Breaking the Fourth Wall/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope Characters are aware they are in a work of fiction, and are able to talk to the audience.

  • Straight: Characters can turn to camera and talk to the audience.
  • Exaggerated:
  • Beyond the Impossible: Characters become impatient with the you for not reponding and actually manage to get out of the TV screen and into Real Life to talk to you directly.
  • Downplayed: Leaning on the Fourth Wall
  • Justified: The characters are in a Reality TV show or being filmed for a documentary. The cameras ARE there.
  • Inverted: The actors remain completely in character and are shocked by the writers turning up on the set and telling them that they are fictional characters, explaining what is about to happen.
  • Subverted: A Fourth Wall Psych, e.g: Jim turns to camera and comments on the situation. On the next shot we realize that this was shown through Bob's eyes.
  • Double Subverted:
    • Bob then turns to camera and says “He was talking to me, OK? Jeez.”.
    • OR Jim says "Not you, Bob! Them!", referring to the audience.
  • Parodied: As Alice does a long, inappropriate Shakespearian soliloquy, other characters pace around look inpatient.
    • One of the characters is the camera(wo)man.
  • Deconstructed:
    • One character talks to camera, but it's actually a symptom of paranoid schizophrenia, and bothers the other characters.
    • Or, the discovery that that they are nothing more than Fictional Characters drives them insane.
  • Reconstructed: However it's pretty harmless - it's basically talking to yourself. The other characters learn to ignore it.
  • Zig Zagged: A Bob is always talking to camera, both to the writers and the audience. It gets diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenia, and he is committed to mental hospital. We get scenes from “the ward for people who talk to invisible cameras” which are very odd. People in this ward are not always in agreement about where the camera is. Meanwhile, the writers miss having someone to talk to, and are punishing the other characters. Alice realizes this, and proclames it in a long Shakespearian soliloquy. The writers are moved and flattered by this. Bob is later released, but he is cured of his fourth-wall braking.
  • Averted: Despite the wacky, whimsical, and down-right illogical setting, despite the whole thing being a spoof, no-one ever so much as turns to look at the camera.
  • Enforced: his is exactly the kind of show where people talk directly to the audience and the authors. And they do.
  • Lampshaded: “Yes YOU, audience! I can see you! Hello!”
  • Invoked: When something unfair happens, Bob complains to the writers.
  • Defied: ???
  • Discussed: “I prefer talking to the writers than the audience. You can get more done”
  • Conversed: “The characters on this show are always talking directly to the viewers. But they never seem to hear wen I talk back to them.”
  • Played for laughs: Nearly Always.
  • Played for Drama: The Shakespearian soliloquy: A character gives a long speech, pretty much directly to the audience, about everything going on in their head.

Hey you! Yes, you! Click the back button, will ya?

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