| 1 | ''"[[SelfDemonstratingArticle Man, do you remember that article we wrote about framing devices?]]"''\ |
| 2 | ''"That was a damn good article. How did it go again?"''\ |
| 3 | ''"Well, I believe it went something like this..."'' |
| 4 | |
| 5 | The Framing Device is a narrative technique in which a story is surrounded ("framed") by a secondary story, creating a [[NestedStory story within a story]], often through SeparateSceneStorytelling. The inner story is usually the bulk of the work. The framing device places the inside story within a different context. |
| 6 | |
| 7 | Framing devices typically involve outer story characters as the audience of the inner story, such as a parent reading a bedtime story to a child. Other times, the outer story character is the author of, or a performer in, the inner story. Occasionally, the inner story is a hallucination or delusion experienced by one of the outer story characters. |
| 8 | |
| 9 | The inner story does not need to be a work of fiction from a frame-story character's point of view: letters, journals, and memoirs can also be used as framing devices, often in the form of DayInTheLife. |
| 10 | |
| 11 | Anthologies and {{Clip Show}}s often use framing devices to connect the unrelated elements into a unified whole. The earlier "Treehouse of Horror" specials of ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' use a framing device in this way, though the practice was eventually abandoned. |
| 12 | |
| 13 | Occasionally, an entire series can use a persistent Framing Device, such as ''WesternAnimation/{{Cro}}'', which was framed by a recently thawed mammoth, who was telling the stories which composed the bulk of each episode. A noteworthy example from the days of radio is ''Radio/YoursTrulyJohnnyDollar'', whose stories were told in the form of explanations to a private detective's [[RecapByAudit expense account]]. This method was also used to get foreign children's shows that were [[QuarterHourShort Quarter Hour Shorts]] on the air in the United States back in the 90's, [[ImportationExpansion usually by creating an entirely new show to serve as the framing device]]. To a lesser extent, devices such as the CaptainsLog can be viewed as a Framing Device, especially when (as in many ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' episodes) they appear to have been written after the fact. |
| 14 | |
| 15 | The Framing Device is OlderThanDirt: It goes right back to the Old Kingdom of AncientEgypt with the "Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor", c. 2300-2100 BC. Sometimes the trope is written using nested framing devices that are several layers deep, as in the ''Literature/ArabianNights''. ''Literature/{{Frankenstein}}'' is framed by a story of an arctic expedition coming across the dying Dr. Frankenstein; ''Literature/TheRimeOfTheAncientMariner'' is framed by the mariner foisting his story on an unwilling wedding guest. One of the first (if not ''the'' first) examples in film is from ''Film/TheCabinetOfDrCaligari'', which (on a suggestion from Creator/FritzLang) framed the original story as a {{flashback}} in an asylum. |
| 16 | |
| 17 | The technique sometimes seems to be a byproduct of an ancient notion that it was improper to waste people's time with lengthy fabrications. |
| 18 | |
| 19 | This is frequently used as a technique to highlight that the narrator of the framed story is not the actual author, and so draw attention to the possibility of an UnreliableNarrator. |
| 20 | |
| 21 | SuperTrope of RecapByAudit (the aftermath of an event reveals or sums up what happened), StorybookOpening (story opens with a storybook being opened, and the focus going into that book), MythPrologue (a work starts by telling a myth that the plot is based around), WholeEpisodeFlashback (an episode consisting almost entirely of flashbacks), HowWeGotHere (the story stops and retells the events prior leading up to that point), InterrogationFlashback (the story is told via someone being pumped for information), and NostalgicNarrator (the narrator looks back at their earlier life often). |
| 22 | |
