Leaning on the Fourth Wall

Ash: Do you think I could do a show with all of my Pokémon?
Misty: A live stage show?
Ash: No, a television show.
Misty: Who would watch something like that?

— Pokémon: The Series, "Flower Power"

Bob: Hey, Alice, have you ever noticed how sometimes a character will talk to another character about something that sounds like it's really about the show they're in, but it makes perfect sense in context?

Alice: Yeah! Usually it sounds strained because it's hard to make this kind of dialogue sound completely natural.

Bob: But if they can pull it off, it's usually good for a bit of comedy.

Alice: This might be related to Lampshade Hanging, This Is the Part Where..., Conversational Troping or any other trope with Fourth Wall in its name.

Bob: You mean like Fourth Wall Psych? What about Aside Glance? The inverse would be This Is Reality. Common subtropes are Diegetic Soundtrack Usage and Who Would Want to Watch Us?... wait, why are we talking like this?

noreallife

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Example Subpages:

• Comic Books
• Live-Action TV
  • Doctor Who
• Video Games
• Western Animation

Other Examples:

Advertising

• Thanks to food and drug guidelines, just about every drug commercial on American TV is like this, with characters rattling off side-effects in "casual" conversation, sometimes (but surprisingly rarely) lampshaded when the other character will say "You sound like you're trying to convince me to use it!"
• A Bamzu.com commercial features two people on a couch talking about how great Bamzu is. It finishes with the man saying to the woman, "Hey, maybe we could do a Bamzu commercial!" to which she replies, "You think?"
• A series of GEICO commercials feature extremely poorly "animated" characters speaking in robotic voices. One of the characters informs the other that the commercial — in which they are currently appearing — took only 15 minutes to produce (which they tie into the amount of time it takes to switch to Geico).
• One Honda commercial had a man talking about his car and the deal he got from it, while his friend says that he sounds like a car commercial.

Anime & Manga

• In the Ah! My Goddess chapter where Belldandy somehow gets drunk on cola, Keiichi chases after her and trips over an empty liquor bottle, saying, "Geez, you'd think this was a stupid comic book or something!"
• In Assassination Classroom, the students wear casual street clothes instead of their typical school uniforms on the first day of their vacation. On the following day, they've already gone back to wearing their P.E. jerseys. Two of the students explain that they're both comfortable and that "it would cruel to have to think up clothes for a second day". The context implies that it would be hard for the mangaka to have to think up new clothes to draw for each of them.
• One chapter of Ayakashi Triangle ends with Shadow Mei teasing some sort of revelation about Matsuri that only she's aware of. She's nominally Thinking Out Loud, but effectively talking straight to the audience.
  Shadow Mei: (turning to face the reader) Well, I guess I could tell them.
• The first half of Baccano!'s first episode is what seems like two Meta Guys arguing over when this whole thing is supposed to start, who the "main character" is and whether or not any of it actually had a point. Technically they're an eccentric Knowledge Broker and his assistant trying to sort out the data they have on immortal-related occurrences over the last couple of years, but it sure seems like they're picking apart the show you're just about to watch.
• One episode of Bastard!! (1988) had Gara proclaim that you never defeat a major enemy while off screen.
• Osamu Tezuka is famous for this, at least in his less-serious stories. In the Black Jack story "Baby Blues", a teenaged girl brings Jack an abandoned baby, and he asks, "Whose baby is it? Is it yours?" The girl slaps him — but instead of Jack she's slapping Tezuka himself, with the caption standing in for the slap. Tezuka is of course gone by the next panel and the story continues.
• In the Bokurano manga, several people compare the plot to that of an in-universe manga which is also about kids piloting a giant robot. At the end of that manga, the kids all die and Earth is destroyed.
• City Hunter: Shinjuku Private Eyes: When the Kisugi sisters come at Umibozu and Miki, the dialogue alludes to both the time gap since the Kisugi sisters' left Japan In-Universe and the fact that they haven't been seen in animation since 1985.
  Hitomi: It's been a while you too.
  Umibozu: It-it's been a very long time!
• Cardcaptor Sakura:
  • A lampshading of the many relationships in the series:
    Tomoyo: It seems our relationship chart has gotten rather complicated.
  • In the "Freaky Friday" Flip episode, she notes that the combination of a comical Li and serious Kero provides excellent humour.
    Tomoyo: You have the perfect timing, as if I was watching a wonderful comic combo...
• Code Geass:
  • During a Breather Episode, Milly remarks "Sometimes you just get these little filler moments in life... and that's fine." This could also be seen as a Take That! toward the fandom, which had a tendency to gripe whenever School Festival episodes came up.
  • "Look forward to me, Jeremiah Gottwald, with all you've got!" This is supposed to be addressed to V.V. but it's obvious he's talking to the audience.
• Andy almost does this in Cowboy Bebop, to Spike's confusion. Everytime Andy showed up in the episode, his Leitmotif "Go, Go, Cactus Man" would play - a song that uses heavy whistling. Later on in the episode, Spike hears someone whistling as he walks by, and immediately thinks it might be Andy.
• The Dangers in My Heart: While helping her study science in the library, Chii notices how Ichikawa normally is speaking (To Yamada, which is a detail she doesn’t notice) compared to how he usually talks under his breath in a nervous manner. As if he's speaking in wobbly, deflated speech bubbles (Which he is).
• Darker than Black:
  • Happens in episode 9: the episode begins with Kiko Kayanuma making her first appearance of the season. As she and a friend board a train, they are discussing their apparent disgust at how a certain unnamed director added a pointless "gag character" to an otherwise "Dark and Serious" movie.
  • As an anime fangirl/cosplay enthusiast, she does this a lot. For instance, when she and Gai end up in possession of an (even more) will-less Yin, they try to figure out where to hide her while everyone's out looking for her. Kiko suggests the hot springs, because you have to go at least once; then she looks at the audience and says, "Kiko is doing her best!"
• Death Note:
  • The last words spoken during the anime version indicate Ryuk is leaning on the fourth wall. They're spoken by Ryuk as he kills Light, but the words of farewell ring on for the series, reminding everyone that all this time, the whole purpose of everything that's gone on from beginning to end was for Ryuk's entertainment.
    Ryuk: It was good while it lasted. We eased each other's boredom for quite a while. Well, Light, it's been interesting.
  • At the start of Matsuda's day in the limelight, we get a montage of the other characters making disparaging comments about him, followed by Matsuda saying, "I want a bigger role in this!" It sounds like he's talking to the writers.
• In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, an anime original scene, at the beginning of the Swordsmith Village Arc, where Aoi narrates what Inosuke and Zenitsu have been doing separately since Tanjiro spent more time than his buddies recovering, has Zenitsu directly address Aoi's narration in a comically exasperated manner. That's an uncharacteristic scene for the main duration of a given episode, since ludicrous fourth wall leaning moments like these are reserved for post-episode segments such as the Taisho Rumors/Secrets where there are no rules.
• In Dramacon, Emily complains that people keep on glomping her because apparently, she looks like some manga character.
• In a Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA OVA involving a dance contest, the stereo plays the opening theme song.
• During an insult contest between Ed and Pinako in Fullmetal Alchemist, one of Ed's is "You're so short you're two-dimensional!"
• When some of the members of Genshiken graduate, they have a discussion about where the story could go now that several of the characters have left — except it turns out they're actually talking about Show Within a Show Kujibiki♡Unbalance, which is doing a graduation story at the same time.
• Though Ryou of Gourmet Girl Graffiti never specifically address viewers, she often holds ingredients or dishes she made towards the camera.
• Haikyuu!!: A rather sad example. After losing to Karasuno in the Interhigh preliminaries, Ikejiri comments that if they were in a work of fiction, those that won and go on to nationals would be the protagonists, and those who lost and had their season cut short were just the extras.
• At the start of the last chapter of Haru and Midori, a flashback shows Tsugumi talking with her classmates about how a drama ended just as it was getting good.
• America has one of these moments in Hetalia: Axis Powers.
  America: I'm not stepping out of the house until spring comes around!
  [the light goes out]
  America: And the light bulb burns out as soon as I say that?! What is this, a comedy movie?!
• In the GO Chrono Stone series of Inazuma Eleven, the main characters use their flying time travelling caravan flown by an android bear to create a fictional timeline around a King Arthur story book so they can find King Arthur and transfer his aura into one of their soccer players. When they create the storybook world, they're forcefully thrown into it as the story's characters. This leads to multiple exchanges where the protagonist Tenma is referred to as the main character, and some other characters lamenting how they're a minor character.
• In Episode 28 of Jewelpet (2009), a radio plays the theme song.
• Kaguya-sama: Love Is War:
  • The first "Darkness" chapter has Ishigami read a romcom seinen manga Momo-chan Doesn't Think (normally shortened to MomoKan), and comment that it's an oddball in the magazine because it's completely devoid of Fanservice. Sounds a bit familiar, doesn't it?
  • In the Young Jump 100th chapter, Shirogane and Ishigami celebrate the anime adaptation announcement of MomoKan, and has the chapter end with Shirogane instructing the Student Council to say "Anime Adaptation banzai!" repeatedly, just to drive the point home. Shortly before this chapter was published, Kaguya-sama announced that it was getting its own animated adaptation. The chapter would later be adapted as a trailer for the 3rd season of the anime, with the dialog altered accordingly to maintain the joke.
  • Chapter 140 did the same thing for the announcement of the live-action movie, complete with having the same actor in the lead male role.
• In Kill la Kill, the appearance of any new character or technique is commemorated with giant red kanji. In later episodes, it appears as if the kanji are actually physical objects, breaking when struck and having a visible reflection. Nui even leans on hers while talking.
• In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2016), Shad's brain apparently applies its own Translation Convention when speaking foreign languages, and doesn't realize that Japanese (or whatever language the manga's translation may use) is still only used to represent Hylian. It's not until Link mentions he also understood the Oocca's reply that Shad realizes the Oocca themselves, being a tour guide, has simply switched to Hylian for their guests' convenience.
• Love Live! Sunshine!!: In season 2, episode 1 Mari gives a speech as director of her school for the opening ceremony of the second term. There she states, that the second season has started!
• Made in Abyss: In the anime's second episode, Riko declares that her discovery of a mysterious robot from deep beneath the earth must signify the beginning of something important in her life. Right after she rhetorically asks what else could possibly be such an obvious story-starter, the opening theme plays.
• Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans: McGillis's line when he sees Gundam Barbatos functions in universe as a way of hinting at the deeper history behind the Gundams in that timeline, but it's basically an allusion to the Gundam franchise itself.
  McGillis: Machines bearing the name "Gundam" have appeared in many turning points throughout our history. They've played a major role in the fate of mankind. If this one serves Ms. Bernstein, an advocate for Mars Independence, who knows what will happen next?
• My Dress-Up Darling: In Chapter 32 (Episode 10 of the anime), Marin visits Gojo and he lends her his shower so she can wash all the body makeup off her skin. Marin jokingly asks if he's gonna try to peep on her while she's in the shower, causing him to get flustered, and then she comments how if they were in a manga, he would probably jump at the chance to take a peek and she would yell at him.
• Naruto:
  • More than once, Naruto is described as being the sort of person who could never be the main character of anything. They are, of course, absolutely wrong.
  • There's one point in the manga where Naruto comes running into a fight late yelling, "The main character of a story usually shows up in these types of situations and instantly kicks the enemy's ass!" Naturally, he then proceeds to be on the receiving end of said ass-kicking.
  • Jiraiya having written a book about a ninja Determinator whose name is Naruto (which the character of the series was named after by his parents after they read the book) is fourth wall-leaning enough, but a couple of pages of Chapter 448 which were only in the volume release has part of Naruto's speech to Pain/Nagato nearly have him talking about himself as if he was fully aware that he was a fictional character, and all of this is done in a completely serious fashion.
  • Acting also as a Take That, Audience! moment, Sakura's infamous fake love confession to Naruto is a verbatim reading of all the arguments Naruto/Sakura shippers used to justify why they should be together (paraphrasing: "I used to love Sasuke, but he's now evil and he's breaking my heart, but you, on the other hand, have always been there for me", and "You used to be a dork but now you're the village's hero, so of course now I love you."). Not only does every single person present have a Disapproving Look on their faces, but Naruto easily sees right through her, calls her out for lying, and rejects her outright by telling her that he hates people who lie to themselves.
  • In Episode 499, the penultimate episode of Shippuden (the arc of the preparations for Naruto and Hinata's wedding), after learning of the rest of cast's mission to get the perfect wedding gift for them, Hinata innocently says "I never thought our wedding would cause so much trouble." Considering the amount of Ship-to-Ship Combat and Die For Our Ship that split the fanbase through the course of the series, despite Naruto/Hinata being one of the biggest Fan Preferred Couples in anime and manga for the last fifteen years with the manga's entire run, this is perfectly fitting.
  • The Sequel Series, Boruto opens with a monologue in which Naruto's son, Boruto, stresses that this will be his story and that his father was only a part of it at one point; this seems dedicated to assure the fanbase that for his parental similarities, Boruto is not like his father.
  • In one episode of the Boruto Anime, a villain rants about how this "New Era" is a pathetic add-on to the glorious previous Shinobi era, naturally he gets both a physical and verbal smackdown by Mirai Sarutobi, one of the new generation characters.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
  • Fairly early in the manga, Ako tells an aged-up version of Negi that she envies Negi because she feels like she's just a supporting character and he's the main character. She is, of course, absolutely right. Negi counters that even if she's a minor character in someone else's story, she's still the main character of her own. As she was the main character of that particular mini-arc, he was right, too.
  • In an especially tongue-in-cheek moment, Natsumi refers to herself as a side character right before making a casual observation that turns the chapter (#257) into a Wham Episode.
  • It also has a more Fourth Wall-breaky one when Negi sees what his father was like: he exclaims, "It's like he's a character from a totally different manga!"
  • Asuna says something similar when Kotaro first breaks out his demon form. Also a Lampshade Hanging, as said demon form is an Homage to Inuyasha.
  • Similarly, in chapter 277, minor character Tosaka says to Ako and Akira, "Us side-characters gotta look out for each other."
  • In one of the Negima?! OVAs (legal, US/Canada only) has a line lampshading the use of towels in a Hot Springs Episode, noting that it isn't some TV anime. ("OVA" being comparable to what is known in the west as "direct to video" but generally of higher quality)
    Haruna: [to Nodoka while she and Negi are together in the hotspring] This isn't some erotic anime, you know! [grabs at Nodoka's towel] You gotta ditch the unmentionables!
• In one chapter of Ojojojo, Tendou holds up some rectangular narrative speech bubbles on a stick as she recaps the events of the previous chapter. Haru dismisses the act as another one of her friend's silly antics.
• In One Piece:
  • On the last page of Chapter 597 Luffy says "The pirate 'Straw Hat Luffy' is going on a holiday for a bit", then at the bottom of the page it is announced that the manga is going on a four week break, its longest so far. We get it, Odacchi.
  • In chapter 627, after a seven-chapter-long flashback (one of the longest flashback arcs seen so far), Jimbei apologizes to everyone that it took so long to tell the story. Almost as if Oda was apologizing to the audience for taking so long by having Jimbei say it.
  • In episode 268 of the dub, Sanji's worried Nami's hurt when the train they were riding on is blown up, with Zoro commenting that she'll be alright since she isn't a background character like Sanji. More likely just part of their rivalry and played for laughs.
• Happens often in Ouran High School Host Club.
  Tamaki: This anime is obviously a romantic school comedy. Haruhi and I are the main characters, and that means we are love interests.
• At the start of the final third of The End of Evangelion, animation ceases and live-footage commences, displaying Tokyo urban life in the early morning. As the VA's for Misato, Asuka, and Rei stand still amidst a bustle of pedestrians, Shinji and Rei discuss via narration why it is that audience members care about the fate of fictional characters so very much. Bach's Jesus Bleibet Meine Freude plays simultaneously. Heck, the sequence even outright bends the wall, as the live action footage has quite a few fictional elements slyly inserted in it. The Tokyo skyline has several buildings from the fictional Tokyo-3 placed among the real ones through effect shots, and the shots of the voice actresses alternates between them as themselves facing the camera and them in cosplay as their characters with their backs to the camera.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • One episode had Misty say that when Jigglypuff drew on her, she looked like a cartoon character. Ash says how ridiculous it would be if they were in a cartoon.
  • An Orange Islands episode has Ash and Pikachu take part in a stage show where the trainers do voice-overs that make the Pokémon look like they can talk. In the dub, Ash comments on how hard it is to match the lip-flaps.
• Pokémon Horizons: The Series: In the second episode, Liko muses (to her dismay) that the bizarre turn her day has taken — suddenly being hunted down for a family heirloom by a mysterious organization and being absconded via an airship by yet another mysterious organization (who later turn out to be bodyguards hired by her parents) — might mean she's the heroine of some story.
• At the end of Princess Tutu, when the characters have defied Drosselmeyer and got their happy endings, Drosselmeyer wonders just how they were able to overcome him as the author of their story. This makes him wonder if he himself is just a character to another author.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica:
  • In the pilot, when Madoka mentions how she first saw Homura in a dream the previous night, Sayaka says that "the anime character in [her] is popping out."
  • The music Madoka is listening to in the first episode is the anime's theme tune.
  • In series finale, Madoka's mom also asks if her daughter is an anime character when talking with Homura after she re-writes the laws of the universe and everyone else in the world has forgotten her.
  • In the movie, Mami hums her theme music while brushing her hair.
• Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle: One chapter begins with the Demon King announcing to his minions than an anime about life in the Demon Castle is going to be produced, and everyone needs to act natural while the team shoots reference footage. All of the demons immediately begin to act out every manga cliche they know, with Princess Syalis being the only one who acts normally (that is, getting up to a lot of mischief). As a result, the reference footage of the overacting demons gets thrown out, with only footage of Princess actually getting sent in. As a result, the anime ends up being purely about her, and the havoc she wreaks in the castle while trying to sleep. If you haven't already guessed, the chapter was released at the same time as the announcement that the series would be getting an anime.
  Demon King Twilight: The anime will be about a hostage wreaking havoc and taking naps? They're calling it Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle!?
• In Soul Eater, when the teachers are having their meeting about how to rescue Kid from the Book of Eibon, Maka and Soul are trying to listen in on what's going on. They are hiding behind a wall corner in a very over dramatic spy-esque fashion, and Maka says something along the lines of:
  Maka: The way we're sneaking around like this, it's almost like we're the protagonists of some supernatural crime story!
• Space Patrol Luluco has a rather spoilerish example. While in hell, Inferno Cop tells that he was in Space Patrol with Luluco replying that makes Inferno Cop her predecessor. This is true both figuratively and literally as Inferno Cop was the first of Trigger's works and Luluco's show is the one that takes the most after his from the three that came afterward (Kill la Kill, Ninja Slayer, and this show).
• The Story Between a Dumb Prefect and a High School Girl with an Inappropriate Skirt Length: In Chapter 38, Tsukishima and Tasaki (the only main characters without love interests) start hanging out discussing manga, and the conversation gets to talking about the tendency of manga writers to Pair the Spares...to which they both say in unison "I absolutely hate it when the leftover characters start dating each other!"
• In the first episode of the Tamagotchi anime, the idol singer Lovelin is providing coverage of a big race that is occurring where each racer must complete events placed along the way to continue. At some point in the episode, she informs the spectators to stay tuned. As if to hint that she may have been talking to the audience watching the anime as well, the episode immediately cuts to a commercial break after she says this.
• There are two cases in the dub version of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds where the theme song for the dub ("Hyperdrive") appears in the story; in one episode, Yusei is listening to it on the radio while fixing his D-Wheel in a garage, and in another, Rex Godwin's henchman Akutsu is humming it to himself while working. (Of course, it is possible that the song simply exists in-universe, as none of its lyrics mention any characters or events important to the plot.)
• Yui Kamio Lets Loose: In Chapter 15 Kiito asks if they're going to do another Boob Based Gags or not, expecting Yui to hug him.

