Painting the Medium: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:painting-the-
This is typically done for one of three reasons:
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* [[Played for Laughs|Cheap laughs]].
Some of the most popular variants have become so conventional that we stop noticing them
By Painting The Medium, a writer turns a transparent
'''Subtropes include:'''
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* A commercial on British radio starts out advertising, say, a kitchen sale, until the voice actor suddenly collapses on-air; their co-star or producer freaks out and starts shouting for help. The real point of the commercial is to encourage people to get first-aid training.
* A Duracell sports match commercial features the TV scoreboard running out of power and having the batteries replaced.
* There was an entire series of Energizer commercials which would appear to be ads for something else until interrupted by the Bunny. One was supposedly for long distance phone service, featuring a split
** 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-
* 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?"
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** Similar gags showed up from time to time in Akira Toriyama's earlier ''[[Doctor Slump]]''.
* In ''[[Hellsing]]'', dream sequences end themselves by panes getting smaller and smaller until they're pinprick-sized, as the dreams go weird before the character wakes up.
* Many [[Fan Sub
** 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.
*** [http://media.onemanga.com/mangas/00002662/000144682/18-19.jpg This] (Caution: spoiler warning!) scene from the spin-off ''Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann -- Gurren Gakuenhen'' shows off interaction across different panels (and involving a flashback scene no less)
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** 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).
** [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8466225710208488797&ei=ArTuSJv_CYmwrQL0tfzJBg&q=garlock+ subtitled This Gurren Lagann scene] is an example of the first technique mentioned (in the last few seconds).
* 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
** 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.}}
*** They got that from the [[Visual Novel]].
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*** The same applies to other important characters, especially the Endless. For example, Delirium's speech bubbles are colourful and the font is a little... unusual, and Desire speaks in a very pretty, sharp-edged font. Only Death's font and speech bubbles are normal. Among the other characters, there are Matthew the Raven's orange speech bubbles and thin, "sticky" font, Bast's faux-Egyptian font and angels' beautiful cursive.
** In ''[[Swamp Thing]]'', it was used when the titular plant-creature and his wife make love through the use of hallucinogenic tubers. No, really.
** Dave Sim seems quite fond of this
** Also, Frank Quitely's 3-issue art duties on Grant Morrison's Batman and Robin, frequently blended sound effects into the scene. Explosions in the shape of "BOOOOM" and when Damian gets smashed into a wall, the cracks spell out "smash", etc.
* In ''[[Y: The Last Man]]'''s ''Safeword'' arc, Yorick is drugged with hallucinogens, and the structure of the page breaks up, with the panels placed at odd angles and overlapping. The white-on-black title cards (which normally carry objective information like "Tel Aviv, Israel, Three Days Later") show things like "Where The Hell Am I?"
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* 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.
* In ''[[Vogelein]]'', every character has his or her own font. These give some indication of personality or role in the
* ''[[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.
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* In ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog (comics)|Sonic the Hedgehog]]'', Zonic the Zone cop comes from a "perpendicular" world; he's always shown floating sideways, sometimes with his feet resting on the side of the panel.
* At the end of the ''Legion of 3 Worlds'' [[Final Crisis]] tie-in, [[The Scrappy|Superboy-Prime]] literally punches himself out of continuity. As he does so, he's reduced to inks, then pencils, and then nothingness. He then appears back on Earth-Prime, our Earth, where his family now fears him because they've followed his exploits in [[The DCU]]. In the end, he ends up on the official DC forums, just like [[You Suck|the whiny]], [[Unpleasable Fanbase|ever complaining]] [[Fan Dumb|fanboy]] he's been reimagined to represent.
* One of the ''[[Judge Dredd]]'' stories in prog 2010 is told in two parts, with the second part set in 2131 and the first in 2098. The first part is done in the style of an 80s
* In ''[[The Grievous Journey Of Ichabod Azrael And The Dead Left In His Wake]]'', scenes in the world of the living are in full colour, and those in the world of the dead are black and white. Additionally, the [[Grim Reaper|grim reapers]] and their horses are drawn in a very sketchy style which contrasts with the clear, stark art of the rest of limbo; souls awaiting judgement refer to them as blurry.
