View source for Logging Onto the Fourth Wall

{{trope}}
A character in a TV show or movie hops onto his computer, and begins to type in a URL into a Web browser as part of the plot. Or perhaps you spot a URL in a panel of a comic book, or hear a friendly voiceover in a video game, telling you to visit his site.

Cue every geek who saw it attempting to open up his Web browser and check the website in real life.

This [[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything|sometimes succeeds]]: Most media companies have rules requiring producers to buy any domain name they show on the screen before the movie or TV show is released, so that if someone actually tries to visit it, he gets a Web site under their design. Many producers create a nice Web site designed to promote the show, that usually [[Leaning on the Fourth Wall|leans on the fourth wall]] by creating the website as it would be in-universe.

Sometimes this can be an [[Character Blog|in-universe blog of characters]] (which may also double as a [[Fourth Wall Mail Slot]]).

Pioneered by [[Alternate Reality Game]]s, and also used for [[Viral Marketing]]. Can be a form of [[In-Universe Marketing]] as well.

Se also [[555]] (the prefix for fictional phone numbers) which exists for similar reasons.

{{examples}}

Due to the nature of the Web, please specify whether the URL is active or defunct when adding examples. If the site is active,<ref>(at the time, anyway)</ref> please also provide a link.

== Advertising ==
* One Energizer bunny commercial had inmyunderwear.com, devoted to online sale of underwear so that you could be "surfing in your underwear". It used to actually sell underwear, but is now a porn tube site.


== Anime & Manga ==
* In the English dub of ''[[Duel Masters (anime)|Duel Masters]]'', Kintaro (dressed as Hakuoh) introduces himself by sending his cape flying, and tells another character that you can buy them at noveltyflyingcapes.com. Plastic Cow had registered the site for the one-shot gag. The link is currently defunct, but a reproduction of its content can be found [http://dpak.deviantart.com/art/NoveltyFlyingCapes-com-8391283 here].
* After the ''[[Durarara!!]]'' anime began airing, fan-versions of the show's Dollars chat room were created.
* [[Galaxy Angel Rune]] episode 8 involves [[Harassing Phone Call|haunted text messages]] being sent from the nonexistent site <nowiki>http://xgi92.hxbleg.ga</nowiki>.
* If you're quick, you can catch an ad in a newspaper in one scene from ''[[Hidamari Sketch]]'' for ''[[Show Within a Show|Fashionable Detective Lovely Chocolat]]'' complete with a (nonexistent) URL: www.shqft-wed.co.jp.
* ''[[Hell Girl]]'' has the Jigoku Tsuushin website, the site that is accessed when people want to send others to hell. Naturally, someone created an actual URL, and is only one of many Jigoku Tsuushin sites. Link [https://web.archive.org/web/20130719060952/http://jigokutsushin.co.nr/ here].
* In ''[[Paprika]]'', the characters visit radioclub.jp, which gives an error page saying "Can not find server, DC mini error" in the real world.
* ''[[Until Death Do Us Part]]'' has www.prizeneck.com. Going there now will send you to the publisher's site, but it may have lead to a promotional site once.
* Shogun's URLs from ''[[Chaos;Head]]'' really exists. They're leads to gruesome anime-pictures with Haritsuke no Misa case victim on it.

== Comic Books ==
* One ''[[Astro City]]'' story had a character looking up the hero Roustabout on herocopia.com. If you looked up herocopia.com at the time, you got taken to the same page on Roustabout as the characters saw. These days [http://www.herocopia.com herocopia.com] is a sanctioned fan site for ''[[Astro City]]''.
* In ''Checkmate'' Carl Draper (the [[Heel Face Turn|former villain]] Deathtrap, now Checkmate's head of security) has a blog at https://web.archive.org/web/20120208105802/http://www.gideonii.com/ the address of which was visible on panel. (You need the username "CARL DRAPER" and password "wilhelmina" to access it.)


== Film ==
* ''[[The Ring]]'': For a long time, https://web.archive.org/web/20130911152042/http://www.moeskoislandlighthouse.com/ existed. It was moved to https://web.archive.org/web/20090120061043/http://sweb.cz/moesko/ by fans.
* ''[[Transformers (film)|Transformers]]'': Ladiesman217 is an actual registered e-Bay user. It just doesn't have anything for sale at the moment (bummer).


