* Accelerando (2005) by Charles Stross
* Breakfast of Champions (1973) by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. In this novel, Vonnegut's character Kilgore Trout, an amateur Sci-fi writer, writes a story that mocks individualism by suggesting that there is only one human man and one God, and the rest of humanity are robots, made to test the man's reactions; hence, a kind of simulated reality.
* The Circular Ruins by Jorge Luis Borges (not simulated reality, but subjective idealism/solipsism).
* The Cookie Monster (2004), by Vernor Vinge
* Darwinia (1998) by Robert Charles Wilson
* Diaspora (1997) by Greg Egan
* Discourse on Method (1637) by René Descartes
* The Electric Ant- short story by Philip K. Dick.
* Eternity (novel) (1988) by Greg Bear, in particular his introduction of the Taylor algorithms as a means of determining the simulated nature of an artificial environment.
* Feersum Endjinn (1994) by Iain M. Banks (his later novel, The Algebraist, posits a religion that believes our universe is virtual).
* Flight: a Quantum Fiction novel (1995) by Vanna Bonta, posits that our universe is a virtual metaverse whereby collective and individual consciousness creates reality on the quantum level.
* Forever Free (1999) by Joe Haldeman
* Get Real: A Philosophical Adventure in Virtual Reality (1998) by Philip Zhai
* The Girl Who Was Plugged In (1974) by James Tiptree Jr.
* Idlewild by Nick Sagan; this novel contains a simulated school inside a simulated world
* Illusions (1977) by Richard Bach
* The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect (1994) by Roger Williams
* Neuromancer (1984) and Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988) by William Gibson
* Otherland (1998) by Tad Williams
* Permutation City (1994) by Greg Egan
* Loop (1998) by Koji Suzuki
* Riverworld (1979) by Philip José Farmer
* The Seventh Sally and The Princess Ineffabelle(from the cyberiad) by Stanislaw Lem
* The Futurological Congress (1971) by Stanislaw Lem
* Simulacron 3 (1964) by Daniel F. Galouye
* Snow Crash (1992) by Neal Stephenson
* Sophie's World (1991) by Jostein Gaarder
* The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965) by Philip K. Dick
* The Trouble with Bubbles (1953) by Philip K. Dick
* Time Out of Joint (1959) by Philip K. Dick
* Ubik (1969) by Philip K. Dick
* Valis (1981) by Philip K. Dick
* Words Made Flesh (1987) by Ramsey Dukes
* Vurt (1993) by Jeff Noon
* The Wonderland Gambit (1995) by Jack L. Chalker

* .hackSIGN, an anime series about a person whose mind is trapped in an online computer role-playing game.
* Avalon by Mamoru Oshii
* The Red Dwarf episodes "Better Than Life" and "Back to Reality", by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor.
* The Big O by Hajime Yatate and Chiaki J. Konaka. N.B. the reality in question has not been confirmed as simulated, but it is extremely likely.
* Brainscan by John Flynn
* "The Cage" and "The Menagerie", the unaired pilot and later episodes (respectively) of Star Trek, screenplays by Gene Roddenberry.
* The Gamekeeper, an episode of Stargate SG-1.
* Danger Room A training simulator from the (X-Men) universe.
* Dark City by Alex Proyas, in which the sim is halted every night at midnight, rearranged, and then restarted. People are given false memories of different lives than they led in the previous 24 hours, reminiscent of last Thursdayism.
* "The Deadly Assassin," an episode of Doctor Who written by Robert Holmes.
* Die Another Day - James Bond, shows the protagonist wearing VR glasses which very closely reflect reality.
* eXistenZ by David Cronenberg, in which level switches occur so seamlessly and numerously that at the end of the movie it is difficult to tell whether the main characters are back in "reality".
* Good Bye Lenin!, by Wolfgang Becker, a Berlin family tries to make the feeble mother believe that East Germany did not fall.
* The Island, directed by Michael Bay.
* La vida es sueño (Life is a Dream), a Spanish play by Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-1681) that evolved from the legends of the early years of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha.
* The Matrix trilogy by the Wachowski brothers
* Megazone 23 (1985-1989), an anime OVA series created by Noboru Ishiguro and Shinji Aramaki.
* In the Doctor Who universe.
* The Nines, a 2007 film which, unknowingly to the viewer, is focused completely on the subject of simulated reality.
* Noein a 24 episode anime directed by Kazuki Akane and Kenji Yasuda where a simulated reality is created.
* Paranoia Agent by Satoshi Kon
* Possible Worlds, both the play and the 2000 film adaptation of that play.
* Robotech: The Movie, a 1986 adaptation of Megazone 23.
* "The Sentence", an episode of The Outer Limits television series.
* Serial Experiments Lain, a 13 episode anime series by Chiaki J. Konaka.
* "Ship in a Bottle" episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, in which the fictional Professor Moriarty of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories is allowed to exist in a simulation of the world.
* In the Star Trek fictional universe, particularly in and since the series Star Trek: The Next Generation, holodecks are simulators aboard starships and other facilities used for training and recreation.
* The 13th Floor by Josef Rusnak
* Total Recall by Paul Verhoeven, based on a Philip K. Dick's story We can Remember it for you Wholesale.
* Tron (1982) by Walt Disney Pictures
* The Truman Show, directed by Peter Weir, is a conspiracy theory movie, but has no actual SR or VR content.
* The Twilight Zone has featured a number of episodes involving false or simulated realities of some sort.
* Vanilla Sky by Cameron Crowe (a remake of Abre los ojos by Alejandro Amenábar).
* The X-Files has featured a number of episodes involving simulated realities of some sort.
* Welt am Draht a 1973 German film adaptation of Simulacron-3 from Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
* Cube 2: Hypercube (2002) written by Sean Hood
* Harsh Realm the short lived TV Series created by Chris Carter which took place in a Virtual world.