Audio Plays

• Big Finish Doctor Who
  • In Omega, the Doctor and a Time Lord historian are discussing how they were both fans of Omega growing up. The historian says he wanted to know everything about Omega, and the Doctor replies that he always thought knowing everything would take the mystery out of it. The historian then says "Nothing annoyed me more than when Omega fans came up with those convoluted theories to explain away discrepancies in the legend." All of which sounds an awful lot like a Doctor Who fan debate.
  • In the Companion Chronicles audio Second Chances, Kym, probing Zoe's hidden memories of another forgotten adventure, suggests that they skip all the capture and escape stuff, calling it Padding.
  • Legend of the Cybermen has the Doctor and his companions Jamie and Zoe trapped in the Land of Fiction, where they are constantly being tricked into narrating their actions, with a segment where Jamie finds himself in a sound-studio, reading his dialogues from a script while a director (voiced by director Nicholas Briggs himself) tells him to emote more. Also from that adventure:
    Zoe: None of this is real. This is all a wonderful children's adventure that adults adore.
    The Doctor: You are watching this from another level of consciousness, aren't you?
  • A Death in the Family pits the Doctor against the Word Lord Nobody No-One, whom he finally traps in "The Hand of All", a universe entirely consisting of narratives, yet it seems just as real as the actual one. Nobody No-One calls the Doctor out:
    Nobody No-One: How do you know if you yourself haven't been travelling through a universe only consisting of written language and sound for decades?
  • Zagreus has the Eighth Doctor see alternate universes and refer to other parts of the Doctor Who Expanded Universe, the Eighth Doctor Adventures, Doctor Who Magazine, and Death Comes to Time.
• Sonic and Tails R features Ryan Drummond reprising his role as Sonic a full 16 years after his last official game (2004's Sonic Advance 3). Thus, it's only fitting that Sonic's first line in the series (directed at Eggman in-universe) is "Did you miss me?"

Comic Strips

• Candorville takes a darker-than-usual approach to this, as shown on the quotes page.
• FoxTrot is all over this trope.
  • As a sterling example, the last set of dailies is Roger and Andy talking about how, after 19 years, a "major cartoonist" is moving his strip to be Sunday Strip-only. They even suggest ways in which said cartoonist could go out and thank his fans. Andy even gets in a good Lampshade Hanging in response to one of Roger's suggestions: "And break the fourth wall? Not likely."
  • Not even the move to Sunday Strip-only stopped these from coming. The strip for July 18, 2010 depicted Jason trying to decide which costume to wear for Comic-Con; showing him dressed up as Pikachu, Gandalf, Batman, Chewbacca, Mario, and a generic TRON character. When Peter suggests he goes as a Newspaper Comic character, Jason complains that he doesn't have a costume for that.
  • One example is a strip that was released around the time that Attack of the Clones was released; Jason goes to see the movie, and when he gets home, Paige asks how he liked it:
    Jason: Come on, Paige, what are the odds of a geek like me saying anything negative?
    Paige: I'd say something like the chances of George Lucas letting a cartoonist see the movie early so he could write about it in more than vague, noncommittal terms.
    Jason: ...Well, I wouldn't go THAT far.
    Paige: Okay, so there's an atom-sized chance that you didn't like it.
• Sally Forth had Ted declare that they shouldn't do a "middle-aged couple gets overwhelmed by social media plot." When asked why he said "plot," Ted answered, "Sometimes I like to imagine my life as a series of week-long story arcs, and I want each one to be gold." Since then, both Ted and Hillary have been doing more and more leaning, sometimes getting pretty close to No Fourth Wall. Sally herself, and Hil's friend Faye, do their best to resist and keep the strip grounded.