* [[Batwoman]] villain Alice speaks with black speech bubbles and white text just to re-inforce how crazy she is. The only time she uses a normal speech bubble is {{spoiler|her last line before falling off a plane into the river: "You have [[Evil Twin|our father's]] eyes".}}
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== Film ==
* ''[[Casino]]'' features a rather unique example. The characters of Ace Rothstein ([[Robert De Niro]]) and Nicky Santoro ([[Joe Pesci]]) provide offscreen narration throughout the movie. In one scene Santoro is narrating the action when his voice is
* Here's a really meta one: the early Disney ''[[Winnie the Pooh]]'' shorts were played out as readings of the books, down to the animated characters being able to walk on the text, a hurried page-turning at one point to keep Pooh from flying out of the book, and so forth. Thus it [[Medium Awareness|played with the concept that it was a book]], when in fact it ''wasn't''. All this in a cartoon for children.
** This gets ''really'' weird when the same concept is played with in ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'', especially the second game -- [[Recursive Adaptation|where it's technically a book (in-game) based on (the Disney) movie, based on (the original) book]], all in a video game.
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* ''[[Flowers for Algernon]]'' by Daniel Keyes is written as a diary by Charlie, the main character, and his grammar and vocabulary weaken or expand in tandem with his intelligence and schooling.
* This is kind of the whole ''point'' of ''[[Finnegans Wake]]''. Joyce does it quite a bit in ''[[Ulysses]]'' as well, and to a lesser extent in his earlier fiction.
* ''[[Discworld]]'' is full of textual variations. Terry Pratchett's Death SPEAKS IN CAPITAL LETTERS (or, in some editions, {{smallcaps|speaks in Caps and Small Caps}}), Klatchians speaking in their vaguely Arabesque native language use an ornate cursive font (interspaced with ordinary letters if they have an accent!), Azrael the Death of Universes <big> takes up a page to speak a single word</big>, and the Auditors of Reality, those cosmic-level [[Obstructive Bureaucrat
** 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.
** Speaking of Azrael, ''[[Discworld/Reaper Man|Reaper Man]]'s'' twin A-plots are marked out by subtly different font weights.
** 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
** Susan and Mort also start speaking in capitals whenever they "do the Voice".
** Also in ''[[Discworld/Reaper Man|Reaper Man]]'', Death's scythe is shown to be sharp enough to slice whatever's being said at the time, leaving big ol' slashes and chopping the rest of the sentence onto the next line of the page.
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*** 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 ...}}
** In the hardback edition of ''[[Discworld/Feet of Clay|Feet of Clay]]'', the (speechless) [[
*** And the ones who can speak Speak Like That All The Time.
** In ''[[Discworld/Maskerade|Maskerade]]'' we come across a rogue "Up here?" in one of the margins. Nearer the bottom of the page, the protagonist starts to throw her voice...
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* ''Life of Pi'' ends with an extended conversation, written in script form, between the protagonist and two Japanese businessmen. The Japanese businessmen alternate between speaking to the protagonist in English and to each other in Japanese. The Japanese dialogue is denoted with a bold, paintbrush-like font.
* ''[[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"
** Some paperback editions have covers that are smaller than the pages. The book is larger on the inside than on the outside.
** Similarly, Danielewski's sec{{color|gold|o}}nd b{{color|gold|oo}}k, ''{{color|gold|O}}[[Only Revolutions|nly Rev]]{{color|gold|o}}[[Only Revolutions|luti]]{{color|gold|o}}[[Only Revolutions|ns]]'', had tw{{color|gold|o}} st{{color|gold|o}}ries, {{color|gold|o}}ne starting fr{{color|gold|o}}m the fr{{color|gold|o}}nt and {{color|gold|o}}ne fr{{color|gold|o}}m the back. With every passing page, a little less page space was given t{{color|green|o}} the {{color|green|o}}ne st{{color|green|o}}ry and a little m{{color|green|o}}re t{{color|green|o}} the {{color|green|o}}ther st{{color|green|o}}ry, until at the middle {{color|green|o}}f the b{{color|green|oo}}k it's exactly 5{{color|green|0}}/5{{color|green|0}}. ({{color|gold|O}}h, and there's a hint t{{color|gold|o}} the f{{color|gold|o}}nt c{{color|gold|o}}l{{color|gold|o}}rs in this n{{color|gold|o}}vel. [[Captain Obvious|Did y]]{{color|green|o}}[[Captain Obvious|u catch it?]])
