The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: Difference between revisions
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A monster is on the loose terrorizing a bunch of innocent people. As long as the monster and the victims are characters in a fictional world, one would usually be correct to assume that the boundaries of the [[Fourth Wall]] will be respected. But then, [[Breaking the Fourth Wall]], the monster assaults the omniscient narrator, or leaps out at the audience.
See also [[Rage Against the Author]] and [[The Most Dangerous Video Game]]. May involve [[Sean Connery Is About to Shoot You]] or [[Tome of Eldritch Lore]]. For an in-universe equivalent, see [[Dead Line News]]. Compare [[Refugee From TV Land]]. See also [[Television Portal]].
{{examples}}
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{{quote|'''Princess {{spoiler|Gaia}}''': {{spoiler|"And why would you want to be 'protected' from mama sweetheart? I just want you to be happy and safe. Just listen to mama's singing and you'll understand." }}}}
** In the ''[[Mario & Luigi]]'' crossover "Of Ponies and Plumbers", at the end of chapter 13 Discord tries to brainwash the ''author'' into giving up on the story and therefore [[The Bad Guy Wins|let him win]]. As a result, the author marked the story as "cancelled" on FiMFiction for some time, and the author even [[Kayfabe|pretended to be "discorded" in the comments section of the story]].
** Someone went and [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
* This happens, of course, at the end of ''[http://www.creepypasta.com/day-of-all-the-blood/ The Day Of All The Blood]''.
{{quote|THE SCARIEST PART IS THAT THE MAN WAS YOU!!! (OR HE WAS A LADY IF YOU ARE A LADY) AND YOU FORGOT THAT THIS HAPPENED}}
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* This was a key element to the infamous ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20100325092800/http://thelbane.ranma.net/~alcen/ Revenge Wars]'' fics which flooded the Anime Fan Fiction Mailing List in the mid- to late-1990s in response to and in the wake of Scott "SKJAM!" Jamison's story ''[http://skjam.dreamwidth.org/4743.html#cutid1 Sauce]'': tired of being jerked around, romantically and otherwise, by the various fic authors, assorted anime characters enter the real world to mess with ''them'' in return.
== [[Film]]
* In Disney's animated ''[[Robin Hood (Disney film)|Robin Hood]]'', the rooster narrator is seen in prison. He explains that he's in for tax evasion and that even he isn't above the law.
* Beyond the Mind's Eye is an in-universe example, showing a man being attacked by his TV under the control of a character on the screen.
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* In ''[[Kung Fu Panda]]'', Cueto a brief but bricks hitting flashback to a rabid snow leopard - teeth bared, claws slashing, eyes glowing solid gold - attacking the Jade Palace, the camera positioned to look like Tai Lung was charging directly looking at you.
* In ''[[The Black Cauldron]]'', The Horned King is telling his warriors to become "messengers of death" and the screen makes a close up of his face.
* The ending of ''[[The Woman in Black]]'', where {{spoiler|Jennett looks directly at the camera, implying that your children will die next.}}
* A splice between this and [[Leaning on the Fourth Wall]] is Kevin McCarthy near the end of the original ''[[Invasion of the Body Snatchers]]'' screaming "You're next!" at the audience.
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* In ''[[Gremlins 2 The New Batch]]'', the Gremlins break out of the movie and assault the projectionist, forcing them to run other movies. They are eventually stopped by [[Hulk Hogan]] and the movie proper resumes. When the movie was released to video, the sequence was changed to the Gremlins breaking into the TV and being defeated by [[Stock Footage]] of [[John Wayne]]. The theatrical version with Hulk Hogan is restored for the DVD release.
** In the novelization, the Brain Gremlin hijacks the book to talk about the Gremlins' hopes and desires. He is cut off by the novelist, David Bischoff, managing to axe his way through the locked door of the room where he keeps his computer, and Brainy decides to git while the gitting's good.
* On YouTube there is [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
** The American remake plays with this. The movie ends with {{spoiler|Rachel guiding her son into making a copy of the tape to save his life}}. When he asks what will happen to the people who see it, the camera zooms into the video screen and forces the audience to watch the tape again, implying that it's ''us.''