== Literature ==
* A first-person account of the dangers of predators in online chats was written by one Katie Tarbox and published by Penguin under the title ''Katie.com''. Only one problem: At the time of publication, the domain katie.com belonged to a completely different person who was unaffiliated with the book, and who had had the domain well before Tarbox even started writing. Someone at Penguin was ''really'' not thinking things through. Oh, and to make things even more facepalm-worthy, the original title of the book was ''Girl.com'', but Penguin was fine with scrapping ''that'' title when it found out that a porn site was at that URL at the time.
** Ironically enough, the domain name was sold, and now ''Katie.com'' is a porn site as well.
* A ''[[Captain Underpants]]'' novel had a fight with a giant hamster, with a warning that urged the reader to visit whenhamstersattack.com. [https://web.archive.org/web/20120729233551/http://www.whenhamstersattack.com/index.php/ It, of course, exists].
* In [[The Night Circus]], when {{spoiler|Bailey becomes the modern proprietor of the circus}}, his email address is listed as ''bailey@nightcircus.com''. Guess what author Erin Morgenstern's email is? http://nightcircus.com
* ''[[Animorphs]]'' had www.earthisours.com (defunct) and "The Yeerks Are Here" websites, though the real sites were fan-made, not official.


== Live-action TV ==
* ''[[Doctor Who]]'': In the first episode of the new series, Rose uses a search engine called Search-Wise to find information about the Doctor; both Search-Wise.net and the conspiracy web site she finds exist in real life, the former maintained by an independent IT company as a service for film and television program makers and the latter a creation of the BBC's web team. The series went on to accumulate a large number of tie-in web sites, of which [[The Other Wiki]] has [[wikipedia:Doctor Who tie-in websites|a convenient list]].
* ''[[Arrested Development (TV series)|Arrested Development]]'' had Oscar Bluth's "blog" (which was static, not really a blog) imoscar.com. And as of the final episode, imnoscar.com for {{spoiler|one of Saddam Hussein's doubles, who claims he doesn't have a scar where the real Hussein does}}. Both are now defunct.
* Dane Cook was on ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' and his opening monologue concerned [[YouTube]], and how you can type any random keystrokes in and get at least one hit, including "A:F6". The next day, sure enough, there were a bunch of new videos either named or tagged A colon F6.
* Both ''[[The Daily Show]]'' and ''[[The Colbert Report]]'' have jokingly mentioned URLs, which actually lead to the sites portrayed. Unfortunately, we still need an active example.
** Several years ago there was a Spoof Ad for a bank called "clownpenis.fart." They were late getting online and that was the last domain name left in the entire internet.
** [[Sigourney Weaver]] was looking for herself online and found a [[Nip Slip]] on "eyesugar.biz," which redirects to NBC.
** And now shop on-line at http://www.patnpattisslackssnacksandknickknacks@patnpattisbackpackshack.ack{{Dead link}}!
* ''[[Ghost Whisperer]]'' displayed a URL on screen a few times. Actaully going to those sites (I forget what they are now) you will find (now outdated) tie-ins for the series.
* ''[[The Big Bang Theory]]'' had PennyBlossoms.com in the episode where the geeks opened an online store. Yep, the site exists, and it's owned by the production company.
* Friendface.co.uk from ''[[The IT Crowd]]'' exists, but displays a page showing that Friendface has been "blocked by Reynholm Industries' network": [https://web.archive.org/web/20180419075046/http://www.friendface.co.uk/]
** [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=TNETENNBA The Urban Dictionary page for "Tnetennba"]. Includes "One who looks up words which have been [[Scrabble Babble|artificially created for the purpose of fiction or comedy]]".
* ''[[How I Met Your Mother]]'' does this constantly. [[The Other Wiki]] has a [[wikipedia:How I Met Your Mother|long list]] compiled of them.
** The only exception so far is a rate-your-teacher website from "Subway Wars", which doesn't exist. [[Product Placement|They only show Ted searching and finding the site through Bing.]]
* ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'' Season 1 had a group of nerds with their website, Hellhound's Lair. Googling this brings up the site with a bunch of the American Urban Myths other episodes of Supernatural had used.