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* In the ''Turing Hopper'' series by Donna Andrews, different typefaces are used for third-person narration vs. Turing's first-person commentary.
* The 18th-century novel ''[[Tristram Shandy]]'' by Laurence Sterne includes such features as a black page when a character dies, and a blank one allowing the reader to sketch their vision of a female character's appearance.
* [[Older Than Print]]: An elegant example of this can be found in ''[[The Tale of Genji]]'', the seminal novel of Heian-era Japan, in which the 42nd chapter, "Vanished into Clouds", is left blank entirely after the
* [[Peter David]]'s ''[[Star Trek]]'' [[Expanded Universe]] novel ''I, Q'', working from the point-of-view of Q during the apocalyptic end of the universe, uses a few of these tricks. Data raises his voice above all other noise by rapidly increasing his font size. And near the very end, Q, spitting in the face of death, writes the book up and stuffs it into a bottle which he then hurls into the whirlpool sucking up all existence. The last sentence is cut off halfway (as Q is screaming his defiance of fate), and then followed by not a few completely blank pages. And when you're finally wondering what the heck is up, you run across a few pages of laughter. Seems [[God]] was so amused by Q's defiance that she (God) decided to cancel [[The End]].
** Another ''[[Star Trek]]'' novel, ''Vendetta'' (also by [[Peter David]]), did this when a character reached Warp 10. She got stuck in a time loop, so naturally her one-page chapter began to repeat every few chapters, then every other chapter, then for several chapters in a row, until finally it stopped in mid-sentence ("just a few more seconds...") and the next chapter had the Next Generation crew musing about what her existence might be like now.
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* 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''.
** In the beginning of the sequel, an illustration of Alice going Through the Looking-Glass is matched up on the other side of the leaf with an illustration of her arrival. The second of these
* 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.)}}
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* In Jonathan Safran Foer's ''[[Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close]]'' a father, writing to his dead son, mentions how he wishes he had an infinitely long book with which to write in, because he fears that at his current rate his words will start to slam into each other and become illegible. Farther along the letter the words do begin to get closer, then words start being printed on top of other words, and then the page is completely black.
** Another instance in the same book has the same father's firsthand account of the bombing of Dresden marked up by [[You Make Me Sic|red circles that highlight misplaced commas and misspelled words.]] {{spoiler|This is later hinted to be an interview he wrote for his son, who is said to 'correct' mistakes in the New York Times the same way.}}
** The young protagonist Oskar solicits advice from a randomly-chosen clerk at an art store, seeking guidance in his search for information about his father, who died in the Twin Towers; {{spoiler|later, the reader learns the entire episode is something of a red herring.}} The clerk mentions that when patrons scribble with a pen (in the store) to test it, often they write the name of a color, but rarely do they write in a different color than whichever word they're writing which names a color (such an act, she contends, would be psychologically unsettling). For example if you're testing a red pen you'd write "red" (all of this might help Oskar determine whether a slip of paper he'd earlier
* In ''[[Keepers Chronicles|Summon the Keeper]]'' by [[Tanya Huff]], when one of the mundane characters hears the voice of Hell for the first time and tries to explain it to the protagonist, she asks if it sounded like it was speaking in all capitals, which the author did.
* In ''[[Animorphs]]'', the characters have the ability to communicate via telepathy or 'thought-speak' while in an animal form (as well, the alien Ax uses it when in his normal, mouthless body as his standard form of communication), and dialogue in thought-speak is indicated by the use of the '<' and '>' symbols instead of quotation marks.
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* 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.
** In the ''City of the Dreaming'' books, the main character is flipping through a book, and finds what he's looking for at the end of the right page. Both the character and the reader turn page, and BAM!
{{spoiler|You have just been poisoned. You have just been poisoned. You have just been poisoned. You have just been poisoned. You have just been poisoned. You have just been poisoned. You have just been poisoned. You have just been poisoned. You have just been poisoned. You have just been poisoned. You have just been poisoned. You have just been poisoned. You have just been poisoned. You have just been poisoned. You have just been poisoned. You have just been poisoned. Repeated for the full double page. The pages following this little surprise are black and the text is in white font, as the main character faints due to the poison.}}
** 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.
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* Don Marquis' ''[[Archy and Mehitabel]]'', and other books in the series, are written from the perspective of Archy the cockroach, entirely in lowercase letters... because Archy can operate an old-fashioned typewriter by painstakingly hopping on the keys, but he can't hit shift at the same time! (Marquis would later [[Hand Wave]] reader queries about how Archy handled the carriage return.) The shift key got locked down for (part of) one poem, titled "CAPITALS AT LAST."
