Fourth Wall Greeting

Greetings, fellow troper! My name is Report Siht, and I'm the lead writer of the TV Tropes article "Fourth Wall Greeting". Allow me to explain what it's all about, if you will.

A Fourth Wall Greeting is a greeting by an actor or character used when introducing a scene, implying that the viewer is about to get an intimate, behind-the-scenes look at the production of the scene in question.

Often, the setup of the scene has the camera pan over to an actor caught unaware (often in their dressing room, or on a soundstage), either out of costume or in any other way that indicates that the production cameras aren't currently rolling and what you're seeing is part of the production's self-documentary instead of the end result; you're about to get a candid, exclusive look into its making of. The character often expresses this surprise directly to the camera, for example by greeting it with an impromptu "Oh ... hi! I didn't see you there. As you can see, I'm on the set..." before they begin describing what is happening over on the set.

This setup was sometimes used for commercials for unrelated products, here to give the impression that, while you know that the celebrity endorsing the product is most certainly a paid actor in the profession of telling you things convincingly (even when their character is clearly fictional), right now, you're hearing him when he's off-duty and he's therefore telling you the real truth. While it is still used in advertising, even straight, it is often with at least a bit of a wink and a nod if not outright parody or Lampshade Hanging (such as the actor delivering the line in a way that implies he is reading it from a cue card).

It's also still occasionally used in kids' Edutainment Shows to provide Fake Interactivity, where it's perhaps a bit more understandable.

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Examples:

Advertisement

• Used particularly awkwardly in a TV ad for Colonial Penn life insurance, with said camera crew approaching an elderly woman as she's exiting a car with her family. She talks to this random camera crew about how she wishes life worked like the parking meter she was feeding. "I could keep putting quarters in, and live forever", even as a child calls out "C'mon, grandma!" And this is all played completely straight.
• Chuck Norris talking to an off-screen "friend" in mock surprise at the end of a Total Gym ad. Because a multi-title-holding karate champion with tons of sponsors and access to thousand-dollar equipment would give a shit about a hundred-dollar weight bench, let alone interrupt a shoot to tell his friends about it.
• The Jay Bush and Duke ads for Bush's Baked Beans: Jay Bush would introduce himself and Duke to the viewers, narrate the "beautiful bean footage" and then state that he's only shared the secret family recipe with Duke, but that he'd never tell.

Film — Animation

• Aladdin: Opens with a merchant addressing the viewer and even interacting with the camera:
  Merchant: [Addressing the viewer / camera] Please, come closer!
  [Camera zooms in exaggeratedly until it hits the merchant's nose with an audible "bang"]
  Merchant: Too close, a little too close.
  [Camera zooms out to acceptable distance]
  [Later...]
  Merchant: [To the viewer] Perhaps you would like to hear [Aladdin's] tale? It begins on a dark night...

  It's also a Forgotten Framing Device, since the viewer never sees the merchant again; although the merchant is commonly accepted to actually be the Genie (who is a Voluntary Shapeshifter, after all).

• The Emperor's New Groove opens with the protagonist narrating his darkest hour. Before jumping back in time.

Film — Live-Action

• This is Spın̈al Tap: Starts this way.
• Deadpool: To the surprise of absolutely no one, the film starts of this way, introducing the titular merc sitting on an overpass drawing with a crayon while listening to "Shoop" on a radio, before turning to notice the audience.
  Deadpool: Oh, hello! I know what you're thinking: whose balls did I have to fondle to get my very own movie? I can't say anything, but it rhymes with "Polverine". And lemme tell ya, [affects Australian accent] he's got a nice pair of smooth criminals down under! Now, If you'll excuse me, I've got places to go, things to do, and ooohh... bad guys to kill!

