Interesting distinction. This happens to me all the time!

Dream guides fall into this category, no? Any recurring theme at happens in the dream, and not mentally in your thoughts would be this kind of dream.

If I create a giant rabbit with dream written on it, it might help me get lucid. Yet there are two ways I could create this rabbit. One being explicity through dream control in the dream, and then second through simply thinking about this rabbit in my head until it appears in my dreams. So the distinction you're making here is that it is you create the association in the dream. You definitely need to create some kind of consistency that will constantly remind you in your dreams that your dreaming. Imo, that's almost the same thing as having your MILD-DILD