Painting the Medium: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

'''Painting the Medium''' is modifying the presentation of a story in order to convey information about the story. A comic book might give a character special-looking [[Speech Bubbles]] that reflect on their personality. A TV show might change to black-and-white or sepia-tone during flashbacks. A video game might change its GUI to show a change in the player character or the setting.

** Although most fake-ad Energizer Bunny commercials were parodies with fake brand names, one ad used the opening to ABC's [[Wide World of Sports]] more-or-less as-is—sports-clip montage, Jim McKay's "Spanning the globe" voice-over, the works. It ran one year during ABC's coverage of the World Series, making it look even more real. Everything looked normal through the first second or two of the "Agony Of Defeat" clip, before the ski jumper loses control. Then cut to a "close-up" of the Bunny booming away, apparently walking across the ramp. Then cut back to the jumper wiping out...

* A radio commercial has the voice actor breaking into the "next" commercial to mention a sale, leaving the second actor spluttering "She can't do that, can she?"

 

== Anime and Manga ==

* Many [[Fan Sub]]s play with the subtitles at least a little for various effects, though this can distract the audience from what's happening on screen.

** Played by Order, a [[Fan Sub]] group, in their release of ''[[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]]'': every time Simon and Kamina are [[Calling Your Attacks|Calling Their Attacks]], their subtitles get a different font as well as karaoke-like highlights. Also, when someone emphasizes the end of a phrase, the beginning appears first and then the emphasized part appears, and when they're yelling, you can see the words shaking.

** Similarly, Arienai Fansubs's release of ''[[Futari wa Pretty Cure]]'' had some of the karaoke lyrics in the opening credits mimic the motion of objects onscreen, sliding across the screen or spiraling off into the distance.

** A pioneer in these effects was Kaizoku Fansubs with their ''[[One Piece]]'' sub-work. Each character got an elaborate font for calling out their attacks, and sometimes different ways for the letters to appear. It's a bit over-the-top, but then again it's ''One Piece''.

** A somewhat humorous one is done in a fansub of ''[[GaoGaiGar]]''. A certain energy source that greatly boosts the power of any mecha (potentially, ''anything at all'') with mostly unknown origins goes by the name '''{{color|orange| THE POWER}}'''. Whenever a character mentions this, the only subtitles that would show on the screen would say '''{{color|orange| THE POWER!}}''' in gigantic orange letters (the color someone or something becomes when infused with it).

* During Lucy's [[Start of Darkness]] from ''[[Elfen Lied]]'', the moment when Lucy snaps and murders the [[Kids Are Cruel|cruel kids]] who have just {{spoiler|[[Kick the Dog|beaten her little puppy to death]]}} has her final words ("...ARE YOU!!!") {{color|red|subtitled in red}}. In some [[Fan Sub]]s, the font changes as well.

** The same effect was used by at least one fansub group in the final scene of ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro ni]]'''s Watanagashi-hen, when {{spoiler|Mion ([[Twin Switch|apparently]]) murders Keiichi in his hospital bed.}}

* Interestingly, ''[[One Piece]]'' has an example here. The so-called "Levels" of Impel Down are written with Roman letters by Oda himself, katakana spelling shown above, and are also written with Roman letters when the characters mention them. However, in Luffys speech bubbles, they're written purely with katakana. The reason for this is unknown, but might be related to Luffy's rather childish speech pattern.

* The second, remade Tokyopop translation of the ''[[Magic Knight Rayearth]]'' manga features a different font for each kind of character.

 

== Comic Books ==

* An even earlier use of this was the surreal ''[[Krazy Kat]]'', done by George Herriman. At times, the characters would draw various props themselves, and one Sunday sequence emphasising words that end in '-tion' ends with Officer Pupp hauling Ignatz to... an incomplete panel. Pupp asks Herriman if he's got 'kartoonist's kramp', while Ignatz muses on 'sweet procrastination'.

* In the ''[[Asterix]]'' stories, different fonts are used to show languages that cannot be understood by the main characters (or at least notable accents). Most obvious are the Goths, who are written in a thick, heavy Gothic font, and Egyptians, who speak entirely in hieroglyphs (that are subtitled for the reader's benefit).

** Other frame-using examples include Asterix leaning onto the frame for support, his hand and elbow going out of the frame. There's absolutely no wall in this place.

** At the beginning of ''Asterix and Cleopatra'', which depicts a dialogue between two Egyptian characters, a footnote indicates that the scene will be dubbed for the reader's convenience, and goes to explain that the reason why the movement of characters' lips doesn't fit the pronunciation of the words is because dubbing techniques of the time were not sophisticated enough.

*** At one point, Obelix attempts to speak Egyptian. Since Egyptian is represented by hieroglyphics, his faltering efforts look like a child's drawings.

* In ''[[Superman: Secret Identity]]'', almost the entire narration is formatted as if it were written on a typewriter. In the last scene, Clark makes note that the aforementioned machine finally gave out and that he's finishing his autobiography on a computer, something exemplified by the change of narration bubble format.

* ''[[The Avengers (Comic Book)|Mighty Avengers]] #9'' has several characters accidentally yanked back in time; this is shown by printing everything but the word bubbles and captions in a faux-CMYK halftone style, like the comics of the time they were transported to. In the next issue, it goes even further by adding the introductory caption, tiny ads at the bottom of pages, and so on of the era.