| 23 | When framing devices are stacked on top of each other, they create a NestedStory. If a framing device is set up and is later forgotten by the end of the story, it becomes a ForgottenFramingDevice. If the existence of a framing device is used as a PlotTwist, we're dealing with a NestedStoryReveal. If a story alternates between a character's past and present but doesn't use a framing device, it's FlashbackBPlot. If the framing story is "I came across this story and decided to publish it", the author is invoking DirectLineToTheAuthor. If done badly, you might find ExpoSpeak. |
| 24 | |
| 25 | Compare IntroOnlyPointOfView. |
| 26 | ---- |
| 27 | !!''"Hmm, not bad, not bad at all. But can you give me a few examples of it?"''\ |
| 28 | ''"Maybe one or two..."'' |
| 29 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 30 | |
| 31 | [[folder:Anime and Manga]] |
| 32 | * ''Literature/AscendanceOfABookworm'': The anime is set with the high priest of the local temple looking through the main character's memories with magic to see how she got here. It's not really necessary, but gives a hint to viewers about where the season will end and also gets to show off a popular supporting character ahead of schedule. |
| 33 | * The last compilation movie for the ''Manga/AssassinationClassroom'' anime was framed as [[spoiler:Karma and Nagisa]], just the day before [[spoiler:the Class 3-E reunion seven years after the main story]], meeting up and talking to each other. |
| 34 | * ''Literature/{{Baccano}}'' uses this both in the anime and the first of the LightNovels, though in different ways. The anime starts with the Vice President of the Daily Days and his young assistant trying to make sense the bizarre history of the last three years. The book starts with the ''conta è oro'' of the Martillo family [[spoiler:eventually revealed to be ''Firo'' rather than the assumed Maiza]] relaying the 1930 story to a Japanese tourist in the present. |
| 35 | * ''Manga/BoboboboBobobo'' frequently has a theater (conveniently placed in the main character's head) which plays various films, directly cutting into plot points in the middle of episodes, done mainly for the RuleOfFunny. |
| 36 | * ''Manga/KingOfBanditJing: Seventh Heaven'' is a 3-episode OriginalVideoAnimation series in which the first and third episodes act as a frame for the second one. |
| 37 | * The movie adaptation of ''Anime/MagicalGirlLyricalNanohaAs'' was set up as Reinforce Zwei talking about the events that eventually led to her creation, as recounted by Hayate and the Wolkenritter. |
| 38 | * A particularly ingenious version of this is used in ''Anime/MartianSuccessorNadesico'', in an inversion of its ShowWithinAShow relationship with ''Anime/Gekiganger3'' -- it airs as an episode of ''Gekiganger'' in which its characters are watching ''Nadesico.'' It manages to [[LampshadeHanging lampshade]] the RecapEpisode when one of the ''Gekiganger'' characters complains that nothing new happens in them, and it's an excuse for the production company to take a break. The ''Gekiganger'' OVA meanwhile, has a framing device of the ''Nadesico'' cast, after the end of the series, watching the ''Gekiganger'' movie in a theater. |
| 39 | * ''Manga/{{Monster}}'' opens with a passage from Revelations which puts the actions of the series it parallels in a very different context. |
| 40 | * ''Manga/MoriartyThePatriot'': |
| 41 | ** ''The Merchant of London'' flashback chapters are framed in Louis being asked to recount a particular story to Bond to explain what information Fred has just told everyone Milverton has found on William. |
| 42 | ** ''The Remains'' is framed with the Moriartys returning to the Durham manor and looking around and Louis finding an old abandoned diary he left there with recountings of past adventures. |
| 43 | * The first half of Episode 14 of ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'' is a ClipShow with SEELE discussing the events that played out up to that point framing the segment. |
| 44 | * The story of ''Manga/NotSimple'' is told as a reporter named Jim writes a book (also titled Not Simple) detailing the many trials of the protr's life. |
| 45 | * ''Manga/OokuTheInnerChambers'' spends a third of its story within one of these: The first volume ends with the eight Tokugawa Shogun, Yoshimune, asking the court historian of the court's history. The next volumes uses this as a framework for the historian telling the story of the third to seventh Shogun, explaining the backstory of the Inner Chambers and how it works to the reader. After Yoshimune is caught up, the remaining volumes then follows Yoshimune and her descendants. |
