't need to waste time making progress toward killing the Ender Dragon, meaning they will always catch up with him sooner or later. Dream often exploits this upon reaching a bottleneck such as the Nether or End Portal, using his lead to build traps and give himself a bigger head start on the other side. These traps are often so effective that the hunters literally have no idea what hit them.
  • In the last 1v1 against George, Dream does it twice. First, after making a Nether portal in a village, he gets the Nether advancement before going back and hiding under a house to wait for George, easily surprising and killing him upon arrival due to lack of substantial food. Second, Dream builds a large lava pit in the End portal room, positioning himself on a single block over it to lure George and making the ceiling out of stone bricks so George thinks he's found a normal part of the stronghold. Even with a bucket of water, George doesn't last long.
  • In the "2 Hunters" video, Dream makes a Nether portal, enters to get the advancement signifying doing so, and returns, hiding in a tunnel and leaving lava out for George and Sapnap. When they arrive, George burns to death and Sapnap tries to run down Dream's tunnel, only to be cornered and killed.
  • In the first "3 Hunters" video, Dream buries his Nether portal in Netherrack, leaving behind a tunnel leading to a chamber with a bed in it. When the hunters arrive and follow the tunnel, Dream explodes the bed, resulting in a Total Party Kill.
  • In the "3 Hunters FINALE" video, Dream crafts an End Crystal and sets it up in the stronghold. Once the hunters catch up to him, he runs past it, then turns around and blows it up with an arrow for another Total Party Kill.
  • In the "3 Hunters GRAND FINALE", the roles are reversed as the Hunters enter the End before Dream and create a trap for him, consisting of walls and a roof to stop him pearling away and having three bows trained on the spawn platform. Dream is able to defeat them all the same by dropping primed TNT through the portal first, blowing out their walls and floor and sending all three falling into the void.
  • In the "4 Hunters REMATCH", Dream's Nether portal spawns underground, so he mines out a convoluted maze to disorient the Hunters, who end up Cutting the Knot and destroy the maze with bed explosions, although Dream finds a way to take advantage of the ensuing chaos.
• Anti-Climax: Some of Dream's Minecraft Manhunt videos end like this.
  • At the end of "Minecraft Speedrunner VS 3 Hunters FINALE," after Sapnap and George have been defeated, Bad comes out of nowhere and kills Dream.
  • In "Minecraft Speedrunner VS Hunter LIVE" (14:03), Dream's run abruptly ends when he jumps into a ravine only to fall to his death, since a piece of cobblestone off-screen had redirected the Soft Water stream he was aiming for.
  • In the extra scenes video for the "4 Hunters" video, they decide to try another Manhunt with Bad speedrunning instead of Dream. After a long chase, Bad actually manages to escape with a dolphin… only to drown seconds later.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Invoked. Dream knows that the Ender Dragon isn't a threat to him unless he mistimes his water placements, and will likely go down in a minute (he is a speedrunner and knows the best way to kill it). With that in mind, the climax of the videos, and what typically takes up the majority of the runtime in the End, is the final fights with the hunters, who have always managed to make their way to the End as well. These fights are typically where Dream employs one of his backup strategies and often where the most iconic moments in Manhunt occur, while the dragon is always an afterthought—of every one of Dream's losses, only one of them is from the dragon itself,^note it's the 1v1 Manhunt with Bad and the dragon has been reduced to being slain in mere seconds as the fights between Dream and the hunters become longer and better.
  • The one time the Ender Dragon is the main focus of the fight is the second Manhunt video. George decides that if he kills the Ender Dragon instead of Dream, he wins, as the goal is for Dream to kill it. The fight goes from Dream trying to kill George so he can quickly finish off the dragon to Dream trying to kill the dragon before George can—and it gets pretty damn close.
  • In the "4 Hunters" video, this is finally averted. It looks like it's going to end like yet another Ender Dragon fight, but the hunters arrive seconds before Dream can kill the dragon and heal it using pre-crafted End Crystals, forcing Dream to simultaneously take out the dragon while killing the hunters. And at the end, it's the dragon's breath attack that lets Sapnap get close enough to Dream for the finishing blow. However, Dream does end up killing the dragon within a couple seconds of dying thanks to having ignited TNT, resulting in a rather confusing ending that leaves all five players arguing over who won).
    • And it's back to being played straight in the "4 Hunters Rematch" video, as the Ender Dragon goes down without a fight. The hardest part of the End was Dream trying to sneak past the hunters to even reach the dragon—but once he did, the fight was basically over.
      Sapnap: Did you just one-cycle the dragon?!?!
  • Subverted with the hunters in the "3 Hunters Grand Finale" video. The climax is entirely non-action based, with the conflict stemming from the hunters reaching the End first and laying out a nigh-inescapable death trap. The "fight" itself revolves around Dream trying to circumvent the trap entirely or even destroy it. However, while the fight is lacking in action, it is considered one of the best endings of the series due to the sheer tension as well as exactly how Dream cheats certain death this time. A similar case comes with the "4 Hunters Grand Finale" video—there's no final fight with the hunters because Dream annihilates them beforehand, but the method Dream uses to do that is more than climactic enough to compensate.
• Armor-Piercing Attack:
  • During the finale of 4 Hunters FINALE REMATCH, Ant uses splash potions of harming against Dream. Since the Instant Damage effect ignores armor and is only mitigated by Protection enchantments, Ant was able to kill Dream (who had over half his health remaining, with full iron armor but no enchantments) with a single clean direct hit.
  • Prior to then, Dream's explosive tactics like beds and End Crystals are more than capable of one-shotting a hunter despite them more than likely wearing armor.
  • In the "4 Hunters Grand Finale" video, the firework-loaded crossbows make short work of the hunters despite all of them being clad in iron armor.
• Attack! Attack... Retreat! Retreat!: Has a trend of occurring in the Manhunts.
  • The most obvious example is a time where the 3 hunters are chasing Dream, only to see him drinking a potion and immediately running away, due to the absurd (supposed) damage output of a player with Strength (who is able to easily punch through iron armor). The problem is that the potion was Fire Resistance, which has no effect in PvP, but Bad jumps to the conclusion that it's a Strength potion. Since George (who is colorblind) is the only one who sees the potion, he agrees with Bad and the hunters retreat.
  • Another example is the beginning in "Minecraft Speedrunner VS 3 Hunters FINALE REMATCH.", where the usual process of Dream running away with no gear ends with him finding a ruined portal chest and taking out a golden sword, causing the hunters to panic and run.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • In the "4 Hunters Rematch" video, the hunters use beds to destroy Dream's Nether maze, allowing them to blow up any hiding spot Dream might take. While an awesome approach to Dream's trickery, beds are extremely dangerous in close quarters. Eventually, their last bed ends up killing Sapnap and leaving the other hunters burning and on next-to-no health, letting Dream easily pick them off.
  • In the "4 Hunters Finale Rematch" video, Dream and Sapnap both get horses and get into a jousting match. While badass on paper, the Minecraft gameplay engine is not very well-suited to mounted combat, leading both of them to dismount, kill each others' horses (to negate the travel speed advantage), and resort to on-foot PvP.
• Batman Gambit: As Dream explains in his analysis videos, he frequently predicts how the hunters are going to act when faced with something and makes a split-second decision to exploit it.
  • Probably the best example is him bluffing everyone into thinking he drank a Strength potion and charging three people head on with 1 HP. Normally this would be suicide, but since they've all been wiped out by something similar before and they're just that afraid of him, this works perfectly and they immediately run.
  • Another example comes from the 1v4 rematch, where Dream exploits the hunters' natural instincts to chase him in order to trap them in the Nether, having glitched above the bedrock ceiling and blowing up the portal back with TNT as he enters. The hunters are trapped in the Nether with no way to relight the portal and must abandon their overpowered armor by committing suicide in order to even have a chance at winning.
    • To expand on this, according to Dream from his analysis video, he got this idea from overhearing George saying that his flint and steel broke. He also didn't hear any of the other hunters say anything about using one the whole time, so he jumped off that assumption into setting off this trap. If any of the hunters actually did have a flint and steel the trap wouldn't have worked. Batman Gambit indeed.
  • Dream ends up on the receiving end of one of these in the "3 Hunters" video. Bad is sent to the End when Dream activates the portal while he was within the frame at the beginning of his climactic fight with the hunters. While he dies not long after, he's first able to builds a lava trap over the End spawn, predicting Dream to just waltz in if George and Sapnap die. When Dream hops through, he's caught completely off-guard. According to a later review, Dream had been so confident that he'd taken his hand off his computer mouse, which is why he doesn't move for a bit before suddenly jerking his camera up to look at the lava.
  • During the 4 Hunters Finale, Dream brews Invisibility potions while in the Nether. Meanwhile, the Hunters have acquired full diamond armor with Protection enchantments. Dream chugs one of his Invisibility potions as they're taunting him over it and slips through their base after getting a good look; then, once he's safely in the overworld, he makes a remark about their base that convinces them he's right there. It takes a while before they think to use the compass and realize he's escaped the Nether.
  • During the first Hitmen video, Dream collects a lot of leaves and, after towering up, bridges out using them. This turns out to be a trap all along when George and Sapnap follow him up and inch their way closer using their shields, allowing Dream to swipe the platform out from under them using his shears.
    George: He spleefed me! He spleefed me!
• Battle Amongst the Flames: Pretty much any Nether fight in the series is this, but a notable non-Nether instance is one of the final few battles in the "4 Hunters Finale Rematch" video. In said video, Dream and Sapnap are trapped in a lava lake, both having drunk fire resistance potions. The remaining hunters seal the two inside by turning the top layer of water into obsidian, dooming Dream to die when his potion runs out. The fight has Dream trying to fight off Sapnap while finding a way to escape the lava, which he manages when he digs underground and creates a small pocket of air.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: During a 1v3 Minecraft Manhunt, this trope is what the hunters thought happened when Dream leapt into a lava lake in the Nether. What actually happened was Dream had been drinking a Fire Resistance potion during his fall. The funny thing is, Bad actually jumped in after him, dying soon after as he and the other hunters debate what just happened.
• Big "NO!": Oftentimes the hunters (often George) say this when Dream manages to kill any one of them. Similarly, Dream will do this if the hunters beat him.
  • In the "3 Hunters Grand Finale" video, when Dream was in the Nether fortress, Dream reacted this way when he found out that the hunters broke the Blaze spawners.
• Big "OMG!": Dream frequently says this whenever the hunters manage to force him to run. This will also occur when the hunters are ambushed by Dream.
• Big, Stupid Doodoo-Head: There are often many childish insults thrown around.
• Big "WHAT?!":
  • The hunters have this reaction to Dream hopping across lava in the Nether using nothing but boats in the "3 Hunters Grand Finale" video. (18:27) Justified, since he manages to pull off a feat nobody expected him to do.
  • Happens again later in the "3 Hunters Grand Finale" video when Dream sent lit TNT to the End to counter their spawn-camp trap, thus resulting in all three falling into the void, securing Dream the ultimate win.