Fan Works

• In the 6th chapter of the Time Skip Star vs. the Forces of Evil fanfic Hekapoo Vs. The Legion Of Affliction, this exchange happens after Meteora mistakes Hekapoo and Kelly as a couple:
  Kelly: I'm...really sorry, Meteora, but I'm aromantic, which means that I'm not really into romantic desire or attraction.
  Hekapoo: Yeah, sorry if we uh...have to tell you the truth about this. Trust me, I confessed to her once and while it was rough, we're still great buds, and it's best for us to to be this way.
  Star: And hey, maybe when you're older, you could write fan-fiction about them falling in love and having a cute life together. [Star, Hekapoo and Kelly wink to the audience]
  Meteora: Wait, who did you wink at?
  Hekapoo: Oh, uh, you.
  Star: You, silly.
  Kelly: Right at ya, girl.
• Ace Combat: The Equestrian War: Sky Eye says that "the game is over" for Red Cyclone when Fortress Intimidation is destroyed by Rainbow Dash and Firefly.
• Return to Krocodile Isle: Krusha's speculation of where King K. Rool went is that a "higher power" forced the Kremlings into hiding because they were "unfit to continue coexisting" with the Kongs.
• In The Familiar of Zero/Spec Ops: The Line crossover Zulu Squad no Tsukaima, the OC Sgt. Crosby does a lot of this, since he is an elite mook from a military First-Person Shooter in a magical world of tsundere and yandere.
• In Oh God, Not Again!, when presented with a headline reading "Harry Potter and the Pentawizard Playoffs", Harry muses that it sounds like the title of a book...
• In the Bleach fic Hogyoku ex Machina, Orihime comments on Ichigo's adventures with "We could serialize them, maybe! Shonen Jump would take the manga!"
• Another Bleach fic, Winter War, has one character musing that "sometimes the princess had to save the dragon, and sometimes she had to save the prince as well, and sometimes the princess and the dragon and the knight all teamed up together and went to argue with the person who’d written the story and complain about how they never got anything interesting and new to do." Of course, it's also from Orihime's POV.
• Code Prime: When the Black Knights confront Sky-Byte, Quillfire, and Springload, Tamaki is the most perplexed and asks this question.
  Tamaki: What the hell is this?! Some kind of kids' Saturday morning cartoon?!
• A rather gory Digimon fic, The Interloper, has Christopher Van Numen regarding what had happened in that very day and how it all felt too perfect to be just a simple coincidence, all the while he infiltrates the DSI's R&D Wing, his internal monologue eventually going:
  "Were they nothing more but characters, whose capacities for self-determination were undermined by an unfeeling writer—an omnipotent author that had nothing better to do except enthused prostitution to the ideals of entertainment and fame?"
• In the Death Note AU The Faceless (Disguise of Carnivorism) Light is skeptical about having Naomi Penber, a woman, serving among his soldiers, complaining that she might get pregnant and slow them down. Naomi counters that there was more of a chance of Light getting pregnant than her.
• Distortions (Symphogear): Yumi, is talking to Hibiki about the recent events and how they feel like a fanfic to an anime.
• During the battle against Frieza in Dragon Ball Z: Dynasty, there's this gem by Frieza himself that lampshades his infamous... perception of time:
  Frieza: I cannot risk accidentally ending one of your miserable lives too early. With how angry you've made me... I plan to give each of you ten minutes.
  Piccolo: You think you can end this in ten minutes!?
  Frieza: Oh my word, you poor Namekian. You don't seem to realize...
  Piccolo: Realize what!?
  Frieza: A mere five minutes with me is almost like an eternity~!
• In Chapter 6 of the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfiction The Apprentice, the Student, and the Charlatan, Celestia and Luna are passing on backstory to protagonists Nova Shine and Twilight Sparkle about the antagonist. Bearing in mind that Nova and Twilight are dealing with romantic issues of their own, this little gem shows up.
  "Well, obviously," Nova commented dryly, glancing at the wall with the hearth, the wall with the door, and the wall with the window as he attempted to organize his thought. "The stallion likes the mare, the mare likes the stallion. The mare is open about it, the stallion keeps it to himself, leading to all this unnecessary drama and tension. Really, this story just writes itself, doesn't it?" he asked, leaning on the fourth wall.
• Medicated: While they're waiting for the portal to Amphibia to activate, some of the humans pass the time by talking about how someone's fanfic was reposted on another website without the authors' permission and they should address it by making the characters talk about it, which happened to this fanfic.
• In My Stupid Reality a Death Note AU where L is trying to make Light his successor, Light tries to get out of The Program by deliberately failing the psych exam by pretending to be a homicidal maniac who believes all criminals should die. Unfortunately he failed too well and L knew he was faking.
• In one entry in GentlemanJ's fanfic series "The Journey of Graves," the title character finds out about a gentlemen's club (one that's PG-rated, tops) started because the men of Ponyville feel like extras in comparison to the Mane Six, with Graves saying that he doesn't exactly feel that way. Anyone who watched the series knows the guys are right, and anyone who reads the fics knows the metaphysical reason why Graves doesn't feel that way, because he's the main character of the fic.
• Blind by Obsidian Sickle has a part where Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke are on the way to a client and go meta. During the trip Naruto (who's taken writing as a hobby) talks about how he's writing a story but is having problems. He says he wants to avoid just skipping parts but wonders what to write while characters travel saying "If they travel, it'll be boring to just say they're moving then skip to them at the destination". Sakura suggests putting in dialogue or show Character Development to spice it up.
• Fantasy of Utter Ridiculousness:
  • Alice Margatroid demonstrates one of her Spell Cards to Coop and the others. Jamie wonders afterward where the creepy music came from.
  • After the protagonists return to Jersey City, Jamie wonders how the residents of Gensokyo—which is a melting pot of Japanese mythology—were speaking perfect English.
  • Marisa makes a claim later on that she and Reimu both become younger while incidents are in progress, trying to explain why they both look like adolescents when logically speaking they should at least be in their early 20s. Reisen tries and fails to call her out on this.
• Plan 7 of 9 from Outer Space. Buster Kincaid accidentally swallows a blue pill and realises they're all living in an artificial reality created by machines — thousands of personal computers owned by Fan Fic writers who need to get a life.
• Hivefled features, among other things, characters commenting on the way they're drawn.
• Despite having No Fourth Wall, Calvin & Hobbes: The Series ends with the Five-Man Band looking back on their adventures, providing an outlet for the writers to look back on the series as well.
• In Pokéumans, Brandon's fight with Zeke the Charizard is going badly, not helped by being fought in a room full of lava trickling down the walls. In his narration, after the fourth or so time he burns himself, he remarks that he felt like "some jerk was making me do this for comic relief".
• Tiberium Wars pulls an incredibly meta line when you consider it's a novelisation of a Real-Time Strategy game:
  That's how war has been fought since Stalin rolled into the Allies a century ago. You point, you click, and they die. It's how it works.
• The Powers of Harmony went on hiatus for two years due to various issues in the author's real life. The first chapter posted after the hiatus ended has Rainbow Dash, whose group is waiting to meet the dragon lord Bahamut, complain how it feels like they've been waiting for years.
• A Trigun and Gungrave crossover fanfic, Wintertime Business, has Vash wondering why Brandon and Mika look like the people he knows in his era and ends up assuming that nobody there knows why. In truth, both series are created by Yasuhiro Nightow, and Brandon/Grave and Mika look like Legato and Meryl respectively.
• The cast of the Contractually Obligated Chaos series don't usually lean on the fourth wall so much as they sometimes outright bulldoze it. (Given the source material, this is natural enough.) But there's one specific example in Sleeping Beetle which mixes this trope with Mythology Gag. Lydia, who has a canonical ability to somewhat communicate with animals, dryly remarks that this makes her an "actual Disney princess." This prompts Beetlejuice to ask what that makes him, to which she replies that he's obviously "something from a Tim Burton movie."
  • Later, in Bug Princess and the Seven Months, the author ended up taking an unintended Series Hiatus and left chapter four hanging for a little over three years. When the nonsense resumed, a little Self-Deprecation was in order courtesy of original character Hugo, who remarks, "It feels like it's been years since we last spoke!"
• The Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic fanfic Take Up My Sword ends with Hakuei being painfully possessed by Arba . The last lines of the story are Arba doing a mix of this and Evil Gloating.
  Arba: Your story is over, and now? You are mine.
• Invoked in the Star Trek: The Next Generation/Firefly crossover fic Lost in the Woods when Mal Reynolds first sees Deanna Troi and assumes that she's the Enterprise equivalent of a Companion, referencing how Inara and Deanna were basically intended to be the sex appeal for their respective shows.
• Lost in Camelot features Bo (Lost Girl) arriving in Camelot early in the events of the second season of Merlin (2008). After she forms a relationship with Merlin and Morgana, when Bo learns about Morgana's past attempt to assassinate Uther she compares it to the idea that they're talking about a TV show where she missed the first season, which is essentially exactly what happened. Later on, Uther declares his intention to arrange a marriage between Morgana and Prince Urien of Mercia; in various translations of the original Arthurian myths, Morgan le Fay was married to King Urien.
• Because I Knew You features a minor example when Peter Parker and Wanda Maximoff introduce themselves to each other using aliases, Peter having adopted a new name since Strange's spell erased his identity (Spider-Man: No Way Home) and Wanda making contact with him to investigate the spell after she was able to protect herself from it. While Peter's alias of "Ben" is an obvious reference to his uncle, Wanda is calling herself "Lizzie", which can only be a reference to Elizabeth Olsen.
• This crops up repeatedly in the Dragon Age: Inquisition series Twice Upon an Age. In the Dragon Age games, Varric often talks about writing his books and is in fact a well-known author, so when he makes remarks in the fic about writing a book about what's happening, it seems like a continuation of that gag. However, it goes beyond this when the reader remembers that Varric is credited as the editor of the fanfic. Throughout the entire series, Varric inserts repeated editor's notes into the narrative; these do everything from explaining things to the reader down to outright scolding the author for something. Since the implication is that he's adding these notes while the story is written, and he's therefore actively involved in deciding what gets included in the story, the instances of him talking about writing the story come across as this.
• Pokémon Reset Bloodlines does this every once in a while:
  • During its first encounter with Ash, MissingNo notes that in the previous timeline, Ash and his friends lived in a near-eternal state of happiness and joy, "like they were in a children's cartoon".
  • In Chapter 24, Anabel, who has recently joined Ash's travel group, thinks to herself that Ash radiates a cheerfulness and determination that she finds charming, "like someone out of those long running animated shows".
  • A sidestory centered on "the Dude" ^note  The guy who teaches you how to catch Pokémon in the Gen II games has him remark that even though someone might be a "nobody", it doesn't mean that they can't have adventures or their own story to tell, which is a comment on how many Characters-of-the-Day became Ascended Extras and starred in their own stories, forming an Expanded Universe.
• A few times in Traveler, Ash notes that his situation feels like "the part where a story would fade out".
• Harry in A Discordant Note detests the concept of destiny, saying that if life were a book, destiny would be a plot contrivance used to make things happen a certain way.
• Kirby Of The Stars The After Story:
  • This exchange from Chapter 1 where the Kirby anime is concerned:
    Dedede: And [Fumu's] saying that like a Demon Beast showed up every week! How many times could it have been anyway?!
    Bun: (under his breath) Close to one hundred, I think...
  • In Chapter 11, Alphonse goes on a brief rant about constantly unresolved romantic resolutions in fanfictions, to the confusion of everyone else present.
• The Kung Fu Panda fanfic A Different Lesson has a brilliant send-up of this trope via a bookseller the heroes visit, where a scroll is for sale which tells the story of the movie. Thanks to Gossip Evolution, willful misinterpretation, and a certain amount of Shout Outs to Fanon, Po is turned into a Fake Ultimate Hero who took out Tai Lung all by himself while the Furious Five did next to nothing (the fight at the bridge becomes a "footnote"); Viper only cares about makeup and pretty clothes, Monkey is mute, while Shifu's Cynical Mentor and Jerkass tendencies are lampshaded; the filmmakers' ploy with making Tai Lung appear to be a mindless beast before The Reveal of Ian McShane's voice is also referenced by making the snow leopard a drooling savage with Hulk Speak, and... Tigress is a man.
• In crossover Echoes of Yesterday, Taylor is feeling disturbed after learning that Supergirl is a real character in another universe, and eve more disturbed after being told she's probably a fictional character in a different universe, because who would want to read about her extraordinarily depressing life?
  "S-so you're not just a cape. You're a fictional character brought to life?"
  "Yes and no." Kara said. "I am fictional to your world, but my world is very real. There are many possibilities in the multiverse, Taylor. Fiction and reality blur the lines when you travel between worlds. Yours is not the first world I've encountered where we existed as stories, and I guarantee there are worlds where the lives of your people are recorded and told as stories of their own."
  Dear god, what sick twisted person would want to read something that dark and depressing?
• Fire Emblem: Three Houses: Fifth Path: While Byleth doesn't have the same Fourth Wall Breaking skills as Sothis, she does get a leaning moment at the end of the prologue.
  Byleth: (Well, Here we are. It all begins here.)
  Sothis: I thought it began when you traveled back in time.
  Byleth:(That was more like a prologue. This is the real beginning.)
  Sothis: If you say so.
• Mega Man: Defender of the Human Race: When Bass arrives to attack the Mega Man Killers for harming Roll, Punk laughs at it and calls his reaction "your own personal fanfic shipping dream".
• The Resident Evil fanfic The Progenitor Chronicles: the MC and Rebecca come across a room with a map of the building they're in and a typewriter sitting on some crates. In-game this would be a classic save room. In-universe, it's completely out of place and the MC wonders why he's just found a typewriter in 2016.
• In Lincoln's Memories: At the end of "Nothing But the Tooth", Luan Loud says, as her reason for keeping the video of Lincoln's three-hour cry, "You never know. Maybe he'll want to play embarrassing videos of himself seven years from now to make up for something he did."
• Varric has fun with this in Skyhold Academy Yearbook. During the installment Disorienuptials, which centers around his wedding, he remarks that when he writes about the wedding in an eventual book, "I’ll skip the last couple days before the wedding. The suspense might kill the readers." This comment is the last sentence in chapter 7; chapter 8 jumps directly to the morning of the wedding, meaning the story really does skip the last few days before the wedding.
• My Dream Is Yours: According to Dr. O, the reason that Olympia, an Odd Squad historian, doesn't know about Precinct 13579's first Dream-Transfer-itis epidemic is because the agents couldn't find a way to work mathematics into solving the epidemic.
• Naru-Hina Chronicles:
  • In Chapter 21, Hinata notices Sai and comments that it's been a while since the last time she saw him. In this case, this is a reference to the fact that Chapter 21 is the first time Sai made any appearance in NHC.
  • Naruto and Shikamaru ask Tsunade about the results regarding some thieves that are seemingly Jiraiya and Asuma. The next few panels show Tsunade taking her time before answering. Both Naruto and Shikamaru are annoyed by that, with the former complaining that she's just keeping them in suspense. Their reactions reflect the readers who wanted mattwilson83 (the creator of NHC) to show the results already.
• In New Chance, Naruto met his father (still alive) in the first chapter. Chapter 2 starts with Naruto waking up and thinking it one of the many dreams he has had where "his parents were still alive, sometimes only one, or the Kyuubi didn't attack Konoha.", to name a few, not realizing how many Fan Fic premises he's listing.
• Penny Saves Paldea:
  • The first Team Star boss Juliana defeats is Mela; this confuses Penny because Mela is only the second-weakest boss on the team, with Giacomo being the least powerful of the five. This is a nod to how Pokémon Scarlet and Violet players thought Mela would be the Warm-Up Boss of "Starfall Street" due to her being the only boss shown in prerelease material, when Giacomo is supposed to be fought first as his levels are the lowest.
  • Arven interprets the tone of Team Star's whispers about his condition as being "as clear as a thirty-minute day." The day/night cycle in Scarlet and Violet has half an hour each of daytime and nighttime.
• Percy Jackson: Spirits: When Percy first hears about bending and the Avatar, he notes that it sounds like something out of a cartoon. Later, after telling Iroh and company his story, he notes that his life sounds like something out of an adventure novel.
• In So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, A-D'oh, Bart and Lisa watch the last episode of Krusty's show and Lisa notes that the finale of a show that has run so long cannot possibly please everyone.
• There Was Once an Avenger From Krypton: The big reveal in Chapter 34 of The Girl Who Could Knock Out the Hulk allows the author to get pretty meta about the whole concept of this fic series. Specifically, Doom and original Reed splicing things from other universes into the MCU in order to try and make it harder for Thanos to harm Earth is both a reflection of how the author keeps finding new franchises that they like and finding ways to insert them into the Kryptonverse, and an In-Universe justification for the Massive Multiplayer Crossover nature of the setting. Doom and Reed's explanation of all this to Kara also gets very meta in places, like in describing Kal-El's role in the DC universe and why he didn't get sent to the Kryptonverse instead of Kara. The chapter can also be seen as meta in regards to the author's views of their previous attempts at writing for the Kryptonverse, as their previous fics that were meant to kick off the storytelling multiverse were dropped and are shown as prior failed iterations of the universe that Reed and Doom show Kara.
• Throw Away Your Mask: Minato occasionally justifies his actions by saying it raises his social stats, such as saying Chagall Cafe's coffee makes him more charming, or that Edogawa's strange concotions give him courage.
• In the To Love Ru fanfic To-Love-Carnage Rito and Yui have a conversation about Fan Fiction that heavily implies they know they're in a fan fiction. Citing Fan Fiction tropes and hoping "God" won't write them out of the story.
• True Potential:
  • Rōshi is an author who has written several novels in his life. When he ends up fighting several Otogakure shinobi, he thinks that these shinobi aren't anything special and are "nothing more than 'filler characters', waiting to be killed by the power of the author."
  • After Sasori and Deidara bring Kabuto to the hideout in the Land of the Rivers^notethe one where Shukaku was extracted from Gaara at the beginning of Shippūden, the latter replies with "Really? A rock blocking a secret entrance? That sounds like something out of a kid's manga".
• In Manehattan's Lone Guardian, Bastion and Gates—expies of Locus and Felix—suit up in new armor. Afterward, one of their fellow agents wonders if anyone else is hearing an ominous guitar. This is strongly implied to be "Soul Clef XI", the author's selected background music for the scene.

Films — Animation

• The ending for The Boxtrolls has Mr. Pickles and Mr. Trout discussing how neatly everything has wrapped up, as if it was a story, "Assuming we're in one." The stinger goes on to have the pair debate their existence and whether all their actions are controlled by invisible giants. As the discussion continues, the audience sees the sped up movements of a stop-motion animator flitting about a miniature set, manipulating them both.
• Coco: After Héctor changes a profane word from a song he's performing to Chicharrón, the latter complains that the resulting line is not true to the song, to which Héctor states "There are children present.", despite Miguel being the only child with them. This means he may be referring to children in the audience.
• Frozen II: During the song "Some Things Never Change", Olaf faces the camera as he sings the line "You all look a little bit older", as if he's acknowledging the six-year gap between Frozen and its sequel. Also may count as Fourth Wall Psych since some children (which Olaf could have been addressing in universe) appear from behind the camera.
• In Incredibles 2, Tony Rydinger tells Dicker how much Violet had "changed". The scene cuts to the recreation of the last scene of her and Tony from the first film with the new higher definition rendering of the characters. This results in showing very clearly that Violet really has changed.
• The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part: Finn and Bianca's mom comments "I'm not the bad guy in this story, I'm just an amusing side character." It serves as both a cute way to say she's just trying to make her kids stop fighting, and a direct reference to her being an amusing Maya Rudolph cameo rather than the film's Big Bad.
• When Gopher first appears in The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, he says, "I'm not in the book, but I'm at your service!" "Not in the book" can mean "I'm not listed in the phone book", but he's also alluding to his status as a Canon Foreigner—he was invented for the movies, so he isn't in the book.
• In Moana, when Moana objects to Maui calling her "princess", his retort is a tongue-in-cheek summation of the Disney Princess franchise: "If you wear a dress and have an animal sidekick, you're a princess!"
• Rango has the title character ask the Spirit of the West why he has to go back to town and save the day. The Spirit's response is "No man can walk out on his own story." This one might not count, as the plot and characterizations in Rango are heavily based on the concept of reality vs fiction. The Spirit of the West's line is a reference to how Rango has been jarred into reality after spending the majority of the movie treating his predicament as if it's a movie or play, and is a deliberate line to remind him that life is still a story to be told, even if it is deadly real.
• In SCOOB! (which is rated PG), Shaggy tells Blue Falcon to drop some F-bombs (as in, "Falcon bombs"), but Blue Falcon misunderstands him and tells him to keep it PG.
• In The Stinger for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, a mysterious figure asks another what he's missed; after all, he's only been gone for two hours. The movie, of course, is just under two hours long, and the mystery man is Spider-Man 2099, one of the spider-characters absent from the roster featured in the rest of the film.
• In Space Jam, when Bill Murray shows up for the climax as a borderline Deus ex Machina, Daffy asks him how he got there and Murray replies, "The producer's a friend of mine." Either Daffy is questioning how Murray got into the Looney Tunes world, and the answer is that Murray knows the producer of Looney Tunes, or they're raising the very valid question of what Bill Murray is doing in a Looney Tunes/NBA crossover movie in the first place, in which case the producer in question would be the film's producer, Ivan Reitman - who is indeed a friend of Murray's. Judging from the disgusted reactions from Daffy (and the leader of the Monstars), they took the latter interpretation.
• The Super Mario Bros. Movie: After Mario and Luigi watch their Kitschy Local Commercial, Luigi describes it this way: "That is not a commercial. That is cinema". The brothers' mother also says during the dinner scene that their commercial is so good, it belongs in a movie theather.
• At the end of The Sword in the Stone, as Merlin is going on to Wart aka. King Arthur about the legacy he will leave, he notes that "they might even make a motion picture about [Arthur]".

