You're here because you know something. What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Neo: The Matrix.

Morpheus: Do you want to know what it is?

Neo: Yes.

Morpheus: The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work… when you go to church… when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

Neo: What truth?

Morpheus: [leans in closer to Neo] That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind.

Simulated Reality

Holodeck

The Experience Machine 

 

The Telesterion

 A great hall in Eleusis, Telesterion ("Initiation Hall" from Gr. τελείω, to complete, to fulfill, to consecrate, to initiate) was one of the primary centers of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Devoted to Demeter and Persephone, these initiation ceremonies were the most sacred and ancient of all the religious rites celebrated in Greece.

  

A world within the world. Stories within the story.

Truman Burbank is the unsuspecting star of The Truman Show, a reality television program in which his entire life, since before birth, is filmed by thousands of hidden cameras, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and broadcast live around the world. The show's creator and executive producer Christof is able to capture Truman's real emotion and human behavior when put in certain situations. Truman's hometown of Seahaven is a complete set built under a giant arcological dome in the Los Angeles area. 

Simulated reality is a theme that pre-dates science fiction. In Medieval and Renaissance religious theater, the concept of the "world as theater" is frequent. In the United States the science fiction/action media franchise that began with the 1999 film, The Matrix, features characters who are mostly unaware that they are living in a simulated reality.^[25][26] Simulated reality in fiction has been explored by many authors, game designers, and film directors. It is a prominent theme in the works of Philip K. Dick."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_reality