| 46 | * ''Anime/SamuraiChamploo'' has a recap episode framed via Mugen (surreptitiously) reading Fuu's diary entries. |
| 47 | * ''Anime/TenchiMuyo Extra Chapter: Galaxy Police Mihoshi's Space Adventure'' (a.k.a. ''Mihoshi Special'') is framed by Mihoshi telling the story to the other characters from the original OriginalVideoAnimation series. Most of the characters in the "inner" story are AlternateContinuity versions of them. |
| 48 | [[/folder]] |
| 49 | |
| 50 | [[folder:Comic Books]] |
| 51 | * ''ComicBook/AllFallDown'': Chapter two's funeral service frames a flashback to the heroes and villains' last hour of glory. |
| 52 | * ''ComicBook/AmericanVampire'': Skinner Sweet's origin story as the first American vampire is narrated to an live audience by Will Bunting, an eyewitness that followed the events closely and wrote an novel about it. At the end of his tale, [[spoiler:it's revealed that Sweet was right there listening to it all along, and [[CruelMercy rubs on Bunting's face how he is old and decrepit while Sweet is young forever]]]]. |
| 53 | * ''ComicBook/AnthonyBourdainsHungryGhosts'': The premise involves a wealthy Russian billionaire hosting a banquet for his rich friends in New York. After dinner is finished, the guests and the billionare's disgruntled kitchen staff play Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai, a Japanese parlor game where they all tell horror stories by a mirror and one-hundred candles, blowing out a candle for every finished story. |
| 54 | * ''ComicBook/{{Arawn}}'' is a StartOfDarkness story on how the title character became an EvilOverlord after being abandoned and betrayed by all those he knew and losing the only woman he loved, being narrated by Arawn himself to one of his victims. |
| 55 | * ''ComicBook/AstroCity'': Many flashback stories use framing devices of one of the participants telling of their experiences many years later, notably "Shining Armor" and "The Dark Ages". |
| 56 | * ''ComicBook/AvengersBackToBasics'': The stories are presented as simulations of the Avengers' past missions recorded on a VR headset, which Kamala is browsing through while studying the team's history. |
| 57 | * ''ComicBook/BackToTheFuture'': The first volume is framed as stories that Doc Brown tells his sons while constructing the time train in the Old West. |
| 58 | * ''ComicBook/BizarroComics'': Mr. Mxyzptlk finds that he's been made the new ruler of the Fifth Dimension, but [[PrestigePeril his joy is short-lived when he learns]] there's a MultiversalConqueror on the way. His attempt at dealing with the being known only as "A" in [[GreatGazoo his usual fashion]] [[NoSell goes south]], and Mxyzptlk is forced to find a champion to help him play A's games. After failing to convince Superman to help, Mxy tries to find an alternate version of Supes who will, only to get stuck with Bizarro Superman. An attempt at teaching the dim-witted and eccentric Bizzaro about being a superhero just leads to Bizarro making his own comics, which leads into the anthology of various strange, non-canonical tales involving DC Comics heroes that takes up much of the rest of the book. |
| 59 | * ''ComicBook/BlackMoonChronicles'': The second series is framed as a story told by one of Wismerhill's daughters to her own daughter about how grandfather became the emperor of this strange new world. |
| 60 | * ''ComicBook/{{Circles}}'': The story is told mostly from Paulie's point of view as he writes in a diary, but his is not the pure point of view, since we see many things to which he is not privy. Paulie's diary segments are a Framing Device used to introduce the subject of that season's problem. |
| 61 | * ''ComicBook/ConanTheBarbarian'' by Dark Horse Comics. The actual stories are framed by the tale of an Eastern Prince of a less ancient (but still pre-Gutenberg) era that discovers the Nemedian Chronicles (maybe the "Know, o Prince" line gave them the idea). The one reading the tales of Conan to the Prince (who cannot read) is his vizier, [[spoiler:a wizened old man dressed in Stygian garb...]] |