** Even without that implication, one of the reasons this film was an international success is surely that it plays on the fear behind this trope: not only are these "fictional" horrors real, they're coming to get you.
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* A nice one on the Brazilian series "Dragoes do Eter". The author actually uses the reader as a character, making him affect the story, making the characters aware that there are readers, but they actually think the readers are "Demi-gods". In this universe, Demi-gods are the most powerful beings in existence, and whenever The Narrator starts talking to you, ''awesome happens''. If you find that technique to be cheesy or that it gets old like DC's Earth Prime, I ensure you that it's [[Better Than It Sounds]].
* In the fourth book of The Pendragon Adventure, The Reality Bug, the Reality Bug plagues a virtual reality program that might kill everyone who is plugged into it. At the end of the book, the bug ''punched a hole in reality'', thus escaping and ready to murder people in the real world.
* Piers Anthony's ''[[Xanth]]'' novels occasionally feature excursions into "Mundania", that is, the real world, and include characters originating in Mundania. The ''Xanth'' books themselves exist in Mundania, and have been mentioned in-story as accounts of Xanthene events.
== [[Live-Action TV]]==
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* The "Don't Feed The Plants" ending of ''[[Little Shop of Horrors]]''. Warnings are sung directly to the audience, and the plant puppet leans into the audience and the theatre finally goes dark after it opens wider than it ever previously did in the show.
== [[Theme Parks]] ==
* [[Disney Theme Parks]]
** Disney World's Great Movie Ride: {{spoiler|Halfway through your friendly tour guide goes off to investigate something and has the tour get hijacked by a movie character.}}
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* ''[[EverQuest]] 2'' features one dungeon, the Estate of Unrest, where the [[Big Bad]], a malevolent ghost turned [[Genius Loci]] and low-level [[Reality Warper]], spends the entire thing regularly taunting and threatening the player characters, but is baffled as to why he can't sense their souls to attack them. When the party enters the caves beneath the mansion where his bones lie, aiming to forcibly reincarnate him to kill them, he roars that he finally found their souls and that they won't be safe "behind that pane of glass." Then the screen is engulfed in static for a moment as a skull appears and tries to lash out at the player.
* In-universe example: In the [[All There in the Manual]] [[Backstory]] for Infocom's ''Hollywood Hijinx'', B-movie king Buddy Burbank was notorious for several uses of this trope. A film of his entitled ''Meltdown on Elm Street'' involved an accident at a neighborhood nuclear power plant, resulting in a nuclear meltdown. After the citizens try to resume their normal routines (only without hair), a nuclear power plant worker who survived the accident but [[I Love Nuclear Power|became a horrific homicidal monster]] goes about killing the citizens. The climax of the film took place at the Elm Street Cinema. Burbank arranged that each theater showing the movie have an usher run up and down the aisles wearing a glowing nuclear plant worker's jumpsuit. The result was that several moviegoers died of shock. This bit of [[Backstory]] was most likely inspired by the real-life "Tingler" example mentioned above.
* Some characters in ''[[Mortal Kombat 9]]'' break the fourth wall during their victory poses. While some of them are friendly (like Kitana, [[Third-Person Seductress|who winks at the player]]) but others, like Mileena, tend to be ''very'' threatening.
* The main enemies in ''[[La Tale]]'', the Agasura, are said to be after the game's [[Game Master]]s for their omnipotent power of 'hack'.
* In ''[[Minecraft]]'', Ghasts shoot fireballs at your character... if you're in first-person mode. In third person, it becomes clear that they're targeting ''the camera''. This was actually a bug, it's been patched out.
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* ''[[Tomb Raider]] II'' did this at the end when Lara sees the player peeping in on her after a shower. "[[Dramatic Gun Cock|Don't you think you've seen enough?]]"
* ''[[Ultima VII]]'' starts off this way, with a red demon poking his head through your computer monitor, telling you how he's going to take over your earth just as he's taking over the world of Brittania.
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
* ''[[Touhou]]'''s Flandre can break anything, [http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=
* ''[[I Robot (video game)|I Robot]]'' has an enemy called the View Killer; a nasty looking spike that is fired at the player's camera rather than Robot. Because you know, [[Everything Is Trying to Kill You|giant beach balls of doom weren't bad enough]].