  • It's not even limited to tactics. All the players have this reaction in the "4 Hunters FINALE" when their chase takes them to an inexplicable, giant mountain. The thing is so tall that when Dream reaches the summit he can barely see ground level through the distance fog.
  • Happens again in "4 Hunters GRAND FINALE" when Dream uses a glitch to escape the hunters in the Nether on a scaffolding bridge that crumbles just as fast as he builds it.
• Big "YES!": Dream whenever he defeats the Ender Dragon at the end of his videos, or gets a huge victory against the hunters. Similarly, the hunters will do this if they beat Dream.
  • Perhaps the two biggest are at the end of the two Grand Finale videos. The "4 Hunters Grand Finale" in particular has him give one so loud that it sounds like his voice is cracking.
• Blown Across the Room: In the "4 Hunters Finale", Dream manages to get his hands on a bow enchanted with Punch, giving it massive knockback. It's one of the crucial items of that Manhunt, letting him win a tense standoff with George in the Nether, and making it much harder to reach him at the top of his pillar in the End, greatly contributing to his victory.
• Booby Trap: In 5 Hunters Rematch. Sam made a TNT tripwire trap near the portal, but Dream manages to spot the wires and disarm the TNT below and use it against the hunters.
• Bookends:
  • "Minecraft Speedrunner VS 3 Hunters" (the first one) ends with Bad orchestrating a trap in the End spawn area designed to kill Dream upon entry—and he succeeds. The fifth episode & grand finale of the 3 Hunters series has Bad lead the hunters in setting up another End spawn trap to kill Dream again—however, Dream becomes aware of their plan and sends TNT through the portal to counter the trap.
  • The Final Boss in the Grand Finale (not counting the rush to kill the dragon) is a 1v1 fight against George, the first-ever hunter. Dream lampshades it.
  OH GEORGE! We're gonna end this how it started: me and you, buddy!
• Borrowed Catchphrase: Dream frequently uses BadBoyHalo's Unusual Euphemism Catchphrase "Muffin".
• Bowdlerise: On Twitter, Dream released a short clip of a tense moment from the "5 Hunters Rematch", which revealed that for the YouTube video he had edited out a muttered f-word when he almost fell from a bridge. In the same video, he also clearly removed an instance of Awesamdude saying "ass" while he was angry at Bad.
  • For the second Hitmen video, Dream mutes an instance of George yelling "Fuck off!" at him.
• The Bus Came Back: For a while, George was the one and only hunter. Dream did special one-off Manhunt episodes with Sapnap and Bad, but they hadn't appeared for a while. Eventually, however, Sapnap was brought back as a second hunter alongside George, and when they decided a third was needed Bad came back as well. Just like Dream and George, Sapnap and Bad are now mainstays in the Manhunt series.
  • Antfrost, the fourth hunter of the series, first appeared on Dream's channel in a video called "Last to Leave Circle Wins $1,000," having been one of the two winners. He didn't appear again for just about a year until his appearance in the first "4 Hunters" video, but now he's a mainstay.
• Call-Back:
  • A subtle one at the end of "3 Hunters Grand Finale": Dream drinks a Fire Resistance potion just before blowing out the hunters' End trap and entering himself; hearkening back to the successful lava trap Bad set in the first 3 Hunters video.
  • Two in the 4 Hunters Finale video. First, at the end of the battle atop the absurdly tall mountain, Dream escapes by exploiting a boat in the same manner as the 3 Hitmen video. Later, he makes Strength potions (actual Strength potions, not Fire Resistance potions as a bluff) last seen in the "3 Hunters" video. Both instances are lampshaded.
    BadBoyHalo: Did he use the stupid boat thing?
    Dream: Remember what Strength II felt like?
  • Another one occurs in the "4 Hunters Grand Finale" video as Dream makes a speech similar to his speech at the end of the "3 Hunters Grand Finale" video. He even lampshades that this speech isn't his first.
• Can't Move While Being Watched: In his Speedrunner VS Assassin videos, the Assassin cannot move while Dream is watching him, and a red line appears. This forms the basis for many of Dream's strategies when facing the Assassin.
• Catchphrase: From Minecraft Manhunt:
  • Oh, Dream~! ^note The Share Phrase for anyone hunting Dream.
  • Come here, [name]! ^note Dream whenever he's doing the hunting.
  • Oh, hello good sir! ^note Used by BadBoyHalo.
  • Leave me alone! alongside Oh... my... God... ^note Dream whenever the hunters are after him and he's low on health/doesn't have a strategy ready
• Chase Fight: What usually happens when the hunters are chasing Dream... or vice versa.
• Chekhov's Boomerang:
  • In the ''2 Hunters" video, Dream prepares the area around his Nether portal by digging a long tunnel with a dead end. He springs a trap and ambushes the Hunters when they drop into his cave, with Sapnap trying to flee down the tunnel but hitting the dead end, letting Dream catch up and finish him. After leaving the Nether, he uses the tunnel for what he actually dug it for: fleeing the Hunters while filling it with blocks behind him, giving him enough time to dig to the surface and escape.
  • In the "4 Hunters Rematch" video, Dream creates a Nether Portal above bedrock in order to escape the hunters, who have buffed themselves with enchanted gear. He returns to the Nether later on and uses the same portal to trap the hunters in the Nether, destroying it on his way back out and forcing the hunters to kill each other and lose their enchanted armor just to have a chance at continuing the chase.
  • In "Minecraft Survivalist VS 3 Hitmen", the hitmen mention obtaining some Ender Pearls. Their first attempt to use them fails when Sapnap misses his shot and lands right where he started instead of on top of Dream's tower, but it becomes critical in the climax when Dream kills him and takes the other Ender Pearl, which he uses to save himself after getting knocked off the tower.
• Chekhov's Gag:
  • An interesting case of an unscripted example. Early in the "4 Hunters Rematch" video, Dream is unable to light his Nether Portal because he doesn't have a Flint & Steel. This ends up not mattering much because Dream is in the overworld and thus is able to easily find the materials to make one, but later on in the video the hunters end up in the same scenario, only they're on the other side of the portal, leaving them trapped in the Nether and forcing them to kill each other (losing their Protection IV armor in the process).
  • A series-wide one. Every video (or nearly every video) has George getting attacked by an Enderman during the Final Battle. Such instances have been memed widely (primarily because of how George tends to narrate such instances), but they come back with a vengeance in the "4 Hunters Finale" video when George is killed by them, briefly taking him out of the final fight.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • In the first Death Swap (16:33), Dream finds in a chest an enchanted golden apple, which is the single item that turns the tables on George when he puts his trap in the Nether.
  • In the "3 Hunters Grand Finale" video, Dream is on a boat, collecting lily pads by crashing into them. He uses the lily pads later on to escape the hunters.
  • In the first "4 Hunters" video, Sapnap makes an enchanted diamond axe that he names Dream Slayer. Dream kills Sapnap in the Nether and takes the axe, using it as his primary weapon for the rest of the video.
  • Also in the first "4 Hunters" video, Dream gets a pair of golden boots enchanted with Frost Walker from an ruined Nether Portal in the overworld. Dream uses them later in the video to set up a trap in a river, tricking the hunters into towering into the air and then turning the water to ice when they jump down after him, causing them to fall onto the ice and die from fall damage.
• Christmas Episode: The "Speedrunner vs 4 Hunters FINALE REMATCH" was filmed sometime just before Christmas and uploaded on Christmas Day. Bad and Ant wore Santa hats, Minecraft's holiday Easter Egg turned chests into presents, Dream turned his Evil Laugh in a "ho ho ho", and the two parties taunted each other with Christmas songs.
• Climbing Climax:
  • In the "3 Hitmen" video, one of Dream's main strategies is to tower up, and force the Hitmen to engage him on his terms with the threat of fall damage. He does this a handful of times throughout the video, but the final minutes of the match are an extended standoff between Dream and the Hitmen on a tower that keeps getting higher as Dream flees upward, and keeps getting thicker as the Hitmen follow him.
  • In the "4 Hunters Finale", Dream spends most of the End fight up on top of one of the pillars, forcing the Hunters to tower up to get at him. With his Punch bow, he knocks them away far enough that they have to restart their towers from scratch, dragging this phase out much longer.
• Continuity Cavalcade: Fittingly for the Grand Finale, the final Manhunt features several callbacks, primarily when the players reach the End. Several of them are lampshaded either during or after the fact.
  • From earlier Manhunts overall: After being phased out of the series in favor of more dramatic tracks, the iconic "Trance Music for Racing Game" makes a return during the opening chase.
  • From the "5 Hunters Rematch" video: Dream uses a flying machine to try and reach an End City. Unlike that video, Sapnap is able to intercept him and break the machine.
  • From the "4 Hunters Finale" video: Dream employs falling TNT numerous times.
  • From the "3 Hunters Grand Finale" video: When Dream blows up a majority of the hunters in the End, the camera cuts to their perspective as they get obliterated. Additionally, one of the hunters tries to use an Ender Pearl to make it back onto land after falling, only to die anyway.
  • From the "5 Hunters" video: Dream uses a fishing rod to steal one of the hunters' dropped items that grants him a significant advantage.
  • From the "2 Hunters" video: Dream is stuck in a floating section of water that will eventually drop him into the void, but manages to narrowly snag a dead hunter's Ender Pearl and teleport to safety.
• Controllable Helplessness:
  • Happens in videos like "2 Hunters" and "3 Hunters Finale Rematch", when Dream kills all the Hunters in the End when they haven't set a bed in the stronghold, leaving them far away from the End portal and often not being able to find it again since their compass no longer points toward it.
  • The Hunters think they've caused this in "3 Hunters Grand Finale" when they enter the End before Dream and build a trap around the spawn platform, thinking there's no way Dream can escape if he comes in. Dream averts it with TNT.
  • In "4 Hunters Rematch", the Hunters acquire full iron armor with the Protection IV enchantment, rendering themselves nigh-unkillable to Dream. They again think they've invoked this trope, until Dream traps them on the Nether roof, putting them on the receiving end of the trope until they kill themselves to escape.
  • At the end of the "5 Hunters Rematch", Dream is flying with Elytra to break the End Crystals, and the Hunters can't do anything to stop him. Lampshaded by Awesamdude during an analysis, specifically pointing out a shot where George is just standing and watching.
• Critical Existence Failure: This happens often when the hunters are at one heart and take fall damage.
  • In Minecraft, But My Friend Is A Dog," early on, George falls out of a tree and dies from the resulting fall damage.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: During the first assassin video, Dream is able to kill George twice by freezing him while he's swimming underwater, causing him to drown. Later in the "2 Assassins" video, he drowns the assassins several times, buries George in gravel and prevents him from getting out, and freezes Sapnap so he can't run from a creeper and skeleton.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Many battles in Manhunt can be very one-sided.
  • It's very telling that the 3v1 Manhunt with Mr. Beast and Co. is the only Manhunt in the entire series to end before anyone gets to the Nether.
• Darkest Hour: Near the beginning of "5 Hunters Grand Finale", Dream is atop a tower on low health with no food and no way of getting down, while the hunters swarm the base of the tower with near-full diamond armor and Sapnap builds up to attack him. Dream says here that he's never felt as trapped before.