Films — Live-Action

• Annie:
  • The film's very first scene is built around saying "Our Annie is not the Annie you know and expect", which alludes to the reaction to the title character's Race Lift.
  • A quick gag after "I Don't Need Anything But You" has New Yorkers watching the Stacks and Annie story unfold on the news. A man comments, "If he keeps up singing and dancing like that, there's no way he'd've won anyway."
  • Ms. Hannigan has a tendency to do this around musical numbers.
• Austin Powers: "You know what's remarkable is how much England looks in no way like Southern California."
• In Bulldog Drummond Drummond hears Phyllis's story and says, "You must admit it's rather like a penny thriller." Bulldog Drummond was an adaptation of the Bulldog Drummond series of penny thriller novels.
• Near the end of The Compleat Al, Al's (fictional) director, producer, and record executive discuss plans to finish the video and wrap up production, just in time for Al to walk in and start throwing out some more outlandish ideas. Cut to the music video for "Dare To Be Stupid," which incorporates all of the ideas just discussed.
• In Contact, a film making money for Hollywood by portraying aliens, the main character Ellie says "Beg for some of that Hollywood money! They've been making money off aliens for years."
• In The Dark Knight, the Joker drops the below line. While Heath Ledger's Joker only appeared in that one movie, the Joker as a character and his rivalry with Batman continues to be reimagined and depicted in various Batman media.
  The Joker: I think you and I are destined to do this forever.
• In Deathstalker II: Duel of the Titans, the opening has Sultana exclaiming, "I'll have my revenge... and Deathstalker, too!" Cue title screen. Didn't Family Guy make a similar joke?
• Lots of this in the latter portions of Deathtrap, after Cliff reveals that he is writing a play called Deathtrap, based on the Fright Deathtrap that Cliff and Sidney perpetrated in the first part of the film.
  Cliff: Everything we did to convince Myra she was seeing a real murder would have the same effect on the audience.
• One of the funniest moments in Ed Wood comes when Ed asks his DP which dress he prefers, the red one or the green one. The colour blind DP asks which the red one is — something the audience might also be wondering, as the entire film is in black and white!
• In F9, after Dom managed to capture Jakob, we cut to a frustrated Otto, with Cipher telling him that "if this was a movie, This Is the Part Where... the villain suffers a minor setback."
• A scene near the end of The Fifth Estate shows Julian being interviewed during his stay at the Ecuadorian embassy. At one point, he gives his thoughts on the upcoming WikiLeaks movie — the very movie he is in!
• In Hellboy (2019), when the protagonists talk about some villain not being around anymore because of Hellboy, Alice quips that this probably means the guy won't be putting in an appearance in the sequel.
• In High School Musical 3, during the "I Want It All" sequence, Sharpay and Ryan briefly sing a line about how "sequels pay better".
• In His Girl Friday editor Walter Burns describes Bruce Baldwin as "He looks like that fellow in the movies - Ralph Bellamy"; Baldwin is being played by Ralph Bellamy.
• Home Sweet Home Alone: One early scene in the movie features the characters watching a sci-fi remake of "Angels with Filthy Souls", the fake gangster movie from the original Home Alone, with one character saying it's garbage, and he doesn't know why they are always trying to remake the classics, as they are never as good as the originals. (The movie itself is a pseudo-remake of the original Home Alone).
• James Bond:
  • After Tracy leaves George Lazenby's Bond in the prologue of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, he says "This never happened to the other fellow."
  • In Spectre, Oberhauser's introductory line, "Welcome, James. It's been a long time. And finally, here we are. What took you so long?", is as much about Bond and Oberhauser/Ernst Stavro Blofeld being reunited as it is about SPECTRE returning to the Bond franchise for the first time since 1971's Diamonds Are Forever after decades of complicated lawsuits.
• In Jeepers Creepers, our heroes have just decided to go back and see if the creepy guy was really hiding a body. The sister comments to her brother, "You know the part in scary movies when somebody does something really stupid, and everybody hates them for it? This is it."
• The predicament the park managers face at the beginning of Jurassic World is the fact that attendance has been gradually decreasing as people come to take living dinosaurs for granted. This mirrors how in real life the CGI revolution sparked by this franchise in The '90s has resulted in big budget special effects no longer being the major, automatic audience-attractor they used to be beforehand.
• In Kingsman: The Secret Service, Galahad and Valentine discuss Bond movies (not by name). Valentine clearly catches on to Harry's cover, and when he confronts Galahad later, Valentine says it's like a scene in a Bond movie (not by name), where he explains his plan, then comes up with some absurd deathtrap and Galahad escapes. Galahad says it sounds good. Valentine just says "This isn't that kind of movie" and shoots him in the head. At the climax, where Eggsy kills Valentine, Valentine asks him if he's going to come up with a Bond One-Liner (not by name). Eggsy just says, "It's like you said to Harry; this ain't that kinda movie."
• Kung Fu Hustle: Early on, the main character, played by writer/director Stephen Chow, has a soccer ball kicked his way, does a few tricks with it, then flattens it while shouting, "No more soccer!" This is in reference to the fact that Chow decided to make this movie rather than a much-requested sequel to his previous film Shaolin Soccer.
• In Little Women (2019), Jo's editor Mr Dashwood says of the protagonist of Jo's autobiographical novel, "I don't see why she didn't just marry the neighbor." This is a nod to how large parts of the Little Women fandom (both historic and contemporary) wanted Jo and her neighbor Laurie to get married, and were upset when they didn't.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers features a scene that was not in the book where Faramir captures Frodo and Sam and takes them to Osgiliath with him. While there, Sam looks back on their journey and says "This is all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here."
• Magnolia: "This is like a movie, and this is the part of the movie where you help me out."
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Iron Man 2:
    Tony: I didn't expect to see you here...
    Rhodey: (now played by Don Cheadle) Well, it's me, and I'm here, so get over it and move on!
  • Iron Man 3 opens with Tony Stark opening with explaining his story in such a way that he is talking to the audience. In a post credits scene, it turns out that he is actually talking to Bruce Banner (fast asleep by the way!) in a therapy session, despite Banner's protests that he isn't a therapist!
    • Also, Killian speaking to President Ellis: "I just needed a reason to kill you that would play well on TV."
  • Many had suspected that in Avengers: Age of Ultron that Captain America could actually pick up Mjolnir but chose not to as to not ruin a fun game and/or upstage Thor. Come the Final Battle of Avengers: Endgame, Cap calls it and wields it. Thor's reaction is a boisterious I Knew It!, echoing many moviegoers' reactions.
    • Also in the latter film, Tony's recorded goodbye speech to Morgan says not everyone gets a happy ending; his, and the film's, is a Bittersweet Ending. He also goes " what a world. Universe, now." and says the sheer size of the universe would be somewhat surprising to himself ten years earlier.
  • At the end for the second trailer for Captain America: Civil War, an annoyed Iron Man declares, "All right, I've run out of patience. UNDEROOS!" Cue the first appearance of the MCU version of Spider-Man, who takes Cap's shield, binds his wrists with webbing, then lands perfectly on a tarmac cart. For extra leaning, the spoilered character's first words? "Hey, everyone."
  • The Stinger at the end of Spider-Man: Homecoming isn't a preview of the much-anticipated Avengers: Infinity War or anything, it's a cheesy PSA like the ones Peter and his classmates watched during the film, in which Captain America appears to discuss the importance of patience even though it isn't always rewarded, leaving you to wonder why you wasted your time. Cap also breaks character and asks someone off-camera, "How many more of these?", referencing the sheer number of entries in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
  • As the critic Moviebob notes, the villain of each Avengers movie has an evil plan that echoes the public perception of superhero movies at the time of each film's release:
    • Loki believes the superheroes will clash and not be able to work as a team.
    • Ultron believes that superheroes do more harm than good to the broader cultural landscape and must be eliminated.
    • Thanos believes that there are simply too many superheroes and plans to kill half of them.
    • 2014 Thanos just wants to end the universe. Not unlike how many people just wanted the MCU to end with Endgame.
  • In Captain Marvel, Vers is ambushed by a Skrull. In the next scene, she's suddenly a human woman on Earth named Carol, and an offscreen voice asks, "Am I the only one that's confused?" From there, it's revealed that Vers' abductors have hooked her up to a Mind Reading Machine that's displaying her twenty-odd years of missing memories out of order and out of context, and they're all just as baffled as the audience.
  • Spider-Man: Far From Home may just win the prize as far as this trope goes:
    • At the beginning, Jason wonders aloud, "Are the Avengers even, like, a thing anymore?" and other characters regularly wonder where the other superheroes are. At the time of the film's release, Marvel had yet to announce any future releases.
    • Betty mentions that everyone has to move on to a new "phase" of their lives early on; this movie is either the final movie in the MCU's third phase or first in Phase 4. In the movie's final minutes, there is a construction sign that reads "We're excited to show you what's next", above a four-phase roadmap. Phases 1, 2, and 3 are complete, with Phase 4 being a question mark.
    • Nearly everything about Mysterio is a nod to Marvel Studios' film-making process and established formula. His impressive superhero suit is usually CGI and he's actually wearing a goofy motion-capture suit except for when he makes public appearances, during which he rarely wears his mask or helmet because it would keep him from charming the person he's talking to. He also has recruited a writer tasked with making the outlandish events he stages sound as if they have some basis in reality; the MCU has regularly been applauded for similarly recontextualizing and reconstructing more outré ideas from the comics.
• In The Matrix Reloaded, halfway through the Burly Brawl, the fight cuts to an Agent being copied over by Agent Smith. After being transformed, the two clones look at the massive fight happening in front of them for a brief moment, some fans have however interpreted this as the clones staring at the viewer, possibly preparing to assimilate them too.
• Subverted in the Metal Gear Fan Film Metal Gear Solid: Philanthropy. Pierre teases Snake by saying that he's so cool he'd "make a good video game character, no shit — a Nintendo platformer, I'd say!"
• In The Misfits (1961), Perce, who had an accident a while back, assures his mother over the phone that "My face is fine. It's all healed up, just as good as new." Montgomery Clift had been in a serious car accident in 1956 that scarred his face and damaged his pretty-boy good looks.
• In The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Evey became famous for writing novels based on her own adventures. In an autograph signing of her latest book, just before the camera cuts to Maria Bello instead of Rachel Weisz:
  Woman: Mrs. O'Connell, is it true that the Scarlet O' Kiefe character is based on you?
  Evey: No. I can honestly say she is a completely different person.
• The Danish film Nattevagten ("Nightwatch") ends on this note, with characters discussing the events that have happened and noting that if it were a film it would be called "The Night Guard". And at the end of the movie, one of the characters would say "No" at his own wedding. He does.
• In None Shall Escape—a 1944 film about a trial against a Nazi officer following the end of the then-ongoing second world war, told via flashbacks from the points of view of the witnesses at the trial—the judge's final remarks are clearly addressed to the audience just as much as to the people in the courtroom.
  "Men and women of the United Nations, all of you—you are the jury. It will be up to you to finally judge all criminals and to determine the penalties that shall be meted out to them. For this will only be your war if the final victory brings you justice and a true and everlasting people's peace."
• Daniel's card trick in the opening of Now You See Me is filmed from the perspective of the woman he's showing it to. Not only does she play into it, a large portion of the viewers are also going to end up picking the same card.
• In Ocean's Twelve, Tess Ocean (played by Julia Roberts) decides to pretend she's Julia Roberts, since she looks so similar, and runs into Bruce Willis (as himself), who thinks it's her.
• The Only Son: Ryosuke takes his mom Tsune to see a movie, an Austrian musical called Lover Divine. As the lead actress sings a song, Ryosuke leans over to Tsune and says "This is called a talkie." The Only Son was Yasujiro Ozu's first talkie.
• Orphan: First Kill: Some moments alluding to Leena's true age also function as Lampshade Hanging about Isabelle Fuhrman now being an adult woman the way Leena is, with characters describing her as having "grown up" and looking like a "little lady".
• This line from Prometheus uttered by David as he holds a drop of the Engineers' organic sludge:
  David: Big things have small beginnings.
• Revenge (2017) ends with Jen suddenly turning around to look directly at the camera right before the credits roll.
• Happens accidentally in The Room (2003). When Claudette discovers Mike and Michelle, who are introduced as they inexplicably come into the apartment to make out and eat chocolate, she asks, "What are these characters doing here?" The audience is probably wondering the exact same thing.
• At the end of the television movie Santa Hunters, Alex tells the camera that it is time to put the cameras away and then yells "Cut!" The scene changes.
• In Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, there is a brief scene where two guys are talking about a comic book version being better or worse than a movie version of something.
• In The Seven Year Itch:
  • Richard shows his wife (herself appearing in an Imagine Spot) a few alleged flashbacks of other women throwing themselves at him, only for her to scold him for having an overactive imagination: "Lately you've begun to imagine in Cinemascope with stereophonic sound."
  • The following exchange about a character played by Marilyn Monroe:
    Tom: What blonde in the kitchen?
    Richard: Wouldn't you like to know! Maybe it's Marilyn Monroe!
• At the end of Shanghai Knights, Roy suggests to Chon Wang (played by Jackie Chan) that they go to California to act in "moving pictures", particularly kung-fu action films.
• SHAZAM!:
  • There is a scene which shows a young boy playing with toy Batman and Superman dolls clashing them against each other, only for having Shazam and Dr. Sivana clashing outside his window making a huge BOOM. Which causes him to drop the dolls in amazement.
    CinemaSins: The exact reaction as the execs at Warner Bros after seeing the public's response to this movie.
  • Another scene has the characters admitting they can't come up with a name for Billy Batson's alter ego, a reference to the fact that the Captain Marvel name is not be confused with Marvel's Captain Marvel.
• The Star Trek films:
  • Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country was the final film to feature the entire Star Trek: The Original Series cast, who were well aware of it, showing throughout the movie. In the last scene, when the USS Excelsior, now under the command of Sulu, departs, Chekov says "So, this is goodbye...".
  • The trailer for Star Trek (2009) has a line where Nero says, straight at the camera, "The wait is over". This line is not in the film.
  • Star Trek Into Darkness: Chekov's look of alarm when told to put on a Red Shirt. There's even vaguely foreboding music playing.
• Star Wars:
  • A New Hope around the 1:30 hour mark has the heroes, after rescuing Princess Leia and securing the Death Star plans, heading off to the Rebel base to deliver them; It's then when Leia says "It's not over yet". She's right, the movie still has 30 minutes left to depict the battle of Yavin.
  • In Attack of the Clones, in the scene where Jar Jar enters and greets Anakin, he subtly smiles at the camera, as a nod to his hatedom.
  • The Force Awakens starts with this line from Lor San Tekka (in-universe, referring to the MacGuffin he's handing to Poe):
  This will begin to make things right.
  • The Last Jedi:
    • When Kylo Ren reveals to Rey that her parents were no one special, he adds that "You have no place in this story."
    • When Kylo he refuses to leave Ahch-To with Rey, Luke asks her (paraphrased): "Do you think I'm going to walk out with a laser sword and face down the whole First Order by myself? What did you think was going to happen here?" Many fans came into the film expecting Luke to do exactly that. And at the end of the day, he does, but not exactly in the way you'd expect.
• In Terminator Genisys, the T-800 frequently remarks that he's "old, but not obsolete"; This seems to reflect on the aging action star actor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and his suitability for the role.
• Top Secret! leans on the Fourth Wall, which promptly shatters:
  Nick: Look, I'm not the first guy who fell in love with a girl he met in a restaurant who turned out to be the daughter of a kidnapped scientist only to lose her to a childhood lover who she'd last seen on a deserted island and who turned out fifteen years later to be the leader of the French underground.
  Hillary: I know, it ... it all sounds like some bad movie.
  [Nick and Hillary both look at the camera]
• In Tropic Thunder,, being about a Troubled Production, is basically Leaning On the Fourth Wall: The Movie
  • "I think I know a prop head when I see one!" says Tugg as he hefts what is an obvious prop head, seeing as Cockburn's actor is still alive. (Of course, In-Universe, everyone else is grossed out, because Tugg is handling a "real" bit of corpse and even licking "blood" off of it.)
  • Robert Downey Jr.'s character at one point says, "I'm a dude, playing a dude, disguised as another dude!" This could mean, "I'm Kirk Lazarus, playing Sargent Osirus, playing a farmer," or it could mean... "I'm Robert Downey Jr., playing Kirk Lazarus, playing Sargent Osiris."
  • A meta example: when pressed to stop acting like Osiris (because they're not filming anymore), Kirk Lazarus says "I stay in character until I do the DVD commentary!" Sure enough, Robert Downey Jr. did most of the DVD commentary as Osiris, turning into Lazarus when the appropriate moment was occurring on-screen.
• About four minutes into Trouble in Paradise, Herbert Marshall's character says "Beginnings are always difficult." (He's talking about how to start off a fancy dinner.)
• In a 1980s Finnish comedy film from the Uuno Turhapuro series, a restaurant waiter has been tricked, by two alcoholics, into drinking a full bottle of vodka. Later, when a lady enters the restaurant, and listens to the waiter singing a song, she glances around, and declares with an enlightened face: "I see. This must be a Finnish movie. There is no other explanation for the presence of so many drunk people in one scene."
• Victor Frankenstein: At the SDCC panel, a clip was shown where Victor and Igor are wheeling a gurney down a hallway, and Victor repeatedly yells, "Big presentation in Hall H!" The SDCC panel took place in Hall H, and many of the attendees laughed and cheered at the line.
• In the film Wonder Man, Danny Kaye tries to convince his twin brother (also Danny Kaye) that he's a ghost by walking into a solid stone marker (using trick photography) and asking "What's this, trick photography?"
• X-Men Film Series:
  • X-Men: In response to Wolverine's complaint about their black leather uniforms, Cyclops asks, "What would you prefer, yellow spandex?"
  • X-Men: Days of Future Past: All of the dialogue about the mutants being on the "verge of extinction" and the possibility of starting over has been read by some critics as commentary on the possibility of Days of Future Past "saving" the franchise after the damage done to it by X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
    Magneto: We've been given a second chance.
  • Deadpool (2016): Although Weasel isn't aware that he's in a film like Wade post-mutation, he still comments at one point "Deadpool, sounds like a fucking franchise." He also earlier states, when referring Wade to the Recruiter, "You should talk to him, it might advance the plot."
  • X-Men: Apocalypse:
    • The passage from The Once and Future King that Professor X reads to his class is: "The past must be obliterated and the new start made. Let us now start fresh without remembrance rather than live forward and backward at the same time." For the audience, the underlying message is that we should ignore the Ret-Gone original timeline of the X-Men movie series and focus on its Alternate Timeline.
    • After watching Return of the Jedi, Scott and Jubilee start discussing which one of the previous films was the best, only for Jean to remark that the third movie is always the worst.
      Honest Trailers: Congratulations! You've played yourselves.