* In ''Still Life With Woodpecker'' the author alternates between writing a story and writing about himself writing the story. In the final chapter his typewriter breaks down and he is forced to finish in longhand.
* Elizabeth Bear's ''Blood and Iron'' has a relatively subtle one. For the majority of the book, every character uses third person narration. After one character {{spoiler|sells her soul}} her narration switches to first
* [[Iain M Banks]] ''loves'' these. In ''Complicity'', for example, one narrator's chapters are written in first person, while the other's are told in second person. Most infamously, about a third of his ''Fearsumm Enjinn'' is narrated by a dyslexic boy. Including the title.
* In ''[[Dune]]'', some words like "SPICE" and "VOICE" tend to be printed in capital block letters to give them a sort of mystical echo (see above for DEATH in the Discworld novels). However, there are no capital letters in the Hebrew language, so the Hebrew translation has these words printed in bold and in a larger typeface than the rest of the sentence. This method makes them even more creepy and resonant than the original, if at all possible.
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* ''[[The Colbert Report]]'' once had Stephen respond to the people who didn't broadcast his show in HD by putting his hands in the parts of the screen which is cut off in the standard definition broadcast {{spoiler|and sticking out the middle finger of each hand}}, after which he advises them to upgrade so that they can see it.
* In the Wayne's World skits on ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'', when Wayne and Garth want to do a dream sequence, they wave their arms and make "dream sequence" sound effects until the image fades. They do it to end the dream sequences too, but sometimes can't get particularly stubborn dream sequences to end when they want them to.
* ''[[It's Garry Shandling's Show]]'' is arguably the ur-example of all things [[Breaking the Fourth Wall]]-related. Garry would talk
** ''[[The Jack Benny Show]]'' had similiar interaction, since Jack would start out on the stage and walk into the set after speaking with the audience. Including walking through the missing literal fourth wall so he could get hand something to someone who walked out the front door.
** ''[[The Burns and Allen Show]]'' started the same year (1950) and [[George Burns]] especially would talk to the camara and announcer. Also the commercials were built into the show itself and George would sometimes watch what Gracie was doing on their TV set.
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** [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=BQ9YtJC-Kd8 The TV Show]"'s central conceit it that it's showing us a series of TV shows being viewed by two guys in a control booth. Then one falls asleep on a console, and elements from some of the shows start interacting with each other, the camera, and the producers. [[Hilarity Ensues]].
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewc1hixzYPY Madvillain - All Caps]. It's an animated comic
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== Tabletop Games ==
* In the original Malkavian Clanbook for ''[[Vampire: The Masquerade]]'', various pages throughout the book were altered, using mirrored text and other techniques. One of the most dramatic was a page talking about alternate food sources for some Malkavians. As it reached the end of the page it discussed a particular vampire who fed on
** What's even scarier, the Malkavian in question was supposed to eat not only words, but also ideas that these words represent. Cue the paragraph about the Word-Eater's diet not only blurring and falling apart under his hand, but at the same time degrading into gibberish ending with an orphaned line on the other page: "...and other butchers' aprons."
* Game supplements for ''[[Shadowrun]]'' are often presented in the form of in-character online documents, to which various deckers have appended their own commentary. Often their remarks contain plot-hooks for [[Game Master
* Used a lot in ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]''. For example, in Time Spiral, the timeshifted cards are printed in the old card frame to show that they are from the past; in Planar Chaos, they are printed in an alternate version of the new frame to show that they are from an alternate universe (i.e., they are color-shifted versions of existing cards); and in Future Sight they are printed in a futuristic frame because they are previews of possible future sets. Also, there are numerous single-card examples in the Unglued and Unhinged joke sets:
** "Old Fogey" and "Blast from the Past" are both in the old card face. "Old Fogey" also says "summon" instead of "creature".
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** The [[Eldritch Abomination|Eldrazi]] get special colorless frames as well.
* 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
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* ''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.