| 62 | * In ''ComicBook/GothamAcademy'', the Endgame tie-in and the Yearbook storyline both feature a premise involving the main characters telling stories. In the former, the students are housed together following a power outage caused by the Joker's Endgame, so naturally the main characters take the chance to share Joker-themed ghost stories while the main plot is explored. In Yearbook, Maps is comforted by Olive when her idea for a yearbook club is rejected, leading to a multitude of side-stories featuring (mis)adventures several of the Academy cast had undertaken, all removed from the main plot of the entire book. |
| 63 | * ''ComicBook/LegendsOfTheDeadEarth'': |
| 64 | ** In ''Franchise/{{Batman}}'' Annual #20, Old Posea tells three children of the Bat-Man's heroic deeds in Gotham on Old Earth in order to teach them life lessons. |
| 65 | ** In ''ComicBook/{{Catwoman}}'' Annual #3, a museum tour guide tells several visitors about Commissioner Joker's pursuit of the OutlawCouple Batman and Catwoman in the ancient city of Gotham. |
| 66 | ** In ''ComicBook/{{Azrael}}'' Annual #2, Nunky recounts the story of Azrael's [[HistoricalHeroUpgrade heroic victory]] over ComicBook/{{Bane}} in the hell of Gotham to a large group of children. |
| 67 | ** In ''[[Franchise/TheFlash Flash]]'' Annual #9, Deborah tells the story of Tristan and Bryan Mallory, including her own involvement with them, to six children. |
| 68 | ** In ''[[Franchise/GreenLantern Guy Gardner: Warrior]]'' Annual #2, a family of [[LizardFolk Reptilian aliens]] experience simulations of the adventures of Guy Gardner and his descendants through a cybertronic inducer while visiting the asteroid museum Warriors. |
| 69 | ** In ''ComicBook/{{Aquaman}}'' Annual #2, two storytellers tell conflicting stories about Aquaman to determine which is better. He is a great hero in the first story and a terrible villain in the second. |
| 70 | ** In ''ComicBook/{{Starman}}'' Annual #1, Richard Swift / the Shade tells seven children about the exploits of two Starmen, Prince Gavyn and Ted Knight. |
| 71 | ** In ''ComicBook/SovereignSeven'' Annual #2, Violet Jones, Pansy Smith and Daisy Miller recall various adventures of the Sovereign Seven in the coffee house Crossroads as the universe comes to an end. |
| 72 | * The ''ComicBook/{{Hellboy}}'' miniseries ''Koshchei the Deathless'' has the title {{villain protagonist}} making peace with his former enemy Hellboy and telling him his life's story and StartOfDarkness in a bar. |
| 73 | * ''Marvel Presents'' #8 is an interesting example of {{filler}}. The intended ''ComicBook/GuardiansOfTheGalaxy'' story was running late, and they couldn't reprint their first appearance from ''Marvel Super-Heroes'' #18, as ''Astonishing Tales'' #29 already reprinted it at the time. Cleverly, ''Marvel Presents'' instead reprinted ''ComicBook/SilverSurfer'' #2 (featuring the debut of the Badoon, the Guardians' main antagonists), framed as a ''Guardians'' story by Creator/RogerStern (in his first writing gig for Marvel) where the Guardians recover a Bandoon "Mento-Corder", which projects the Badoon's encounter with the Silver Surfer into their minds. |
| 74 | * ''ComicBook/PacificRimTalesFromYearZero'': The graphic novel is comprised of stories being told to journalist Naomi, and are presented as flashbacks. |
| 75 | * ''ComicBook/{{Pathfinder|DynamiteComics}}: Origins'' frames the {{Origins Episode}}s of the Characters/PathfinderIconics who make up the main cast as them telling their life stories to an interviewer for the Pathfinder Society offering them membership. |
| 76 | * Each issue of ''ComicBook/{{Plutona}}'' runs with the main narrative but jumps to a traditional comic style for a few pages at the end to explore Plutona's backstory. |
| 77 | * ''ComicBook/RiversOfLondon'': Volume 4, ''Detective Stories'', involves Peter recounting some of his strangest cases to an examiner while taking the last part of the test to become a police detective. |
| 78 | * ''ComicBook/TheSandman1989'' uses this a few times, most notably in the "World's End" arc, which features a framing device of characters swapping stories in an InnBetweenTheWorlds. Often, those stories are themselves framing devices for more stories. In places, it nests at least four framing devices deep. |
| 79 | ** The current ''ComicBook/HouseOfMystery'' uses the same framing device. |
