Breaking the Fourth Wall/Real Life

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • There's no better way to mess with your friends than by breaking the fourth wall in conversation. That way, if there's ever a movie made of your life, you can include fourth-wall breaking scenes without having to fictionalize anything.
    • So that's what you've been doing. Knock it off, Derek! Yes, this is an attempt to mess with the heads of every Derek in the world. Don't spoil it
  • Thanks to the existence of wiretaps, it is now possible to break the fourth wall by giving a friendly, or not so friendly, hello to the FBI/DHS/NSA/SRI/etc. This is customarily done after making a particularly seditious comment, as exemplified by this xkcd comic and another from The Last Days of Foxhound.
    • Can you say that directly into the microphone please? * Prominently displays shirt pocket or some other mundane place a microphone could be hiding*
    • George Carlin once told a story about a friend of a friend who, while under investigation by the FBI, took to answering his phone with "Fuck Hoover" instead of "Hello".
    • If your boss is prone to listening in on staff you don't even need the FBI.
    • On online games, some savvy players do this to moderators who might be monitoring the chat.
  • Have you ever had a homework in which you have to write X amount of sentences? Now how many times have you (or classmate) written: "I am doing my homework" or "I am learning [insert subject] at school". (This is more frequent in a foreign language class.)
  • You know when you're waking up and half-dreaming still, and you say something utterly surreal that makes complete sense at the time but makes no sense later, until you realize that it was actually a very profound remark, as if someone were narrating your life? You just broke the fourth wall.
    • Bonus points if you just turn your head away (usually towards left side) and give a look worth of Deadpan Snarker and make a mental note over the situation.