* Given the difficulty in transferring [[Terry Pratchett]]'s famous footnotes to the page, the play adaptation of ''[[Discworld/Guards Guards|Guards Guards]]'' recommends having someone in a footnote
* In the first published edition of the script of ''[[Lady in the Dark]]'', the musical [[Dream Sequence
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*** It also takes the liberty of informing you that a Navy SEAL team has been dispatched to your location.
** In ''Firestorm'', Nod's CABAL taccon AI [[AI Is a Crapshoot|goes rogue]] and tries to kill the player. For the next mission, you have none of the usual voice responses from your HUD, because those are all generated by CABAL; the mission after that is to steal a GDI EVA as a replacement, and the player's UI is changed to the GDI voice for the rest of the campaign.
** 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
*** The actual interface shows up in ''Renegade'', and the idea of "battle commanders" comes up a few times throughout the series.
* ''The Rats'', a 1985 Spectrum horror strategy interspaced with scenes of text adventure (unfortunately written years before this concept became feasible), depicts the encroaching presence of rats by having teeth marks, claw marks and actual vermin appear on the screen, and being killed by a rat by having one {{smallcaps|TEAR THROUGH THE TEXT WINDOW AND LUNGE AT YOU }}
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** ''[[Wing Commander (video game)|Wing Commander]]'' also used that mechanic, but in 1990 on the SNES.
* The main menus of ''[[X Wing]]'' and ''[[TIE Fighter]]'' do this as well. The game opens up with a pilot selection screen presented as a roster. An officer will ask you to enter your identity, and if you try to skip ahead, armed guards will block you. Once you get inside, the main menu is presented as the interior of a Rebel or Imperial base. In ''X-Wing Alliance,'' the main menu becomes the ship the player is based at ala ''Freespace.''
** In ''X-Wing Alliance'', this "hangar menu" is more than just a menu styled like the
** 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".
** Flight sims love to play with this trope, living up to their "simulation" status. For example, MircoProse's ''F-15 Strike Eagle III'''s main menu is a recreation of a hanger at the Nellis, NV air force base, with pilot selection being done by clicking on a locker, mission selection by clicking on a map or officer, and starting the mission by clicking on a plane just outside the hangar.
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* The Mojo stage of the Sega Genesis ''[[X-Men]]'' game gives the player a time limit to reach the end of the stage. Once there, the player receives a message that he needs to reset the computer core to escape the level. This puzzle is solved by hitting the Reset button on the Genesis.
* In [[Simon the Sorcerer]], you need to convicne four wizards posing as country bumpkins that you can see through their disguise. You do this by telling them that when the mouse pointer hovers over them, the infobox reads 'wizards'.
* In ''[[Simon the Sorcerer]] 3'', the last puzzle in the game involves getting a CD out of a computer which has no
* The 1985 wargame ''Theatre Europe'' simulates conventional WWIII. Accessing nuclear weapons requires a real-world phone call. [[That Other Wiki]]: "The telephone number connected the player to a recorded message, which started with the sound of air raid sirens and dramatically built up through various sounds of war to a huge explosion, followed by the sound of a crying baby. As this faded out, a voice stated "If this is really what you want... the code is 'Midnight Sun'"." Global thermonuclear war is a [http://homepages.tesco.net/~parsonsp/html/theatre_europe.html complete loss]; for single strategic missiles, the player has to remember to turn off automatic retaliation for nuclear attacks with equal or stronger force, a system that both sides use and which responds to retaliations. At the hardest difficulty level, it's impossible to win as the Warsaw Pact.
* In what's probably one of the most genuinely disturbing things in video games, there is a level of the ''[[Reservoir Dogs]]'' game where you play as Mr Brown, the getaway driver who has been shot in the head; in the movie we cut directly to him crashing the car after several miles and shouting, "I'm blind!", to which Mr Orange informs him that he isn't blind, he just has blood in his eyes. In the ''game'', you have to drive Pink and White out of the jewelery store with your sight increasingly obscured by blood dripping down the screen, a narrowing field of vision, and eventually flickering between black and white, colour and sepia tone.
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* ''[[Furcadia]]'' advertisement: "This advertisement is in Finnish when you're not looking."
