History Main / NoticingTheFourthWall

'''This is often used as TheReveal, so beware of spoilers.'''

->''"I see it all now! There's a reason we're all weirdos who make strange food! We're in... a CARTOON!"''

-->-- '''Chowder''', ''WesternAnimation/{{Chowder}}''

->''"I see it all now! There's a reason we're all weirdos who make strange food! We're in...a CARTOON!"''

* The sci-fi comic ''[[ComicBook/TwoThousandAD 2000 A.D.]]'' once ran a Creator/MarkMillar comic about a man who suddenly realizes he's in a comic, and it will soon end. He decides to make the best of his time left by going in a nihilistic rampage ("It's not really murder, you understand. None of these people have names.") It ends with the man being arrested and pointing the reader out to one of the policemen. He turns around in horror, screams, and grabs on to the panel border with tears in his eyes. "Oh God! Please don't turn the page...Please, read it again!"

* A common [[EpilepticTrees epileptic tree]] is that this happened to ComicBook/TheJoker, causing him to GoMadFromTheRevelation. He has no problem killing innocent people because he knows they're not "real", and he does it entertainingly because he knows the audience will appreciate it.
* Creator/GrantMorrison's ''Comicbook/AnimalMan'' memorably did this in a full-page panel, which provides the current page image. He often goes to "Comic Book Limbo," where all the no-longer-used comic characters live, and meets his creators. But whenever he leaves, he loses all memory of the visit.
** Creator/GrantMorrison was punished for this by having their AuthorAvatar (codename: The Writer) drafted into Franchise/TheDCU Suicide Squad.
* Superboy-Prime from DC Comics flips this around. He loses the real world (ours) and ends up going more then a bit nuts in the realms of comics that used to be fake to him.

--->'''Homer:''' If I don't exist...does that mean I can't eat doughnuts?
* ComicBook/{{Deadpool}} has known for years about the man with the typewriter, but in ''ComicBook/DeadpoolKillsTheMarvelUniverse'' he [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin does something about it]]. After killing the heroes and villains of the Marvel Universe, he then travels through the multiverse and walks into the Marvel office where the writers are discussing what Deadpool will do next in ''Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe''. [[TakeThatMe He kills them]] while they are talking about him killing them in the comic. And then he turns to you, the reader.

* The protagonist of "WebOriginal/NothingLikeTheSun" scours the multiverse trying to discover how she became omnipotent and why, despite this, she can't turn her GlowingEyes off, eventually coming to the horrible realization that [[spoiler:she and everyone she knows is a fictional character, and that she was only created in the first place as a joke because the authors wanted to write a SelfParody]]. She is able to take this in enough stride to realize that [[spoiler:because she is omnipotent, she can bring her authors to her own world, and force them to fix things, after which she spends the rest of her life living it up with her omnipotent powers]].

* {{Downplayed}} in ''WebAnimation/DeathBattle'': "ComicBook/MartianManhunter VS ComicBook/SilverSurfer". The characters don't find the answer as to why, but they perceive that they're in some weird universe where they're compelled to fight to the death.

* {{Downplayed}} in ''WebAnimation/DeathBattle'': "ComicBook/MartianManhunter VS ComicBook/SilverSurfer". The characters don't find the answer as to why, but they're conscious about the fact that they're in some weird universe where they're compelled to fight to the death.

[[folder:Film-- Live-Action]]

[[folder:Film-- Animation]]
* Happens in-universe in ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory1'': Buzz Lightyear is initially convinced he is a real space ranger, and not a toy, and only learns otherwise when he sees a commercial for a Buzz Lightyear toy like himself.
* ''WesternAnimation/SausageParty'' contains a straighter example. The characters discover at the end that they are fictional creations of cartoonists in the real world, and use a wormhole to get revenge on their creators for the suffering they've been forced to endure.
[[/folder]]

* A ShowWithinAShow example from ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration''. The Moriarty character from a Literature/SherlockHolmes reenactment miraculously learns that he's not only a fictional character but that he's a computer generated recreation of said character.
** In a later episode he (Moriarty) does the same thing for his computerized girlfriend Regina.
* In the ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' musical episode "Once More With Feeling" Anya notices the sudden lack of a fourth wall in their apartment:
--> "It's like we're being watched. Like there was a wall missing from our apartment, like there were only three walls, and not a fourth wall."

* ''Series/CharlesInCharge'': The final scene in the series had Charles wake up and say "I just had the strangest dream that I was an actor named Scott Baio." At which point the disembodied voices of his family and friends tell him that he really is.
--> Haven't you ever wondered why you have no last name?

* At the end of the ''Series/MastersOfHorror'' episode "Valerie on the Stairs", Rob ignores Valerie's pleas that she can't exist outside the house, only for her to vanish. Shortly afterwards Rob realizes that ''he'' is a fictional character as well and everything he did was written by the boarding house residents. He dissolves into a pile of written papers, the last line of which is "And so it came to pass that Rob Hanisey never became a published author".