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Noticing the Fourth Wall: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:i-can-see-you 1163.png|link=Animal Man|
{{quote|''"I see it all now! There's a reason we're all weirdos who make strange food! We're in...a CARTOON!"''
|''[[Chowder]]''}}
A specialized form of [[Breaking the Fourth Wall]]. Fictional characters suddenly come to the realization that they are fictional characters living in a work of fiction. As you can imagine, this is often a terrible shock. How would you take it if you suddenly learned that you, your family, your friends, and your '''''entire universe''''' are all fake, and that everything you've ever said, done or thought was the product of someone else's imagination? Thus, characters who experience this trope seldom take it well. Popular in comic books and among writers who want to wax philosophical.
Not to be confused with [[Truman Show Plot]], in which the characters are real, but the world is fabricated.
{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* ''[[The Big O]]'': You may not be able to tell by the confusing finale, but this was the true secret of Paradigm City: {{spoiler|the reason nobody remembers what happened prior to 40 years ago is because they didn't ''exist'' prior to 40 years ago.}}
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== [[Video Games]] ==
* ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20130526084416/http://www.kongregate.com/games/EddyParanoia/inquisitive-dave Inquisitive Dave]'' begins as a side-scrolling adventure game, but {{spoiler|after the evil wizard Zardolph is defeated,}} he comes back with the knowledge that their entire world is just a video game, and this knowledge had given him the power to {{spoiler|escape the game and become a virus, destroying every system "because only through chaos can they know true freedom!"}} This leads to {{spoiler|a final confrontation with him at the top of his tower, where the trick to beating him is to hide in an alcove his magic can't reach and refuse to fight back. As a villain character, the point of Zardolph's existence is to fight the hero, so if the hero doesn't fight him, his existence is redundant. Thus, he disappears}}. After the credits, the creators reveal {{spoiler|to Dave that Zardolph hadn't really escaped their control; it was just a test of Dave's lateral thinking.}}
** This [[Let's Play]] ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1RpEs_GTy0 video]'' explains that {{spoiler|1=the whole point of the game was for the amusement of the audience, and it is pointed out that the system and the player are being watched. The player is given his freedom from the game, and the video watcher is called a voyeur. From the perspective of the watcher this seems like
* One of the dream sequences in ''[[Max Payne (series)|Max Payne]]'' has Max realize he's in a comic book/computer game. In the course of the dream he observes that each of these revelations are "Funny as hell, it was the most horrible thing I could think of." Upon awakening, he says that the drug-fueled dream left "dark stains on my soul that would never come off." As a confirmation of this, he observes in the game's sequel that "when I slept, my dreams were nightmares."
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