* Similar to the Stephen King example further up the page, Ron DeLite of ''[[Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney]]: Trials and Tribulations'' occasionally trails off in his speech as the text fades to match the window's color. Throughout the series, characters have their text scroll faster when they're nervous or angry, indicating that they're speaking faster; two separate characters (Wendy Oldbag and Moe the Clown) have their text move so fast it's nigh-impossible to follow when they start rambling. When someone yells, their text shoots up in size.
* 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
** 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.
** Speaking of ''Metal Gear'', if you have a wireless headset registered to your [[PlayStation 3]], you can receive CODEC audio via the headset rather than your speakers.
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* The [[Lilo and Stitch|Stitch]] summon in ''[[Kingdom Hearts II]]'' sticks and crawls on the surface of your TV screen... even when you're looking in ''first-person''. And during his [[Limit Break]], he stands on the command menu and licks it to restore your MP.
* Malkavian players in ''[[Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines]]'' have an alternate, jumbled-up font for their alternate, jumbled-up dialogue options.
** The oddness continues in that news broadcasts on various TVs, which serve as background and interesting little recaps of your more public adventures in the game for other characters, take a more sinister turn for Malkavians. Not only does the news anchor speak directly to you, his descriptions of various stories are far more twisted and violent than
** There was a Malkavian Thin Blood on the beach in Santa Monica who offered to read your future. She actually did describe events that happened in the game (though they only make sense in retrospect), and if your character was Malkavian, your lines would add even more information. Also, if asked about how it all ends, she'd answer that it's not important whether you win or lose, it's if you bought the game that counts. Sadly, not enough people did...
*** Though to be fair, I think more people might have bought it if developer Troika wasn't justifiably infamous for releasing horrifically buggy and unfinished games with ''[[Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines]]'' being perhaps their worst offense.
* For a time in the early 1990s, it became almost ''de rigeur'' for platform games to make the player's avatar get bored and in some way address the player if not moved for some time. We have [[Idle Animation|a trope]] for those things.
* The classic [[Infocom]] text adventure ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (video game)|The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy]]'' has a scenario whereby you cause a [[Temporal Paradox]], which, in typical ''HHGTTG'' style, destroys the universe in a most thorough fashion. The game explains in literary detail the havoc which ensues, ending with "The universe ceases to have ever exis"
* In ''[[Tales of Hearts]]'', the characters experience the [[Mysterious Waif]]'s guilt flashback to just before she had an inadvertent hand in Armageddon. Late in this flashback, another character tells her past self to come along and begin the project. Her text box simply says "Yes," but the voice actress screams out "No!" At this moment, the viewer-character separates from the flashback-character and enters the final stage of her [[Heroic BSOD]].
* Happens at least once in ''[[Super Robot Wars]] [[Original Generation]] 2''. Normally, when you begin a mission, there's a short text explanation of what's happening, then the mission's number and name appear on a blue background before fading out to reveal the map and begin the actual gameplay. However, on some important occasions, this screen doesn't appear, and instead these details flash up onto the screen after said important occasion has occured. When this happens during episode 30, immediately after having -EPISODE 30- DYGENGUARD- appear on the screen, the level boss yells out "What was that!? ...And what does "Episode 30" mean!?".
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* ''[[Splinter Cell]]: Conviction'' [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYmwR-sP4FQ uses] the rather cool technique of 'projecting' elements like mission objectives and backstory onto the surrounding environment. For example, as Sam approaches a mansion the words "Infiltrate the Mansion" appear on its facade like they're being beamed from a film projector.
* In ''[[Final Fantasy IV: The After Years]]'', the game's spritework is of higher quality than the original game; in general, everything is larger and, as a result, more detailed and more smoothly drawn. This is especially noticeable on people. Whenever the story calls for a flasback, (flashing back to the destruction of Mist, for example), the spritework reverts to the original squat style of ''[[Final Fantasy IV]]''. A copout to avoid remaking the scenes with new sprites? Not quite, as the style also reverts when flashing back to events not in the original, like Ceodore's birth.
* ''[[Wet]]'' is heavily influenced by the Hong Kong action films of the 80s and early 90s, along with the drive-in movies and grindhouse films of earlier decades. As a constant reminder of this, it uses phony projector tricks similar to ''[[Grindhouse]]''
* This is the primary gimmick of the ''[[Viewtiful Joe]]'' series, except that the player controls them, and it's cinematic tropes that are used. Slow motion lets our hero dodge attacks and punch more dramatically (and punch bullets), zoom in temporarily stuns foes, mach speed lets him move very fast, Sylvia's Replay let's her attack for triple the damage(or triple the received damage, and sometimes Joe will smack foes so had they bounce off the screen.