| 80 | * ''ComicBook/TheSecretsOfWillowmyst'' is presented as a story being told to a bunch of kids (who occasionally interrupt to point out [[FridgeLogic certain things]]) by one Miss Gwen. |
| 81 | * ''ComicBook/StarWarsKanan'': The bulk of the series is made-up of Kanan's flashbacks to his days as a Padawan. These flashbacks are framed and by the story of the Ghost crew's mission to Kaller, which happened sometime during Season 1 of ''[[WesternAnimation/StarWarsRebels Rebels]]'', and events of this story are what trigger these flashbacks in Kanan. |
| 82 | * ''ComicBook/{{Uber}}'' is narrated as a historical document in [[AlternateHistory alternate timeline]] where [[StupidJetpackHitler the Nazis developed super-soldiers]] at the brink of the Reich's defeat in World War II. |
| 83 | [[/folder]] |
| 84 | |
| 85 | [[folder:Eastern European Animation]] |
| 86 | * ''Animation/TheLittleMermaid1968'': The story is told to a bunch of tourists who visit Copenhagen, in Creator/HansChristianAndersen's native UsefulNotes/{{Denmark}}. They stop by the famous statue of the Little Mermaid in the city's port and the guide starts the tale, and the films ends at that same place. |
| 87 | [[/folder]] |
| 88 | |
| 89 | [[folder:Fairy Tales]] |
| 90 | * ''Literature/BootsWhoMadeThePrincessSayThatsAStory'' is a framing device for Boots's TallTale. |
| 91 | * ''Literature/TheBlackThiefAndTheKnightOfTheGlen'' is a frame for three stories by the thief. |
| 92 | [[/folder]] |
| 93 | |
| 94 | [[folder:Fan Works]] |
| 95 | * ''WebVideo/DragonBallZAbridged: Episode of Bardock'' reveals at the end that all of the events were part of a story told to Gohan by [[IdiotHero his father]] in [[AllJustADream a dream]]. The other movies that do not fall into canon are stated or implied at various times to be movies, written by Krillin, produced by Nappa, and watched on TV by Vegeta. |
| 96 | * In ''Fanfic/FateStarryNight'', the "Jack's Adventure" sidestories are narrated from Jack's perspective, as she's describing how she got to Ritsuka in time to rescue him from Berserker. The story ends with her cheering about how she found him. |
| 97 | * ''Fanfic/TheGoldenBoysLastTemptation'' is framed as ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} telling a secret story, which can only be told once every ten years, to a little kid. |
| 98 | * ''WesternAnimation/TotalDrama'': |
| 99 | ** In ''[[Fanfic/LegacyTotalDrama Legacy]]'', Heather and Duncan at Camp Wawanakwa comprise the frame story, and [[{{Flashback}} their reminiscences]] comprise the inner story. |
| 100 | ** In ''Fanfic/TheLegendOfTotalDramaIsland'', Brett learns that he will be a contestant on the newly revived ''Total Drama Island: The Next Generation'' and learns that his mother was a contestant on the first season of the original ''WesternAnimation/TotalDrama Island'', so he asks her to tell him all about her experience. Her tales comprise the inner story, with the [[GreekChorus byplay between Brett and his mother]] comprising the frame story. |
| 101 | * ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'': |
| 102 | ** ''Fanfic/TheFirstOfMany'' is the story of [[WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic Shining Armor]] calming Twilight's fears of her first date becoming a BadDate by telling her how his first date became a BadDate. What a great brother! |
| 103 | ** ''FanFic/TheGodEmpressOfPonykind'' opens with Twilight running in on [[GodEmperor Celestia]] while the princess is wearing her old armor. After an initial [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness freak out]], Celestia calms down and begins to tell Twilight of her rise to power in Equestria. The story really starts moving with an attack on [[TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}} the Imperial Palace by Abaddon's armies.]] |
| 104 | * The ''Franchise/MassEffect'' fic ''Fanfic/TheTranslationInBlood'' frames the backstory of Rear Admiral Hannah Shepard (Commander Shepard's mother if you chose the Spacer background) and Councilor Sparatus as Hannah, during the early days of the Reaper War in ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'', looking back on the First Contact War 35 years earlier. The fic switches back to the present for the last quarter or so of the story. |
