Painting The Medium / Western Animation

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• The classic Looney Tunes short "Duck Amuck" is eight minutes of the animator screwing with Daffy Duck. Changing backgrounds, messing with sound effects, redrawing Daffy himself... even seemingly screwing with the film projector so that parts of two frames are on screen at once (prompting the two Daffys to confront each other).
  • This was remade as a game on the DS, with similar "painting," including Daffy "ripping up the game code".
  • Bugs Bunny has a similar episode, Rabbit Rampage by name, where Elmer Fudd is the artist. It's one of the very few times Bugs doesn't walk away with his dignity unscathed.
  • It was also referenced on The Simpsons, when Homer badmouthed Matt Groening only to have a huge pencil eraser loom toward his head. The camera zooms out to reveal the pencil as a diegetic piece of an art installation that is on its way to being installated.
  • South Park references it as well in "South ParQ The Vaccination Special": the mysterious Hollywood Elite (actually Trey Parker & Matt Stone) at one point break down the episode's animation layers and turn a character into various bizarre creatures, including a giant penis with eyes in true South Park fashion.
• The Amazing World of Gumball makes extensive and heavy use of this. Simply the fact that most of the characters don't share the same art style does volumes to explain each character's personalities & attributes.
• South Park:
  • In "201", when Tom Cruise steals Muhammad's goo, a Censor Box appears over him just like Muhammad. When Stan makes a joke at his expense during the final battle, the box disappears.
  • Also in "201", there were two main plots; one was a political plot about censorship, the other was about finding Cartman's true father. Cartman and Kyle argue with each other about which is more important, then look straight at the camera.
  • The "Coon & Friends" arc initially got bad reviews after the first episode, in part because the boys (playing superheroes in silly outfits) couldn't be recognized due to the Only Six Faces art style. And then it turns out to be done on purpose, deconstructing the secret identity aspect of superhero stories, and the characters' identities are very slowly revealed throughout the episode trilogy. And then the story takes a few very dark turns once Mysterion's is revealed.
  • Speaking of "Coon & Friends", Cthulhu and the other Lovecraftian abominations that appear during the arc are rendered in elaborate 3D models as opposed to the show's usual "cardboard cutout" style, to signify how truly alien and incomprehensible they are to normal humans.
• In the pilot episode of Wolverine and the X-Men (2009), the ellipsis between the explosion that starts the main intrigue and the "present moment" was symbolised by a fake television signal disruption — as though Charles Xavier's huge psychic overdrive temporarily blew out your TV.
• Family Guy once had the usual promo for the Simpsons (8/7c) come on over the top of the regular cartoon, with Marge Simpson walking into frame. Suddenly, Quagmire walks into view and tackles her, ostensibly for sex. She fights him off, and he chases her around with his pants around his ankles. Eventually, she gives in, offscreen, and they both return to view and decide to head back to the Simpsons' for round two. The characters in the body of the cartoon actually stop talking to watch what's going on. The next scene is an exterior shot of the Simpson house. The audio indicates that Homer walks in on them, and gets shot by Quagmire in self-defense. Then he shoots Marge to keep her from calling the police. Then Bart walks in and gets shot. Then Lisa. He hesitates with Maggie. Then the show cuts right back to Family Guy like nothing ever happened.
  • In a later episode, an intrusive ad for 24 (Mondays on Fox) appeared at the bottom of the screen, and Stewie stopped the action for quite a while to notice and complain about it.
  Stewie: Oh- oh, I'm sorry, is my wedding interrupting your- your promotion? We're right in the middle of our show. Okay? Right now. You have a timeslot. Go there. Maybe finish this candy bar before you open another one.
  • Which kicked off a running joke in the same episode as fake live-action sitcom ads periodically showed up at the bottom of the screen, including "Shovin' Buddies" and "Slowly Rotating Black Man". The characters reacted to them each time.
  Lois: Is that even a real show?
  Stewie: No, no, someone's playing a joke on you.
  • After Stewie's time machine rips a hole in the fabric of the universe and leaves Brian and Stewie floating in an endless void, a generic promo for The Cleveland Show pops up, commented on by Stewie.
  • In yet another episode: Stewie makes a reference to the "wonderful decisions" made by Fox executives, and as he's finishing up his seemingly sincere statement, an ad for Sons Of Tuscon appears on the bottom of the screen. SoT had been canceled halfway through its season; Stewie then has a tired/disgusted look on his face as he turns to the camera, "let's all remember, that this, was a thing."