* ''[[Rising Stars]]'' contains a truly rare and ''brilliant'' use of the comic medium. As the protagonists leave a character who has become a hermit because he is plagued by seeing the dead, they comment on how he will be alone when they leave. The last panel is a full right-hand page of him muttering that he'll "never be alone" while huddling in a chair. It's all normal until the reader starts to turn the page and light illuminates it from behind, causing the next page to show through and outline a host of dead people and their speech bubbles clustered all around the huddled man on the chair. The entire next page is just a white space with reversed images of people and text to bleed onto the previous page.

* Jim Steranko was fond of this; one issue he did had [[Nick Fury]] making his way through a booby-trapped facility. The page was laid out like a maze, requiring the reader to solve it in order to read. The panels weren't even oriented to each other, which reflected Fury's disorientation.

* In a short sci-fi story appearing in the Swedish edition of ''[[The Phantom (comic strip)|The Phantom]]'', a group of humans are attempting to subvert an alien world so they can seize control. The only thing the aliens care about is The Thinker, a heralded being who, according to their faith, thinks the universe into existence; the humans reason that if they can sedate The Thinker with a stunner, they will reveal him as a fraud, and the resulting chaos from the revelation will make the planet easy for conquest. They succeed in the assault... and the following two pages are filled with ''empty frames''. In the last page immediately after, The Thinker wakes up again, realizes he's forgotten what he thought about, and thinks about something else.

* ''[[Zot]]'' features an issue dealing with Terry's lesbian urges and her dilemma of whether to confess her feelings to Pam, an open (and widely mocked) lesbian. The final page features Pam greeting Terry, only for her to shamefully walk away. {{spoiler|Next comes a page of letters to the writer, or if you're reading the trade paperback, author commentary. Flip the page, and you see the ''real'' last page, where Terry changes her mind and rushes back down the hallway to say 'Hi' to Pam.}}

* ''[[Deadpool]]'' was also the only character who thought and spoke in yellow boxes or balloons, when everyone else used normal white. Now major characters like [[Iron Man]] and [[Spider-Man (Comic Book)|Spider-Man]] have started having their own distinct boxes and bubbles.

* DC's magician Zatanna Zatara casts her spells by speaking them backwards. In issue 23 of ''Countdown to Final Crisis'' we meet her Earth-3 counterpart, Annataz Arataz, who speaks them ''upside-down''. How this sounds to the other characters in the story is not explained.

** [[Meta Guy]] [[Ambush Bug]] can see speech bubbles, and asks her why the words in hers are backwards. She runs away crying.

 

== Film ==

* At the end of ''[[Shrek]]'', the heroic ogre palms the camera's lens for privacy before kissing ogre-Fiona.

* [[A Nightmare on Elm Street|Freddy's Dead]] had a segment of the film (in a dream) filmed in 3D. When the audience is supposed to don their 3D glasses, the character entering the dream actually puts on a pair herself; it is explained that while the glasses mean nothing in the real world, in the dream they "can be whatever you want them to be", and allow her to navigate Freddy's mind. The glasses vanish once she puts them on, and reappear at the end of the film, when the 3D is over.

 

== Literature ==

** Specifically, the Auditors don't ''need'' quotation marks, as they do not actually speak, but alter reality so that they have already spoken.

*** Except in ''The Science Of Discworld III'', in which an Auditor who speaks to Rincewind is forced to actually vibrate some air molecules to communicate. It seems reality isn't as easy to alter in the Roundworld universe, and its words are described as "windy and uncertain" as well as using quotation marks.

** The "single word" was ruined in the Corgi paperback edition, as Pratchett inserted an entire extra page just to get it on a left-hand page—and then the paperback changed the numbering. (The American paperback gets it right.)

** Susan and Mort also start speaking in capitals whenever they "do the Voice".

*** Also in ''Thief of Time'', each chapter break is marked with the ''tick'' of a clock... until the Glass Clock stops time, and the breaks are marked with a simple space as in the other books.

**** It gets better. The chapter break after the Clock stops time is marked with a ''ti-''... and the breaks are marked with a simple space, until time resumes with an ''-ick''. Thereafter chapter breaks are marked with ''tick'' again.

{{quote|There was no sound in the-

"Open up there!"

There was a tinkle of broken glass.

"You've broken their window!"|''not a sound'' in the-}}

*** Conversely, the hordes of belief-deprived microgods which Om warns away from Brutha are too simple to form words, but express themselves with fragmentary subverbal interjections, like this:

{{quote|... Want ...}}

*** And the ones who can speak Speak Like That All The Time.

*** Mind you, this is kept deliberately ambiguous earlier, and interpreted depending on the [[Rule of Funny]]. For example, when Tulip refers to a virginal as "an instrument for --ing young ladies" he gets the raised-eyebrow response "I thought it was just a sort of early piano" and his colleague intervenes with "intended to be ''played'' by young ladies."

** Several characters are also noted for their ability to pronounce punctuation and italics. The sort of people who can pronounce [[Wiki Words]].

** In several books, when a character mentions something Important, it is written with the First Letter in each word Capitalized. Other characters note that they can Hear the Capital Letters.

*** The 25th anniversary release of the paperbacks fix many of these that were previously left out. YAY!

{{quote|'Well, ---- me,' he said. 'A ----ing wizard. I ''hate'' ----ing wizards!'

'You shouldn't ---- them, then,' muttered one of his henchmen, effortlessly pronouncing a row of dashes. }}

** One of the earlier books had an elderly wizard who could pronounce brackets (when he used them, which was often).

** Edward D'eath is a ''very'' dangerous ''person'', as illustrated by his ability to "''think in italics''".

* Lemony Snicket's ''[[A Series of Unfortunate Events]]'' does this sort of thing a lot.