| 105 | * ''FanFic/TheInfiniteLoops'' began when the multiverse computer system suffered a system crash and necessitated the induction of [[GroundhogDayLoop time loops]] while the admins scrambled to repair things. The actual STORY is really a bunch of people screwing with their own canon in any way they see fit. |
| 106 | * The story [[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8340339/1/The-Quiet-Fox The Quiet Fox]] is predominantly told in flashback with each flashback chapter narrated by a different character. [[spoiler:Sasuke's chapter is particularly memorable.]] |
| 107 | * ''FanFic/RedactionOfTheGoldenWitch'' is presented as a critical analysis of an unpopular [[RecursiveCanon Forgery]] based off the events of ''VisualNovel/UminekoWhenTheyCry''. The author personally believes that the reason this particular Forgery breaks from established storytelling patterns is because it's actually a confession related to ''another'' incident that occurred on the island in 1996. |
| 108 | * ''VideoGame/StarTrekOnline'': |
| 109 | ** ''Fanfic/FromBajorToTheBlack'' frames vignettes of Eleya becoming first a Bajoran Militia NCO, then a Starfleet officer, and finally a commanding officer, with Eleya answering unheard interview questions from journalist Jake Sisko. |
| 110 | ** "Fanfic/RemembranceOfTheFallen": Tiana Lanstar visits her wife Sobaru's grave on the Bajoran Day of Remembrance, and reminisces about an encounter with Kanril Eleya at Starfleet Academy ten years earlier and how they celebrated the Day of Remembrance together. |
| 111 | * ''Fanfic/CodeGeassLelouchOfBritannia'' starts every chapter with a FictionalDocument of some variety |
| 112 | * ''Fanfic/FairyWithoutWings'' has each chapter start and end with a quote that falls in line with the context of the chapter. The quote can be said by a character of [[Manga/FairyTail either]] [[Anime/CodeGeass fandom]] or a pre-existing one. Sometimes it's song lyrics. |
| 113 | * In ''FanFic/TheStoryToEndAllStories'', each chapter ends with a cutaway to Mike and the Bots discussing what they've just seen. |
| 114 | * ''FanFic/DoctorWhoovesTheSeries'' ChristmasEpisode ''A Hearth's Warming Tale'' is framed as Luna telling the story to three little fillies, with [[LeaningOnTheFourthWall comments]] and discussion from the kids. |
| 115 | * The main installments of the ''Fanfic/TwiceUponAnAge'' series are presented as being adapted from the official Chantry historical record concerning [[VideoGame/DragonAgeInquisition the Second Inquisition of Thedas]]. The author is a "Chantry scholar" turning the formal records into a story, assisted by her editor, [[DirectLineToTheAuthor Varric Tethras]]. There are also a few side volumes which have their own related but separate framing devices. |
| 116 | * ''Fanfic/MCURewrites'': The events of ''[[http://archiveofourown.org/works/11613921 Black Widow]]'' are told through flashbacks with narration from Natasha RomanovBlack Widow as she is on trial now that the entire world knows her past crimes after she leaked both SHIELD and HYDRA on the Internet during ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheWinterSoldier''. |
| 117 | * ''Fanfic/CollatedAccountsOfTheInfinityTrainASummary'': The fanfic is written as though it is a research document, with the author's thoughts being interspersed between excerpts from other texts such as letters, newspaper articles, and interviews from throughout history. |
| 118 | * The story of ''Fanfic/AllMixedUp'' is really a case file that Oprah (and later Ori) reads through while waiting for her old boss, Olesya, to come and visit her. |
| 119 | * ''Fanfic/VowOfNudity'': Fiora's [[ADayInTheLimelight standalone story]] is framed as a dream which Haara (the series protagonist) experiences thanks to lingering aftereffects from the [[FightingDownMemoryLane amnesid]] the pair fought together. |
| 120 | [[/folder]] |
| 121 | |
| 122 | [[folder:Film — Animated]] |