• Death or Glory Attack:
  • At the end of the "3 Hunters Grand Finale" video, Dream has outsmarted the hunters despite them performing at their very best. Their trap has been foiled by Dream's use of TNT, and Bad and George have pretty much given up. Sapnap, however, takes a bed, goes back to the End, and uses it in an effort to blow up Dream and himself before Dream can kill the Ender Dragon. He only kills himself with it and Dream wins, but he got damn close to killing Dream with that, something Dream praises in the bonus video.
  • In the "4 Hunters" video, Dream uses TNT to kill the Ender Dragon, knowing full well there's a chance he'll die. What happens is that Dream is caught in the dragon's breath and killed by Sapnap, but the TNT also activates and kills the dragon, creating enough confusion as to who won that the five are still arguing about it in the bonus video.
• Death Trap: The point of Death Swap is to carefully plan and construct a trap for your enemy to fall in. The winner is whoever can kill the other player with a trap first.
  • It eventually bleeds into Manhunt, with much of the videos past the "2 Hunters" video being devoted to not just Dream speedrunning the game but also him laying out traps that only get more elaborate.
• Degraded Boss:
  • Well, more like degraded trap, but it still counts. Dream using a bed to destroy the hunters in the first "3 Hunters" video is treated as one of his "big" traps, with all the set-up and reactions that his other big traps have. Later Manhunts (especially the "4 Hunters Rematch" video) treat exploding beds as a common tactic that's used by both sides (most prominently used by Dream to attack the Ender Dragon).
  • In a case of actual people, George, Sapnap, and Bad go from being able to handle Dream solo (with each having won their first solo Manhunt against him) to needing each other's backup to even consider taking him on (which is thanks to the many levels in competence that Dream takes). Ant and Sam averts this, as they are the only hunters to have never fought Dream solo, and Sapnap's case is downplayed considering he's still a decent match for Dream when he's separated from his allies.
• Deus ex Machina:
  • In "Minecraft Speedrunner VS 3 Hunters FINALE," after he goes underwater and digs down to escape the hunters, he finds some diamonds.
  • Sapnap's Ender Pearl at the end of the "2 Hunters" video also counts, being the only reason Dream wins in the end.
  • In the "4 Hunters Rematch" video, Dream finds an enchanted golden apple in a desert temple, a rather rare find. Said apple is the only reason he survives Ant's subsequent detonation of the temple's TNT in a kamikaze attempt.
• Did Not Think This Through:
  • In the 4 Hunters video, the Hunters realize that they can chase Dream in a line and boost each other by punching the one in front of them, helping to keep on Dream's tail. What they don't realize until it's too late is that doing so expends their hunger faster than just sprinting, and they all lose their speed while Dream still has some remaining. Though a seemingly cool strategy, it causes the game-opening chase to end on an anti-climax without even a proper fight, letting Dream start gathering resources with much less trouble.
  • The video where Dream tries to beat the game while George can control any mob had some close calls for the former, but ultimately George never managed to provide more than a temporary nuisance with most of them. Dream then heads into the End, where he very unpleasantly finds out that the Dragon counts as a monster.
• Didn't See That Coming: The Manhunt rules are usually infallible, accounting for instances such as Dream dying after killing the dragon but before entering the final portal (a Dream win) or Dream dying but not to the hunters (a Hunter win). However, the rules don't account for Dream dying before he kills the dragon but somehow managing to set up events before his demise that lead to the dragon's death regardless... which is exactly what happens in the "4 Hunters" video thanks to the delay between TNT being lit and going off. This leads to an argument about who won that continues even through the bonus video, with the hunters insisting they won and Dream arguing that it's a tie at worst. The rules are later updated to account for this—Dream dying before the dragon, regardless of if the dragon dies even a second later, is a win for the hunters. Later 1v4 Manhunts retroactively apply this rule to the first 1v4, treating the above instance as a win for the hunters.
• Disney Villain Death: At the end of the first Hitmen video, Sapnap tries to jump from the top of the tower to Dream, who's using a Good Bad Bug to fall slowly with a boat, but misses and falls to his death. Seconds later, George tries the same thing with the same result. Downplayed since they respawn.
• Don't Celebrate Just Yet: Celebrating too early has meant the difference between victory and defeat in more than one Manhunt.
  • In the ending of "Minecraft Speedrunner VS 2 Hunters" video, George and Sapnap knock Dream off the End island and remove his water flow, dooming Dream to eventually fall into the void when his remaining water runs out. George then celebrates by killing Sapnap, which causes Sapnap's Ender Pearls to fall into the void... and right into Dream's hotbar. What follows is Dream using the Pearl to teleport back onto the island, using George's shock and confusion to utterly own him in their final fight, and killing the Ender Dragon soon after with no difficulty. What makes this an even more notable use of the trope is that George and Sapnap had every reason to celebrate, as if George hadn't killed Sapnap Dream would have died, as he had no Ender Pearls until Sapnap's dropped onto him.
  • In the first "3 Hunters" video, Dream kills George and Sapnap, while Bad was knocked through the End portal early in the fight and was killed by the Ender Dragon. Dream, thinking he's home free, hops through the End portal...and straight into a lava trap Bad set up before he died. Dream later admits that he might have been able to escape if he'd been more prepared and reacted fast enough, but that he didn't even have his hands on the controls because he thought the manhunt was more or less over.
  • In the "3 Hunters Finale" video, Dream kills Bad early on in the Final Battle and after much struggle takes down George and Sapnap. When he stops to celebrate and gloat, Bad, who had quickly returned to the End and stayed hidden, runs up behind Dream and kills him with a single punch, baffling everyone.
  • In the "3 Hunters Grand Finale" video, George, Sapnap and Bad make a trap near the End entrance platform (namely, they've encased it in blocks and intend to relentlessly bombard Dream with attacks once he enters). They then proceed to taunt Dream about the trap, believing he can't do anything about it. Well, Dream can't... but thanks to them telling him about the trap beforehand, that handy amount of TNT on-hand can. Had they kept quiet, Dream certainly would have waltzed into the End and died without a clue about the trap.
  • In Minecraft Speedrunner VS 4 Hunters REVIVAL, Dream is able to trick the hunters into committing to entering The End while he used an ender pearl to really enter a nether portal, letting him remove their ability to rejoin the fight by destroying their bed. When he successfully kills all 4 hunters with a mace, Dream tries to finish off the dragon with the mace too... but when he decides to attempt killing the dragon with the same tactic, he whiffs landing the hit, meaning he completely threw the game away.
• Double Entendre: Sapnap and Ant spin Bad's offer of melons to his teammates into him wanting to share his "watermelons" with others.
• Early Game Hell: The beginning of a Manhunt is almost always one of the most frantic parts, since all the Hunters are nearby and Dream doesn't have any of the tools he'd normally use to fight them off, leading to some dud games where they simply corner Dream and punch him to death in minutes. Once he manages to get some breathing room he can gather resources and equipment, giving him a lot more options to level the playing field.
  • Perhaps the best example of this is in "3 Hunters Rematch", in which the opening chase lasts nearly ten minutes, with the hunters hot on Dream's heels the entire time and Dream one hit away from death more often than not.
  • Stunningly averted in "5 Hunters Finale Rematch", when Dream gets into the Nether within minutes of the Manhunt starting due to a nearby ruined portal with enough obsidian and a flint and steel in the loot chest to activate it, and once inside he finds a bastion straight away. Interestingly, this could be considered a literal Early Game Hell.
  • "5 Hunters: The Last Manhunt" has the hunters stack up on diamonds early, due to Ant and Awesamdude using clay formations to locate diamond veins.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • In Manhunt, Dream used to tower up a lot in early videos to evade the hunters, though he'd eventually have to jump down to beat the game and thus this strategy wasn't as effective as Dream hoped. The tactic was mostly abandoned after the "2 Hunters" video, but Dream briefly does it again in the "4 Hunters" video to set up his Frost Walker trap... then does it again in the Final Manhunt several times during the Early Game Hell.
  • In Minecraft Speedrunner VS Hunter (FIRST EVER), the compass didn't track Dream through the Nether.
• Exact Words:
  • At the start of every Manhunt video, Dream says, "If I beat the Ender Dragon, I win." This comes into play at the end of "Minecraft Speedrunner VS Hunter (Again)", where Dream kills the dragon but George kills him before he can enter the overworld portal—Dream successfully argued that he won, as the rules state he only has to kill the dragon before he dies, not enter the portal. It also comes into play at the end of "Minecraft Speedrunner VS 3 Hunters Rematch", where Dream kills the Ender Dragon a split-second before the hunters kill him, barely giving him the win.
  • This, however, comes to bite him in the "4 Hunters" video, as Dream manages to kill the dragon but dies seconds before (he killed the dragon anyway through TNT he lit before he died). The result is something the players argue about for a while, and in the bonus video Dream concedes that while the hunters would technically win, he continues to insist that it's a draw.
  • At the end of "Minecraft Speedrunner VS 3 Hunters FINALE REMATCH," Bad asks Dream to come down from his perch in the End. Dream comes down alright—and by that we mean he immediately begins attacking Bad.
    BadBoyHalo: Come down here, please.
    (Dream comes down and promptly attacks him.)
    Bad: Ooh! He came down!
  • In the "4 Hunters Finale" video, Dream makes a montage of collecting vast amounts of iron. When Bad asks what he's doing, he explains he's mining for full diamond. From the viewer's perspective (and even Bad's since he doesn't believe it) it seems like Blatant Lies, but then, Dream uses the iron to make a trap that uses minecart entity cramming; it kills George and allows Dream to steal his full set of diamond armor for himself, and it's then that it becomes clear that it was this trope all along—in the end, it was Dream's mining that allowed him to get full diamond.
  • It returns in the first Speedrunner VS Five Hunters video, in which the hunters manage to trigger the dragons respawn sequence, causing the game to glitch and never give Dream the advancement, despite the dragon having to die for the sequence to begin. The argument is ongoing in the behind the scenes video, with Dream arguing that he won, while the hunters insist they did.
  • After Dream does a Total Party Kill in "5 Hunters Rematch", the Hunters beg Dream to not burn their stuff. So Dream blows it up with TNT instead.
  • In the weeks prior to his duel with Dream, Techno trained with Calvin & Fruitberries, who were accomplished PVP masters on par with if not even better than Techno, under the logic that Dream won't be able to find trainers more skilled than those two. And he's right, Dream doesn't find better trainers than them—he simply finds those two and trains under them as well.
• Failed a Spot Check:
  • In the "Speedrunner vs Diamond Juggernaut" video, Sapnap ambushes Dream when the latter tries to return from the Nether. Dream manages to lose Sapnap, loops back arounsd toward the portal...only to spot Sapnap heading straight toward him a moment later. However, Sapnap somehow manages to miss Dream despite the latter being out in the open and runs back toward the portal instead. Dream lampshades this with a line of text on screen.
    I don't know how he didn't see me.
