Nested Story: Difference between revisions

** Technically the stories are closely related, as they concern one woman and the pretzel twists of her past. They go three levels deep, which was almost unheard-of at the time (although two levels deep was almost commonplace).

* The Polish film ''The Saragossa Manuscript'' has at least five levels of stories-within-stories, and some characters appearing in multiple levels.

** Nolan likes these sort of movies. ''[[Inception]]'' features a dreams-within-dreams narrative.

** ''[[Memento]]'' also has the B Plot of Lenny telling someone the story of his condition in what can best be described as a Flashback.

* The dialogue "Little Harmonic Labyrinth" in Douglas Hofstadter's ''[[Godel Escher Bach|Gödel, Escher, Bach]]'' is one of these. It includes [[Lampshade Hanging]] and discussion of the whole concept of "push" and "pop" story. Helpfully, each level of reality is denoted by an indent in the text, but the indents are used for other things besides telling stories in stories- in one section, Achilles and the Tortoise find a magic lamp and meet a Genie. Attempting to get a wish for more wishes, the genie initially refuses saying that it can't grant "meta-wishes" (wishes about wishes) but eventually relents, but it has to ask the Meta-Genie to allow it to grant a meta-wish... and the Meta-Genie has to ask the Meta-Meta-Genie, and so on. Each genie's lines are indented one more than the previous one. {{spoiler|Naturally, the outermost story (in which Achilles and the Tortoise get kidnapped and start reading a book while they wait for the villain) never does get resolved...}}

* ''[[Wuthering Heights (novel)|Wuthering Heights]]'' is narrated by Mr. Lockwood, who has the story narrated to him by Nelly Dean, who at one point tells him about the time Edgar was telling her...

* Used in ''[[The Stinky Cheese Man]] and Other Fairly Stupid Tales'': "Jack's Bean Problem". The Giant orders Jack to tell him a story, but says he'll eat Jack when the story's over anyway. Jack realizes his only hope is to stall, so he tells the story of how <small>the Giant orders Jack to tell him a story, but says he'll eat Jack when the story's over anyway. Jack realizes his only hope is to stall, so he tells the story of how</small> <small>the Giant orders Jack to tell him a story, but says he'll eat Jack when the story's over anyway. Jack realizes his only hope is to stall, so he tells the story of how</small> <small>the Giant orders Jack to tell him a story, but says he'll eat Jack when the story's over anyway. Jack realizes his only hope is to stall, so he tells the story of how the Giant...</small> In a later chapter, we find out that the Giant fell asleep listening to Jack's endless recursive loop, and Jack just snuck away.

* This happens a couple of times in ''[[The Count of Monte Cristo]]''.