Narrator: Difference between revisions
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[[Self-Demonstrating Article|That's what the sign had said, anyway.]] And so, [[Tropes Will Ruin Your Life|as if compelled to do so]], the Troper sat down at his computer screen and began to type...
A character, sometimes part of the story proper and sometimes completely external to it, who acts either as the storyteller or as a framing device. A '''Narrator''' always breaks the [[Fourth Wall]], explicitly addressing the audience to tell them the story. Sometimes the Narrator is also responsible for presenting [[An Aesop]] to the audience at the end of the story, as in ''[[The Twilight Zone]]'' and its imitators.
To be a Narrator, the individual must directly relate to the story in some way, if only as the person telling it. For example, [[Alfred Hitchcock]] was ''not'' a Narrator for ''[[Alfred Hitchcock Presents]]'', because his footage was independent of and had no bearing on the story or stories it appeared with. [[Rod Serling]] ''was'' a narrator, because he specifically introduced stories, often provided a lead-in to set them up, and provided a closing after the story footage ended; in one episode he actually ''was'' in the story, explaining how it was clearly ridiculous fantasy until the protagonist hears him and burns an envelope with his name on it, causing him to disappear.
Sometimes the Narrator can also take on aspects of a [[Greek Chorus]] or be [[Lemony Narrator|otherwise weird]], but a pure Narrator does not offer opinion on the action, he just lays it
One way of subverting this trope is to [[Interactive Narrator|have one or more characters able to hear the narrator]] (in most instances, the characters do not hear the narrations), and refuse to do what the narrator describes. Another is to [[Unreliable Narrator|make the narrator a complete liar]].
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* The [[GaoGaiGar]] Narrator explains all the scientific Keys to Victory without really letting emotion into it. He doesn't need to - explaining ''how'' the [[Monster of the Week]] will be getting its ass(es) handed to it in through what is basically the Japanese version of [[Morgan Freeman]] is enough.
* [[Ookami-san]] has Shirai Kuroko as a [[Lemony Narrator]] who also makes frequent observations about the main heroines' [[A-Cup Angst|lack of endowments]].
* The narrator of [[Keroro Gunso]] is a typical narrator, usually summing up the episode with a little piece of wisdom at the end of each segment. However, everyone is aware of his existence. He even appears on screen [[The Faceless|(wearing a mask)
** He's only a typical narrator in the Japanese version. In the dub, he openly hates his job and tries to seperate himself from the insanity. In one episode, he actually quit his job because the series recycled a plotline too many times, and a new British narrator replaces him until he comes back at the end. He also only does the show because he's deep in gambling debts, apparently.
* ''[[Kimba the White Lion]]'' sometimes uses a narrator who would set up the premise of the episode or go over plot points that the audience may have missed from previous episodes.
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* Parodied until the break of dawn by the ''[[George of the Jungle]]'' [[The Film of the Series|movie]]. The narrator not only narrates the action, he talks to the audience (at one point assuring them "[[Never Say "Die"|Nobody dies in this movie]]... they just get really big boo-boos"), corrects the actors when they mishear his description and at one point gets into an argument with one of the [[Mooks]] over how he's describing him, even rewinding the movie just to give him a hard time.
** The narrator was also parodied with in the old ''[[George of the Jungle]]'' cartoons, including one point where he made a character in the cartoon crash his plane into the top of the mountain with the warning, "Let that be a lesson to you: never monkey around with a narrator."
* ''[[300]]''. At the end of the film, the
* The [[Adam Sandler]] flick ''Eight Crazy Nights'' had narration as well.
* ''Little Children'' plays this oddly straight, with a narrator explicitly saying what the characters are thinking at a given moment. It's surprisingly effective, though frequent PBS viewers will be rather weirded out, as the narrator they use is Will Lyman, the voice of ''Frontline'' and many an episode of ''Nova''.
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** Yuna narrates the sequel.
* Marquis Ondore narrates, via his memoirs, several key points in ''[[Final Fantasy XII]].''
* Alazlam is technically the narrator of ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics]].'' Though he doesn't get involved in the actual story scenes, his "Brave Story" menu allows you to replay any of them, and gives his description of what happens. Plus, he has the final words in the ending, not counting the last "bonus" scene. Daravon, who runs the Tutorial menu, appears sneakily in the game via the Mediator skill "Mimic Daravon"
** It's also implied Alazlam Durai is getting this information from the "Durai Reports", written by his ancestor Olan Durai (who hangs around at the periphery of the plot through much of the game, only actually appearing in battle once)
* In the 2004 version of ''[[The Bard's Tale]]'', the events of the game are narrated by the man who's reading the tale (as voiced by the late [[Tony Jay]]). He and the eponymous Bard (as voiced by Cary Elwes) frequently bicker throughout the game, discussing issues like [[Kleptomaniac Hero|the morality of claiming items from chests for one's self]], or [[Money Spider|the absurdity of finding money]] [[Randomly Drops|or sellable goods from killing various creatures]].
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