  • In the "3 Hunters Finale Rematch" video, George gets separated from the other two hunters in the Nether. Later, while fleeing from Bad and Sapnap, Dream runs right past George. George somehow doesn't see Dream go by and has no idea he was even there until the other two hunters (in hot pursuit of Dream) find him a few seconds later (and are rather understandably confused as to how George missed him).
  • At the end of the "4 Hunters Rematch" video, the four hunters are so focused on finding Dream in the End that they don't notice that he is attacking the ender dragon until half of her health has been depleted.
• Final Death Mode: In the Minecraft Manhunts, if Dream dies once at any point, the hunters win the game unless the Ender Dragon has died beforehand.
• Five-Man Band: The hunters.
  • Bad is The Leader of the group, usually being the one to rally the hunters together and being the mastermind behind many of their attempts on Dream's life.
  • Sapnap is The Lancer, being one of the core leaders of the group (but not quite on Bad's level) as well as being a direct contrast to Bad in tactics (Sapnap will rush Dream without a second thought while Bad will usually stay back and come up with a plan first). He's also The Big Guy, being the group's muscle and the largest threat to Dream in direct combat.
  • George is The Heart of the group. Although he's the most overshadowed and overlooked in terms of skills, having no major niche to fill on the team (compared to Bad, Ant and Sam's cunning and Sapnap's brute force) and being the most prone to falling for Dream's traps, he still plays the much-needed assist and support role for the team—whether that be keeping Dream out of range of killing the other hunters or assisting Sapnap in rushing Dream while the rest of his teammates gather resources—and there would be a noticeable void in his absence.
  • Ant is The Sneaky Guy and The Reliable One, typically avoiding direct combat and help the team inform the danger up ahead. He also proves himself willing to play the long game, splitting off from the hunters for twenty minutes of the "4 Hunters Finale" video in order to provide the hunters diamond armor and an enchanting table, sacrificing the ability to kill Dream early for providing a much tougher fight later on. This is further cemented in the 4 Hunters Finale Rematch where, at the end, Ant is the only one to avoid the Pitfall Trap, and actually manages to kill Dream using splash potions.
  • Sam is The Smart Guy of the group, being the most knowledgeable about Minecraft mechanics and glitches and utilizes redstone to trap Dream.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: At the end of the Player-Controlled Mobs video, George gets the advancement "You Need a Mint" shortly after entering the End. This advancement means the player has obtained dragon's breath, meaning George has taken control of the Ender Dragon, something Dream doesn't realize until George destroys him.
• Follow the Chaos: This is how Dream and George get back to Sapnap and the spawn in "Minecraft, But A Black Hole Grows Every Second..." (6:07)
• Formula-Breaking Episode: Happens on a few occasions:
  • One video has Dream hunting down George as the latter tries to beat the game. Dream wins after knocking George off the starting End platform, even more surprising considering Dream had died and lost all his gear mere seconds prior.
  • Another video has Sapnap hunting Dream—the "formula breaking" here comes from the fact that Sapnap has full diamond gear from the beginning. Sapnap wins soon after Dream leaves the Nether.
  • One video has Dream and George team up to beat the game while an AI hunts them down. The video ends when the AI kills Dream.
  • A special video Dream did with famous YouTuber MrBeast has Dream hunting down MrBeast himself, as well as his friends Karl and Chandler, the catch being that the three only lose when each of them dies once, but even those who have died can continue to protect the survivors. It's also notable in that Dream is noticeably holding back, as Beast and his friends are considerably less skilled at Minecraft. To make things fair, Dream has given the three a full set of iron armor to start, and he also doesn't employ his usual tactics of setting traps and psychological warfare. If Dream even tried to go as all-out as he does against his own friends, the video would have ended in the first two minutes.
  • And yet another video has George and Sapnap team up against Dream. Eventually averted, however, as more than one hunter becomes the norm as Dream continues to improve and it's clear that more hunters are needed to keep things fair (notable as George, Sapnap, Bad, and Ant are no slouches in Minecraft—Dream's just that good).
• Friend or Foe?: Cunningly exploited by Dream in "3 Hunters Grand Finale" when he hits everyone with a splash Invisibility potion once cornered. Everyone is forced to stop attacking as they can't immediately tell who is Dream and who is a teammate (everyone had the same armor and swords), and in fact Sapnap accidentally attacked Bad Boy Halo enough times for Dream to finish the job then run.
• Funny Background Event: During the "4 Hunters" video, George begs for help with Endermen. A moment later, he is seen in the background running from no less than five Endermen.
  George: Can someone just... get these Endermen off me please!
  Bad: You're on your own, George.
• Goomba Springboard: In the "5 Hunters Rematch", cornered in the Nether with the Hunters on one side and a massive cliff above a giant lava lake on the other, Dream tries to use the boat physics trick (where getting in and out of a falling boat will make it fall slower) to fly off and reach a platform on the other side of the lake. Even with the exploit, it's simply too far and he's about to end up in the lava... if not for a Ghast suddenly floating into his path. He lands on its head and takes a flying leap off it, getting just enough distance to make it to safety.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Dream and his collaborators generally try to keep his main videos clean of profanity, though streams have been known to involve some spicier language. Bad in particular likes to use "muffin" as a curse substitute. Once when killing George in a Manhunt, Dream very clearly almost drops an f-bomb, but manages to morph it into "flipping".
• Grand Finale: In the Minecraft Manhunt series, the "3 Hunters Grand Finale" video is the finale to the five-episode 3 Hunters saga, with the Dream Team planning on moving on to bigger and better Manhunts (namely, Manhunt with a fourth hunter). The "4 Hunters Grand Finale" video plays the same role to the five-episode 4 Hunters saga. The "5 Hunters Grand Finale" similarly acts as the finale to the five-episode 5 Hunters saga, while dually serving as the Grand Finale for the core Manhunt series... until the Revival series.
• Hard-Work Montage: Frequently happens when Dream has an advantage, or when he's preparing to do something spectacularly destructive to his Hunters that warrants showing the preparation for.
  • The "4 Hunters Finale" video is an interesting Bait-and-Switch on the subject. The Hunters have set up a defense in the stronghold's portal room, and Dream heads into a cave, prompting Bad to ask where he's going. Dream responds that he intends to get a full-diamond loadout, and Bad invites him to go right ahead. Anticipating his own edits, Dream warns him "It might take a while", and we cut into a montage of Dream accumulating iron, making a bunch of minecarts, and then setting up a trap. When we proceed to normal footage, George falls for the trap, leaving behind his enchanted full-diamond loadout.
  • In the 4 Hunters Finale Rematch, Dream gets enough distance between him and the hunters to construct a giant pitfall trap involving signs, crafting tables, and sand.
  • The end of 4 Hunters Grand Finale shows Dream gathering a number of seemingly random resources for a plan to make several crossbows and fireworks loaded into all of them, allowing him to unleash a deadly salvo that kills all his hunters at once.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • In "Speedrunner VS 4 Hunters", Sapnap enchants a diamond axe named "Dream Slayer", but he is killed and Dream uses it to harass the hunters for the rest of the match.
    George: His axe is so OP!
    Sapnap: I should've never created that thing.
  • In the "4 Hunters Rematch" video, this applies twice. First, Dream creates a netherrack maze to hide from the rapidly-approaching hunters in the Nether, but this makes it so he can't easily make it back to his portal. Second (and with much more devastating effects) is when the hunters create beds to nuke said maze and Dream along with it—the first catches Dream (and likely the viewers) off-guard, but their next beds avoid Dream, kill Sapnap, and leave the other three hunters on low health in a burning crater, allowing Dream to finish them off with no effort.
  • On a more comical note, during the 4 Hunters Rematch, when the Hunters get Protection IV enchantments on their armor, Dream, being unable to fight them head-on, traps them above the Nether, where they are forced to kill themselves to escape. When they finally resign to it, the surviving hunters tower up and fall... insufficiently far to kill them with Protection IV.
  • In the "4 Hunters Finale" video, Ant spends much of the episode away gathering resources for the hunters, including a full set of diamond armor for each of them and an enchanting table for protection. Dream kills George using a trap, then steals his armor to make himself that much harder to kill.
  • In the first 5 Hunters video, Sapnap makes, enchants and names a diamond axe, only for Dream to steal it using a fishing rod. A few moments later he also manages to steal Sapnap's diamond pickaxe, as Sapnap accidentally dropped it. He spends most of his remaining time in the Nether taunting Sapnap about one or the other, to the point that Sapnap temporarily leaves the game.
  • In 5 Hunters Rematch. Sam made a TNT tripwire trap near the portal, but Dream manages to spot the wires and disarm the TNT below and relocate the them near the hunters.
  • Remember that end crystal nuke which decimated the hunters? Bad made another one and take revenge on Dream in a 5 Hunters game.
• Hold the Line: In the "VS Hitmen" video, the map is small so Dream cannot beat the game normally, but there is a one hour timer. If it runs out, Dream wins, so the hunters must kill him before.
• Improbable Weapon User:
  • Dream uses a fishing rod in the 4 Hunters Manhunt, pulling the hunters to their deaths multiple times.
  • The Random Item challenge is full of these due to the nature of the video. Most notable is George using buckets of pufferfish to poison Dream to near death, and Dream attempting to attack the hunters with a Netherite hoe, though it's not very effective.
• Instant Costume Change: 4 Hunters Finale: Ant, right before George and Sapnap were about to get killed by Dream, gives them and Bad full iron armor to change into, which they do near-instantly.
• Instant-Win Condition: When Dream explains at the start of the video that beating the Ender Dragon means he wins, he's not kidding. Even if Dream dies a split second later, so long as he gets the "Free the End" achievement beforehand he wins. He doesn't even need to enter the portal to the overworld - which is normally what an official Minecraft speedrun requires.
  • This rule backfires on him spectacularly during the "5 Hunters" video when the hunters respawn the Ender Dragon within half a second after Dream deals the killing blow, causing a glitch that denies him "Free the End" and ultimately costs him the Manhunt.
• Interesting Situation Duel: 4 Hunters Finale Rematch; Sapnap and Dream chug Fire Resistance Potions and end up fighting in a lava pool, the surface of which is quickly turned to obsidian by the other Hunters. What follows is about three minutes of battle beneath the lava, with Dream trying to kill Sapnap before the potions wear off and Sapnap trying to make Dream waste enough time for the fire protection to end.
• Interface Spoiler: Minecraft's advancement system lets the Hunters know when Dream has acquired key items such as diamonds and blaze rods, and when he's reached significant milestones such as entering the Nether or a Stronghold, as well as Dream (and the viewers) seeing the Hunters' advancements.
  • Cleverly averted by the Hunters in "4 Hunters Rematch", where they use enchanted books purchased from a librarian villager to enchant all of their armor with Protection IV without triggering the "Enchanter" advancement, allowing them to catch Dream completely off-guard with it. Although their villager trading had triggered an advancement of its own, some comments Ant and George had made caused Dream to think they were just stockpiling arrows, adding to his shock at the reveal.
  • Averted in the "2 Assassins" video where the Assassins don't have their advancements shown, which ultimately leads to Dream's defeat as he doesn't know that George is waiting for him in the Nether.