* In 2002, ''[[Sesame Street]]'' episode [http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Episode_3997 3997] featured Oscar the Grouch seeing a commercial for the grouch amusement park Six Crabs Yucky World. The commercial showed the URL https://web.archive.org/web/20110928005058/http://www.yuckyworld.org/ , which Oscar subsequently visited on the show. Troper [[Tropers/Taper|Taper]] happened to be watching at the time and, amused by the .org domain, visited the site, only to discover that the producers had neglected to register the domain. He quickly registered it himself, putting up [http://waxwolf.com/yuckyworld.org/index-old.html a placeholder page]. Soon thereafter, he was contacted by Sesame Workshop and transferred the domain to them; they had intended to register the site but the paperwork had fallen through the cracks and not been filed by air time. [[Tropers/Taper|Taper]] received several e-mails from parents who had watched the show and visited the site, thanking him for keeping the domain from being registered by a [[Shock Site]]—this is the basis of his claim that he once saved Sesame Street. (The yuckyworld.org site no longer functions as a web site but is still owned by Sesame Workshop.)
* ''[[iCarly]]'' has quite a few examples from links on its show, like: https://web.archive.org/web/20190830164959/http://worldofchucks.com/ or http://chickapedia.com, which redirect to the iCarly website.
* In season 3 of ''[[24]]'', a villain at one point mentions the website http://www.sylviaimports.com/. Going to that URL gets you a (now-dated) message from the show's producers.
* There have been several ''[[Lost]]'' ARG websites, the earliest of which was oceanic-air.com, a site for the [[In-Universe]] Oceanic Airlines. It also contained a few [[Easter Egg]]s for the show (no longer available). Amusingly, a later ARG site that was about the [[In-Universe]] Apollo Candy became a porn site once the producers sold the domain.
* ''[[Felicity]]'' had http://www.noelcrane.com/
* Conan O'Brien made an off-hand joke on ''Late Night'' about https://web.archive.org/web/20100123143737/http://www.hornymanatee.com/. Because of (according to Conan) legal reasons, NBC actually had to buy the URL. It used to feature fan art, plus a donation link to a manatee help group. Now it just links to NBC.
* [[The L Word]] would like to redirect this browser to https://web.archive.org/web/20120711153412/http://www.ourchart.com/ Did you get that? It's [[Product Placement|OurChart.com]]
* ''[[Sherlock]]'' has https://web.archive.org/web/20180622153038/http://www.thescienceofdeduction.co.uk/, Sherlock's personal website.
** Plus, a couple of blogs- [https://web.archive.org/web/20180728071642/http://www.johnwatsonblog.co.uk/ John's,] and [http://www.mollyhooper.co.uk/blog/ Molly's]{{Dead link}}.
** And [http://www.connieprince.co.uk/ Connie's.]
* ''[[Two and A Half Men]]'' has an episode where Charlie discovers a website called http://www.charlieharpersucks.com which has mean information about him. It used to have such information, but is now a redirect to the show's main page.
** Another episode has the characters mention a couple of fake porn websites. In real life you'll be greeted by a message from the writers berating you for trying to go to a porn site.
* A crazed fan in [[The Amanda Show]] (played by Amanda Bynes herself) often advertised for her website www.amandaplease.com during episodes. The site actually existed as a crazed fan site by the in-show character.
* The titular character of ''[[Nathan Barley]]'' boasted about registering his site, Trashbat, in the Cook Islands so it would end with "[[Does This Remind You of Anything?|.co.ck]]". The producers actually did the very same thing with [https://web.archive.org/web/20051027002638/http://www.trashbat.co.ck/ the site they set up for the show ].
* [[Psychoville]] featured several examples.
* The ''[[Are You Afraid of the Dark?]]'' episode "The Tale of Station 109.1" had http://www.radiospace.com/.
* ''[[Angel]]'' had Cordelia joking about [https://web.archive.org/web/20140109062725/http://oh-by-the-way-we-have-darla-stashed-here.com/ a handy website used to find Darla]
* ''[[Jericho]]'' set up JenningsandRall.com, supposedly the in-universe Web site of Jennings and Rall, the corporation with a significant role in the second season of the series. It offered hints as to events on the show. The domain name has since lapsed, but the site can be seen [http://jenningsandrall.tomtooman.com/ here].
* ''[[Happy Endings]]'' has www.steakmehometonight.com, which advertises Dave's food truck. The site has commercials for the truck, today's specials and links to the Twitter and Facebook pages (which exist) for the nonexistent food truck.
* ''[[CSI: NY]]'' had an episode with Stella finding out her boyfriend had posted a sex tape on the site www.aresanob.com ('Bonasera', her last name, backwards). The site had a message saying "Click here to see what Stella saw", then showed the sex tape clip and an extended promo for the next ep, "All Access". (now it just takes you to the CBS page)


