The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You / Fan Works

• Downplayed in Persona 4 SILVER BLUE. In one chapter, it’s revealed that Izanami’s status as a deity grants her some kind of cosmic awareness, and she seems to have some degree of Medium Awareness. She decides to directly address the reader, but she doesn’t try to attack them or anything like that. Instead, she warns the reader that they too can fall into their own fog of lies in real-life and deceive themselves if they aren’t careful. She also explains that she’s been aware of the reader since they first started reading the prologue. And lastly, she ominously foreshadows some future things to come in the story before departing to pay Labrys a visit.
• No, not even fanfic authors are protected by the fourth wall, as proven in episode 13 of Pretty Cure Heavy Metal when Zero escaped from the author's computer and assaulted him after he said Candle Jack's name in the nar You guys never learn, do you? Three episodes later, the author made a similar mistake: saying the name of the Hypnotoad, after which he was quickly hypnotized by the creature.
• In the third entry of the Gintama Chromatic Chronicles, Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way zaps herself from the Harry Potter universe into the Gintama universe and starts turning everybody into goffs. The story starts with the author already having caught the "goffik virus", resulting in the narration, spelling and grammar getting crazier and crazier the worse her condition gets.
• Inverted in the fic It's a Small World, After All. The characters are scared of what might happen if the fangirls come IN.
• In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, the character Pinkie Pie (who formerly provided the page image) occasionally appears to acknowledge the audience. One early fanfic depicted her as a serial killer. Episode 25 of the actual show had her temporarily go (more) insane. Given the above points, it was only a matter of time until some fan combined them into this trope, and that they did.
  • In Pinkie Pie's Incredible Interplanetary Super Prank, she plays an April Fools' prank on the reader.
  • The Pony POV Series chapter "Teacher Teacher" begins with the reader talking to Princess Gaia, who hypnotises them into her Lotus-Eater Machine. She's also replied to quite a few readers comments and tried to do the same...
    Princess Gaia: "And why would you want to be 'protected' from mama sweetheart? I just want you to be happy and safe. Just listen to mama's singing and you'll understand."
  • Hell, not even the author was protected. By the end of the next chapter Princess Gaia has put him into the Lotus-Eater Machine too. In his absence she took over the author's note that directs people to what music is recommended for listing while reading the chapter as well as the note that promises that the next chapter is on its way.
  • In "Applejack vs Nyarlathotrot", Nyarlathotrot turns away from the heroes and suddenly gives a HUGE rant to the reader, claiming it is the readers and writers' faults that all of this is happening because they created him with their desire for Dark Fics. He then threatens and insults the reader for a while as the heroes stare at him confused, since they can't see the fourth wall like he can.
  • In the Mario & Luigi crossover "Of Ponies and Plumbers", at the end of chapter 13 Discord tries to brainwash the author into giving up on the story and therefore let him win. As a result, the author marked the story as "cancelled" on Fimfiction.net for some time, and the author even pretended to be "discorded" in the comments section of the story.
  • Someone went and combined this with the movie version of a certain entry from Comics up above...
  • Whatever the hell this is. Distorted Applejack appears like she died with a dumb expression on her face before she gets up, faces and then leaps at the audience with that same face, and the screen goes black.
  • In the grimdark fanfic Pages Of Harmony, Twilight expresses her desire to eliminate chaos from everywhere in the multiverse. A comment on the fanfic summed up a Fridge Horror that turns Twilight's ambition to be Paranoia Fuel toward the readers...
    DarthSonic66: For anyone rooting for Twilight here, I have to ask: y'all do realize she wants to murder a good many of you? Considering her multiversal ambitions.
  • Inverted by Fanfic Is Crapsack, in which Pinkie Pie is traumatized by the horrible fanfiction she was exposed to. Played straight when Pinkamena brutally defeats the Trollfic.
• Paper Mario X 2: The author gets shot by Samus at the end of Chapter 52.
• The Child of Love: In an omake, Asuka kicks the author in the groin after hearing him mutter that she was angry because it was her time of the month.
• Superwomen of Eva 2: Lone Heir of Krypton: In the third chapter's omake Asuka gets mad and fed up with the author's antics and chases him angrily to beat him.
• Imperfect Metamorphosis is an Alternate Universe Touhou Project Fan Fic. A much-hyped and foreshadowed climatic battle occurred between Yukari Yakumo and Yuuka Kazami. At the end, Yukari merged her soul with Yuuka's, in the attempt to effectively destroy her. It failed, but because Yukari is connected at a deep level with reality's veil, Yuuka saw every single reality that exists or that we created with our imagination for just about everything. She knows about us. She knows about TV Tropes. And she made that fact known.
• The Buffy the Vampire Slayer / Batman crossover ''Lacking and Anchor'' offers an Alternative Character Interpretation for the Joker. The accident that turned him into the Joker let him see past the fourth wall. Realizing that his and his world's existence was reliant on having readers, he devoted himself to keeping Batman's story as interesting as possible.
  Joker: “How do you expect to keep your readers if your villains fall flat? With a lack of readers our world fades from existence, I couldn't let that happen – better to die in a blaze of glory than to never have existed at all … so I painted the town red in blood, pain and screams like the labor pains of existence to make our world live!”
• From Princess Tutu Abridged we have Fakir writing to control the narrator of the abridged series into helping save Duck. And then makes the other abridgers sign a contract to only write non-canon endings for minor characters.
