All of the many elements in the dream sequences have meaning, with the exception of the Cheese Man. Whedon explains: "...the Cheese Man—meaningless. Why? Because I needed something in the show that was meaningless, because there is always something in the dream that doesn't make any sense at all. In this case it was the Cheese Man. He confounds everybody because of that, and people ascribe him meaning. This to me means that we're being successful, because this means they're not worried about everything else, which means they sort of did understand most other things."