• It Only Works Once:
  • In the "3 Hunters Finale" video (the third of the 3 Hunters series), Dream sets up an escape route leading to an End Crystal he intends to use to blow up the hunters (as their gear is too good for him to win in a straight-up fight)—and he succeeds. Two Manhunts later, in the "3 Hunters Grand Finale" video, Dream sets up an escape route leading to another End Crystal for the exact same purpose—but the hunters, knowing to be on-guard, realize they're in a trap quickly. Bad also spots the End Crystal when he's out of range, and the hunters are able to avoid the trap.
  • Typically, Dream only uses the various kinds of traps and trickery once. On the one hand, it's definitely more fun to see newer ways to outsmart the hunters, but on the other hand it's quite clear that some tricks just don't work twice.
  • Bad is knocked into the End before Dream finishes fighting the other Hunters in the first "3 Hunters'' video and rigs a trap near the End spawn to kill Dream. This succeeds without question. Later, in the "3 Hunters Grand Finale" video, they reach the End first once more and try to rig another trap. However, they make the mistake of letting Dream become aware of their intentions, and Dream spends the final minutes of the video simply gathering TNT to drop through the portal and blow up both the trap and all three hunters.
  • Lampshaded in "Minecraft Survivalist VS 3 Hitmen". During the video, the hitmen manage to land a sneak attack on Dream because George kept saying that he didn't know where Dream had ran off to. They then try it again almost immediately after, but comment that it won't work the second time.
  • One of the most famous gambits in all of Manhunt was in the first "3 Hunters" match, where Dream pursued by the Hunters leapt into a ravine, landed in a small pond, and covered up the water with blocks, killing all of them with fall damage as they dove after him. He tries the same trick in the "4 Hunters Finale", but they aren't foolish enough to jump in and land on his blocks. On the other hand, it still works as a delaying tactic — as instead of dodging his blocks to land in the water and keep hounding him, they decide to loot a nearby village first, giving Dream some time to get basic tools and resources.
  • In the extra video after the "5 Hunters Finale" video, they talk about how a lot of the huge, game-winning tricks and strategies used by both sides haven't appeared a second time. As a matter of honor, they get one opportunity to exploit a crazy trick and catch the other side off guard, and then they've agreed not to use them again to keep the 'meta' fresh and allow counterplay. Some specific examples are Splash Potions of Harming after Ant destroyed Dream with no warning, glitching out the Dragon with End Crystals like the Hunters did once, and cheesing the Dragon with an obsidian water tower as Dream had just done.
  • An interesting cross-series variation of this occurs in "5 Hunters FINALE REMATCH". After Dream digs down to bedrock level out of the hunters' sight for a brief time to plan his next trap, George had noticed Dream had been in the same spot for an awfully long time and, considering how far down it was, he was able to correctly deduce that Dream was attempting to utilize bedrock as he did in their "Death Shuffle" video, allowing him to warn the other hunters and get them to position to ambush Dream.
  • In the Final Manhunt, Dream attempts to build a flying machine to evade the Hunters and get gear in the End City, like in the "5 Hunters Rematch", but Sapnap manages to speed-bridge across before Dream travels too far from the main End island, and does a Death or Glory Attack to break the machine. This almost wins the Hunters the Grand Finale to end all Grand Finales... key word being almost.
  • A recurring tactic beginning with 2 Hunters Revival is Dream throwing an Ender Pearl at the same time he enters the End Portal, granting himself the achievement to trick the Hunters into thinking he's in the End while allowing him to ambush them as they're about to "follow" him into the portal. They wizen up to this in later manhunts, but Dream proceeds to innovate on this tactic:
    • In 3 Hunters Revival, the hunters realize their compass is still tracking Dream, but he then proceeds to actually enter the portal completely undetected, giving him time to set up lava when they do head through.
    • In 4 Hunters Revival, Dream adds on another layer to this by throwing his Pearl into a Nether Portal so he remains untrackable in the Overworld, causing the Hunters to unknowingly enter the End Portal and only realize they've been duped after their gear is stuck in the End. The Hunter try to salvage the situation by preparing a TNT Minecart and Dripstone trap, but Dream beats it with another variation: throwing another Pearl into water, causing him to stick around in the End long enough for them to trigger the trap (and blow up the walls in the process) before warping to safety, then actually entering and Pearling away from the platform.
• Irony: In the "4 Hunters" video, Sapnap crafts an enchanted diamond axe named Dream Slayer. When the hunters fight Dream in the Nether, Dream kills Sapnap and uses Dream Slayer to replace his own iron axe, using the very weapon designed to kill him as his own primary weapon for the rest of the video.
• Jump Scare: Has happened a couple times during Manhunts:
  • In the first assassin video, George unexpectedly used an Ender pearl to appear directly in front of Dream, sending him into a panic.
  • In the last 1v1 video with George, Dream builds to the surface to escape George and tunnels to the side near the surface, blocking his path off. When George passes and goes to the surface, Dream goes back into the shaft and waits just under the surface, surprising George when he digs back down and killing him.
• Kill It with Ice: In the first 4v1 Manhunt, Dream uses his Frost Walker boots to freeze the surface of a pond right before Sapnap and Bad land in it, causing them to die from the fall damage.
• Land in the Saddle: The infamous "MLG Horse" tactic, where Dream is unable to use water to break his fall and thus relies on a nearby horse as a cushion.
• The Law of Conservation of Detail: Dream cuts out the parts of his videos that are boring or don't have any action in them.
  • In the final minutes of the "3 Hunters Grand Finale" video, after Dream blows up the End spawn trap, he goes to the End and shoots the first pillar. It then cuts to him fighting the Ender Dragon, suddenly at low health. He edited the video the way he did so that the viewers wouldn't know if he died or not, and after going to the End, no viewer would have to worry about Dream dying to the Ender Dragon.
• Lava Adds Awesome: In the 4 Hunters Finale Rematch, there is a moment where Dream and Sapnap duel each other in lava, as both of them had Fire Resistance on. It is quite intense which ends in Dream killing Sapnap after both escape the lava.
• Loophole Abuse:
  • Discussed in the "3 Hunters Grand Finale" video (37:01), when the hunters arrive in the End before Dream can even find the stronghold.
    Bad: Hey, you never said we could not go to the End before you.
    George: It's true.
    Sapnap: It's not against the rules and regulations.
    George: Let's just flip through my (makes a flipping page sound) manual (flips again) of Manhunt, yep, it's not in the rules.
    Bad: Oh. What about that, Dream. Interesting.
  • Happens again in the "5 Hunters" video, as Dream gets so close to killing the dragon, the hunters place End Crystals which activate, reviving the dragon. While this would still count as a win for Dream, however, the server glitched to where the dragon didn't die and instead returned to full health (but with the same animation as reviving the dragon)—which wouldn't be so bad if Dream didn't get the achievement proving he'd killed the dragon, meaning he still hadn't won yet.
• Metaphorically True: In the 4 hunters finale video, Dream claims to be mining for full diamond armor, which Bad doesn’t take seriously. It’s true in the sense that he was mining to make an entity-cramming trap that would later kill George, allowing Dream to take his full diamond armor.
• Mood Whiplash: At the tail end of the 4 Hunters Finale Rematch, in the middle of a Hard-Work Montage set to "Feeling Mean" by Ben Bostick, Dream realizes he's had his lead for longer than he should and asks what's taking the hunters so long. The montage then resumes.
• Mook Horror Show: Though on paper Dream is at a disadvantage as the target of Manhunts, as many comments like to point out, in practice, the Hunters are more scared of Dream than he is of them, and for most of the Manhunts that fear proves to be fully justified as he picks the Hunters off. This is especially the case when watching the earliest Manhunt videos from George's perspective, showing exactly how terrifying it is to go up against Dream. Most of the time, he'll be hunting you.
• More Dakka:
  • In the 4 Hunters Finale Rematch, the Hunters employ one of their most useful opening tactics yet: Trading for mountains of arrows they use to harass the armorless Dream. It's one of the most intense openings to date as it continues to play a part throughout the manhunt. It almost falls into Xanatos Gambit territories of planning: It prevents the Foregone Conclusion of a tactic outright killing Dream and forcing a restart, but it leaves Dream at an extreme disadvantage with low health. Furthermore, it allows the hunters to outgun Dream from afar and keep him pinned down. Lastly, their equipment is all but worthless to Dream, who must conserve inventory space, so even if they died Dream gained no real advantage. It's actually by abandoning this tactic and rushing Dream that three of them meet their demise.
  • Dream turns it around on them in the "4 Hunters Grand Finale" video, however. When the hunters set up camp near the End Portal, Dream manages to kill them by loading a hotbar's worth of crossbows with explosive fireworks and relentlessly bombarding them.
• Mounted Combat:
  • In the 4 Hunters Finale Rematch, Dream and Sapnap engage in a jousting match as the other hunters are far behind. It's a brief one, however, as both of their horses soon die and they're left to fight in the traditional Manhunt way.
  • Happens again in the Survivor VS 3 Hitmen, Dream manage to tame a speedy horse and running away from the hunters.
• Musical Spoiler: At the beginning of his Minecraft Manhunt videos, Dream goes off without the hunters knowing, and there's an absence of music. So long as there's no music playing, you can be sure that the hunters don't know he's gone.
  • Subverted in the "3 Hunters Grand Finale" video. This time, the hunters are smart enough to surround Dream and watch him closely to make sure that the hunters know exactly when he runs off.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Sapnap's sudden desire to kill Dream's parrot in the "4 Hunters Grand Finale" video (to the point of giving up an easy shot on Dream in the Nether just to kill the parrot) seems to be him channeling his Chronic Pet Killer persona from the Dream SMP.
  • Another one that's discussed in-universe. Dream's pitfall trap in the "4 Hunters Finale Rematch" video was one of the first traps he and Sapnap did in their early, pre-Manhunt days. It's revealed in the bonus video that Sapnap did in fact remember the trap and its history (though unfortunately for him, Bad, and George, not until after they fell for it).

• No Body Left Behind: Par for the course with Minecraft, but in addition, when he kills any of the hunters Dream will often burn the loot the hunters have on them if he can't use any of it himself, leaving behind no trace of them.
• No Kill like Overkill: At the conclusion of the "4 Hunters Grand Finale" video, Dream prepares no less than nine firework-loaded crossbows. They decimate the hunters in maybe two seconds.
• No One Could Survive That!: In the "5 Hunters Rematch", while escaping from the Hunters in the Nether, Dream takes a flying leap off a cliff over a lava chasm, and block-clutches with half a heart of health left. The Hunters are left in disbelief that he even survived that.
  Bad: He can't survive that!
• Not the Fall That Kills You…:
  • In "Minecraft Speedrunner VS 3 Hunters," Dream leaps into a ravine with George, Sapnap, and BadBoyHalo close behind. He lands in Soft Water, and then covers the water with his blocks, leaving the other three with nowhere safe to land. They all die from the resulting fall damage.
  • Techniques Dream has used to avoid fall damage when he can't use water include landing on hay bales (which reduces fall damage), boats placed on the ground, grabbing a ladder from mid-air, and the infamous MLG Horse.