| 123 | * ''WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}}'' begins with a peddler selling a magic lamp and proceeding to tell the story of the fortune it brought its previous owner. The third film, ''WesternAnimation/AladdinAndTheKingOfThieves'', ends with the same peddler bidding the viewers farewell with a reprise of ''Aladdin'''s opening song, "Arabian Nights". One of the proposed endings of the framing device in the first film was revealing that the peddler was in fact the Genie, which explains why only these two are four-fingered when everyone else is five: because they were the same character. It also explains why the peddler has the lamp, as obviously Aladdin wouldn't have sold or thrown away a memento of his best friend. |
| 124 | * The children's movie ''WesternAnimation/{{Balto}}'' begins and ends with live-action sequences, where a grandmother is explaining to her granddaughter about the diphtheria epidemic in Nome, Alaska, and how it led to the 1925 dog-sled serum run. The end sequence, where they visit the statue erected to honor the dogs who heroically brought the medicine the town needed, reveals that the grandmother is actually Rosie, the little girl who almost died. |
| 125 | * Used often in the first decade of DirectToVideo WesternAnimation/{{Barbie}} movies. |
| 126 | ** ''WesternAnimation/BarbieInTheNutcracker'': Franchise/{{Barbie}} tells young Kelly about Clara's courage in ''Theatre/TheNutcracker'' to give the kid a confidence boost as she rehearses her ballet steps. Barbie casts herself as the protagonist and three Kelly counterparts appear throughout the story: a Snow Fairy, a girl from the Gingerbread Village, and a Flower Fairy. |
| 127 | ** ''WesternAnimation/BarbieAsRapunzel'': Barbie retells ''Literature/{{Rapunzel}}'' to spark Kelly's imagination when she doesn't know what to paint. Again, Barbie is the title character, and there are three Kelly counterparts: the Prince's younger sisters Katrina, Lorena, and Melody. |
| 128 | ** ''WesternAnimation/BarbieOfSwanLake'': Barbie tells a version of ''Theatre/SwanLake'' to Kelly as a bedtime story when the younger girl is having trouble spending the night at camp. Kelly appears in the story as a cygnet, while several other kids her own age (presumably the other campers) correspond to the rest of the enchanted animals. |
| 129 | ** ''WesternAnimation/BarbieMariposa'': Elina from the ''WesternAnimation/BarbieFairytopia'' sub-franchise tells the story to her pet puffball, [[KidAppealCharacter Bibble]]. This is dropped in the sequel, ''WesternAnimation/BarbieMariposaAndTheFairyPrincess''. |
| 130 | ** In ''WesternAnimation/BarbieInAChristmasCarol'', Barbie tells a YetAnotherChristmasCarol story to her younger sister to teach her the TrueMeaningOfChristmas. Barbie casts her little sister as Tiny Tammy to her Scrooge-esque Eden Starling. |
| 131 | ** ''WesternAnimation/BarbieAndTheDiamondCastle'' frames the main plot as a story being made up by Barbie and Teresa for Barbie's sister Stacie to teach Stacie a lesson about friendship after a fight with her friend Courtney. While Barbie and Teresa appear as the protagonists of ''Diamond Castle'', there is no Stacie equivalent. |
| 132 | ** ''WesternAnimation/BarbiePresentsThumbelina'' is the last to use this setup. Camp counselor Barbie tells the story of Thumbelina and the Twillerbees to convey to the children that [[AnAesop "Even the smallest person can make a big difference."]] None of the characters in the frame story have counterparts in the story, not even Barbie herself; [[spoiler:this becomes clearer once it's revealed that the Twillerbees are RealAfterAll and are apparently acquainted with Barbie.]] |
| 133 | * The main story of ''WesternAnimation/TheBookOfLife'' is told to a group of schoolchildren by a museum tour guide reading from the Book of Life. [[spoiler:Tellingly, though, La Muerte and Xibalba look exactly as they did in the main story when they reveal themselves in the end.]] |
| 134 | * ''WesternAnimation/BuzzLightyearOfStarCommandTheAdventureBegins'' is a movie within a movie, featuring the Franchise/ToyStory gang preparing to watch a VHS copy of the movie. |
| 135 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheCareBearsMovie'' is told by [[spoiler:an elder Nicholas about how the Care Bears helped him]]. |
| 136 | * ''Heathcliff: TheMovie'' (released in 1986) is made up of "stories" he tells to his nephews, which are actually select episodes taken from the TV show's first season (premiered in 1984). |
| 137 | * The movie based off the 1980's ''WesternAnimation/DennisTheMenace'' cartoon had a framing device of Dennis trying to help recover Mr. Wilson's memory by telling him about some of their past adventures. |