** From ''The Bad Beginning'', the first book, comes this quote: "He found himself reading the same sentence over and over. He found himself reading the same sentence over and over. He found himself reading the same sentence over and over."

** And yet ''another'' book features the trio falling down a very long elevator shaft. Two pages are pure black. Stop for a moment to consider how closely Handler/Snicket must have worked with his publisher to get the word counts to exactly fit the trick pages.

** Another example mentioned how sometimes books would have passages that would seem to make no sense to people who were just skimming, to get them to go back and actually read the book. This was followed by a sentence about construction workers carrying a door.

{{quote|''No part of this book may be used, reproduced, destroyed, tampered with, or eaten without written permission except in the case of brief, possibly coded quotations embodied in critical articles, reviews, and subpoenas.''}}

* According to [[The Other Wiki]], when ''The Hobbit'' was published Tolkien wished for "Thror's map to be tipped in (that is, glued in after the book has been bound) at first mention in the text, and with the moon-letters (Anglo-Saxon runes) on the reverse so they could be seen when held up to the light." This turned out to be prohibitively expensive and was left undone. Alas.

** Fortunately the 'moon letter' version of the map has been created in the 2004 deluxe edition.

* In some editions of Daniel Handler's book ''Watch Your Mouth'', {{color|brown|the second half of the story is printed in burgundy.}}

* ''[[The Neverending Story (novel)|The Neverending Story]]'' uses two different colors for the two reality levels in the book, or two different typefaces in cheaper printings.

* ''[[House of Leaves]]'' is printed in three colors, although there are some variations between the different [[wikipedia:House of Leaves#Colors|versions]] of the book. Normal text is printed in black, the word "{{color|blue|house}}" appears in blue, and {{color|red|references to mythology}} or <s>{{color|red|struck out passages that are somewhat threatening to the reader}}</s> are in red, with the addition of colored and Braille plates. "{{color|red|Minotaur}}" may or may not be struck out, depending on whether it's used during one of the aforementioned mythology references. In addition, there are a few instances of purple in the book as well, including the phrase "{{color|purple|A Novel}}" on the front cover, the {{color|purple|edition number}}, and one instance of a {{color|purple|struck-out purple phrase}} in Chapter XXI. There are two different typefaces, which are used to represent the contributions of the elderly blind man, Zampano, and the twenty-something slacker, Johnny Truant, with a rare third typeface for "The Editors"—and even the accuracy of the typefaces is called into question. Mirror text is used on occasion; some pages have only a few words sparsely placed, and in odd orientations. A labyrinth is represented by a chapter consisting almost wholly of footnotes which refer to each other in a way that can only be described as labyrinthine. The vote is out on if it's good surrealism or pretentious crap.

** Danielewski also wrote a book called ''The Fifty Year Sword'' in which he uses different colors of quotation marks to indicate different speakers.

* The web novel ''[[Sailor Nothing]]'' is, of course, not content to mess only with [[Deconstruction|genre]] and [[Anachronic Order|storytelling]] conventions. The color and font of headers reflects the mood of a particular section; Chapter 5 is split into four subpages, presented in a random order that changes on refreshing the page, each written in first person from a different character's perspective; Shin's journal entry uses a monospace font; the title for Cobalt's entry is the periodic table cell for cobalt; and Chapter 7 is rendered entirely as an [[Interactive Fiction]] game with sprites, although the author has provided a text-only "walkthrough FAQ" version. Even in the "normal" chapters, the narration switches between first person, third person, diary entries, et cetera. The little divider graphics between sections of a chapter contain one-liners if you squint just right.

* The children's book ''[[The Monster at the End of This Book]]'' has ''[[Sesame Street]]'''s Grover going to greater and greater lengths to keep the reader from turning the page (as he's afraid of the titular monster at the end of the book). He tapes pages together, attempts to nail them down, builds a brick wall, all to no avail. (It's okay, though, as the monster at the end of the book turns out to be {{spoiler|himself}}.)

** Another book, ''Oscar's Grouch Book'', has Oscar the Grouch trying to get the reader to stop reading and leave him alone, through a series of similar tricks.

* A mainstay of the ''[[Thursday Next]]'' novels. The most prominent example is the Footnoterphone, which enables Jurisfiction agents to communicate long-distance via the footnotes of the novels. Certain characters speak exclusively in "Olde English" or "Courier Bold," which are treated as foreign languages by the characters even though they are perfectly comprehensible to the readers.

** In ''[[The Demolished Man]]'', telepathic communication is represented by creative typesetting, sentences that can be read up, down, left or right simultaneously, rebuses, fonts and other trickery. Bester seemed very fond of this sort of thing in general.

*** An example: Two of the characters in this book are named @kins (Atkins) and 1/4maine (Quartermaine).

** Another occurs in the short story ''Fondly Fahrenheit'', about a schizophrenic mass murderer and his robot. At times the guy thinks of himself simply as himself, other times he thinks of himself as the robot, and then there's the times he thinks of them both as one person. All of this is accomplished by Bester constantly switching his use of pronouns.

* In the ''Turing Hopper'' series by Donna Andrews, different typefaces are used for third-person narration vs. Turing's first-person commentary.

* At one point, ''[[Interworld]]'' has the bottom quarter of a page go completely black, to symbolize the main character losing his memories.