Literature

• Jane Austen:
  • Darcy and Elizabeth warp the Aesop at the ending of Pride and Prejudice.
  • Northanger Abbey is full of this, thanks to the main trio being Bookworms.
• About halfway through the first book of Black Legion the narrator notes that the Inquisitors would like him to skip the Legion's beginnings and get to the "interesting" parts - the sword Drach'nyen, the Black Crusades and the Crimson Path. Replace "Inquisitors" with "readers" and there you go.
• In Cryptonomicon, Rudy von Hacklheber mentions that "there are certain old family connections" between him and Enoch Root, but that "the connections make a very long story. I would have to write a whole fucking book." That book would be The Baroque Cycle—which is in fact three volumes and can be described as "a fucking book" if anything can.
• Dirty Pair:
  • In the original TV series, Kei and Yuri occasionally compare their incredible misfortune to the idealized TV world...
    Yuri: If this were a TV show, a charming hunk would appear and say, "Are you in trouble, ladies?"
    Old man: Are you in trouble, ladies?
  • Also, the Crusher Joe movie shows the Dirty Pair as a fictional TV show and vice versa.
• At one point in The Illuminatus! Trilogy, a character pens a scathing review of a book that seems strikingly similar to Illuminatus! itself:
  It's a dreadfully long monster of a book, and I certainly won't have time to read it, but I'm giving it a thorough skimming. The authors are utterly incompetent — no sense of style or structure at all. It starts out as a detective story, switches to science-fiction, then goes off into the supernatural, and is full of the most detailed information of dozens of ghastly boring subjects. And the time sequence is all out of order in a very pretentious imitation of Faulkner and Joyce. Worst yet, it has the most raunchy sex scenes, thrown in just to make it sell, I'm sure, and the authors — whom I've never heard of — have the supreme bad taste to introduce real political figures into this mishmash and pretend to be exposing a real conspiracy. You can be sure I won't waste time reading such rubbish.
• Meggie does this in Inkheart at one point, thinking that perhaps the things happening to her are just a story and hoping that the person reading it will close the book because it's "so horrible and scary". There is also a point where Elinor expresses a longing for the romantic medieval times and Dustfinger replies that perhaps she was "born into the wrong story".
• Harry Turtledove has a tendency in his alternate history novels to have characters talk about the absurdity of things like the US winning the Civil War (in his Southern Victory series) or an explosive-metal bomb bursting over Nagasaki (in World War). The Lord Darcy stories contain some similar references, usually about how terribly messed-up the world would be if Richard the Lion-Hearted hadn't survived his crossbow wound. In one story, Darcy speaks dismissively of detective-fiction fans, who treat the Serious Business of criminal investigation like it's some kind of entertainment.
• Haruhi Suzumiya:
  • In the second novel, when Kyon asks Koizumi that isn’t it weird that he treats aliens, time travelers and espers as facts of life, but thinks the other paranormal phenomena Haruhi has made are a step too far, Koizumi says that’s different because the former already existed, and asks Kyon to imagine what someone observing their world from the vantage point of one that lacks any supernatural things would think of the situation. He then discusses what kind of magic can exist in a story without destroying the worldbuilding’s consistency, though specifically in the context of the changes Haruhi has made to their own lives.
  • The English dub adds one in episode six: While Kyon is narrating, the beginning credits are shown. Just as he asks "Who wrote this scenario, anyway?" the current credit is "Series Composition: Haruhi and her friends".
• Katanagatari: Togame tends to make comments that'd break the fourth wall if it weren't for the fact that she's writing everything down for publication.
• In J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, there are several examples that stem from the fact that the hobbits all know that Bilbo is writing a book (and that the the novel itself is purported to be that book):
  • "You and I, Sam, are still stuck in the worst places of the story, and it is all too likely that some will say at this point: 'Shut the book now, dad; we don't want to read any more.'"
  • In the fourteenth overall chapter, "The Council of Elrond", after Frodo finishes bringing the Council up to speed with everything that's happened since he left home:
    "Not bad," Bilbo said to him. "You would have made a good story of it, if they haven't kept on interrupting. I tried to make a few notes, but we shall have to go over it all again together sometime, if I am to write it up. There are a whole chapters of stuff before you ever got here!"
  • A chapter focused on Pippin ends with Merry telling him that his recent exploits are impressive enough that they'll probably get their own chapter in Frodo's book.
• In Qualia the Purple Hatou's considerations on storytelling count as this.
• The main character of Peter David's Sir Apropos of Nothing has the epiphany early on that he's a supporting character in the storybook world around him. He's not pleased and sets out to change this.
• In Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series, Thom Merrilin often says that one day people will read about their adventures in books. and that there is no way of knowing who the main character will be. Particularly, he suggests that perhaps he'll be remembered as the hero of the story, rather than Rand: a nod to their analogue characters in Arthurian mythology in which Merlin is sometimes treated as the main character over Arthur.
• Doctor Who Expanded Universe:
  • The Doctor Who Eighth Doctor Adventures novel The Blue Angel has the Doctor start complaining about the Series Hiatus. In-story, his concern is that, being lost in some tunnels, he's afraid his story is over, but it spills over into a Meta Guy-type ramble about stories. The story contains three plotlines; one deals with an alternate Doctor who's an insane human. He frequently refers to his "episodes", which are in fact psychotic episodes, the content of which is quite a bit like episodes of the TV series. The whole book is just very, very meta.
  • On p229 (of 280) in the deeply Mind Screw-y Past Doctor Adventures novel The Infinity Doctors, the Doctor, confronted with a book of infinite pages, says:
    "The best thing about a book is that you can always tell when you're getting to the end. No matter how tricky the situation the hero's in, you hold the book in your hand and say 'Hang on, I'm two hundred and twenty-nine pages in, with only another fifty-one to go. It started slow, but it's building to a climax.'"
  • In another EDA, The Taking of Planet 5, the Doctor says "There was a time when it always seemed to be Saturday when I was on Earth, and the children’s programmes were excellent, if my memory doesn’t cheat." He then starts talking about Transformers, but the connection's already been made in the reader's mind. (Doctor Who is traditionally broadcast on Saturdays, and "the memory cheats" was one of the phrases associated with former producer John Nathan-Turner.)
  • The Fourth Doctor book Festival of Death has a line where the Doctor complains that it's unusual everyone seems happy to see him, because "normally, when I arrive somewhere, people point guns at me and throw me in prison. Within about twenty-four and a half minutes of arriving, usually." Classic Doctor Who episodes are twenty-four-and-a-half minutes long without the titles and credits and tended to get the Doctor captured as a stereotypical, staple Cliffhanger.
  • Taken to the absolute limit in the New Adventures story Conundrum, which is set in thr Land of Fiction and has an omniscent narrator who is set out early on as actually being the Master of the Land of Fiction. There are several moments when he complains that he can almost read the Doctor's mind but not quite, because New Adventures policy was that we shouldn't see the Doctor's thoughts. There's also a point where the Doctor plays Scrabble with one of the villains, Mel, then points out that there literally is not room on the board for the word that the narration has just described as being played.
    Mel was somewhat taken aback. "But... but it's there!" he protested.
    "I know," said the Doctor. "Interesting, isn't it?" In one fluid movement he folded the Scrabble board and tipped the letter tiles back into their tray. "You want to be more careful what you write in future," he remarked.
    "I don't understand."
    "That's because I wasn't talking to you."
    "You weren't?"
    The Doctor was on his feet now and his back was turned to his confused opponent. "No," he said. "I was talking to you!"
    To... me?^note That's the third-person narrator expressing shock at being addressed directly.
• In Atlantis Found from the NUMA Series, a character looks into Dirk Pitt and reports that his background looks like a series of adventure novels.
• In The Last Dragon Chronicles, after main character David goes on a particularly emphatic rant, his landlady Liz soothes him: "David, stop talking in italics. It doesn't help anything."
• In the Alcatraz Series the main character will sometimes makes a reference to how the events of the story would appear if they were written as memoirs, which is what the books pretend to be through Direct Line to the Author. Also, the characters will sometimes refer to how long ago an event happened by how many chapters it took.
• In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Vernon Durlsey and Mad-Eye Moody have this exchange:
  "I am not aware that it is any of your business what goes on in my house –"
  "I expect what you're not aware of would fill several books, Dursley," growled Moody.
• In his Zamonia novels, Walter Moers has pretty much declared the fourth wall to be a floor. The books contain a note, that Walter Moers is not actually the author of the book, but actually just a translator and editor. The original scripts have been written by Hildegunst von Mythenmetz (Optimus Yarnspinner in English versions), his Author Avatar who is an author in the world of Zamonia. However, Hildegunst has the habit of not simply writing down the story he is telling, but constantly interrupting it and addressing his reader. These parts are so numerous that Moers left them all in when he made the translation. Hildegunst is a Bunny Ears Author who rants about nonsense and fictional events, but is himself a satire of the modern literature scene. Hildegunst is leaning very heavily on the fourth wall at all times, but it is explained by him actually addressing his Zamonian readers and not the real world readers.
• In John Hemry's The Lost Fleet novel Invincible, Geary muses about the unrealistic cover that would probably be put on books about his life. He describes the covers the series actually got.
• Richard Bachman Stephen King's pseudonym's book Thinner has a character complain that the premise sounds like "Something out of a Stephen King novel".
• From Smoke and Shadows:
  "Do your best and happy endings are inevitable?" Her lip curled. "You're living in a fantasy world."
  "Hello!" Tony jabbed a finger toward her. "Wizard!" Held up his hand to show her the small scars on his wrist. "Vampire!" A larger gesture to take in the entire studio. "Television! Fantasy's seeming pretty damned real to me right about now."
• Zeus Is Dead: A Monstrously Inconvenient Adventure does this often, at least when it's not actively taking a jackhammer to the wall. The Fates, upon their introduction, refer in vague terms to the reader. Thalia discusses Leif's refusal to accept his call to adventure. The narrative addresses the reader directly on numerous occasions.
• In How Much for Just the Planet?, there's an Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene moment where Chekov, Scotty and two Klingons are hiding out in a sand trap on the 18th hole (as their golf game was interrupted by the Brigadier and Sergeant Benton bombing the shit out of it) and take the opportunity to do a little stargazing, apparently looking towards the Paramountain:
  Scott's eye was caught by an unusual constellation: a ring of stars haloing a distant peak. "Look at that, now. Doesn't it awe you a little? To think there might be a higher power than us, arranging matters?"
  "Or that we are the property of some vast indifferent thing?"
• Characters in the Lord Peter Wimsey series have a penchant for talking about how much more convenient their lives would be if they were in a detective story, often courtesy of an important character who's a novelist.
• Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot novels have a few examples.
  • Ariadne Oliver is a character who appears in seven of the novels. Like Christie, she is a mystery writer who doesn't much care for her principal hero (vegetarian Finnish detective Sven Hjerson) but has to keep writing about him because he's popular with readers. Christie uses Ariadne to poke fun at the mystery genre, as well as herself and her own mistakes in her stories.
  • In Curtain: Poirot's Last Case, we have Hastings saying "I was tired of this silly joking about my 'speaking countenance'. I could keep a secret as well as anyone. Poirot had always persisted in the humiliating belief that I am a transparent character and that anyone can read what is passing in my mind."
• In Palimpsest, two characters discuss the physics of their alternate world:
  "There are some theories. You know, no one really knows. It's not like there's a manual. A couple of times, I heard that someone wanted to write one, publish it as fiction — but we would know. We would see right through all those made-up characters and silly little narrative twists. We would know what it was: a primer."
• Peacekeeper, the fifteenth novel in C. J. Cherryh's Foreigner (1994) series, centers around major character Cajeiri's ninth birthday party and wraps up a number of plot threads that have been dangling since about book seven of the series. It has several remarks to the effect that "the next wholly auspicious number after nine is fifteen" in the numerology of the atevi (the aliens who are the main focus of the book). In-universe, it's Cajeiri noting — or someone noting to him — that this is the most significant birthday party he's going to get for quite a while. But it also reads as meta-commentary; since Cherryh didn't manage to wrap up this particular plot by book nine of the series, she needed to drag it out through book fifteen if she wanted the structure of the series to respect its characters' numerology.
• At one point in the Dora Wilk Series, Miron suspects that him and Joshua being forbidden from helping out Dora is not because it may cause an inter-system scandal, but because it would make Dora's job easier, worded so that you can almost hear "and the book would be over in moments".
• Bored of the Rings has this on the last page of Chapter IV:
  Suddenly Frito had the overpowering feeling that he had come to a turning point, that an old chapter in his life was ending and a new one beginning.
• Journey to Chaos: Shortly after his arrival on Tariatla, Eric remarks that his life has become very dangerous and strange, kind of like something out of a fantasy novel or video game.
  I'm rescuing a princess with a mercenary, a sentient staff, and a ghost. It's like one of those RPGs I used to play when I was a kid...
• We Can't Rewind: Narrator and protagonist Don Richards occasionally stops to point out several things in his story that he's convinced would surely be different if he were living in a fictional story; particularly that, unlike in all the made up stories in which bad guys typically get their comeuppance, the teacher who molested and made a single mother out of his new wife Denise back when she was eleven vanished as soon as he realized she was pregnant and was never seen again, let alone brought to justice.
• The First Law: In the third book of the series, Ardee West complains about trying to get through the third book of The Fall of the Master Maker, griping that it's all just a bunch of battles and journeys, with too many wizards to keep straight. All of these could be criticisms of The First Law itself. Sand dan Glokta admits that he never could finish the first book.
• Lethal White of the Cormoran Strike Novels:
  • At one point, the narration notes when Matthew's eyes darken that Robin had thought this was literary license until she watched as his eyes turned black as his pupils dilated in shock upon telling him "Well, the problem with that, Matt, is that I don't love you anymore."
  • When one of the members of the Chiswell family uses the phrase "Steady on, old chap," it's said that Robin never thought she would hear the phrase outside of a book.
• Ciaphas Cain:
  • One of Amberley's comments in The Last Ditch basically boils down to saying you should use the Lord Commissar rules to represent Cain on the tabletop.
  • In The Emperor's Finest a decidedly meta footnote in Chapter 7: The irony of this statement seems to have eluded Cain entirely, though not, I suspect, most of my readers. In-Universe this refers to fellow inquisitors but the passage this footnote refers to fits the most common complaint in RL about the Cain series.
  • Amberley is disappointed that her fellow Inquisitors treat Cain's memoirs as light reading instead of food for thought. Given that the real world readers would have no idea who Cain was before they picked up the book, they wouldn't be overly surprised to discover he seems to be a self-serving coward which would greatly surprise people who have been watching his work for decades. Also, the books are much, much lighter than other 40K books whose grim setting is supposed to be dramatic and thought-provoking, often times to make people examine human nature or just for the shock value the setting provides. Comparatively, the Cain series is light-hearted and tongue-in-cheek which is more "light" then the darker material.
  • It's mentioned several times that Cain is a frequent subject of ludicrously overblown propaganda posters and stories that misrepresent him to a comical degree. This is an accurate description of the books' covers and titles, such as the memetic HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!.
• In The Conference of the Birds from the Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children series, Jacob comments upon his and Noor's arrival in Miss V's loop that he'd imagined something more welcoming waiting for them. He says that just once he'd like to see something such as a nice shade-dappled glen in a forest, "Just once, something like the portals in kids' books."
• In Turtles All the Way Down, Aza's therapist quotes a famous No Fourth Wall moment from James Joyce's Ulysses, in which a character addresses the author with "O Jamesy let me up out of this." Later, as Aza has a breakdown, she thinks, "Whoever is authoring me, let me up out of this."
• Roys Bedoys:
  • In “We’re Moving, Roys Bedoys!”, Maker says that Roys can’t leave them because “Who else is going to be bad and then make a smart choice?”.
  • In “Roys Bedoys and Little Red Riding Hood”, Wen tells Roys that he can play the big bad wolf since he makes bad choices. Roys retorts, “No I don’t. I make good choices after I make the bad choices”.
  • In “That Website’s Not Safe, Roys Bedoys!”, Roys claims that he always “makes smart choices” and Loys thinks he’s joking.
• Waking Up As A Spaceship has two prominent examples in what's currently available to readers.
  • In chapter 53, Abigail E. Eternity is asking Abyssal about her life story. Abyssal states that if she were writing a novel, it would be 52 chapters at that point, 53 if we count the most recent incident. Abigail is wildly amused.
  • In chapter 74, Astral asks for the really, really short version, not the "seventy or so chapters." Abyssal goes into a rant lampshading how she's The Chew Toy.
  "I was adrift in space, flying blind, then you shot at me. I managed to assimilate a pirate ship, and finally get astrogating data, so I went to Ashen station, and Jinko shot at me. So I escaped to Little Big-foot, and you shot at me again! Then Federation Union, Dawning Star, pirates and who knows what showed up and everybody shot at me! Then I escape to the coordinates you gave and would up being held captive by Abigail E. Eternity!"
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Old School: Greg lampshades that it seems he's been in Middle School forever. That book represents the fourth time we've seen Greg start a school year and each successive book spans a shorter period of time (the first being a year, the latter books spanning months or weeks). Then again, it's pretty normal for some American schools to consider Middle School as being up to the 9th or (on MUCH rarer occasions) even 10th grade.