Live-Action TV

• Our Miss Brooks: "Transition Show" begins with Miss Brooks in the school cafeteria talking to the audience. Madison High School has suddenly been ordered closed and demolished to make way for a new Los Angeles Freeway (in spite of the show previously being set in a small city named Madison. Miss Brooks leaves the about-to-be-demolished school cafeteria, and goes to tell-off the also-fired Mr. Conklin. By the end of the episode, Miss Brooks and Mr. Conklin are working at Mrs. Nestor's Private Elementary School in the San Fernando Valley.
  • Notably, the concurrent radio show continued at the extant Madison High in its Everytown, America setting. That was also the continuity followed by The Movie Grand Finale at the end of the season. This left the fourth season of the television series an Oddball in the Series disjointed from the rest of the program's run.
• Used by numerous DVD bonus features on the Stargate SG-1 box set. They're so brilliantly cheesy it's hard to tell if it's deliberate or not.
• Stephen Colbert often uses the line on The Colbert Report on returning from a commercial, especially when he's delivering The Tag from his fireside set. For example, "Oh, Hi there. I was just standing here pretending not to notice you."
  • This is a carryover from his segments on The Daily Show. One of them, "So You're Living in a Police State," began with a grainy, greenish image of a bathroom from the ceiling. He came in and stood at a urinal peeing, then suddenly looked straight into the camera and said, "Oh, hi! I didn't see you there in the sprinkler head!"
  • And sometimes the camera starts rolling before he 'notices' and we see him rehearsing different deliveries of his "Oh, hi there!" line.
  • Another example, from his Christmas Special: "Oh hi! I didn't see you through the wall of my log cabin!" (Said wall is, of course, non-existent)
• The Mitchell and Webb Situation had a sketch parodying this, where the man being featured on a Reality Show is bewildered by the whole charade. The sketch starts with the host ringing his doorbell and greeting him as if it's the first time they've met. "What do you mean? You've been here over an hour. You've only just gone outside again. I'm miked up!" "So where's the kitchen?" "It's where you set up all those lights."
• Josh Groban does this in the faux commercial for "Josh Groban Sings the Tweets of Kanye West".
• This is the regular format of the "Betty White in her home" segments on the NBC prank show Betty White's Off Their Rockers, sometimes with the actual phrase used by White herself.
• An episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer begins with Andrew enacting a familiar form of this trope in-universe - he looks up from a book as he sits in an antique chair in an old fashioned library. In this instance the books are fake. In fact the whole scenario is in Andrew's imagination and he's actually sitting on the toilet, pointing a video camera at himself.
• In Mystery Science Theater 3000 the first post-credits segment usually had Joel/Mike and the 'Bots addressing the audience before going to Commercial Sign.
• The NewsRadio episodes "Space" and "Sinking Ship", which are both non-canonical What If? storylines, are both book ended with scenes of Phil Hartman sitting in front of the studio and explaining the premise of the episode. They're very tongue-in-cheek, with Hartman unable to even remember the name of the show and admitting to only watching it by accident, and "Sinking Ship" ending with Andy Dick casually mentioning that Dave Foley had died filming the episode.

Music

• The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band:
  We're Sgt. Peppers' Lonely Hearts Club Band/ we hope you will enjoy the show.
  • The White Album: "Good Night"
  Good night, everybody. Everybody, everywhere.
• The second track of Frank Zappa's Uncle Meat is called "The Voice Of Cheese" and has Suzy Creamcheese greet the audience with the words "Hello teenage America..."
• Hobo Johnson's submission of "Peach Scone" for the NPR Tiny Desk Contest begins with "What up, Bob?" ^note Bob Boilen, who hosts the Tiny Desk Concerts and continues with
  "Hi, we're Hobo Johnson and the Lovemakers
  We're a couple of kids who like to make a little bit a love, like to make a bit of music"

Puppet Shows

• Sesame Street: The street scenes begin with one of the Muppets or humans saying to the viewer: "Hi! Welcome to Sesame Street!"

Theatre

• The chorus of "Ex-Wives", the opening number in Six: The Musical, has the ladies welcoming the audience to the show and their version of history.
  Welcome to the show, to the historemix
  Switching up the flow as we add the prefix
  Everybody knows that we used to be six wives
• "Well, hello there, and welcome to Urinetown. (Not the place, of course—the musical.)"