* In ''[[Modern Warfare]]'', cutscenes before the start of a mission are presented as the networking and information system used by the protagonists' various orginizations displaying relevant information while important characters speak over it, although the presentation itself is a heavy dramatization of what anything like this in reality would be displaying, it takes up the entire screen and the characters speaking are never seen, as if they're standing right next to you, watching it just like you are. And then it's taken up a notch in ''Modern Warfare 2'' when one entire cutscene is, with no elements recognizable from the game itself, the {{spoiler|emergency broadcast system of Washington DC, telling you where to go for evacuation as the Russians invade the city.}}
* The main ''[[Assassin's Creed]]'' games are masters of this trope: the [[Framing Story]] takes place near the end of [[The End of the World as We Know It|2012]], and you only play as the Assassins through accessing their genetic memories through a device called the Animus. The game uses this to [[Justified Trope|justify]] several standard video game tropes, most obviously why the HUD is laid out the way it
** The sequel takes it up a notch with the Animus 2.0, which adds several gameplay refinements and subtitles, which were absent in the first game. A note in the game's manual from Lucy is a reminder to fix the nasty bug in the Animus 1.0 software that [[Super Drowning Skills|prevented the ancestor from swimming]] (and indeed, Ezio is a very prolific swimmer), and a side conversation has Desmond thanking a member of his [[Mission Control]] for the subtitles.
* The ''[[Golden Sun]]'' games tend to avoid this, with the exception of the final battles in both games. Just as the fight starts the screen appears to ''shatter''.
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* In ''[[CROSS†CHANNEL]]'', at one point Taichi flips Touko's skirt up expecting a [[Megaton Punch]]. When he doesn't get one, he decides to go one step further by pulling her panties down and quickly requesting that someone throw up a mosaic. And, of course, as per Japanese laws on [[H-game|H-Games]], it's already there since ''Cross Channel'' is a partially censored game.
* At one point in ''[[A Profile]]'', Masayuki questions his mother's use of a tilde in her sentence.
* In ''[[Ever 17]]'', the text box changes color depending on the current POV
** ''[[Remember 11]]'' has the same
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** 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.}}
* ''[[Dominic Deegan]]: Oracle for Hire'' has used sequences that break the comic strip, once to symbolize a breakdown [http://www.dominic-deegan.com/view.php?date=2005-05-02 of reality], other times [http://www.dominic-deegan.com/view.php?date=2007-10-04 of the mind]. (The mouth-things and mosaics in the former are completely
* 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.
* ''It's Walky!'' pulled a similar stunt [http://www.itswalky.com/d/20031221.html here].
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* Similar to the ''Bob And George'' example, in the ''[[V for Vendetta]]'' strip of ''[[Joe Loves Crappy Movies]]'', [[Author Avatar]] Joe makes a snide comment about George W. Bush and is promptly taken into custody. He is then replaced by a government agent called George that replaces Joe for several strips, interacting with his friends and then girlfriend (now wife) Yeoh (who, strangely enough, are unfazed by this). Bringing this into Fourth Wall Painting territory is the fact that the strip's title changed to "George Loves Crappy Movies" and the movie reviews that accompanied each strip were made as if they were written by George (with his own [[Strawman Political]] bias).
* [http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/archive_page.php?comicID=331 This] page of ''[[Gunnerkrigg Court]]'' uses the end-of-chapter symbol to censor a profanity, basically creating a [[Sound Effect Bleep]] [[Dissimile|without the sound effect]].
** In the ''Gunnerkrigg'' interim comic ''City Face'', the [[Shout Box]] below the comic doesn't display reader
** [http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/archive_page.php?comicID=678 This page.] Note the bright light that bleeds into the gaps between panels, and the way Antimony's hair flows out of the last panel as she re-enters the Ether.
** For scenes set in the Ether in general, there are no borders between panels, and the art simply bleeds off the page. And on [http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/archive_page.php?comicID=682 this page], Annie is in the Ether but interacting with the physical world; it's represented by her reaching into an inset panel.