Music

• Just about any example in This Is a Song.
• Whenever a singer says "stop!" and the music temporarily halts.
• In "You're Wondering Now" by The Specials — similar to, but not exactly the same as the Stop and Go trope — the following two lines are repeated several times throughout the song, including right at the absolute end of the song^note which, since that song is the last one on its album (the band's self-titled debut album, that is), also concludes the album as a whole:
  "You're wondering now, what to do,
  now you know this is the end"
• During the 2012 Grammys, Taylor Swift switched a line in her song "Mean" to read "Someday, I'll be singing this at the Grammys..."
• Daft Punk's track "Too Long" has lyrics performed by late house musician Romanthony about feeling free after a long time of bad moments, while the length of that song is exactly ten minutes long.
• Wynonna Judd's "Girls with Guitars" contains the line "Oughta be a song about girls with guitars."
• Coldplay played on this with their breakthrough song "Yellow"
• Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water" tells the story of the band recording the song.
• Carly Simon's "You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you."
• "Weird Al" Yankovic's parody of George Harrison's "I've Got My Mind Set On You", titled "This Song's Just Six Words Long."
• "From a Window Seat," by Dawes, which is about the songwriter riding in an airliner, taking notes to be used in composing the song:
  So I reach down for my notebook to see what impressions could be spun
  But it's just buildings and a million swimming pools
  So I leaf back through the pages to see where I am from
  Or for some crumbled map of what it's leading to
  And I find that the hero in the song that I am writing
  Doesn't know he's just an image of myself
• Buffalo Springfield's "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing":
  Who should be sleeping but's writing this song,
  Wishing and hoping he weren't so damn wrong?
• The name of the game for a lot of Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger. Notable Instances include:
  • Kyoryu Violet's introduction, in which he knocks over the background he is speaking in front of.
  • The entire first few minutes of the Distant Finale, Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger 100 Years After, so much so, it's practically a Deconstruction. The beginning, based on the opening from the TV show, is filled with these moments where characters recoil in fear from the normally casual explosions, and various other goof-ups are made. The team is soon after criticized by the monsters they are fighting for not behaving like a true Sentai team.
• Jefferson Starship's song "Light the Sky on Fire" (and the subsequent video in the Star Wars Holiday Special) features lead singer Marty Balin looking skywards and asking the following:
  Yes, I would really like to know
  What are they watching us for?
• The last song on Radiohead's album The King of Limbs, Separator, has lead singer Thom Yorke repeating the line "If you think this is over then you're wrong", which sounds like he's singing that there's more music yet to come. And while the theorized King of Limbs Part 2 was a bit too optimistic (no pun intended), Radiohead did release 2 non-album singles, a remix album and a live DVD that same year.
• Marty Robbins: Robbins' masterwork is considered to be the "El Paso" trilogy that began with the epic song of the same name, an even more epic prequel titled "Faleena from El Paso", and then more than a decade later he released the third part, "El Paso City". In this last song, Robbins sings about hearing the first song and the story within, "I can't recall who sang the song," he says.
• The Megas regularly include lyrics that mention videogame mechanics, such as level selection or even specific enemies from the appropriate level, referencing the origins of their songs in Mega Man videogames. Sometimes they even include references to the songs being actual songs as well.
  Bubble Man: This is my redemption song!
  Wood Man: My level has robotic ostriches, bats and big monkeys.
  Elec Man: We're at a level select...
  Mega Man: What always ends in bloodshed begins as just a game.
  Mega Man: It's time to pick the stage.
  Mega Man: Is your song just lines of code, or something that you heard?
• Twenty One Pilots’ “Stressed Out” breaks the rhyming structure of the first verse with the final line: “I wish I didn’t have to rhyme every time I sang.”
• "Skydiving" by Lights begins with the line "It all starts here." "Skydiving" is the first vocal track on Skin & Earth, proceeded only by "Intro", which is just an instrumental prologue to "Skydiving."
• Jhariah: "Are You Happy? (Questions)", the 8th track of 12 on The Great Tale of How I Ruined It All, points out that "you're past the halfway point of a story that hopefully has a happy ending." Other lines imply that he really is telling a story to someone (i.e. "hear the great tale of how I ruined it all"), so this make sense in- and out-of-universe.
• Emerson, Lake & Palmer's "Karn Evil 9: First Impression - Part 2" picks up where "Part 1" left off and is the first track on side two of the Brain Salad Surgery LP.
  "Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends."

Podcasts

• In Jemjammer, after an extended break between episode five and six, Jyllana jokes that the docking procedure they began in the previous episode felt like it took eight weeks to complete.
• Ads during Mission to Zyxx are typically read as intercepted transmissions from leaders of the Rebellion against the Federated Alliance, often at less-than-appropriate times such as the middle of a distress call from a crashing spaceship. That might've just been a fun conceit, until in one episode where we meet Centurion Tiddle, and C-53 identifies his father as Rolphus Tiddle, Rebel commander and underwear salesman.

Pro Wrestling

• In Al Snow's promo about the debut of The J.O.B. Squad (himself, 2 Cold Scorpio and Bob Holly) on the August 23 (taped August 11), 1998 Sunday Night Heat, he said that they are a secret organization "fighting against the evil organization PUSH, 'cause none of us are getting one!"
• Triple H likes to do this. In his WWF Attitude (video game) intro, he speaks to the player as "that fat-ass guy sitting on the couch." In WWE'12 he expressed frustration at the WWE becoming PG-13 when feuding with the Miz. He thinks Edge is a smart guy for marrying Vickie Guerrero. "Marrying the boss to get ahead in the business? That's genius!" Throw in his partner-in-crime Shawn Michaels and they nearly break the wall down, from a baby photo with Triple H's head poorly photoshopped on to wondering who got Vince's daughter pregnant. Also during the writer's strike when Triple H came out, made a bad joke and then remarked "Who writes this stuff? Oh yeah, they're on strike!"
• On October 10, 2011, Michael Cole said that he got a ton of Twitter posts and emails about how everybody missed him. When Jerry Lawler challenged him to show him one of these, he mentioned somebody named "Sean C" who sent him one of these. Michael Cole's real name is Sean Michael Coulthard.
• When he isn't leaning on the wall, CM Punk is often cheerfully (or angrily) booting it down.
• On the Raw following Wrestlemania 22, Edge said to Triple H, "That's the problem with you, Hunter. You think you own the place." In real life, Triple H is married to Stephanie McMahon.
• After Thunder Rosa took control of Mission Pro Wrestling and declared it as many company positions would be filled by women as possible, she opened up the first all woman card "Hell Hath No Fury" by introducing Robyn Reid as the booker who made it all possible. While this implicitly was Thunder Rosa assuring she wouldn't be booking her own matches, she was more explicitly crediting Reid for getting clean wrestlers together during the COVID-19 induced restrictions, especially Big Swole from All Elite Wrestling and Lindsay Snow to challenge for the NWA World Women's Title belt.
• "Stone Cold" Steve Austin once took a jab at Vince McMahon about the former's feud with Bret Hart by saying that "You're a greedy, selfish promoter and you know Stone Cold and Bret Hart are gonna get it on in the biggest match of the decade and you don't want to miss out! You're gonna fill your back pocket full, son."

Radio

• Our Miss Brooks: An interesting example in the radio episode "Reckless Driving''.
  • Miss Brooks, Mrs. Davis, Mr. Conklin, Mr. Boynton, Harriet and Walter are on Mrs. Davis' porch listening to the radio.
  • Steve Allen suddenly drives up asking for the way to Hollywood - turns out he's going to host the summer replacement for Our Miss Brooks.
  • The radio is tuned to Our Miss Brooks Miss Brooks calling it the show "with the school teacher with my name".
  • Miss Brooks, incidentally, thinks Eve Arden is "a doll". Mr. Conklin hates the pompous principal, while Walter Denton likes "one character in particular."
  • Eve Arden announces her summer replacement, saying she would be listening to Steve Allen's show that summer. Everybody on the porch commending her nice speech. Allen, however, wonders if she'll really be listening. Cue Eve Arden saying of course she would, he has her job!
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1978) had a scene with Zaphod dramatically speaking while "Also sprach Zarathustra" grew in volume under him, until Zaphod tells Marvin to cut it out, whereupon the final two notes barely make it out.
• Welcome to Our Village, Please Invade Carefully has a couple of these.
  • In one episode, Lucy uses the alien computer to Skype the outside world but finds that nobody believes her story about the alien invasion. The computer says it would back her up, but people would think it was just an actor putting on an alien computer voice.
  • In another, The Resistance plan to put a hidden message in the village newsletter and use the alien minions to get it to the outside world, but decide that even if they could, the Perception Filter makes everyone outside the village ignore it, so outsiders would simply assume Cresdon green was a fictional location invented for a sci-fi series.

Roleplay

• The 3rd RP of Darwin's Soldiers gives us this little quote:
  Cpl. Thomas Stern: It's as if someone is watching us and giving us what we need in order to get through our problems. That's very odd. Too much like 'deus ex machina' for me.
• Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues has a post that was made in November and has a security guard talk about his Thanksgiving plans. The other guard asks him why he's thinking about that when (in-game) it's May.
• In Nan Quest, the Big Bad asks Nan "Do you have a single thought of your own making?" in the course of a Breaking Speech. Given that her every thought and action was dictated by the tgchan collective, well... no, she doesn't.
  It was like he was living in a damn comic book.
• Survival of the Fittest: a common trend that appears at least once each version is to have a character rant at one of the cameras. While they're usually directed at the terrorists and/or the in-universe audience, a portion can also be interpreted as applying to the readers of the site themselves, in some examples being in a You Bastard! context.