* The text for "The Mouse's Tale" in ''[[Alice in Wonderland]]'' winds down the page and narrows to a point, resembling a mouse's ''tail''.

* Similarly, Karen Hesse's novel ''The Music of Dolphins'' is told by a young girl who was [[Raised by Wolves]] (or dolphins, as the case may be). At the beginning, the text is quite large and written in very simple sentences; as the narrator learns more English, the font size decreases and the breadth of vocabulary increases. {{spoiler|She eventually has a breakdown and goes back to the ocean, forcing the text to return to its original simplified state.}}

* ''[[The Athenian Murders]]'' by José Carlos Somoza played with this similarly to ''[[House of Leaves]]'', with an apparent ancient Greek mystery being the bulk of the book and various footnotes telling other stories. One set of footnotes is by the original translator who was rumoured to have been murdered in the same fashion as the characters in the text, and another set of rare footnotes apparently by the editors of the copy you are actually reading. Most of the footnotes are from the current translator who is driving himself crazy, convinced that there is a hidden message in the translated text, and becomes convinced that the characters in the text are interacting with him. {{spoiler|Eventually, it's revealed that both translators are fictional characters, and the entire book and all its footnotes was written by someone else. (Who, to make matters more confusing, wrote himself as one of the minor characters in the Greek mystery, making the translators characters created by someone in the text that they are translating.)}}

* ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four|1984]]'' consistently describes a certain radical book being said by characters either ''in italics'' or in a {{smallcaps|completely different font}}. It's even pointed out in the narrative text.

* As usual, William Gibson goes for broke; his poem "Agrippa -- A Book of the Dead" (about his dead father) was first released on an encrypted, uncopyable diskette ''that deleted itself as you read''. The book version was printed in photosensitive ink, disappearing after prolonged exposure to light.

* This is sort of the entire point of most of the "dialogues" in ''Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid''.

* In the aftermath of {{spoiler|the rape}} in ''Self'', the text is split into two columns per page, presumably to be read at the same time. Sometimes one or both of the columns feature large amounts of blank space.

* Walter Moers does these quite often. To name a few examples:

** In the ''13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear,'' the font changes when the titular character is having an encyclopaedia moment and grows when a giant spider is running after him.

** A similar thing happens in ''Ensel and Grete''. Whenever the [[Literary Agent Hypothesis|Author of the book]] disrupts the flow of the story to digress and talk about what he feels like, the font changes. At some place several pages of the word Brummli are written to terrorize the reader.

* Bram Stoker's ''[[Dracula (novel)|Dracula]]'' is a series of letters between many of the characters. The reader is intended to interpret the novel as [[Epistolary Novel|a bound collection of letters]], and each includes headers with dates and signatures. It's very effective at drawing some readers in, especially since the viewpoints sufficiently show different characters' personalities, but it can also seem disjointed, since it switches around a lot and (usually) looks like normal fonts pretending to be letters.

* In the [[Real Life]] "[http://www.purplehell.com/riddletools/bacon.htm Baconian Cipher]" (not actually a cipher, rather, a steganographic code), developed by Francis Bacon, two different typefaces ('''bold''', ''italic'', {{smallcaps|a different font}}, {{color|blue|a}} {{color|red|different}} {{color|green|font}} {{color|blue|colour}}, etc.) are utilised, one standing for the letter "A" and one standing for B, so that messages can be hidden within the fabric of some plaintext, i.e. literature, be it fictional or not. It has, therefore, been suggested by some that Bacon in fact might have hidden clues to the supposed "fact" he wrote [[Shakespeare]]'s plays by using this ciphe-er, steganographic code.

* In ''[[The Years of Rice and Salt]]'' by Kim Stanley Robinson, the format of the book changes to match the historical era each section is set in. At the beginning, chapters have [[In Which a Trope Is Described|elaborate descriptions]] and the prose is frequently interrupted by poetry. Gradually, the prose becomes more solid, the chapters shorten to just titles, then numbers, and then nothing but a blank spot between them and the next chapter.

 

 

** And, of course, whenever a French character spoke "French" (ie, English with a bad French accent) to an English character who only spoke "English" (ie, English with over-the-top British accents and mannerisms), it was treated as being completely incomprehensible.

* In the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode "[[Doctor Who/Recap/S30/E09 Forest of the Dead|Forest of the Dead]]," when {{spoiler|Donna is trapped in a [[Lotus Eater Machine]], she starts noticing all the [[Jump Cut|jump cuts]] and realizes that though it seems time is passing, no time passes at all}}. Another character tells her about it: "{{spoiler|You didn't get my note last night. You got it a few seconds ago. Having decided to come, you suddenly found yourself arriving. That is how time progresses here, in the manner of a dream."}} {{spoiler|These jump cuts actually happen to her in-universe, since it's a computer world that creates the illusion of passing time.}}

* A number of ''[[How I Met Your Mother]]'' play with framing device by having Future!Ted openly alter what's happening either to censor it for his children or simply because he's forgotten the details.

 

* In the original double-sided record version of Ray Charles' "What'd I Say", voices came on protesting at the end of the first side, and on the beginning of the second side Ray calls out "All right!" before launching into the second half of the song.

* In the vinyl album version of the ''[[Monty Python]]'' sketch ''The Piranha Brothers'', the voice-over announcer for the skit is being menaced by one of Dinsdale's thugs, and told that the sketch has gone on too long. When he protests, the thug "scratches the record", ending the bit. We fade out to: "Aw! Sorry, squire! I've scratched the record -- -orry, squire! I've scratched the record! --" over and over. ''Infinitely'', as this part ran on an actual loop on the LP.