• This is more a background threat to the reader than an actual event in Pokéumans: because of a mix of clone replacements, memory erasure and secret bases, there is no way to disprove that the series is actually happening in real life. So anyone could be a Pokeuman - even you.
• This happens to the author, or a version of him in the multiverse, during the events of Bond Breaker.
• An in-universe example occurs in Turn Me Loose: A Harry Potter Adventure. Harry and Fleur use a pensieve to view Harry's memories of him, Bill, and Chen fighting a powerful demon when partway through the demon starts addressing them directly.
• The Revenge Wars—A series of fanfics wherein the Ranma cast discover the existence of Fourth Wall and are extremely unhappy that a bunch of strangers are playing god over their lives.
• The premise of Lies of Our Lives is a fanfiction Xander seeing past the fourth wall and wanting revenge on fanfic writers for the pain they put him and his friends through.
  Xander: You watch us, manipulate us, you change our lives and make us suffer and for what? Petty entertainment? Because you're bored? Because you have nothing better to do with your lives!? You fragment and distort our very beings with every word your type, with every image you make, and I say no more. I've seen you, staring at us like the bunch of perverts that you are, and I will not stand for it any longer. All of this will end! Because I'm going to end this. Because I'm coming for you. All of you.
• While actually an April Fool's gag for Undermon, the part where Chara hijacks the thread, and even proceeds to attack it after Her name was said, giving her control over the Protagonist, it actually hints at what could happen should She actually gain control for real...
• In-universe, Peorth is watching a porn video starring Urd in The Vain Rose's Garden when Urd turns to the camera and says, "Having fun, Peorth?" She then approaches the camera, and comes out of the television.
• Played with in the Contractually Obligated Chaos series, when Prince Vince harasses the author into writing an extra installment. The actual exchange takes place on Tumblr, and is only mentioned in the author's notes, but it's true. Other characters occasionally make snarky remarks about the plot, and Who Writes This Crap?!, but none have ever conversed with the author outside of the narrative. Yet, anyway.
  • The same series also invokes the trope in-universe in the installment Bug Princess and the Seven Months. By this point, the entire cast has more or less given up and accepted that the plot is a Sentient Cosmic Force which is amusing itself at their expense.
    Lady Delphine: And if there’s one other thing I know, it’s that the fourth wall does not protect you, me, or anyone else. BJ himself is pretty certain that the plot is up to something, and he doesn’t trust the hack writer as far as he can throw them.
• An unusual one in the Worm fanfic Taylor Varga where one of the characters with the username Void Cowboy posted in the story thread itself! This was quickly followed by several other characters such as Tin Mother (an in-story secret AI), Armsmaster, and a couple of others including the story-specific Ianthe. Several of these characters have since posted on other threads, thus spreading the meta.
• In Doctor Who Regenerated, Daisy makes a drawing of a Weeping Angel. Then, in blissful ignorance, she uploads it into the Internet, where it apparently takes on a life of its own, as images of the Angels are wont to do. Sleep tight.
• In-Universe example with The Joy of Creation: Reborn which features Scott Cawthon, the creator of the Five Nights at Freddy's franchise, and his family being attacked by the animatronics from his own series.
• Varric Tethras is credited as the editor on the Twice Upon an Age series of fanfics. Throughout the main story, there are editor's notes in which he converses with the author (whom he has nicknamed "Scholar"), criticizes her choice of words, and otherwise makes a lovable pest of himself. According to the notes on the side volume Agents Acquired, he basically insisted that the author add it to the series.
  Author's note: I maintain that this was not my idea. I mean, it was a little bit, but in a passing fancy, 'oh hm' sort of fashion. No, my beloved editor was the one who seized this particular plot bunny and ran away with it.
  Editor's note: Don't worry about Scholar. She'll forgive me. She always does.
• Dragon Ball Z Abridged has a touch of this at the very end of episode 12. They've already established Mr. Popo as the most frightening and creepy thing in existence. Then the end of the episode has KaiserNeko (who was the Team Four Star director/editor of Dragon Ball Z Abridged), wake up from a nightmare related to the show and declare that he has to stop editing so late at night. Suddenly Mr. Popo takes over his computer and starts talking to him in the real world. Cue the horrified scream.
• Cat-Ra: Aroda takes over the author's notes during the alternate reality at the end of Season 3.
• A slightly harmful example in this mod for Risk of Rain 2 which crashes your PC if you die.
• Weaponised in the 'Yandere X Reader' fanfictions, fittingly enough, where you yourself have to confront a Yandere version of a fictional character.
• Fairy Tail Watches DBZA has an In-Universe example with the Fairy Tail wizards and their friends watching Dragon Ball Z Abridged and affected by many in-series events. They get hit by the Solar Flare (at one point they see Lucy's landlady naked), the Dragon Slayers can sense Cell off-screen even before he announces himself, and even get affected by Goten's Ret-Gone in "Super Android 13". The most notable example is that when they are watching "Cell Reception", Goku's "Ninja-and-Pirate" dream is replaced with a "Wizard-and-Firefighter Dream", having Goku dressed as both Natsu and Shinra Kusakabe^note As both Fairy Tail and Fire Force were published in Shōnen Magazine and Piccolo dressed as Gray, making the wizards feel that Goku might be aware of them. This gets compounded when they watch "Hyperbolic Plot Device" and Goku says his dream ended because he felt he was being watched.