== Newspaper Comics ==
* ''[[Garfield (Comic Strip)|Garfield]]'' once used this trick: [http://images.ucomics.com/comics/ga/2000/ga000907.gif One of the strips] has the titular cat ordering coffee from a site called coffeequick.com, which Jim Davis apparently registered and checked for visitors IRL.
** [[Older Than They Think|Beforehand]], [http://images.ucomics.com/comics/ga/2000/ga000730.gif this strip] had Odie registering dingleball.com. Both sites led to web games which can now be found on the official Garfield website: [https://web.archive.org/web/20130902045930/http://www.garfield.com/fungames/dingleball.html Dingle Ball] for the Dingleball.com strip, [https://web.archive.org/web/20130917222033/http://www.garfield.com/fungames/beanme.html Bean Me!] for the Coffeequick.com strip.
* ''[[Prickly City]]'' managed to screw this one up by mentioning a fake URL (CoyotePAC.org) in one comic that the authors didn't bother to register in real life. Cue a porn spammer grabbing the real-life domain as quickly as possible after the comic was printed. Oops.


== Tabletop Games ==
* [[White Wolf]]'s ''[[Hunter: The Reckoning]]'': The game mentioned a website with the URL "www.hunter-net.org", where the title characters would get together and discuss hunting monsters. Several websites with that URL (or something similar) were created in [[Real Life]].


== Video Games ==
* ''[[Batman: Arkham Asylum]]'': Arkham Asylum has an in-universe Web site, www.arkhamcare.com, as does the Gotham Municipal Service, www.gotamcitymunicipal.com.
* ''[[Grand Theft Auto]]: Liberty City Stories'' had a couple of Web sites named off by the game's radio stations, as well as appearing in the game's manual, which was written as a newspaper.
** The GTA games started doing this way back in ''[[Grand Theft Auto III|GTA 3]]''. Anyone remember www.petsovernight..com?
* ''[[Doom (series)|Doom]] 3'' has various spam messages readable in the PDA that point to www.martianbuddy.com. Going on that site would gives you a code to unlock two weapon lockers in the game.
* The graffiti in one of ''[[Portal (series)|Portal]]'''s [[Room Full of Crazy]] includes the address http://www.aperturescience.com/ which gives [[Backstory]], and other appropriate weirdness.
** Another graffiti had a username and password for the before-mentioned website (cjohnson and tier3 respectively). Logging in with said username and password would give more backstory about the game (that is, until the site was changed due to the release of ''[[Portal 2]]'').
* ''[[The World Ends With You]]'' has a URL (book3rd.tv.jp, now defunct) quite visible on a billboard in the Shibukyu Main Store (aka [[No Communities Were Harmed|Tokyu Department Store]]) area.
* Two websites are mentioned in ''[[Beyond Good & Evil (video game)|Beyond Good and Evil]]''—one for the news channel that broadcasts in-game, and one for the military force in the game. At one point, they were sites owned by the game's publisher Ubisoft, and had [[Bonus Content]] in them. However, they've since expired.
* This ended up working out for ''[[Super Paper Mario]]'', where Francis' website was digibutter.nerr, and someone bought the actual domain name at digibutter.nerr.biz for a fan site about ''Paper Mario''.
* In the NES ''[[Who Framed Roger Rabbit?]]'' game, at one point you find Jessica Rabbit's phone number. Back in the day, if you actually called the number, you would get certain hints.
** [[The Angry Video Game Nerd]] did a follow-up video to his original review, and decided to call the number. It is now an x-rated phone line. He's amused that there exists an NES game that advertises such a thing.
* ''[[Enter the Matrix]]'' had websites revealed through cutscenes and the "hacking" minigame, that when visited in real life, gave you clues to unlock additional secret, usually extremely helpful things in levels, ranging from heavier weaponry to make boss fights easier (like a heavy machine gun to take down a SWAT heli) to unlocking an easier/stealthier/etc route through a level. The websites were all done up as if they were in-universe sites, and if I recall correctly, you actually had to do a bit of work to find the clues you could use in game.
* ''[[Pikmin]] 2'' had the player receiving e-mail from the characters' families, which was sometimes replaced with spam mail. The spam would refer to a website - either nintendo.com or pikmin.com.
* [[The Adventures of Sam & Max: Freelance Police|Sam And Max]] has maxforpresident.org , a site promoting Max as president. In canon, Max becomes the president on the United States running against Abraham Lincoln. The site has a free download for "Episode 4: Abe Lincoln Must Die!!" as well.
* In ''[[A Vampyre Story]]'', when Mona tries to read the Baroness von Kiefer's journal, the only entry she can find is instructions to visit a particular website (she doesn't get it, but Froderick tells her the message was received); at the website is...the Baroness' journal, which reveals backstory about the Baroness and her research.
* [[Team Fortress 2]] has ReliableExcavationDemolition.com and BuildersLeagueUnited.com which are the names of the R.E.D. team and B.L.U. team. Humorously, the BLU site has been hijacked by the RED site.
* In ''[[Hatoful Boyfriend]]'', Yuuya suggests the player character check out the blog of [http://pigeonblog.wordpress.com/ Brian the Pigeon]. Apparently in the ''Hatoful'' universe, Brian is a multiple Pulitzer Prize winner for his writing.