* Any [[Augmented Reality]] game which treats the player as an in-game character to be targeted and attacked, with examples including ''[[Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir]]''.
* ''[[Pony Island]]'' starts out like a cute 8-bit game where you control a pink unicorn, but eventually there's a dark [[Genre Shift]] and the script tells you that Lucifer has stolen your soul ''and'' that of the unicorn, and that you will not be able to stop playing until you surrender or destroy the game cabinet. Unfortunately, while the concept seems original, the game isn't very scary, nor is it really a good game overall, at least according to most critics.
* ''[[Doki Doki Literature Club!]]'' seems like you're typical [[Dating Sim]] with cute anime girls, {{spoiler|until they start disappearing, and it eventually becomes clear one of them is a [[Yandere]] who is elimintating them to have her quarry all to herself... And the quarry ''isn't'' any character in the game...}}
* In ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'', when Snake first encounters Psycho Mantis, he's a little skeptical about the villain’s claim of having [[Psychic Powers]]. Being the boastful type, Psycho Mantis decides to convince him by reading his mind, deducing that Snake is a methodical type who always plans ahead with caution and prefers subtlety to raw strength. Now, the typical player would likely react by saying, “Big deal, I could have told you that.” And then, Psycho Mantis [[Breaking the Reviewer's Wall| addresses the player directly]], asking how much he enjoyed the ''other'' video games he had recently played - accurately naming the titles. But that's not all, ''then'' he decides to convince the player further, by using his telekinesis to move the [[PlayStation]]'s other controller. In hindsight, it's pretty easy to tell how this was done (the game was referencing the memory card and then activating the rumble pack) but back in 1998, when both types of hardware were new for consoles, it likely creeped a lot of players out.
== [[Web Original]]==
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** Implied in-universe in the entry for [http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-674 SCP-674].
** [http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/sandrewswann-s-proposal One of the SCP-001 proposals] is {{spoiler|the authors}}. Complete with a containment procedure, in case the [[Godzilla Threshold]] is crossed.
** Also, if you want to read ''any'' of the SCP-001 proposals, you have to click on a link that {{spoiler|leads to a page with the following disclaimer: WARNING: Any non-authorized personnel accessing this file will be immediately terminated through Berryman-Langford memetic kill agent. Scrolling down without proper memetic inoculation will result in immediate cardiac arrest followed by death. [[You Have Been Warned|YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.]]" If you're brave enough to scroll down, you'll see a frightening looking design and a message that the "memetic kill agent" has been activated, following a message stating that, because you aren't dead, access is approved.}} [http://www.scpwiki.com/scp-001 See it here.]
** SCP-3935 is a haunted school, one of the entity's manifestations being a soft voice that says, "Hello." If you stay on the page long enough, you'll hear this yourself. [http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-3935 Go on, try it...]
* [[The Slender Man Mythos]] and its followers are fond of this, often showing [[Fan Nickname|Slendy]] attacking the cameras outright.
** In one [[Marble Hornets]] Entry, the masked man stares right at you. Not the camera, you.
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** There is a theory that Slender Man has some control over his victims, and that he's compelling his victims to post videos of him to the internet, to help the spread of knowledge about him, and will him into existence.
* The Entity from [[Atop the Fourth Wall]]. In August near-subliminal messages from it started appearing in the credits, and Linkara responded to any questions about this by saying that he didn't see anything, despite his usually posting out of character in the comments.
* In ''[[Die Anstalt]]'', one of the patients, Dr. Wood, is a psychiatrist who {{spoiler|is revealed to have narcissistic personality disorder and becomes a cult leader. If you try to use dream analysis therapy on him at this point, Wood steals your pendulum and proceeds to try and hypnotize ''the player character'' into joining his "Claw Association".}}
* From the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
* ''[[Dragon Ball Abridged]]'' has a touch of this at the very end of episode 12. They've already established Mr. Popo as the most frightening and creepy thing in existence. Then the end of the episode has one of the members of [[Team Four Star]] wake up from a nightmare related to the show and declare that he has to stop editing so late at night. Suddenly Mr. Popo takes over his computer and starts talking to him ''in the real world''. Cue a massive [[Oh Crap]].