Tabletop Games

• In the New World of Darkness, there's an insane, possibly evil, god-like intelligence called the God-Machine as a setting fixture and antagonist. The G-M regularly influences NPCs to behave bizarrely and causes all kinds of weirdness that players are often expected to investigate and thwart. Of course, being part of the World of Darkness, it only exists in a given campaign insofar as the other GM includes it.
• The description of the disadvantage "delusions" in The Dark Eye lists "We are all just part of some strange game." as an example.
• The Magic: The Gathering expansion Oath of the Gatewatch has a group of cards of different colors, each depicting a planeswalker promising to keep watch, but no black version is present. Three expansions later, Eldritch Moon completes the theme with "Oath of Liliana", whose flavor text reads, "I'll keep watch. Happy now?"
• At least one Palladium Books RPG includes the job skill "Role-Playing Game Designer," which grants the character an extra Physical Endurance stat due to the exhausting demands of the job.
• In an article on combining the Discworld Roleplaying Game with GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, Phil Masters introduces the Order of Subterranean Taxonomy, who delve into dungeons to learn about the monsters therein, and record their findings in numerous illustrated manuals, folios and tomes. In a nod to first edition Dungeons & Dragons, we're told the oldest have only black and white illustrations but are still thought of fondly, not just for the pictures of succubi serving as Poor Man's Porn.

Theatre

• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead plays with the fourth wall a lot. The first scene centers on the characters flipping a coin ninety times in a row and it comes up heads every time. Guildenstern comes quite close to realizing that the reason this is happening is because they are fictional characters and the result of every coin-flip is determined by the author, not by chance; but he never quite figures it out.
• William Shakespeare:
  • In general, Shakespeare makes a lot of jokes about how his female characters were played by male actors.
  • In Twelfth Night, the line "If it were played upon a stage, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction".
  • As You Like It: "All the world's a stage and we are but players."
  • From Julius Caesar, immediately after Caesar's assassination:
    Cassius: How many ages hence shall this our lofty scene be acted over in states unborn and accents yet unknown!
  • In Macbeth, "Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage..." ^note 'Shadow' was another way of saying 'actor', as was player'.
  • The entire "The play's the thing/Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king" soliloquy from Hamlet. Hamlet admires the In-Universe players because they can get worked up over a fictional situation.
  • Possibly in King Lear: Near the end, Lear calls Cordelia "my poor fool." It's a common theory that in its original performance, Cordelia and the Fool were played by the same actor, which would explain why he disappears just before she reenters the story.
• It's a key part of the Pantomime format that while one character will have No Fourth Wall, the rest of the cast are only allowed to lean on it.
• Cyrano de Bergerac: This play is a blend of farce and drama, and his first act is placed at the Burgundy Theater. Cyrano has interrupted the Show Within a Show La Clorise. The rest of the theater actors are rehearsing a new play, and Cyrano invites them to a Sword Fight he will have with one hundred men.
  Cyrano: Come all — the Doctor, Isabel, Leander,
  Come, for you shall add, in a motley swarm,
  The farce Italian to this Spanish drama!
• The 2011 revival of Company does this when Bobby and April are discussing Bobby's apartment. As the set was left to be as simplistic as possible, all of April's remarks about the (non-existent) decor ("That's darling!" "Isn't that tasteful and interesting!") were made in reference to the conductor and the audience (with Bobby at one point even reaching out and poking the conductor.
• In the tradition of the original books, Percy Jackson and the Olympians repeatedly does this.
  • He initially refuses to sing "The Campfire Song" after almost half the show because....

    Percy: If I try to sing, it'll probably cause an avalanche.

  • An even more blatant (and hilarious) example:

    Dionysus: [The master bolt] isn't some tinfoil zig-zag from a travelling musical!

• In Eugène Ionesco's Rhinoceros, we get this exchange:
  Jean: Instead of squandering all your spare money on drink, isn't it better to buy a ticket for an interesting play? Do you know anything about the avant-garde theatre there's so much talk about? Have you seen any of Ionesco's plays?
  Berenger: Unfortunately, no. I've only heard people talk about them. [...]
  Jean: There's one playing now. [both turn to stare at the audience] Take advantage of it.
• The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Radio Show Live underwent heavy cuts to get five seasons into a two hour show. Near the end, Slartibartfast brings up a number of the missing scenes and mentions that the eddies in the space-time continuum have lead to Arthur missing whole chapters of his life.
• In the third act of Arsenic and Old Lace, O'Hara says, regarding his own play, that he wants to "just run through the third act quick."
• The Phantom of the Opera features the following lyrics in the song "Prima Donna," following some Gratuitous Italian: "You'd never get away / With all this in a play / But if it's loudly sung / And in a foreign tongue / It's just the sort of story audiences adore / In fact, a perfect opera!"
• Dog Sees God: "Do you ever feel like you're not a real person? That you're the product of someone's imagination and you can't think for yourself because you're really just like some creation and that somewhere there's people laughing every time you fall?"
• In the last line of Charley's Aunt, Lord Fancourt (who had been impersonating Charley's aunt so Charley could tell his sweetheart's father that he had a chaperone) tells Donna Lucia (Charley's real aunt) that "in future I resign to Sir Francis Chesney all claims to 'Charley's Aunt.'" Brandon Thomas, who wrote the play, also was the original Sir Francis.
• The Book of Mormon's Act I finale has a lyric from Elder Cunningham about how "[he's] gonna stand up and steal the show!"
• In the musical Merrily We Roll Along, Frank introduces Mary Flynn to The Beautiful Elite as his friend, saying, "We go way back." "But seldom forward," Mary quips. Of course the characters don't go forward, since the show they're in runs Back to Front (and this is the first full scene).
• Downplayed in Bullets over Broadway. They don't exactly wink to the audience, but there is obviously a scene where the Show Within a Show briefly overlaps with the real show.
• In some productions of Oliver!, the lyrics for Fagin's song "Reviewing the Situation" end with "There is no in between for me/But who will change the scene for me?", whereupon the set immediately starts to revolve as Fagin heads back to the fireplace to count his money.
• The Mrs. Hawking play series: In Gilded Cages, when Mary comments that Nathaniel is rooting for her and Arthur's relationship, Arthur responds, "Of course he is. Who wouldn't be?" This has the double meaning for those members of the audience who may be shipping certain characters.
• The eponymous character in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado comforts the company with the words "I'm really very sorry for you all, but it's an unjust world, and virtue is triumphant only in theatrical performances."
• Steven Bank's Home Entertainment Center is about a young guy who pretends that he's starring in his own musical variety show whenever he arrives home. He frequently addresses the audience when announcing what's happening on "The Steven Banks Show," but he's really supposed just talking to himself.
• In To Kill a Mockingbird, the act break happens during the trial, and the final line of the first act is the judge calling for a recess of however long the intermission is.

Visual Novels

• C14 Dating:
  • One of the things mentioned about the Fictional Counterpart to The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask that both Melissa and Shoji have played is the fact that the player's actions can impact the fate of its characters. This element is also present to the game itself to an extent and some of Shoji's own events have options that only show up if specific choices were made during a previous event.
  • Some of the epilogues mention Shoji's side job working on a romance game for an indie company.
  • In the last-week scene that can be viewed after winning over Kyler romantically, Sherri visits Melissa while she and Kyler are having a conversation. After Kyler finds an excuse to leave and it's made clear Sherri knows what's going on between them, Melissa jokingly asks Sherri is she gets extra points for having managed to romance someone during the summer class. In a game belonging to a genre in which romancing a Non-Player Character is the main objective.
• At the end of Crown Delights Deli, Jules wonders about the past and how things would've turned out differently. Mr. Javier wonders the same and suggests a do-over, prompting you to start the game over if you say yes.
• The Danganronpa franchise does this a fair amount:
  • Chapter 6 of Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair has Hajime exploring a virtual version of Hope's Peak Academy from the first game, pointing out various strange and unlikely things like the Bio Lab being used as a morgue or blossoming cherry trees being planted in the Dojo. Then it's revealed Hajime and the other students are trapped in a virtual reality simulation, which Monokuma repeatedly refers to as a "game", even dropping references to other video game tropes like the final boss undergoing a transformation.
  • Taken to the next level in Chapter 6 of Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony. The entire killing game turns out to have been staged as part of a TV show entitled Danganronpa, which is currently in its 53rd season. The mastermind then displays comments being broadcast in by the audience, many of which resemble stereotypical internet comments such as "Danganronpa 25 was the best!" or "This is why I wish Kaede had survived!".
• Comes up occasionally in Mystic Messenger, though the game also has instances of explicitly Breaking the Fourth Wall. The most usual example is during evening and nighttime chats, where someone you're talking to will be about to leave the chatroom, and they'll remind you to "not stay up too late playing phone games."
• This trope is used often in Ace Attorney.
  • At one point in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations, presenting Maya with Phoenix's profile prompts the pair into a conversation over Phoenix's strange anime style hair:
    "I mean, you normally only see hair like that in video games."
  • This is also played in the first game when Dick Gumshoe referees to his constant use of "pal":
    "Hey! You can't just go around saying pal like that! That's my endearing character trait!"
  • In Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, if you select "Refresher course, please!" when Kristoph Gavin asks if you want a refresher on cross-examinations, Justice will think "Better safe than sorry, especially this early in the game!"
  • In Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies, there's a campaign going on to try and combat against false evidence and false charges in the legal system. This campaign includes at least two stuffed animal mascots, a elephant-judge called "Phony Phanty" and Rhino-lawyer called "Bum Rap Rhiny". This fact ends up strangely becoming important during the Juniper Wood's bombing trial, at which point Phoenix thinks to himself, "Who knew the legal world could inspire a whole line of merchandise?"
• Junior's "gamer talk" in Fleuret Blanc very obviously provides tongue-in-cheek hints on obscure gameplay mechanics (such as the Scoring Points), even if it's ostensibly about different games.
• Ciel and Kohaku in Kagetsu Tohya both complain about their popularity. Kohaku is obviously referring to Tsukihime and breaking the fourth wall. Ciel... well, she breaks it a minute or two later (by commenting that even if she isn't popular, at least her sprite lets her carry an item. Yay umbrella) but hasn't yet by that point and is really referring to the school government play thingy. Oh, and she also complains about how it was called off because they didn't want to make sprites or anything for all the adults in the play... Uh... Yea, it's that kind of game, except when it isn't.
• This line from Little Busters!, lampshading Kyousuke's role as the Big Brother Mentor:
  Riki: This always happens. He suddenly appears, dispenses advice and vanishes, like a scene in a manga.
• Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors has the entire game world shown on both screens of the DS, with gameplay and novel pages being shown in the bottom screen while Junpei's view of the other characters in the game world being shown on top. It's even specifically drawn attention to in order to describe how Akane's psychic powers work. To her, she is seeing both her own viewpoint (the bottom screen, representing her present) and Junpei's (the top screen, representing her future) and is using information from the future to solve the puzzles and gathering information to save her own life as well as Junpei's.
  Akane (In Narration): Perhaps you can think of it as 2 movies showing on the same screen, at the same time. Eventually, it becomes difficult to separate them, and determine which movie is which. However, if I concentrated, I was able to focus on one or the other. That was why I was able to grasp what was happening in front of me.''
• SOON: After getting the anti-robot bomb, that narration states "Things are getting intense. If only real life had save points or you would totally save right now..."
• a letter of challenge: If you repeatedly perform an action that failed in one of the previous time loops, the protagonist will question why she keeps doing something so useless and say that it's almost as if someone is forcing her.
• In Katawa Shoujo, in the bad end for Act 1: During one of his rants, Kenji complains about the fact that he, unlike Hisao, has no possibility of making choices in his life, indirectly referencing the visual novel's multiple choice system.
• Doki Doki Literature Club!: In Act 2, Monika mentions that the Player Character wasn't even given a choice not to join the club. In-universe, this could refer to how he was pressured to join — but it's also a nod to the fact that the player isn't given a choice about joining, like they are about some other things, since it's what starts the whole plot. Monika also has a few other moments a bit like this.

Web Animation

• DEATH BATTLE!: Played for Drama in the Martian Manhunter vs Silver Surfer episode. Both of them ask each other why they're even fighting in the first place, both of them compelled to get into this battle by some outside deity, but neither of them get any revelation that they're fighting for the amusement of millions of viewers. Martian Manhunter requests that Silver Surfer is able to carry the weight of the uncertainty on his shoulders.
• Red vs. Blue:
  • Near the end of Season 5, Church expresses irritation at the fact that "something dramatic happens exactly every five minutes" (which is the length of a typical episode).
  • In Season 11, Lopez the robot gets asked about his creators (i.e., the other characters) and says, "You're going to want to sit down for this story. It's about twenty hours long and I only enjoy telling it in five-minute intervals."
  • An early episode of Season 14 has Agent Florida, upon assembling everyone at Blood Gulch, muse that he could make the conflict last for fourteen seasons. When Vic asks what he means, he laughs it off and explains he means actual seasons.
  • In Season 15, Vic claims that he's been cutting the footage of the Red and Blue Teams' time in Blood Gulch into five minute movies. Intrepid Reporter Dylan states that there are at least 100 of them.
• Episode 6 of RWBY Chibi proceeds to break the fourth wall's legs when Pyrrha Nikos, who died at the end of Volume 3 of the main series, is alive and well here. When Ruby tries to explain what happened, Nora promptly stops her and tells her than Pyrrha is fine and "Nothing bad. Ever. Happens. Everrrrrrrrrrr".
• Turnabout Storm:
  • Phoenix makes an off-hand comment about one of his world's shows within a show, The Steel Samurai, and comments on how amazing it's that a kids show got so popular with the Periphery Demographic. This wouldn't be a very remarkable comment, but he just happened to say it while being in Equestria.
  • While Phoenix and Pinkie are investigating, she starts to hum Pursuit ~ Cornered, one of Ace Attorney's most iconic themes. Phoenix comments that the tune sounds quite familiar to him.