== Web Animation ==
* ''[[Broken Saints]]'' does this with an IP address.
* Many fictional websites mentioned on ''[[Homestar Runner]]'' have domains owned by the site's owners. Those that don't usually get snatched up by fans. One example of the "fans grabbed it" was Virtualpiz.biz from e-mail "pizza joint."


== Webcomics ==
* Marten's blog [http://yellingaboutmusic.blogspot.com Yelling About Music] (also [https://web.archive.org/web/20120301023504/http://www.questionablecontent.net/rlblog/ here]) and the now-defunct VespAvenger site in ''[[Questionable Content]]''.
** Most of the main characters also have their own Twitter pages.
* Randal Munroe [[Defictionalization|defictionalized]] [https://web.archive.org/web/20081201162017/http://wetriffs.com/ WetRiffs] ([[NSFW]]) after [http://xkcd.com/305/ this] ''[[Xkcd]]'' strip. Shortly after the [https://xkcd.com/1025/ Tumblr] strip, http://raccoonsexdungeon.tumblr.com was defictionalized as well.
* ''[[Homestuck]]'': Dave's ironically maintained blog: http://sweetbroshellablog.blogspot.com/
** This is also used in a roundabout-meta way earlier on, when John visits [[MS Paint Adventures]] in-universe [http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=002012 here.] Visiting the url displayed brought curious readers to [http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=3 this page,] which [[Schrödinger's Gun|possibly]] foreshadowed the [[Spin-Off|Midnight Crew Intermission]] that occurred between Acts 3 and 4.
** Also when Rose [http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=002139 visits] the [[Spore]] [[GameFAQs]] [http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/home/926714.html page], and when Jade [http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=002734 visits] a [[Fur Affinity]] [http://www.furaffinity.net/user/vampireprincess007 user profile].
* Parson is seen [http://www.erfworld.com/book-1-archive/?px=%2F014.jpg checking] the hit count on his [https://web.archive.org/web/20131028233635/http://www.hamstard.com/ "Hamstard"] webcomic [[Stylistic Suck|(24 uniques -- a record!)]] shortly before being summoned into ''[[Erfworld]]''.


== Western Animation ==
* ''[[The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy]]'': The "snake cult" members in a particular episode tell Grim to go to www.shnissugah.com to help summon an ancient Canadian Snake God.
* ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'':
** [https://web.archive.org/web/20070217083937/http://www.mrxswebpage.com/ Mr. X's Webpage] from the episode "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes"
** One of the chalkboard gags was "butt.com is not my email address". The problem was, at the time, it ''was'' the address of a real porn site. I think it was later changed to "butt.butt".
** Lisa Simpson's email address, which was some variation of "smartgirl 6 3 underscore backslash at yahoo dot com." (Which wouldn't be legal, because email addresses can't contain backslashes.)
** The Simpsons also went to an Internet cafe, which had the sign "<nowiki>http://wel.com</nowiki>" (which goes to a Korean website for something called Froebel).
** In the episode "Home Away from Homer," Ned rents a room to a couple of seemingly innocent female college students, who then use it for their naughty webcam site, www.sexyslumberparty.com. When the episode first aired, the URL linked to an official show site featuring pictures of the two girls.
** [http://www.thesimpsons.com/badgers/index.htm WhatBadgersEat.com] also happens to exist.
* From ''[[Robot Chicken]]'': [http://glycerinejohnson.blogspot.com Glycerine Johnson dot blogspot dot com!]
* ''[[Aqua Teen Hunger Force]]'' had the www.yzzerdd.com, a wizard with a popup-laden web site. And of ''course'' Williams Street registered the actual domain. (Note that the real-life site also spews popups—hilarious fake ones, just like in the episode, but still...)


== Real Life ==
* During the 2004 debates, Dick Cheney suggested that Americans should go to factcheck.com. Unfortunately, anybody performing such a check would have been sent to a domain unaffiliated with the non-partisan factcheck.org, and which was subsequently redirected to George Soros' Web site.

{{reflist}}
[[Category:Metafiction Demanded This Index]]
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Fourth Wall]]