* The [[NES Godzilla Creepypasta]] has the player [[That One Boss|insulting]] [[Eldritch Abomination|Red]]/[[Big Bad|the Hellbeast]] after [[Escape Sequence|escaping from him.]] [[Oh Crap|He stares]] [[Nightmare Face|back.]] [[It Got Worse|And it only gets worse after that.]]
* [[Zalgo|ZALGO!]] H͉͙̖͎́ͬ̿͟͠ͅȨ̶͚̺͈̬̏̑͊̄̓ͨͪ̚ ̻̬̂̎͒̂̌̕͟C̦̦͚̱̯͕̾͊̏ͦ͘͜O͕͕̟͇͎̩̞̅ͩ̚M̵̪͔̗̺ͯͭ̀E̢̟̙̗̰̬̲͕̘̍ͪͬ̌̏̑͜͢S̴̤̯̫ͩ̑̄̂̚͘͠.̭̞̠̟̘̪̉͒ͧͯ̾͆
* In the [[YouTube]] video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTuEClmaUFE&ab_channel=ChaosMaelstrom shown here], the poster is planning to do a [[Let's Play]] of ''[[Monster Girl Quest]]'' (a well-known [[Hentai]] game), but then he seems to have second thoughts and decides to do something more "family friendly". Kitsune Girl (a recurring boss in the game) doesn't like this (she was really looking forward to "her" game being profiled), so she grabs the host and subjects him to [[Tickle Torture]] until he reconsiders.
== [[Web Comics]] ==
* In the Dungeon Crawling Fools extra content of ''[[Order of the Stick]]'', {{spoiler|Roy grabs the narrator to their pre-dungeon warmup and uses him as a distraction for the monster guarding the castle.}}
* After killing most of the Greek pantheon, what's left to challenge [[God of War (series)|Kratos]]? [http://gg-guys.com/?id=
* ''[[The Bongcheon Dong Ghost]]'' {{spoiler|controls your computer}}.
* In ''[[Homestuck]]'', {{spoiler|Lord English}} has somehow entered author Andrew Hussie's house. Cue [[Oh Crap]]!
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== [[Western Animation]]==
* The narrator in ''[[Danger Mouse]]'' was sometimes affected by whatever [[Evil Plan]] was afoot. When Baron Greenback interfered with the world's transmissions, the narrator kept talking over the end credits, saying he was probably going to be cut off soon. He was.
** In "Play it Again, Wufgang", with all the music of the world destroyed, we're treated to DM, Col. K and Penfold's [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
* ''[[Looney Tunes]]'', being [[Born in the Theatre]], occasionally involves gags with the audience. See that trope for details.
* In the episode of ''[[The Powerpuff Girls]]'' where Mojo Jojo turns the world's population into dogs, Mojo turns the effect on the Narrator about halfway through.
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* In one episode of ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'', a bully who preys on [[geek]]s and [[nerd]]s [[This Loser Is You|lunges at the viewer]] right before the show fades to black.
** Also in the "Treehouse of Horror" segment 'Attack of the 50 ft Eyesores,' Kent Brockman is reporting on the advertising menace, and states that the next time you see a commercial, it could kill you and your entire family. Homer then appears and says "we'll be right back." Then there's a commercial break!
* One episode of ''[[The Grim Adventures of Billy
* "Wild Cards," an episode of ''[[Justice League (animation)|Justice League]]'', is presented (sans opening and ending) as a real-life television program hijacked by [[The Joker]], who has planted a number of bombs on [[Viva Las Vegas|the Vegas strip]] and will detonate them unless the Justice League can stop him and his Royal Flush Gang henchmen. {{spoiler|It's then revealed this is a [[Batman Gambit]] designed to trick as many people as possible into watching, because one of the Gang is a telepath whose gaze - even through the screen - can drive people insane. [[Mood Whiplash|And while the Joker explains all of this to you and his corny TV music ends to be replaced by ominous chords]], ''her eyes are still staring at you from the top of the screen''.}}
* ''[[Darkwing Duck (animation)|Darkwing Duck]]'':
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