* Autotune was first used to correct errors in pitch. Many modern musicians use it to deliberately distort their voice so it's obvious that they're using Autotune, as well as for aesthetic effect, even when they're fully capable of singing themselves. [["Stop Having Fun!" Guys|Some people have expressed their distaste.]] It is also called a Vocoder when used to this effect.

 

* The [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZwMX6T5Jhk music video for Kanye West's "Love Lockdown"], if watched on a standard-definition TV or Youtube, is letterboxed. At about one minute in, a character in the video races towards the camera, then actually jumps ''out'' of the letterbox.

** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMH0e8kIZtE&ob=av3e Welcome To Heartbreak] was mistaken by many people, on first viewing, for a video with graphics errors.

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewc1hixzYPY Madvillain - All Caps]. It's an animated comic book—literally.

 

 

== Newspaper Comics ==

* In ''[[Doonesbury]]'', Dan Quayle's word balloons frequently contained spelling errors, a reference to the infamous incident wherein he told school children that "potato" was spelled "potatoe".

* One of the earlier uses of this was in 1950s strip ''[[Pogo (comic strip)|Pogo]]'', which had one regular who spoke in gothic type to indicate his pomposity. Guests also often had their own font styles. Note that not only did ''Pogo'' [[Captain Obvious|not use computer fonts]], the wasn't typeset, either. Those baroque, elaborate word balloons were ''lettered by hand'', because [[Walt Kelly]] is [[Crazy Awesome]].

* ''[[FoxTrot]]'''s Bill Amend is somewhat fond of this too. One comic had Peter sitting in a chair, and his mother, Andy, apparently chewing him out. Oddly, her speech bubbles had tiny, unreadable text, despite the bubbles being normal size. The last panel is Andy ripping off his previously hidden earphones. "-'''and take off those stupid headphones!'''"

** One strip had Jason walking around and showing people how good he was at juggling knives. Everyone seems oddly unimpressed by this feat, and it isn't until the last panel that we see he ''isn't'' juggling at all. The knives have been taped to a piece of plexiglass, which he is just carrying around. Obvious to everyone in-universe, who would note that the knives aren't moving, but surprising to us.

* ''[[Pearls Before Swine]]'' is very fond of this. One Sunday comic strip featured Pig running to the end of the panel causing the color to go entirely off-base. Another series had the characters actually sit on top if their own panels.

** The adult male [[Too Dumb to Live|crocodiles]] also speak in mixed-case letters, while the smarter (female and child) crocodiles speak in capital letters.

* ''[[Dilbert]]'' once receives a convict serving prison time into his home. The prisoner complains about how cramped it is in Dilbert's house. The speech balloon of the prisoners complaint in this panel obscures Dilbert from view.

* [http://www.gocomics.com//nonsequitur/2011/07/31 This] ''[[Non Sequitur]]'' strip.

* [http://www.gocomics.com/frazz/2011/08/14 This] ''[[Frazz]]'' strip, in which the title character is ''literally'' painting the medium.

* ''[[Bloom County]]'' was also fond of this: for instance, on one occasion a dangling participle fell out of its speech bubble and whacked the speaker in the head.

 

== Radio ==

'''Hamish:''' ...why did you say that?

'''Dougal:''' Well...there might be blind people around here, not knowing where they are. }}

 

== Tabletop Games ==

* The ''[[Dresden Files]]'' tabletop RPG rulebooks are... unique. They're presented as [[Literary Agent Hypothesis|a rough draft written by Billy the werewolf and handed over to Harry for perusal and correction]]. As a result, they're full of marginalia written by Harry (complaining about how Billy describes him, making bad pop culture references, and yelling at him to cut out top-secret White Council information), Bob (technical details about magical beings, plus a bunch of dirty jokes), and Billy himself (responding to the other two), who are differentiated by different typefaces, colors, and sizes of "handwriting." There's sticky notes all over the place, Harry occasionally uses it as scrap paper, the illustrations are taped in, and Billy dropped it in a puddle. And when Harry is being used as an example character, the fourth wall [[Leaning on the Fourth Wall|is in danger of being tipped over]].

* Done with the rulebooks for ''[[Paranoia (game)|Paranoia]]''. Player documents have security level Red, while gamemaster materials are classified Ultraviolet. Since the players' Troubleshooters start at Red level, they are technically guilty of treason if they read the higher-level rules. The GM is encouraged to terminate the PCs if they try to [[Munchkin|game the rules]], and players are encouraged—in true ''Paranoia'' fashion—to know the rules but '''don't''' let on that they know them...

 

== Theater ==

* ''A Man For All Seasons'' features the character The Common Man, who is dressed in a black body stocking and opens the play by ranting about the lousy character he's been given to play. Through various costume changes he then becomes a variety of small parts, allowing the play to avoid needing separate actors for all of them. The last is Thomas More's executioner.

* ''Picasso at the Lapin Agile'' opens with Albert Einstein ariving that the eponymous cafe, only to be told he's not supposed to be their yet because the cast has been listed in the program in order of appearance and two other characters are supposed to arrive before he does. Einstein leaves and later returns, acting as though the previous exchange never occurred.

* In the first published edition of the script of ''[[Lady in the Dark]]'', the musical [[Dream Sequence]]s (but not the childhood flashbacks) were printed in red, as was a snippet of the [[Dream Melody]].