Theme Parks

• The original Journey into Imagination at Epcot opened up with the Dreamfinder singing to himself before noticing the audience.
  "Oh, hello there. So glad you could come along. I am the Dreamfinder."
• The original Tales of the Okefenokee ride opens with a short song by the ever present Crow Quartet:
  Welcome neighbor, welcome to the Okefenokee!
  Welcome neighbor, welcome! You've surely made our day!
  You should've seen us sittin', friend, here.
  We thought that you'd never get here!
  Sure glad ya did, so let's get on our way!

Webcomics

• Subverted in The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, when he's surprised by his And Knowing Is Half the Battle segment at the end of a story he had no part in.
  Dr. McNinja: "Did... Did something happen? Why are you here?"

Web Original

• Each episode of Ask That Guy begins with this greeting in a different language:
  "Hello in a language you won't bother to look up, didn't hear you come in."
• "Hello, I'm The Nostalgia Critic, and I remember it so you don't have to."
• "Welcome to Atop the Fourth Wall, where bad comics burn!"
• "Hi. I'm your Nostalgia Chick, and..."
  • Actually, almost every Running Gag Channel Awesome reviewer!
• There's a hilarious video on YouTube of Gary Busey angrily instructing the interviewer for a Hunter S. Thomson documentary how to conduct it. Busey tells him to call his name as he's looking out into the ocean drinking a cup of coffee so Busey can turn around and be surprised to see someone there to ask him questions.
• Every episode of Yacht Rock (to some degree) was introduced by Steve Huey this way. Ranging from the innocuous "You've caught me lounging in my music nook" (while doing just that) to beating a gimp while wearing bloody underwear: "You've caught me making love."
• Will from Tested.com uses (abuses?) this trope in a video showcasing the site's new office.
• Parodied in a few Homestar Runner cartoons, such as A Death-Defying Decemberween.
  Bubs: Well, hey, Homestar! You didn't tell me you were having a holiday special over tonight!
• James van der Beek introduces his Vandermemes this way.
• Numerous infomercial parody videos by the LoadingReadyRun comedy group starts with the "Oh hi, I didn't see you there" line, to the point where it is a Running Gag.
  Tim: (entering through the front door) Oh hi, you didn't see me there.
• Phelous loves making fun of this trope in his videos. "Oh, hi there! I didn't see you come in, and I didn't see that I left my camera on the tripod there and left it recording and edited it into my video."
• The Walkthrough maker Super Skarmory starts his videos by saying this starting with his Super Mario 3D Land Walkthrough in 2011.
• Eat Your Kimchi: This trope is often used when the show switches from Simon and Martina as commentators to Simon and/or Martina as performer in a sketch.
• The explanatory video to the Kickstarter project for Neal Stephenson's swordfighting game, CLANG, begins this way. It gets derailed after about a minute as a stuntman hurtles through the greenscreen.
• The Encanto YouTube Poop "Enchanto" begins with Mirabel saying "Welcome to the Encanto YTP!" to the viewer.

Western Animation

• Seth McFarlane used this opening for a commercial advertising Family Guy on [adult swim]. On the show proper, Stewie uses it at the start of his one-man show, before being heckled off by a drunken Elroy Jetson.
  • Speaking of Seth McFarlane, the intro to his "Life of Larry" pilot starts off with him saying (in a completely calm voice), "Oh, hi there. You scared the crap out of me."
• In the intro for the direct-to-video series Little Dogs on the Prairie, Hollister and Gilroy greet the viewer before the theme song starts.
• Parodied on The Simpsons with the Mr. Sparkle commercial, the actor in was in a hot tub and basically said "Don't believe me, watch this commercial".
  • Also, when Marge sets up a pretzels outlet, the introductory tape she received from the franchiser shows him hastily setting up the camera, before rushing back to his desk, pretending to look through some papers there, and looking over to the camera to deliver the line.
  • The 138th episode special used the trope repeatedly with Troy McClure, once parodying it by returning from a commercial break to have McClure asleep on a couch and having to be prodded awake from off stage so he could deliver the line.
• On Sid the Science Kid, this is how the closing segment is presented, in which Sid talks with the viewers in his room at night before going to bed and presents his "Super Duper Big Idea."
• Every episode of Super Why! begins with Whyatt greeting the viewers, introducing himself, and opening the door to Storybrook Village.

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