  • In "Minecraft Speedrunner VS 4 Hunters", Dream builds an extremely tall tower to goad the hunters to climb up to pursue him, jumps from it into the lake below, then uses the Frost Walker boots he found earlier to freeze the lake and cause half of them to fall to their death.
  • Another notable case of this is in the "Speedrunner VS 5 Hunters" video, in which Dream towers up early on to get some breathing room and smelt iron. Sapnap followed him, and ended up knocking Dream off his tower, only for Dream to use a crafting table in mid-air (already placed there by Antfrost's attempt to tower) and making a boat to MLG. Upon analysing the stunt, he admitted that it was planned in the sense that he planned to make a boat, but the entire thing beyond where his wood was and the placement of the boat was pure luck. Even so, it's insanely impressive.
  • Yet another example occurs in the Final Manhunt, where Dream is stuck in an Early Game Hell and has towered up to evade the Hunters, while he was on low health and Sapnap was in hot pursuit. However, when Sapnap drops his water bucket to the other Hunters on the ground, Dream dives down, grabs the water bucket in mid-air, and lands without a flinch. Oh, and to rub salt in the wound, he steals the Hunters' cooked salmon on his way out to heal up.
• Not the Intended Use: Boats show up rather frequently during the Manhunts, and while they are used to traverse large bodies of water, more often than not, Dream uses them to negate fall damage when he doesn't have a water bucket handy. In another instance, Dream used boats to leap frog across lava to put distance between himself and the hunters.
• Nuke 'Em:
  • At the end of the "3 Hunters Grand Finale" video, the hunters set up a trap near the End spawn point that they plan to use to kill Dream with the instant he enters the End. Knowing he stands no chance of surviving it normally, Dream opts for the perfectly predictable route of just dropping a quarter-stack of TNT through the stronghold portal. What results is basically an interdimensional cluster bomb, leading to the trap's destruction and all three hunters dying.
  • In the "Random Item Challenge VS 2 Hunters" video, Dream gets two TNT drops in a row, so he fills an underground chamber with it and makes a path of TNT to the surface. He lures the hunters off their tower to the mega bomb, and after igniting it towers up to cover the lit TNT. The resulting explosion is so huge it even killed Sapnap, who was flying with elytra. Although Dream was killed as well, he still won due to being the last to die.
• Obvious Rule Patch: Dream and the Hunters have occasionally talked about some unsaid, soft rules that the team chooses to abide by for the sake of fun and better content, which are later expanded on in a dedicated video:
  • Seeds are pre-scouted by third parties such as Callahan, alongside the spawn location used. The idea is to give the speedrunner an advantage close to spawn, along with a note giving them the direction to a nearby PoI. The speedrunner can also request a certain spawn biome in case they have a strategy in mind that requires it.
  • If the speedrunner dies before a run progresses enough to make a good video, it's scrapped and doesn't count. On the other end, to incentivize the Hunters to still try to beat him during this time, Dream awards them a cash prize to make up for dud games.
  • An easy way for the speedrunner to get a huge lead on the hunters is to build a second portal in the Nether to exploit the Extra-Dimensional Shortcut. To prevent this, they're only allowed to use the portal they entered to return from the Nether, ensuring they stay relatively accessible and giving the hunters time to regroup if needed or attack him inside. On the flip-side, it's prohibited to place traps on the Overworld side where they'd be nearly impossible to detect.
  • Extremely powerful strategies can only be used a single time, forcing both sides to continue innovating and to make the most of those strategies (as in, when the run will likely be good enough for a video). Dream later clarified in a comment that plays that can reasonably be countered or don't grant too much of an advantage are still fair game after the first time.
  • As a means of establishing another chokepoint akin to the Nether Portal, once the speedrunner's first Eye of Ender is thrown, they must go to the stronghold it tracks unless they have a very good reason to do otherwise, such as the End Portal being broken.
• Oh, Crap!: Very frequently in Minecraft Manhunt, mostly when Dream is trying to lose the hunters at the start of the game, or when one of the hunters realizes that they've been outplayed by Dream and are about to die. Sometimes, though, Dream doesn't even have to be involved!
  Dream: (separated from everyone in the Nether) So how's everybody doing?
  Bad, Sapnap, and George: (coincidental scream of sheer terror)
  Bad: (Beat) ... we're fine...
  • An amazing example comes in the middle of the "4 Hunters Rematch" video. As the hunters pursue Dream through the Nether roof, Dream begins to gloat that they're now trapped. The hunters have no idea what he means, until Sapnap figures it out as Dream begins to Ender Pearl back to the portal, TNT in hand.
    Sapnap: Wait! He's going back to the portal! Stop him, stop him!
    • Another amazing example comes at the end of the same video. The hunters perch around the End, keeping an eye out for Dream to keep him from approaching the Ender Dragon. They're confident they've won... and then they notice that the dragon's health is plummeting as they speak.
  • At the end of the "5 Hunters Finale" video, the Hunters enter the End, see what Dream is doing, and Sam immediately starts panicking, because he knows exactly what Dream is setting up and how close he is to victory if they don't kill him now.
• Once per Episode:
  • Dream always starts the videos by tricking the hunters into distracting themselves, then running off while they're too busy to notice he's already started. Although this initially stopped beginning with the "3 Hunters Finale" video when the hunters learned to never stop taking their eyes off of Dream, this finally came back in the "4 Hunters Finale" video, with Dream pretending to go AFK to trick the hunters into doing the same, allowing him to get an easy head-start.
  • Every Minecraft Manhunt feels incomplete without hearing from the hunters: "Oh, Dream!"
  • In pretty much every episode, Dream has at least one or two tricks or traps to try out against the hunters. There's usually at least one for every point in the run (the initial resource-gathering, the Nether run, the Ender Pearl hunting, and the End fight).
  • It seems like every episode has at least one Enderman attacking George, prompting some variation of "I'm getting hit by this stupid Enderman!" In the "4 Hunters Finale" video, he ends up dying to one.
• One-Hit Kill: Since their introduction to the series, spears are situational but powerful tools. A spear's damage is dependent on the velocity of both the user and target. If either Dream or one of his victims has a sufficient velocity, the victim will be killed instantly regardless of armor and health. Dream exploits this several times both offensively (jumping from a high place) and defensively (intercepting hunters as they attempt to jump down to him).
• Out-of-Genre Experience: The "Minecraft Speedrunner VS $1,000,000 MrBeast Challenge" episode starts off with a back-and-forth chase like usual, but the moment that everyone ends up in an Ancient City and accidentally summons a Warden, the video abruptly becomes horror survival for a few minutes as everyone forgets about the manhunt and focuses solely on trying to hide from the abomination.
• Overly Long Gag: In "Speedrunner VS PRO", during Illumina's turn as the Hunter, Dream spent several Minecraft days chasing him on boat. What makes it qualify for the trope is that Dream, rather than cut out all the non-action, chose to do time-lapse segments instead.
  Dream: I'm stickin' here, Illumina! This video's gonna be an hour long, and it's just gonna be Illumina and friend boating.
• Point of No Return: Once Dream reaches the End, the only way he can leave is to win or lose the final objective of the Manhunt. He either kills the Ender Dragon with the items he has on him (plus whatever he can steal from dead Hunters), or it isn't enough and he dies. He can't go back to the overworld to regroup, restock, or gather resources for a gambit, he has to have all that prepared before entering in the first place, and if he didn't then he just has to deal with it.
• Post-Final Boss: The Ender Dragon is this. Sure, defeating it is Dream's Instant-Win Condition (not to mention his only win condition), but the real final battle of each Manhunt is Dream's last stand against the hunters, who always make it to the End as well. The dragon is always more of an afterthought compared to the constant threat of the hunters (serving as an environmental obstacle at best), and the number of times it holds relevance within the final fight itself can be counted on one hand.
• Product Placement: At the very beginning of the 4 Hunters Finale, after Dream does his intro, he reveals that Dragon City sponsored him; the game even added a special dragon based off of Dream that people can get. Subsequent videos have been sponsored by Monster Legends.
• In "5 Hunters Finale Rematch" and "VS $100,000 Bounty Hunter", he does ads for Cashapp and Medal respecitvely in the middle of the manhunt.
• Quad Damage: Strength potions are some of Dream's most reliable allies. They turn any fight he might lose into a borderline Curb-Stomp Battle in his favor, they're just that overpowered.
  • The most notable example comes from the first "3 Hunters" video. As Dream approaches the exit Nether portal, he senses the hunters nearby. He downs a strength potion (which the hunters hear) and proceeds to decimate them. And with two leftover potions from the brewing process, he then does it again after escaping the Nether.
    George: He does so much damage!
• Quieter than Silence:
  • Frequently in Manhunt, one of the hunters (usually BadBoyHalo) will tell everyone to be quiet when they think Dream is nearby, or in a wall. This is so that the hunters can hear Dream breaking/placing blocks and running. The background music in the video even stops for those moments.
  • The 4 Hunters Finale begins (after the sponsor plug) in total silence. Dream thoughtfully respects the logic outlined on the page for this trope and puts a notice across the screen to assure viewers that it isn't an audio glitch.
    I pretended to be AFK to catch them off-guard
    your sound is fine
• Rain of Arrows: In the "4 Hunters Finale Rematch" video, the Hunters use this as their initial strategy against Dream. Thanks to some villager trades, all the Hunters get dozens if not hundreds of arrows and can fire them without worry. A persistent challenge for Dream in that Manhunt is that every time he's exposed, they all just start bombarding him with so many arrows that that he can't ignore them or he'll die.
• Round Table Shot: Dream looks at all the hunters surrounding him in the very beginning of the "3 Hunters Grand Finale" video before running away.
• Running Gag: At the beginning of Dream's videos (say it with me): "Also, according to YouTube's statistics, only a small percentage of people who watch my videos are actually subscribed, so if you end up liking this video, consider subscribing. It's free and you can always unsubscribe. Enjoy the video."
  • Whenever the hunters and Dream reach The End, you can expect George to keep "getting hit by this stupid Enderman!" at some point.
• Run or Die: There's a reason it's called Minecraft Manhunt. Later episodes seem to invoke it—while the runner can always fight off a single hunter, they're more than likely doomed if they fight four or five head-on.
  • Early on in the 3 Hunters Finale Rematch, Dream gets a golden sword from a chest near a broken Nether Portal. The three hunters promptly run away from Dream.
  • Early in the "3 Hunters Grand Finale" video, Dream is collecting wheat, when all of a sudden George and Sapnap are chasing after Dream with iron weapons and armor. He runs away as fast as possible while the hunters try to get him.
• Russian Reversal: (In the grand finale explanation video) BadBoyHalo, when they set up the End spawn trap, was expecting to get a video clip of the hunters and him destroying Dream... which would've happened if Dream didn't blow up the place with the TNT first. Dream got a video clip in the main video of him destroying the team of hunters. In short, instead of the hunters destroying Dream (and recording it), Dream destroys the hunters (while recording it.)
• Schmuck Bait: In the 3 Hitmen rematch, during one of the grace periods, Dream tells Bad that there's a leftover piece of iron that he left in a cave. Bad falls for the bait hook, line, and sinker, and as he goes to mine the iron Dream seals him in obsidian, allowing him to gain some distance.