 

== Video Games ==

*** The setup process ''Red Alert 2'' pretends to have hacked into the Allied network, requiring you to use your CD-key to disable the security measures. The installation itself plays out as a slideshow briefing.

*** It also takes the liberty of informing you that a Navy SEAL team has been dispatched to your location.

** In an interview with the developers, they said worked on the idea that you were a "telegeneral" leading your troops through communications links from a control centre—you're supposed to be sitting in front of a computer guiding your forces in the manner of someone playing a real-time strategy game.

*** The actual interface shows up in ''Renegade'', and the idea of "battle commanders" comes up a few times throughout the series.

* The main menu for each ''[[Free Space]]'' space sim is a mock-up of the inside of the carrier the player character is stationed on. To play a mission, click on the ready room doors. The atmospheric impact well makes up for the fact that changing carriers in the plot means that the player won't even know where the exit button is.

** ''[[Wing Commander (video game)|Wing Commander]]'' also used that mechanic, but in 1990 on the SNES.

** In ''X-Wing Alliance'', this "hangar menu" is more than just a menu styled like the hangar—it actually is the hangar, as becomes especially apparent when, during a mission when your ship is under attack, you can enter the hangar to rearm and the red alert lights will be flashing and the battle going on ''even though you're at the menu screen.''

** In the pilot entry screen in ''X-Wing'', the computer will refuse to let you play if you enter "Vader" as your name, since the Alliance doesn't admit "known Imperial agents".

* In ''[[No More Heroes]]'', when Travis gets a call on his cell phone, it comes through the Wii Remote's speaker instead of the TV's speakers. As such, the volume is (in theory) lower and thus you're holding the Wii Remote to your ear as Travis holds his cell phone to his. (In practice, the voice coming through the remote is surprisingly loud—Sylvia has [[No Indoor Voice]].)

** That's not even going into everything that happens once you finally make it to the final ranked battle. The poor, unfortunate fourth wall gets painted, destroyed, rebuilt, destroyed again, and then the pieces get repainted. It's the most divisive ending since the MGS2 Ending.

*** The latter two ''[[Sly Cooper]]'' games also allowed you to do this.

* The Humor NaviCustomizer Part in the ''[[Mega Man Battle Network]]'' series has at least one joke in each game it appears it that paints the fourth wall, if not outright breaks it.

* In the iOS game ''The Heist'', you regularly recieve phone calls from the PC's partner in crime. During said calls, the game actually mimics the iPhone "incoming call" interface to give the illusion that you're recieving an actual phone call. The final call even has the partner using Facetime. However, this has the drawback of looking silly when you're playing on an iPod touch...

* The ''[[Paper Mario]]'' series in general gleefully demolishes the fourth wall at every opportunity, but there's one notable part in ''The Thousand-Year Door'' where a doppelganger [[Grand Theft Me|steals your identity and voice]], and you have to guess his name in order to get it back. If you already ''know'' his name {{spoiler|Doopliss}}, you would think that you could just enter it into the name-entry screen and [[Sequence Breaking|sequence break]] the chapter, but the doppelganger has ''removed one of the letters needed to spell his name in the screen and hidden it'' and you need to find the letter in a chest first before you can give the correct answer.

* ''[[Fahrenheit (2005 video game)|Fahrenheit]]'' has a [[Press X to Not Die|quick-time event]] where the on-screen cues light up like a Christmas tree, and it becomes impossible to win. This represents the way the main character has panicked and is franctically hammering on a keypad. There's also a scene where the solution is to fail a series of quick-time events, since they're for making the main character shake off a horde of glowing hallucinatory spiders and he's being interrogated by the police.

* In ''[[Mass Effect]]'', the various starting menus and character creation scenes are invariably part of some in-universe computer system. Also, the [[Bullet Time]] effect in ''Mass Effect 3'', in addition to being used for standard action sequences like the shootout with Dr. Eva, pops up whenever Shepard suffers health damage or is stunned by attacks.

** Outside of the game, in quotations, discussions, and especially fanfic, the Reapers' [[Evil Sounds Deep|distinctive style of speech]] is generally rendered in either '''bold''' or {{smallcaps|smallcaps}} to emphasize their [[Eldritch Abomination|monstrous...ness]].

 

* ''[[Fate/stay night]]'' colours the screen red or fills the screen with static whenever the protagonist is badly wounded (or going through an epiphany). In the final route of the game, ''Heaven's Feel'', {{spoiler|the screen ''cracks'' whenever the protagonist uses his [[Deadly Upgrade]] which induces brain damage; the static becomes omnipresent, and certain words are whited out or simply ''not there'', as he slowly loses his precious memories and ability to recall events, providing a chilling and saddening effect.}}

* In ''[[Umineko no Naku Koro ni]]'', {{color|red|red text}} is [[Language of Truth|always true]]. {{color|blue|Blue text}} is used to present theories that deny witches. {{spoiler|There's also gold text in the most recent game.}} [[The Anime of the Game]] shows this by making the screen take on the appropriate color tint and having the words fly around the speaker. Also, the title should technically be written as ''Umineko no {{color|red|Na}}ku Koro Ni''.

* In ''[[Ever 17]]'', the text box changes color depending on the current POV character—green for Takeshi, blue for the Kid, and gray for {{spoiler|Blickwinkel himself}}.

** ''[[Remember 11]]'' has the same effect—the text box is [[Red Oni, Blue Oni|red for Kokoro, blue for Satoru]], and gray for {{spoiler|the single POV-less scene}}.