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** [http://www.insecticons.com/insecticomics/v5/458.html And the narrator's one of the Vok.]
* ''[[Books Don't Work Here]]'' does this often. [http://booksdontworkhere.thecomicseries.com/comics/4/ here] is an example of [[Odd-Shaped Panel]], and here is where they play around with [[Flashback Effects]] [http://booksdontworkhere.thecomicseries.com/comics/69/ twice]
* In ''[[8-Bit Theater|Eight Bit Theater]]'', after Thief's [[Class Change]], he's seen in a red outfit for a few strips, then changes to black. When Black Mage asks him about it, he replies that his outfit was always
** ''[[8-Bit Theater|Eight Bit Theater]]'' once represented the Light Warriors experience in distorted time by having a strip where [http://www.nuklearpower.com/2005/03/24/episode-531-time-for-a-new-space/ the characters could see themselves in the past and future by looking around].
** In addition, one of the many, many omnipotent abilities of Sarda includes being able to rearrange the speech bubbles of people he doesn't like, particularly [[Butt Monkey|Black Mage]].
* In ''Lick My Jesus'' (which is, unfortunately, no longer accessible), one strip was based around the idea that different fonts were different languages. One character admitted, "I'm sorry... I don't speak Garamond."
** Kinda like the old [[Britcom]] ''Allo, Allo'', in which different languages are represented by [[Just a Stupid Accent|different accents]]
* 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.
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* ''[[Shortpacked]]'' paints the fourth wall pretty effectively in [http://www.shortpacked.com/d/20050518.html this strip].
* ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' used to use different fonts for the (English) speech of different races of beings in the galaxy. Humans "spoke" in a Courier-like font, the AI entity Petey spoke in a font that filled empty space inside of letters with a dot, and the F'sherl-Ganni aliens spoke in a very "pointy" font. The author phased out this practice due to the difficulty that fans had with reading these exotic fonts, but not without a [http://www2.schlockmercenary.com/d/20020421.html fourth-wall-breaking strip to explain it].
* [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]]
* 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://geekinlove.com/la-caza-del-troll/ This page] of the Spanish webcomic ''[http://geekinlove.com/ GeekInLove]'' depicts the characters hunting a "archtypical" [[Troll|internet troll]], but he is smarter than the main characters thought and he breaks the strip and goes down to the comments area to escape. He is still chased by one of the heroes, who finally kills him in the comment entry box. The "comment area" is in fact a mockup, but it's very well done and the comments are perfectly synchronized with the action.
* [http://www.gocomics.com/lio/2008/10/08/ Here's an example] of
* [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
* 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.
* [http://antagonist.swimtrunkstudio.com/archive_page.php?comicID=77 This strip] of ''The Antagonist'', where a counselor points out the titular ex-villain's, K's, specific speech, assuming the villain is immersed enough in the the act to be able to see his own word balloons, to which K answers, "This isn't a comic book."
* ''[[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.
* ''[[The Adventures of Dr. McNinja]]'' does it, almost literally, in [http://drmcninja.com/page.php?pageNum=10&issue=15 this strip]
* [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.''
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** This was remade as a game on the DS, with similar "painting," including Daffy "ripping up the game code".
** It was also referenced on ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'', when Homer badmouthed Matt Groening only to have a huge pencil eraser loom toward his head. The camera zooms out to reveal the pencil as a diegetic piece of an art installation that is on its way to being installated.
* In the [[Pilot]] episode of ''[[Wolverine and the X-Men]]'', the ellipsis between the explosion that starts the main intrigue and the "present moment" was symbolised by a fake television signal
* An episode of ''[[Chowder]]'' once had the title character playing around with a marker until he accidentally drew on the screen. Gazpacho then said he needed to clean that up, and kept telling the camera to move around until he could reach it, saying it was "too far" with a wide shot, and cleaned it up when he got a close-up. When Chowder said he missed one (the Cartoon Network screen bug), Gazpacho informed him he'd tried before and it doesn't come off.
** This become especially bizarre with re-runs after the network logo changed, as the old logo suddenly re-appears (along with the new one) when Gazpacho taps it, but disappears right after he said it wouldn't go away.
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[[Category:Meta Concepts]]
[[Category:Metafiction Demanded This Index]]
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[[Category:Painting the Medium]]
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