• Secret Weapon:
  • In the "3 Hunters Finale" video, Dream blows up the Hunters with an End Crystal, catching them completely off guard as it was the first time one had been used in Manhunt and they didn't even know End Crystals were craftable.
  • In the end of the "3 Hunters Grand Finale" video, Dream secretly collects TNT to use for his final attack: to destroy the hunters' End spawn trap.
  • In the "4 Hunters" video, the Hunters bring one to the final battle in the form of End Crystals which they use to heal the Ender Dragon.
  • In the end of the "5 Hunters FINALE REMATCH" video, Dream starts chasing BadBoyHalo with intent to kill him. This would've succeeded if it weren't for Bad suddenly turning around while running to place an obsidian block, placing an End Crystal on it, and then activating it all in less than a second to kill Dream.
• Series Fauxnale: Originally, "Minecraft Speedrunner VS 3 Hunters FINALE" and the rematch was going to be the final episode of the 1v3 Minecraft Manhunts. Two weeks after the rematch, however, due to popular demand, Dream released a grand finale that would be the end to all 1v3 Minecraft Manhunts.
  • The "3 Hunters Grand Finale" video itself. It's the climactic conclusion to the 5-episode 1v3 saga, and Dream's line in the opening ("No redos, no rematches, this is it") doesn't help with the implication that this may very well be the last Manhunt. One month later, however, and Dream uploaded a video called "Minecraft Speedrunner VS 4 Hunters"...
  • Much like the previous grand finale, the "4 Hunters Grand Finale" video ends the 5-episode 1v4 saga, yet despite its climactic nature Dream makes it clear that there is a future for Manhunt—namely, 5 hunters.
  • The same thing eventually happens after the 5 Hunters series ends. While its last entry was originally called "The Last Manhunt", Dream proceeded to do a couple spin-offs before eventually building up to 6 Hunters via the Revival series.
• Sequel Escalation: At first, the "3 Hunters Finale" video and the "Finale Rematch" video were going to be the end of the "3 Hunters" series of Manhunt videos (it's later clarified that Manhunt as a whole would have continued but in a different manner). But then, a week after the Unsolved Mystery of Herobrine video released, the "3 Hunters Grand Finale" video released because the last Minecraft Manhunt video got over a million likes. In a day.
• Serial Escalation: Dream's Minecraft Manhunts get more and more over-the-top as the series grows more in number. For example, the Manhunts started off with only one hunter. As the series expanded, Dream added a second hunter, and eventually a third and later a fourth—and, once that ended, a fifth As a result, his victories keep getting better and better. The strategies that Dream and the hunters use also evolve. Where he once ambushed and fought George directly, he'll now set up lava and explosives to use against the hunters. In the 3 Hunters grand finale explanation video, Dream said the hunters were at their best, and Dream only managed to kill one of the hunters once prior to his now-famous TNT ploy, whereas in the earlier videos, Dream killed the hunters many times while also managing to outsmart them. Dream did actually outsmart them in the "3 Hunters Grand Finale" video, but he had to use new techniques as well as becoming better at the game.
• Shout-Out:
  • On two different occasions, George and later Bad (36:01) say "My, how the turns have tabled."
  • During "Beating Minecraft Without Leaving the Nether", the group ran away from a ghast mounted on striders while singing the "And then he waddled away" part of "The Duck Song". This is also referenced a couple of times during Manhunt.
  • During "3 Hunters", George compares Dream to John Wick.
• Spontaneous Crowd Formation: EVERYONE was suprised about just HOW MANY mobs there were when Dream was chasing them.
• Stealth-Based Mission: The final minutes of the "4 Hunters Rematch" video become this. The hunters take positions around the End to keep Dream away from the Ender Dragon, knowing that if he reaches the dragon he'll likely kill her before they can stop him. Dream wins by burrowing under the ground and emerging at the final portal, where he hides behind the central column until the Ender Dragon perches there, at which point he decimates the dragon's health.
  • Dream's escape from the Nether in the "4 Hunters Finale" video. The hunters are buffed with diamond armor and Dream's unlikely to kill them... so he downs an invisibility potion and sneaks past them.
• Sticky Situation/Sticky Bomb: In the "4 Hunters Finale" video, Dream uses cobwebs to snare George and Sapnap and prevent them from moving before detonating TNT around them, instantly killing the two hunters (and nearly taking Dream himself out as well).
• Sudden Soundtrack Stop: In Dream's Minecraft Manhunt videos, the background music that's currently playing stops when one of the hunters tells everyone to stop what they are doing and listen. The music stops so that the audience can list
• Swapped Roles:
  • On rare occasions, Dream hunts down George instead of the usual.
  • Parodied in the extra scenes of the 4 Hunters Finale with Bad becoming the speedrunner while Dream, George, Sapnap, and Ant become the hunters, however Bad drowns while escaping from the hunters (ironically within the early-game grace period Dream gets in the Manhunts proper).
• Technician Versus Performer: Between Dream and Technoblade, where Dream is the performer and Techno was the technician. Dream's iconic Minecraft Manhunt series has both the hunter and the hunted showcasing creative traps and methods of outmaneuvering and killing the opposition in randomly generated worlds. Dream himself is known for his quick thinking and creativity, coupled with incredible luck that all make his videos possible. Technoblade was much more methodical, known for structured PvP matches. He has also performed complex calculations to determine the best method of victory in tournament challenges, including his Excel spreadsheet for tracking potatoes during his potato war and his startling come-from-behind victory in Build Mart, also using a spreadsheet.
• Tempting Fate:
  • In the second Assassin video, Dream builds his Nether portal at the top of a pillager outpost and revels in George's horror at seeing it there, calling himself a genius. He then walks straight off a cliff, ending up at two and a half hearts of health.
    Dream: Well that wasn't genius.
  • In the first "3 Hunters" video, Dream only has time to grab 2 logs (which he makes into 8 planks) before he's forced to flee, with everyone vocally confident that he can't do much with that. He ends up diving into pool of water in a ravine and using the planks to block off the water from his pursuers, killing them when they all land on them.
  • During Survivalist VS 3 Hitmen, at the end, George decides to try and goad Dream into attacking him, while both are high up on a tower. Dream is above George. Needless to say, it does not end well for George when Dream decides to jump to him.
    Dream: Look at me. George, I way outmatch you.
    George: Jump down! Jump down then! (repeats "jump down" several times)
    Dream: (jumps down and punches George off the tower)
    George: Oh my god! NOOOO! He actually did it!
  • During Speedrunner VS 4 Hunters, the Hunter team gets ahold of an enchanting table early and begins souping up all their gear with glee, with Sapnap having so much confidence in their impending success, he names his Diamond Axe "Dream Slayer". Dream manages to win the next skirmish and loots the very same axe, and uses it to murder his opponents several more times during the video.
  • By the end of Speedrunner VS 4 Hunters REVIVAL, Dream is in possibly the best position he's ever been in a Manhunt. He's managed to destroy the Hunters' respawn bed by Ender pearling into the Nether at nearly the same instant he entered The End, tricking them into going in before him. With them unable to reenter the Overworld without dying and respawning at the starting area, he's able to build his inventory at his leisure, including obtaining an extremely powerful mace from a Trials Chest, a weapon that deals damage proportional to how far the wielder falls before striking a target, transferring all the fall damage to said target. Using the mace, Dream is able to almost instantly kill George and Bad, leaving only Sapnap and Antfrost. Dream eventually dispatches the latter and taunts Sapnap with his strategy of building all the way to the height limit and killing the dragon with the mace in one hit. A panicked Sapnap attempts to build a trap near the Exit Portal, allowing Dream to pull the highly risky maneuver of striking him with the mace, one-shotting Sapnap and leaving Dream free to kill the dragon without interruption. In an attempt to show off, rather than killing the dragon using a safe method, Dream instead attempts to implement the mace plan he warned Sapnap of and kill the dragon with a single strike. However, he misses the shot, and dies to fall damage brought on by his sheer hubris.
• Time for Plan B: In the "3 Hunters Grand Finale" video, Dream and the hunters have a conversation about the plans the hunters make. Dream thinks that, since his End Crystal trap didn't work, the hunters have made actual plans.
  Dream: Usually, I feel like you guys, when you just say plans, like as a meme, you're like, "Plan Seven!" But in this case, I feel like "Plan B" is like, you literally, actually have plans.
  George: It's a reputable name.
  Bad: An actual plan.
  Sapnap: Guys, execute Plan 74-35B!
• Took a Level in Badass: All the competitors have gotten way better at Minecraft in general and the strategy of Manhunts specifically over time. Dream actually lost his first Manhunt against only George thanks to a silly mistake, which is a far cry from his later feats of matching or beating teams of three or four Hunters. In the earlier Manhunts there were many scenes of Dream fighting running battles with the Hunters and killing them in straightforward combat, but the Hunters got better at teamwork in later ones, forcing Dream to use tricks and gambits to break their cohesion first before picking them off.
  • In the "3 Hunters Rematch" video, the hunters apply much more strategy to taking Dream on, constantly pursuing him and only suffering casualties when they separate. They block off the first End Portal with obsidian and even use Dream's brewing stand against him, almost costing him the game in the long run.
  • Perhaps the biggest leap for any one group is in the the "3 Hunters Grand Finale" video. Here, the hunters finally live up to their name and end up forcing Dream on the run throughout the entire video instead of them dying to him every few minutes, as they wound up scoring iron armour and iron weapons from a nearby village, then later upgrade parts to diamond armour and weapons, and even go as far as to enchant their stuff. They even go to the End ahead of him to set-up a trap, like they did in the first 3 Hunters episode. Dream is never able to enchant his own armour and sword, and he even admitted that it was their best outing yet. That was, had he not gone and made TNT to blow up all three of them and their trap, he would've actually lost.
  • Sapnap in general qualifies for this trope, even moreso than the other hunters. Originally he's the least experienced of the hunters, frequently getting killed by Dream, and often in the most humiliating ways (such instances being a suicide-leap into lava after Dream destroys the ground he jumps to as well as the infamous Wither Skeleton incident). Notably, his solo bout against Dream has him with a handicap (that handicap being full diamond armor), whereas George and Bad had no such handicap. However, he gains several levels of competence and overall menace as the Manhunts go on. He first qualified for this trope around the "3 Hunters Grand Finale" video, where he's notably the only hunter to even attempt to escape Dream's TNT trap (only failing by sheer luck), and he's also the one who makes one final attempt at killing Dream after respawning (also only failing by sheer luck). He also becomes by far and away the biggest threat during the "4 Hunters" video, crafting an enchanted diamond axe that puts him in Lightning Bruiser territory until Dream somehow kills him and takes the axe for himself, and is also the consistent enemy during the final fight, even being the one to off Dream at the end. Nowadays, he's widely considered one of the two most threatening hunters (alongside Bad) and he's also generally considered the strongest in terms of raw fighting skill.