 

== Web Comics ==

** The priest of Loki figures out that the Thieves Guild has arrived to capture him and the heroes because the comic does a cutaway to them talking in the second-to-last panel of [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0602.html this strip].

** At one point, Haley reaches into the cast page to steal a diamond. {{spoiler|If the story was in any other medium, they wouldn't have been able to bring Roy back.}}

* In ''[[Achewood]]'', Chucklebot (a robot, duh) speaks in a digital font. Blister, a ghost squirrel, speaks in unpunctuated block capitals. The most notable example, though, is Roast Beef, whose rambling speech is conveyed in a slightly smaller font with no commas.

* As did ''[[Bob and George]]'', when the character representing the author [http://www.bobandgeorge.com/archives/index.php?date=000913 apparently dies] and the comic pages fade from existence. Later, when the author is having a [[Creator Breakdown|nervous breakdown]], the comic [http://www.bobandgeorge.com/archives/index.php?date=010701 literally starts falling apart].

** ''[[Bob and George]]'' also uses this to lampshade, subvert, and [[Double Subversion|Double Subvert]] [[Contractual Immortality]]. The characters Bob and George can't die because their names are in the title of the comic. When the plot calls for their (temporary) death, the title of the comic temporarily changes in order to allow it to happen.

* Used in the ''[[Asterix]]'' books where Viking speech has [[Punctuation Shaker|extra punctuation]], the Goths talk in [[wikipedia:Blackletter|Gothic script]] and the Egyptians talk in hieroglyphics.

* In a similarly defunct example, ''[http://cwcomics.comicgenesis.com/alt/thisis/ This is]'', a webcomic presented as a series of brief, tongue-in-cheek descriptions, had as its 404 page a picture and brief, tongue-in-cheek description of a 404 page. Sadly, it has since been replaced by the 404 page from the author's subsequent project, which is significantly less meta about itself.

* The lizard man Draak in ''[[Irregular Webcomic]]'' speaks his native tongue in an unreadable symbol font, rotated 90 degrees so that it runs in vertical columns. He also speaks English in a larger, more messy font than all the other characters. ([[Hulk Speak|Entirely monosyllabically]], though this is unrelated to his intelligence level, which is [[Genius Bruiser|actually quite high]].) [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/470.html Exemplified here].

* In ''[[Antihero for Hire]]'', the titular [[Anti-Hero]] was kidnapped, resulting in an [[All Up to You]] situation. As a result, the comic's panel borders changed to white and pink, the rescuer's colors. Taken even further with green panels matching a comic relief character's scenes.

* ''[[Shortpacked]]'' paints the fourth wall pretty effectively in [http://www.shortpacked.com/d/20050518.html this strip].

* [http://www.ehtio.es/index.php?cont=122 This page] of Spanish webcomic ''¡Eh, tío!'' allegedly depicts an [[Offscreen Moment of Awesome|epic zombie battle]] involving [[Noodle Implements|a ballpoint pen and two chickens]]—except that the image links for the middle six panels are deliberately broken. (Unfortunately Firefox 2 doesn't show that images are missing, so that part of the joke is lost to some.)

* From ''[[Request Comics]]'': [http://www.requestcomics.com/comic/7.html "Anthropomorphic toasters are so harsh and uncaring, they speak in Courier."]

* In [http://www.viruscomix.com/page455.html this page] of ''[[Subnormality]]'', a ninja shuriken is essently made into an asterisk, which the characters use to read the note on the end of strip.

* [http://www.gocomics.com/lio/2008/10/08/ Here's an example] of Painting the Medium from the comic strip ''[[Lio]]''.

* [http://www.kdingo.net/champ/pics/main.php?g2_itemId=3930 This comic], while not part of a continual series, is a wonderful, if creepy and somewhat depressing example of Painting the Medium.

* Used occasionally in ''[[Xkcd]]'', such as in [http://xkcd.com/338/ this] strip, where speech balloons crossing the panel divisions are used to represent an interaction between present and future. Randall Munroe paints a nice [[Fourth Wall]], and doesn't want to see it broken.

* ''[[What Birds Know]]'' uses a [http://fribergthorelli.com/wbk/index.php/page-252/ backwards speech bubble] to show a seriously frakked up side effect of an alleged alternate dimension. The other characters can't understand the backwards speaker.

* [http://countyoursheep.com/d/20091015.html This] ''[[Count Your Sheep]]'' comic.

* [http://www.out-at-home.com/archives/284 This strip] from ''Out At Home.''

** Also, you know the normally-unflappable [[Manipulative Bastard|Doc Scratch]] is pissed off when [http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=004163 even his text in the chatlogs] looks like it's about to go nuclear.

** At the end of the fifth act, Doc Scratch takes over as a first-person narrator for a while. (All of the story up to this point has been in second person.) To make his text easier to read, he rewrites the site's CSS to have a green background. The top of the page is also replaced with a wide shot of his home (which actively changes as he and his guests move around in it.)

** Andrew used this trope [http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=4&p=001756 way back here] in ''[[Problem Sleuth]]'' as well. Instead of doing damage directly to the [[Final Boss]], PS ''attacks the HP bars themselves.''

** AD also uses one of his [[Stat Meters]] to beat up an enemy at one point.

* [http://www.dieselsweeties.com/archive/2411 This] ''[[Diesel Sweeties]]'' strip, where one of the characters laments that they're just standing around talking about ''[[Star Wars]]''

{{quote|"My God, we're living in a webcomic."

