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{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|''"You just show that your first-person narrator was actually in an insane asylum and then OH MY GOD, did it actually happen? Who can say? Here, I can say. It didn't happen because your narrator was just no good. Listen. Never lend an unreliable narrator money."''
|''[[Dinosaur Comics]]'', "[http://www.qwantz.com/archive/001195.html Literary techniques comics: Unreliable Narrator]" [[Alt Text]]}}
In most narratives, there's an element of trust that the [[Narrator|person telling you the story]] is telling the truth, at least as far as they know it. This trope occurs when that convention is discarded. The
Reasons for the unreliability vary. Sometimes the narrator is a guilty party and is trying to mislead the audience as well as the other characters. If the narrator is insane, it's [[Through the Eyes of Madness]]. If the narrator has honestly misunderstood what's going on due to naivety or inexperience, it's [[Innocent Inaccurate]].
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As an author, this is a difficult trick to pull off. It is a lot easier to tell a straight story than it is to deliberately mislead the audience, never mind that it violates the traditional assumption that [[Viewers are Morons]].
One common technique is to use a [[Framing Device]], so that the narrator is presented as a character in the frame story, to emphasize that he is not actually the author. One variation of this, which also gives a reason for the narrator to be lying, is to use the narrator's [[Interrogation as Framing Device|Interrogation as the Framing Device]]. Another, even trickier method, is the [[Literary Agent Hypothesis]], where the narrator is supposedly relating things that happened in [[Real Life]]. Multiple unreliable narrators results in [[Rashomon Style]]. If it's a visual medium and the picture contradicts the narration, it's an [[Unreliable Voiceover]]. This can also be used as a trick in [[Advertising|commercials]], to evade claims of false advertising by having an unreliable character do the talking.
[[Unreliable Expositor]] is a variant with less than credible [[Exposition]] from specific characters, as opposed to narrators of the whole story. Contrast [[Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane]] where the evidence is reliable but insufficient, and [[Infallible Narrator]], when the narration is far more accurate than the character giving it ought to be capable of.
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This can also be a source of humour for the work, too.
Note that this is specifically for narrators within the work. When it's the author that's lying, that's [[Lying Creator]]. When the author simply can't make up his mind, that's [[Flip-Flop of God]]. Can usually be assumed to be the case at least part of the time when history is [[Written by the Winners]].
{{examples on subpages|suf=s}}
{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Characters As Device]]
[[Category:Index of Exact Trope Titles]]
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[[Category:Lit Class Tropes]]
[[Category:Truth and Lies]]
[[Category:
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