Animated Actors / Animated Films

• The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales is a movie where traditionally animated animals are acting in a play. One of them, a stork, even goes on a rant about how he'll star in an avant-garde play in the summer. Though its left ambiguous if the plays represent moments of their lives or not, since the actors are rather similar to the characters personality wise.
• Who Framed Roger Rabbit was entirely about Animated Actors in their off-screen lives, as well as on-studio. For example, Baby Herman is a hard-drinking, smoking, sexually-harassing animated actor who, because of his looks, played innocent-baby parts. Another notable instance is a scene where the penguins from Mary Poppins (released a couple decades after the movie is set) work in a bar, implying they had to rely on menial jobs until they got their big break in Poppins. Other actors, like Roger, have almost identical personalities on- and off-camera.
• Pixar used to play faux-Hilarious Outtakes (or is it Hilarious faux-Outtakes?) during the credits of their movies, complete with falling boom mics, backdrops, flubbed lines, and crew members. They stopped the practice and switched to other credit bonuses when they thought it was becoming too predictable.
  • A Bug's Life and Toy Story 2 exclusively used outtakes. Monsters, Inc. featured outtakes, but then transitioned to a company play.
• The Danish animated film Terkel in Trouble had semi-interviews with the actors, with most or all of them Playing Against Type.
• An interesting example is Aki Ross, the protagonist from Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Hironobu Sakaguchi intended for Aki to appear as a digital "actress" in multiple feature films. Aki's career was tragically cut short by the box office failure of her debut film, the aforementioned Final Fantasy, and the subsequent bankruptcy of Square Pictures. However, before the latter was finalized, Square produced a demo for the Animatrix project featuring a PVC-clad, short-haired Aki acrobatically dueling a sentinel from the Matrix films.
  • Most bizarre was her layout in FHM, the point of which (other than the obvious) was to trick people into thinking it was a real person, thus showcasing the amazing advances in covering up a complete lack of movie with awesome visuals.
  • The Movie's DVD release included a faked blooper reel. While some of the bloopers could never happen in real life (Such as crashing their ship and emerging with shrapnel sticking out of their heads) others were more realistic, with the characters spoiling takes by sneezing or corpsing.
    • The second disc of the DVD has an opening where Aki is filming a scene on set with both actual people and other CGI characters working and talking with each other. IIRC, the Big Bad is seen having a civil conversation with one of the alien monsters he's trying to destroy in the film. And then there's the "Thriller" Easter Egg where the characters dance to the hit song for... some reason.
• A special feature on the Kaena: The Prophecy DVD had the female lead, Kaena, being interviewed in regards to the many demands of her role, such as the physicality (it only seems to play in French, though).
• Wreck-It Ralph does this In-Universe with videogame characters. The title character is an arcade villain dissatisfied with doing the same routine for 30 straight years, even going to Bad-Anon meetings with other villain characters. When he decides to try his hand at being a hero, he abandons his game, causing his character sprite to disappear from the arcade machine. Off hours, most videogame villains are decent people, and if anything are victims of Fantastic Racism, often distrusted and disliked by the other characters in their games. The only characters in the film who avert this are the Cy-Bugs, who can't tell the difference between game time and after-hours like the other characters can, and this makes them especially dangerous...
• In the animated Garfield movies, Garfield, Odie, Jon and other comic strip characters live in Comic Strip Land, working at Comic Studios, where comic strips are filmed and transmitted to the real world via satellite. Strangely, this doesn't apply to their superhero counterparts, who live in another universe entirely and are seen as fictional in Garfield's world.
• Resident Evil: Degeneration has a series of "outtakes" on the DVD, which are actually just scenes from the film but with different dubbing. They mostly joke about how poorly they're paid apart from Leon's voice-actor who got "more pay".
• The special edition of The Lion King includes a blooper reel where the characters are portrayed like this.
• The LEGO Movie's Behind the Bricks featurette shows that not only are the characters aware of the movie and their voice actors, but also the fact that they're, well, Lego figurines. (Wyldstyle: "Or as they should be called, people.")
  Batman: The directors were great, Phil and Chris, really talented guys. ...Big, though. Like, they towered over us. Basically freaks.
  Wyldstyle: They just would pick us up, and physically move us across a set. It's not cool! I mean, it's not like I'm a prop or something.
• Looney Tunes: Back in Action focuses on the backstage lives of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and other Looney Tunes. There's a bit of subversion in that their personalities are identical to their "characters", so even when the camera's not rolling, Elmer Fudd is a bad guy who wants to destroy Bugs and Daffy. Then double subverted when the entire plot of the movie, including Fudd being a bad guy who wants to destroy Daffy and Bugs, was just a movie in which the characters starred.
• DVD Commentary on Fantasia 2000 for "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" and "Pomp and Circumstance" segments has Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck joining in. Mickey and Roy E. Disney discuss what the shoot for Sorcerer's Apprentice was like back in the 40s with Mickey telling stories about how "dancing down the steps took over 40 takes" and having to hire every broom in Hollywood, even from Warner Bros, to get the army. Donald is more focused on interrupting and injecting himself into the conversation of the directors.
• My Life as a Zucchini: The Stinger shows the main character, Zucchini, being asked if he wants to be in a movie. He says he can identify with the role (Zucchini is an orphan) because his parents are divorced, but thinks the name "Zucchini" sounds silly and wants to change it.
• My Little Pony: Equestria Girls: Both Friendship Games and Legend of Everfree have each an extra "Blooper Reel" short using this premise; the "actors" of the movie are flubbing their lines, going on hilarious tangents or just fooling around. The exceptions are a few scenes that are just pure Mind Screw (like human Rainbow Dash riding pony Rainbow Dash), mostly thanks to Pinkie Pie.
• The character interviews on the DVD release of The Powerpuff Girls Movie are basically this; those interviewed are Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup, as well as Mojo, the Mayor, and... Extra Guy.
• A few, but not all, of the Barbie animated films have used this idea, sometimes via Hilarious Outtakes. Barbie: A Fashion Fairytale expands on the idea with Barbie beginning the film acting in an adaptation of The Princess and the Pea...then getting fired, which helps set the plot in motion. (There's even a poster for the previous movie visible within Barbie's trailer.)
• In a similar fashion to both Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Looney Tunes: Back In Action, Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022) depicts nearly any animated character as an actor (although cartoon characters seemingly can do other jobs in this world), with the titular characters having to move on after their series ended. A plot point sees the Big Bad Sweet Pete deforming cartoon characters with debts at him and using them to make bootleg versions of famous cartoons.

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