    • Speaking of Sons of Tucson, in the American Dad!! episode "Jenny Fromdabloc," Roger has a stress ball that he uses for....other purposes, and at one point he picked it up and noticed it was advertising Sons of Tucson, to which Roger remarks, "What is this? I watch Fox, I've never heard of this."
  • In "Married... with Cancer", after Brian's fiancé faints, he shouts out, "Someone call 911!", and then an ad for 9-1-1 appears in the corner, and Brian berates Fox for constantly promoting their entertainment empire, after which, a promo for Empire appears. Then, Brian bluntly says, "Son of Zorn", and an "image not found" box appears, in reference to the show's cancellation.
• The Tex Avery cartoon Magical Maestro includes a gag where it appears that a hair has gotten caught in the movie-projector showing the cartoon, only to have a character pause midaction, pluck the "hair" and toss it away.
  • This cartoon was eventually shipped with a big red warning sticker so projectionists wouldn't be driven crazy trying to eliminate the hair.
    • An Avery Warner Brothers cartoon, "Aviation Vacation", does an earlier (and less well-animated) version of the hair-in-the-projector while an Irish tenor is singing. After a minute he stops and yells at the (presumed) projectionist to "Get that hair out of here!"
  • Several of Avery's cartoons feature similar gags; in "Dumb-Hounded" the Wolf runs around a corner so quickly that he swerves off the film and back, and in "Lucky Ducky", George and Junior stray past a sign reading "Technicolor Ends Here" and find that their surroundings have changed from color to monochrome.
• In one episode of Men in Black: The Series, in a scene where the heroes discuss how to vanquish the powered-with-sound Monster of The Day, the sound seems to suddenly have a bug until the surprised expression of the character realizing that a weapon is being tested on them.
• In The Adventures of Mark Twain, a claymation feature film, God reaches out from the heavens to nudge a sleeping Adam awake. Adam is a claymation figure, the hand of God is a live-action human hand.
  • In a similar vein, God in The Simpsons has four fingers and a thumb on each hand, unlike most of the characters, which have three fingers.
• Any computer or conventional animation that adds "Lens Flare" from the sun or a bright light source is painting the fourth wall, but to make it seem more realistic, as if a physical camera lens was used to record an actual scene.
  • Firefly goes even further, having shot where the camera zooms in on a spacecraft, but then needs to move the ship back into shot and refocus. It's all an effects sequence, so all this takes extra effort to seem more real.
  • Battlestar Galactica (2003) did this along with steadicam effects. In one case, a bit of shrapnel hits the "camera" with an audible thunk and sends it flying, as though the camera had really been floating in space.
• As the world falls into chaos in the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "The Return of Harmony: Part 2", a pony is shown running along the top and left edges of the screen.
  • Some of the Japanese fansubs will have stressed words suddenly grow big, and certain lines following the speaker.
  • In "Lesson Zero", when Twilight has her minor breakdowns, Spike snaps her out of it by physically changing the shot by shoving the backdrop out of the way or using his claw to pop the thought bubble containing Twilight's Imagine Spot. Not to mention the sun and windmill moving like clock hands, representing Twilight's looming deadline.
  • Although Word of God denies her ability to outright break the fourth wall, Pinkie Pie has been known to use cartoon physics and Rule of Funny to her advantage - mostly Offscreen Teleportation.
• The Smurfs: A Christmas Carol plays with the animation medium interestingly: the present and future scenes are done with CGI resembling the feature films, while the past scenes are traditionally animated.
• The Simpsons: Ice Cream of Margie (With the Light Blue Hair) has Marge use popsicle sticks to form "Two Weeks Later" on the front of the screen.
• In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "SB-129", said title is actually the production code for the episode.
  • In "Nature Pants", Squidward references the episode's running time:
  Sandy: I give him a week.
  Squidward: I give him eleven minutes.
• There's a witch in Over the Garden Wall with a spiderlike sewing motif that has woven a giant snare into her hut. Fittingly, the music that plays while she's onscreen is composed entirely of stringed instruments.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks: In "Crisis Point", when Tendi talks to Mariner from outside the holodeck, the holomovie's aspect ratio bars are visible inside the holodeck doors.
• Angel Wars: This is one of the more literal examples of "painting the fourth wall": a demoness walks past a sign written in glowing demonic runes, pauses to read it, shatters it with magic to show how little she respects the message, and then the pieces of the sign temporarily flow onto a corner of the screen in the shape of English writing and stay put relative to the camera during a pan shot, which lets the audience see what the runes said.

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