* In ''[[Zebra Girl]]'', spiky speech bubbles signify that the speaker is a demon.

* ''[[Girl Genius]]'' does this with speech balloons. Rectangles for machines, spikes for shouting, wavy edges for madness, dashes for whispers, icicles for hostility and icons for clank language. [http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20090527 A] [http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20070131 few] [http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20070718 examples].

* This is used in ''[[Keychain of Creation]]'' to show the reality-bending abilities (referred to in the strip titles as "[[Infinite Canvas]] [[Supernatural Martial Arts|Style]]") of a Sidereal [[Exalted]]. Examples include [http://keychain.patternspider.net/archive/koc0222.html dodging by jumping into a different frame], [http://keychain.patternspider.net/archive/koc0228.html using a chunk of the comic's gutter as a projectile], and [http://keychain.patternspider.net/archive/koc0226.html abusing perspective to hit three enemies at once from twenty feet away].

** Also used by (also Fourth Wall breaking) fae in a mailcall filler strip. [http://keychain.patternspider.net/archive/koc0153.html Leave space-time alone!]

* [http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1234#comic This] ''[[Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal]]'' strip subverts its normal format, for very [[Black Comedy]].

* [http://www.precociouscomic.com/archive/comic/2009/06/24 This strip] from ''[[Precocious (Webcomic)|Precocious]]'' is all about Chiller Font.

* Charles Bogle loves to do this in ''[[Hello, Cleveland!]]''. Examples range from Newt resting his hands on the edge of the panel to [[Frame Break|Newt removing the panel dividers]].

* ''[[Bob the Angry Flower]]'' is rescued from a hopeless situation by a friend who spots a text box narrating how his rescue attempt will fail. He shoots the letters clean off it and they escape.

** [http://www.alloverthehouse.net/2011/03/22/recursive-search/ Done again] when hits on ''[[All Over the House]]'' skyrocketed because of people searching for a pornographic music video of the same name.

* ''[[Wapsi Square]]'': [http://wapsisquare.com/comic/is-irrelevant/ Dialog outside the bubbles]

* ''[[Pibgorn]]'' [http://www.gocomics.com/pibgorn/2003/06/12/ Colored fonts]

* ''[[The Phoenix Requiem]]'' [http://requiem.seraph-inn.com/viewcomic.php?page=60 Colored speech bubbles]

* ''[[Derelict (webcomic)|Derelict]]'' [http://derelictcomic.com/?strip_id=20 Symbols, or an alien alphabet, in dialog]

* ''[[Rusty and Co.|Rusty and Co]]'' [http://rustyandco.com/comic/level-4-10/ Presumably counting]

* ''[[Harry Potter Comics]]'' has the Necromancer speak in gray speech bubbles, and souls in the afterlife speak with partially transparent bubbles.

* Every character in ''[[The Last Days of Foxhound]]'' speaks with a differently-coloured speech bubble.

* ''[[Girls with Slingshots]]'' isn't usually [[Medium Awareness|Medium Aware]], but in [http://www.girlswithslingshots.com/comic/gws-1315 this strip] Thea corrects the spelling in Hazel's [[Speech Bubble]].

* In ''[[The Mansion of E]]'', each species has its own dialogue-font, and a few feature colored speech-balloons as well.

 

== Web Animation ==

*** And Homestar himself appears behind the right side. He's pretty much always there, just usually he's [[Behind the Black]].

** In a similar way with the above, typing in the URL http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail200.html brought you (and still does) to a fake Firefox "address not found" page where the "[[Straw Fan|Deleteheads]]" camp out waiting for the 200th Strong Bad Email.

** In the 150th e-mail, "Alternate Universe", the style of talking changes depending on which universe Strong Bad is in at the moment. For example, in the Strong Badman comic, speech bubbles show up during speech, and in the storybook universe, everything anyone says is subtitled like a children's book.

*** Also in the Strong Badman comic, Strong Bad tells Strong Badman that his comic is getting boring, then ''jumped out of the panel and landed in a later one'', thus basically gaining the power of ''time travel''.

* ''[[The Defrosters]]''.

{{quote|'''James:''' I thought for sure that kissing her in one-shot hand-drawn action sequence would work... Time to stop monologuing. The inside set is way prettier, and has nicer music.}}

 

== Web Original ==

* ''[[Echo Chamber]]'', the [[TV Tropes]] webseries, is premised on this. It's about Tropers trying to make a vlog for [[TV Tropes]]. We can only see what [[Cloudcuckoolander|the cameraman, Zack]], films. Most of the action isn't in the vlog itself, and therefore [[The Ditz|Zack]] [[Throw It In|should really have turned the camera off]]. Zack is frequently [[Lampshade Hanging|given excuses]] to be present at times when, really, he shouldn't be there. He [[Your Door Was Open|hides in Tom's closet]] and tags along on a date with Tom, severely creeping out Tom's date.

 

== Western Animation ==

** in ''[[The Emperor's New Groove]]'', Kuzco ''stops the film'' to draw on the fourth wall and whine about how the movie isn't focusing on him.

* As the world falls into chaos in the ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'' episode "The Return of Harmony: Part 2", a pony is shown running along the top and left edges of the screen.

 

== [[Real Life]] ==

 

== Repeatedly used in this very wiki ==

** [[All Blue Entry]]

** [[All Red Entry (Darth Wiki)|All Red Entry]]

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Meta Concepts]]

[[Category:Metafiction Demanded This Index]]

[[Category:Index]]