  • Antfrost also qualifies. In his debut Manhunts, he had little presence and tended to fade into the background. He seems aware of that, however, and nowadays he outright exploits it in order to gather much-needed resources for the hunters while simultaneously allowing them to continue the chase against Dream without losing much-needed firepower. Ant also exploits his lack of fighting skill to lure Dream into a false sense of security — he won the "4 Hunters Finale Rematch" video for his allies after evading a death trap and being chased into a desert temple, only to unleash a fatal harming potion on Dream with no warning at all.
    • His return in the revival series takes place after having competed in many high-profile events, and it shows. His PVP skills have improved to the point where he can keep up with Sapnap while wearing weaker armor, alongside becoming even more level-headed and improving his communication skills. Case in point, after Dream jumps off a ledge, Ant jumps after him, lands in the same boat he uses to MLG, and places cobwebs to stop Sapnap's fall, keeping the two of them hot on his trail.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Though unscripted, it's perhaps justified all the same. Dream doesn't have to communicate his plans to the hunters, and thus tells no one (audience included) until he actually executes his plan. With no warning, the hunters are more likely to fall for whatever scheme he's got going on. Meanwhile, the Hunters are multiple different human beings and must coordinate plans between them in real time, leading them to speak their plan and thus ruin it by tipping Dream off, or spend time communicating it privately which is slower and buys Dream time to prepare for every possibility.
  • The trope is best displayed in the different strategies in the first and last 3 Hunters videos: in the former, Bad tells nobody about his trap and Dream lets his guard down, falling for it completely; while in the latter, the Hunters brag about how they're setting up an unbeatable trap, and Dream—knowing that there's a trap—figures out a way to beat it.
• Wham Line:
  • In the "4 Hunters Rematch" video, this one line from Sapnap clues in the hunters as to what Dream plans to accomplish by leaving a portal to the Nether roof, and also clues in any audience members who are still in the dark themselves:
    Sapnap: Wait! He's going back to the portal! Stop him, stop him!
  • The absence of a certain line ends up being one. When Dream seemingly kills the dragon in the "5 Hunters" video, the "Free the End" advancement that usually signifies Dream's victory doesn't appear.
  • Soon after the above example (also from the "5 Hunters" video), the chat updates and shows this line as shown below.
    Antfrost has reached the goal "The End... Again..."^note All six players got the advancement, but Ant's advancement was the first to appear in chat.
• Wham Shot: The videos sometimes have unexpected events that change everything...
  • In the 2 Hunters video, Dream is falling off the edge of the End and into the void. George then kills Sapnap. And then we see a few Ender Pearls drop right into Dream's hotbar.
  • In the "4 Hunters Rematch" video, Dream is running from the hunters atop the Nether roof. He then uses Ender Pearls to teleport back to the Nether portal, and in his inventory we see him hover over two select items: some TNT and a Flint & Steel.
  • In the "5 Hunters" video, Dream lands the finishing shot on the dragon... and then we see four End Crystals shooting out into the sky, all focused on one point.
• You Are Already Dead: Dream getting one of the hunters alone is treated this way.
• Zerg Rush: While Dream can kill the hunters and burn/steal their items, their ability to respawn means that they can immediately throw themselves back into the fray, distracting Dream from other hunters that have yet to die and lose their equipment. This is especially noticeable in the endgame of Minecraft Speedrunner VS 5 Hunters REVIVAL, where the hunter's morale was low, but they were still determined to fight Dream to the bitter end. To the Hunters' glee and Dream's horror, their punches, being fast and numerous began to break off Dream's armor pieces.
• Zombie Apocalypse: One of Dream's videos was about him and George surviving an army of zombies, with some being fast, some exploding, some throwing you, and more.

• Accidentally Beneficial Attack: During "Minecraft, But The World Is Controlled By A Player...", George has Dream stuck on a small platform in the Nether just far enough to keep him from jumping to the portal. George brings down some of the Nether roof onto the portal as an added obstacle, but this just gives Dream a safe spot to jump to, allowing him to get to the portal easily.
• all lowercase letters: in his old YouTube profile picture (shown at the top of this page), "dream" is uncapitalized.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In one stream highlights video cut together by Dream (NSFW language warning), the Dream Team spoofs C.O.P.P.A. censorship on Youtube with fake "NOT for kids" warnings. Dream swears loudly at children and shows them (Google image search) pictures of blood and Hitler, Sapnap yells at them about his (fake) bankruptcy, divorce, and taxes... and George just tells the kids that there's cooties in the video and they should leave.
• Chekhov's Gun:In the "Death Shuffle" video, while searching for the hole Dream made in the bedrock floor, George comes across an entity cramming machine Dream had previously used to squish himself to death. Sure enough, he becomes tasked with squishing himself later and finds the machine again, and is able to use it successfully despite Dream's attempt to dismantle it.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Dream is green, George is cyan, Sapnap is orange, Bad is red, Ant is white, and Sam is gold (likely due to green already being taken).
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: The Titan from the Titan Takedown series acts as this for the Hunters in Minecraft Manhunt, their goal is the same "try to stop the designated Speedrunner from killing the Ender Dragon" and act as The Heavy compared to the Ender Dragon, but that's where the similarities end:
  • The Hunters are just regular Minecraft players with a fancy compass that tracks Dream to his location and nothing modded about them, making both them and Dream on relatively equal grounds, later entries add more Hunters join in on the hunt against Dream, and they're usually well-known Minecraft Youtubers Dream is associated with.
  • The Titan on the other hand is freaking huge and is definitely modded in through someone in a VR headset and a full-body Titan suit, with the Titan bordering on Dragon-in-Chief to the Ender Dragon for how much the big guy can wreck through everything and keep up with a fleeing Speedrunner, later entries add on more speedrunners instead of Hunters due to how busted the Titan is, and the guy playing the Titan is an anonymous Youtuber willing to play the role.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: The "Battle Box" event in the eighth Minecraft Championships was this for Dream & Technoblade's team, the Pink Parrots. They won all but one of their matches (narrowly losing to the Lime Llamas) and more often than not inflicted a Total Party Kill on the other team.
  • All of the "Challenging 25 YouTubers To A Fight" video. In a series of 1v1 duels where 6 kills wins the game, Dream flawlessly 6-0's everyone except for accomplished PVP player Fruitberries, who manages to get two kills on Dream before Dream decimates him in the remainder of their matches. In a total of 152 matches^note 6 matches for everyone but Fruitberries, who takes 8 matches since he beats Dream twice, Dream loses twice— and to only one player at that.
• Deliberately Monochrome: The beginning of Dream's videos have a monochrome effect while Dream does his intro. After that, the normal video starts.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • In Dream's earlier videos even during late 2019, the style of his videos are noticeably different to the later, more consistent-styled ones. The first of his 'challenge' videos such as the X-ray series and the now-abandoned Minecraft, but speed rises every second were separated into episodic parts, likely due to the Dream-Team having much less skill needed to come close to completing these challenges. Contributing to this is the fact that much less footage is cut proportional to the meat of the videos.
  • Another genre of videos that have been phased out are the 'bits', such as ''Minecraft Youtubers'', and ''this cursed Minecraft video will make you cry...'' that are basically joke videos that don't center very much around Dream's gameplay.
  • Dream used to show the "Unknown" percentage of subscribers in his intro, before removing that out.
  • Lastly, these videos have different/no music edited in, compared to the consistent soundtracks found in later videos.
• Gravity Screw: In "Minecraft, But Gravity Flips Every Minute..." Dream and George have to beat Minecraft while gravity flips. For every minute, it toggles whether you (and everything around you) are floating upwards.
• Hostile Weather: Dream and George try to beat Minecraft while it's raining lava.
• Minimalistic Cover Art: Dream's profile picture and banner on YouTube is mostly green and has a minimalistic figure made of a white circle and white body with no arms.
• Obvious Rule Patch:
  • About halfway through the second Death Swap, it is revealed that Dream and George came up with a special rule: you can't travel to the Nether to kill the other person with lava. This is likely to stop every Death Swap afterwards from degenerating into who can travel to the Nether first, as there are only two other reliable counters to this plan. The first one is by using Fire Resistance potions, which are only possible to make (or find) in the Nether by finding blaze rods and magma cream, or by trading with Piglins. The second solution is to get incredibly lucky with finding an enchanted golden apple, as George found out the hard way. What makes this an even more obvious rule patch is that the first Death Swap ended in the exact manner the duo decided to ban.
• Once per Episode:
  • Dream's intro: "Also, according to YouTube's statistics, only a small percentage of people who watch my videos are actually subscribed, so if you end up liking this video, consider subscribing; it's free, and you can always change your mind. Enjoy the video." Originally a genuine plea, this has since been memed to hell and back, and it was clear after a while that Dream was just saying it out of tradition.
  • It appears that Dream is phasing out the intro in more recent videos, with either the intro becoming much shorter or being replaced with something else. In I added humans to Minecraft..., the phrase is at the end of the video, and has been changed to "Subscribe! Or don't. Your loss."
• Please Subscribe to Our Channel: In the beginning of his videos, Dream shows the viewers his YouTube statistics, which shows that only a small percentage of his viewers are actually subscribed to his channel. Dream executes his intro in a way that doesn't pressure the viewer into liking or subscribing, yet makes the viewer want to do both. As mentioned above, the request started getting shorter and more to-the-point in later videos.
• The Rival/Friendly Rivalry: After Dream's debut in the sixth Minecraft Championships, he & Technoblade served this role to each other. The two typically played up their rivalry, and even ended up in a best-of-ten PVP duel hosted by MrBeast for $100k. IRL, however, the two were good friends and their "rivalry" was just for show.
• Special Guest:
  • Dream appears a ton on George and Sapnap's channels. Given as they're a package deal.
  • Dream appears in some of MrBeast gaming videos as one.
  • Dream and Technoblade's $100,000 duel was hosted on MrBeast's gaming channel.
• Stylistic Suck: Dream's old joke video Minecraft Youtubers Be Like.... The entire video is a parody of, well, Minecraft Youtubers, complete with "off-camera mining" and overall horrendous and inefficient gameplay. Dream's microphone quality also steadily gets worse and worse over the course of the three-minute video, ending with him being borderline inaudible under all the static.
• Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny: Dream & Technoblade, after three Minecraft Championships and months of rivalry, face off in a best-of-ten duel worth $100,000 for whoever wins. Techno wins in a narrow 6-4 victory over Dream, but a video Dream made covering the aftermath reveals they split the money and in fact had planned to do so even before the fight in order to take away most of the pressure on both sides.
• Wham Line: There are several unexpected lines in many of Dream's videos...
  • In the first Death Swap:
    Dream: How long is the Fire Resistance for on god apples?
• Worthy Opponent: Dream & Technoblade viewed each other as this. Even as their "rivalry" kicks off, through all the trash talk and taunting, they never see each other as less than equals. When the two finally square off in a $100,000 duel, the aftermath reveals that both combatants were practically terrified of facing the other.
  • He later has a similar rivalry with Daquavis for their $100,000 duel.
• X-Ray Vision: The main focus of the x-ray challenge series. The challenge was for Dream, George, and Sapnap to beat Minecraft without turning their x-ray off, meaning they couldn't see any blocks that weren't ores.