Webcomics

• Agents of the Realm has a moment when Kendall asks about local legends and Paige is about to drop a four-page-long Infodump:
  Paige: This is going to be a hell of an exposition.
• Apricot Cookie(s)!: Right after an implied Time Skip, Jammy and Butter have this dialogue:
  Butter Punch: And then they replied... "It's called a narrative time skip"!
  Jammy Smasher: Ha ha ha! They never did!
• Arthur, King of Time and Space's Buffy the Vampire Slayer parody leans on the fourth wall of the thing it's parodying: According to Merlin the Watcher, the Hellmouth has an annual cycle of apocalypse, which begins building on the autumnal equinox and climaxes on the vernal equinox. In other words, the season starts in the autumn, the Story Arc develops over the course of the season, the Season Finale happens in spring, and then the whole thing starts again next season.
• Bad Machinery: In this strip, Shelley asks Lottie what happened over a period of a year when this title was on hiatus, and suggests that Lottie has been uncharacteristically inactive. Lottie responds with a list of events, some of which occurred in other comics set in the Bobbinsverse.
• Beeserker: Making mention of BEESERKER: Chapter 12, HANDSOME LIL' CASTLE causes a strange popup to occur.
• In The Bird Feeder #182, "Celebrities," Terry claims one shouldn't look down on someone who treats fictional characters, especially those who appear in comics, as if they're real.
• In College Roomies from Hell!!!, Roger isn't breaking the fourth wall, he's stoned out of his gourd on hallucinogenic blue mushrooms and talking to a Simpsons poster.
• Darths & Droids: Episode 1762 takes this to its logical extreme, where Statler and Waldorf's dialogue consists entirely of lines taken from forum posts discussing the strip itself and its decision to adapt The Muppet Show. Within the context of the comic, they are talking about the song and dance number performed by a flock of cloned sheep.
• Nadine in Demolition Squad does this from time to time, pointing out that she has completed the SAME year in school three or four times over, that she is an unrelated teenager below the age of majority freeloading at the principal characters' apartment for no clearly explained reason, that he would do well not to mention this is a job interview, that she has been wearing the same outfit for several years, and so on.
• In one strip of The Developer's Life, the protagonist is able to "create" copies of himself and the other characters remark on this as if they were readers of the very comic they are in.
• Discussed (sort of) in this Dinosaur Comics strip wherein God notices the fact that time passes in panels and mentions it, then when questioned about what he meant, insists that he doesn't know and neither should T-Rex.
• Dragon Ball Multiverse: At one time, Vegeta complains that his waiting after his first fight seems to him like two years. Guess how much real time had passed since the fight.
• El Goonish Shive:
  • In one strip, the characters are talking about shipping in general, and Elliot/Susan shippers in particular. As for why they'd be talking about people shipping themselves, Susan and Elliot have an in-universe movie review show, and they have pretty good on-screen chemistry to the point where many people in-universe assumed they were a couple.
  • In another comic, after Elliot accidentally reveals information that he wasn't intending to due to jumping to conclusions, the strip immediately cuts to Tedd who appears to be calling him out on it despite being in a completely different location. However, it turns out he's just watching an old sitcom, and commenting on a similar mistake.
  • During Grace's genderswap birthday party, after multiple strips in which Sarah's transformation is delayed, Ellen says there's going to be a riot if she doesn't transform soon ... referring of course to the others at the party, who can't order the pizza until everyone's transformed.
  • When talking about Diane's charisma boost spell, Tedd gets sidetracked by talking about how the spell would be represented in a comic. After mentioning the idea of using a different font for things said while the spell is active (the solution used in the actual comic), Tedd eventually decided that changing the word balloon would be better, referencing how many readers didn't notice the font change or got the wrong idea about it.
• Erfworld in explanation for the magic discipline Turnamancy:
  That was why the seemingly disparate acts of turning wheels and turning prisoners fell under the same kind of magic.
• Frivolesque has Suzie and Marianne, two background extras who tend to discuss things that lean strongly against the fourth wall whenever they get lines. Chloe also exhibits this behavior sometimes.
• At the end of the General Protection Fault storyline "Harry Barker and the Prisoner of Angband", Sharon tells Ki about her Harry Barker dreams and comments she wishes she had the creative skills to write them as fanfic since they might amuse some people. Ki replies "Or irritate a certain class of others." Darlington had previously noted in The Rant that these were the two reactions to the Harry Barker storylines. In the final panel, they're both looking straight at the reader as they discuss the copyright issues of Sharon publishing the dreams.
• In Girl Genius, Bangladesh Dupree indulges while mocking Gil:
  Dupree: You're surprised? She's outsmarted us before, right? I mean, if they ever write this down, they ain't gonna be calling it "Boy Genius."
• This page of Girly: "These dickweeds sure can't get enough of it, all this swirly pitch blackness..." "It's probably because it's so easy to draw... [next panel] our attention with it."
• Grrl Power:
  • Here: it's ambiguous Whether Sydney is actually talking to the audience or to Harem in the flashback panel.
  • Also here. Doubly serves as a Title Drop (at least pronunciation-wise).
• Gunnerkrigg Court, page 499:
  Coyote: How is that for an enigmatic answer?
  Ysengrin: Very enigmatic. It barely answers anything at all.
  Antimony: In fact, it raises more questions than before.
  Coyote: Hahaha! Aw come on, I can't tell you everything right away! That would make for a boring story, don't you think?
• Homestuck has this in Caliborn, who partially functions as a parody of the fans of the comic that criticize its glacial pacing. In a particularly slow part of the comic, while talking to Dirk, he points out the angst that the Alpha kids constantly have, wanting them to get on with the actual plot.
• In Housepets! the first strip of "Let's Imaginate: And Then There Were None" has Bailey confused that they're doing this without an audience. Joey suggests they could video it, and Peanut replies that the only thing worse than an audience is an unseen audience. Joey gives an Aside Glance.
• Happens early on in I Was Kidnapped by Lesbian Pirates from Outer Space!!!:
  Susie: Lesbian pirates from outer space! Psh! Sounds like a comic book to me. One that I'd definitely read.
• In Life (2012):
  • Felicia is about to go live with her webcomic site when she realizes the comic doesn't have any color. Guess when the Life archive switches to full color?
  • After the calculus final.
    Felicia: Now I just have to wait until report cards to see how I did... when do they usually come out?
    Madison: Two weeks from now, I think...
    Felicia: Bleh... I wish I could just skip ahead two weeks...
    Madison: That's a little...
    [two weeks later!]
    Felicia: I got a 76!
• In Misfile, Ash and Rumisiel have a very interesting exchange while shopping:
  Ash: [[http://www.misfile.com/?date=2013-12-09... Besides, I feel like I have to start being the protagonist in my own life story.]]
  Rumisiel: You're screwed then. I'm totally the protagonist of our collective lives.
  Ash: You are life's side character at best, and probably an antagonist.
• Neko the Kitty:
  • Neko occasionally talks to a pretend audience in-comic. In later strips he also appears outside of the comic panels to deliver an additional sign-off gag.
  • Neko obliquely referring to his status as title character.
• The Order of the Stick:
  • Tarquin (Genre Savvy already) calls out the readers when Thog turns out to be the arena champion.
    Tarquin: It's weird no matter how many people he kills, the audience still thinks he's lovable.
  • Two just-introduced characters have a conversation that's perfectly mundane within the story, but take a whole double meaning when you know that Veldrina is a cameo granted as reward for contributing to the kickstarter effort for the webcomic, and Wrecan is a posthumous cameo for a high-profile fan who'd passed away a few years earlier.
    Veldrina: Can you believe I threw 5000 bucks down just to get stuck here?!?
    Wrecan: And it felt like it took two or three years to get this far!
    Veldrina: That's money I could have spent on a new brooch. Or maybe a nice cameo.
  • In the strip where the Order leave Wrecan behind, he briefly discusses about how you never know how long you'll have to get to know someone. In addition, the strip is named "Mark of Distinction". Wrecan's real name was Mark.
• In Question Duck, when the duck and main human character return with Wild Hair after Schedule Slip, another character asked where they had been. (This is only the third time in this strip that someone other than the duck has spoken.)
• Schlock Mercenary:
  • Happened especially early on, sometimes featuring an amusing Lampshade Hanging:
    Schlock: I think [the chin] looks cool. Kinda heroic, like it belongs in a comic book or something.
    Narrator: For the sake of the fourth wall, the chin's coming off.
  • Or on the page after the one where Kaff Tagon's "Oh, Crap!" was covered with another speech bubble:
    Kevyn: ...a conversion bomb. Just one of those will take out the kitesfear, the entire hellevator, and then severely, irreparably irradiate this side of Luna.
    Tagon: Tell me again why I'm not allowed to use profanity or obscenity right now?
  • Putzho and Ulaque do it when explaining how evolutionary selection pressure can continue to function in an immortal society.
    Putzho: Let's say you tell me a story. I like it, but maybe I think the narrative structure is too choppy.
    Ulaque: Like an episodic melodrama, or a long-form comic strip?
    Putzho: Or maybe I find it too self-referential.
    Ulaque: Too didactic, with characters telling each other things they already know.
• In an impressive bit of Meta-fiction that leads back to This Very Wiki, Skin Horse has a scene where Sweetheart is reading the Ironic Echo Cut page, only to be interrupted with an Ironic Echo Cut.
• Something*Positive:
  • Davan's furniture is in storage when Aubrey comes round. She says "Where's all your furniture? It's like we're in a comic and the cartoonist is too goddamn lazy to draw in the background like he usually does."
  • In another strip PeeJee asks why everything seems to revolve around sex. Davan instantly replies "Bad writing", but he's not really listening, he's hating the novel he's reading.
  • When Jason asks where comics characters go when their series is over, Aubrey suggests "the background of another, crappier, comic" and then they go on to discuss two characters S*P inherited from other webcomics. Aubrey says Helen (from Penny and Aggie) is a decent person, but "For some reason, people get angry when she's around". Helen's appearances in S*P always drew angry emails from some P&A fans who didn't like how S*P's author wrote her.
• This strip of Wapsi Square starts with Conversational Troping between Shelly and Heather, and ends with Shelly asking who the audience is in this scenario while looking directly at the "camera."
• In The Warrior Returns, Seongjun's spirit is shown walking into the afterlife. But before he leaves, he turns around and says not to thank him, because he's done awful things too. While this statement is presumably directed at the other surviving Warriors, he looks straight at the reader when he says this, as if reminding them that he's still responsible for enormous tragedy and shouldn't be given a free pass even if his actions are intended to free the world from his "Groundhog Day" Loop.
• In Weak Hero, after a lengthy flashback sequence to Gray's middle school days, Alex comments that it feels like it's been a while since the gang have been at high school.
• The punchline of xkcd #1054 depends entirely on you reading the speech bubbles instead of imagining them as spoken dialogue.

Web Original

• C0DA, written by former The Elder Scrolls series writer/designer Michael Kirkbride, takes place in the far distant future of TES universe. In it, it is strongly implied that Jubal has achieved CHIM, giving him an intentional Story-Breaker Power. He can manipulate events like the author of the work using his "ghost hands".
• In the final chapter of Sailor Nothing, one of the main villains gives a Breaking Speech that can be taken as him addressing either the characters or the audience.
• TV Tropes:
  • An editor of the site will often introduce themselves as "This Troper". This is frowned upon for examples. So are That Troper and The Other Troper.
  • There are a handful of articles that make a point of addressing the reader directly, such as Big Brother Is Watching You.

Web Videos

• Nearly every episode of The Allen And Craig Show is about making that episode, and the characters consistently address the audience, camera guy, and the fact that they have very little money to produce the program.
• In his Anime Abandon review of City Hunter: .357 Magnum, Bennett the Sage looks at the bottom-right corner of the frame to check how much time is left in the video when he realizes he's only thirty minutes into the source material.
• The Call of Warr:
  • Gravesite tells the prisoner if that if they answer his questions, everything will go smoothly...but otherwise, "this whole show will go south".
  • When trying to bring things back into order, Prince says:
    Prince: Now this has been a ridiculous show, so far...
• In the official Doctor Who webisode "Doctors Assemble!", when Fourth says the Earth is facing its greatest threat, Fifth says this sounds like a Tuesday, but all the other Doctors think it sounds more like a Saturday. Except Thirteenth, who thinks it could be a Sunday. All of these refer to the day Doctor Who was broadcast at the time.
• Empires SMP Season 2: Implied. While being transported from Hermitcraft back to the Empires world after the crossover event, Sausage meets an iteration of Bubbles (his pet dog, both in real life and in the Minecraft Multiversal roleplay) with a black collar, whom Sanctuary-Bubbles explains is the "boss" of the interdimensional network who holds the connections together and fixes things when everything is about to break. When Sausage asks if there's a counterpart of himself that does the same, Bubbles tells him that he's asking too many questions and refuses to answer.
• At the beginning of Episode 7, which was released around the time MasakoX left Naruto: The Abridged Series, Kakashi (just before collapsing from exhaustion from his battle with Zabuza) quotes MasakoX's leaving speech almost word for word. After he collapses, Naruto says this:
  Naruto: Bowie-sensei! You can't leave! We need you! Who else is going to provide all the voices? [long pause] ...Of reason?
• Parodied in Naruto: The Abridged Comedy Fandub Spoof Series Show at least twice. The Stinger of episode 5 has the Hokage going off on an extended rant about bridges, which really sounds like he's talking about the concept of The Abridged Series.
  Hokage: Personally I don't see what's so important about a bridge. I mean, come on. First one guy makes a bridge, and everybody uses it, they're like "Ooh, look! A bridge! That's new!" So like, these other two guys make another bridge. It's kinda like the first one, but people use it anyway because the other guy is like "Oh, their bridge is pretty good too, check it out!" And then these three other guys are like "Oh, we're going to make the best bridge ever, we're going to combine our talents and be like 'Oh, look at our bridge, it's totally amazing, ooh!'" It's like, turns out really good, it's like the best out of all the other bridges. Everybody subscribes to it.
  Naruto: Subscribes to it?
  Hokage: I mean, uh, everybody crosses it. Because it's a bridge. Yeah. And before you know it, everybody and their mother is making a bridge. So there's a bridge... everywhere. Nobody even knows why they're making a bridge anymore. They just want people to cross it. They don't care where they're going. The first guy is like "I'm gonna go to conventions to promote my bridge!" It's like, it's just a bridge. It's not a big deal. Get over it.
  Naruto: What's he talking about?
  Kakashi: Apparently, bridges.
• Pirates SMP: On Day 134, at the start of the finale, Scott makes a bleak joke about how the late Acho would be laughing at him and Graecie crying over them and calling them losers. In reality, Acho the content creator is indeed watching over the conversation, invisible.
• Done in an episode of Potter Puppet Pals where Harry says towards the end, "...leave a comment, or submit a video response. And remember to subscribe!" It is presumed he's saying it to the audience before the camera cuts to Ron and Hermione, who look very confused.
• Stampy's Lovely World: In the finale, Stampy makes multiple comments that (although making sense in-universe) are clearly Stampy discussing his own life and audience. The most notable one being when Stampy is leaving the Lovely World and reflects that "in a way, we've both grown up in this place" — technically, in-universe, the "we" is himself and Hit the Target, but it's sweetly made clear that the "we" is actually Stampy and his audience.
• During the Team Four Star D&D campaign TFS at the Table, Lanipator's character Wake goes into a slump and nearly crosses the Despair Event Horizon. While consoling Wake that he is not the only one living a chaotic existence, his crewmate Ezra points out that "Our lives have the randomness of dice rolls!".
• Timmy occasionally notes that all the historical figures visited by The Time... Guys are played by the same actor.
• Two in Undertale the Musical:
  • One that needed a caption to explain it. Just after the fallen child receives a new cell phone, Undyne remarks that "The signal sounds like I'm right there with you." The caption says "The joke is that staging-wise, she probably is."
  • While watching Mettaton on T.V., Sans says, "It's the middle of a show Papyrus. Now's not the time to worry about it." This scene is at exactly the halfway point of the video's runtime.
• In Video Game High School, Brian Firenzi plays a high-school-age character but obviously looks much older. Near the end of season 3, another character tells him that he "looks like a thirty year old man" but he just laughs it off.

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