| 138 | * In ''WesternAnimation/HeavyMetal'', the first segment has the Loc-Nar appearing to the little girl: the subsequent segments are the stories it tells her. |
| 139 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheLEGONinjagoMovie'' is framed as a story told by an old man named Mr. Liu to an unnamed young boy who enters his shop. |
| 140 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheLionKingOneAndAHalf'' has Timon and Pumbaa watching the original movie as this. |
| 141 | * ''Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol'' has the title character performing in a Broadway production of [[Literature/AChristmasCarol the Dickens story]]. |
| 142 | * The Creator/ChuckJones version of ''Music/PeterAndTheWolf'' had live action segments in between some of the cartoon ones, even crossing RogerRabbitEffect territory at least one time. |
| 143 | * ''WesternAnimation/PoundPuppiesAndTheLegendOfBigPaw'' took place in the fifties but was told as a story by characters in the eighties. |
| 144 | * In ''WesternAnimation/TheSpongebobSquarepantsMovie'', a band of live-action pirates ([[ChewingTheScenery rather maniacally]]) run into a movie theater to watch it. |
| 145 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheTownSantaForgot'' opens and ends with an old man (who it turns out [[spoiler:is the now-elderly main character]]) telling the story to his grandchildren. |
| 146 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheWarToEndAllWarsTheMovie'': In the opening scene, set during the Battle of the Yser, King Albert of Belgium is drafting a letter that blows loose from his writing desk and is carried by various means to each segment of the film, zigzagging its way across Europe for the four years of UsefulNotes/WorldWarI until it arrives at a museum warehouse where it is lost for a hundred years. |
| 147 | [[/folder]] |
| 148 | |
| 149 | [[folder:Film — Live-Action]] |
| 150 | * ''Film/ThreeHundred'' uses this coupled with UnreliableNarrator and possibly a kind of unreliable ''listener'', as the events depicted in the {{Flashback}}s are ''very'' over the top. The story is told by the sole surviving member of Leonidas' 300 Spartans, who was sent back to Sparta to tell the tale before the FinalBattle. At the beginning we see him telling the story at a campfire before a group of Spartans, missing an eye ([[{{foreshadowing}} which he still has in the flashbacks]]). [[spoiler:At the end we find he was telling it to inspire his men before the Battle of Plataea]]. |
| 151 | * ''Film/TheAdventuresOfElmoInGrouchland'' was framed by segments of Ernie and Bert talking to the audience about what they are about to see and to encourage them to interact with the film. They would also interrupt the movie at certain points. |
| 152 | * The 1934 version of ''Literature/TheAgeOfInnocence'' starts in the 1930's, with an elderly Newland Archer telling the story to his grandson. Cut to the outside of their car as the car wheel turns into a carriage wheel and we're transported to the 1870's for the bulk of the story. At the conclusion, the carriage wheel turns back into a car wheel as Newland finishes telling the story as they arrive at the home of Countess Olenska. |
| 153 | * The story of the Bell family in ''Film/AnAmericanHaunting'' is told through a letter written in the 1800s that is found more than a century later. |
| 154 | * ''Film/TheAutobiographyOfMissJanePittman'' is another interview-framed film. The interview takes place in 1962, when Miss Pittman is 110 years old. Her memories extend back to before the American Civil War. |
| 155 | * The script in ''Film/BadEducation2004''. The inner story is about Ignacio's past and history with Father Manolo and his time as a transvestite. The outer story is about Ángel in the present trying to get Enrique to adapt his script to film. |
| 156 | * Similar to the [=SpongeBob=] example, ''[[Series/BarneyAndFriends Barney's Great Adventure]]'' began with the main characters getting ready watch the film in a theater. |
| 157 | * ''Film/BigTroubleInLittleChina'' begins with old Egg Shen telling the entire story to a lawyer, but it's a pretty pointless sequence that has no consequences on the rest of the plot. |
| 158 | * ''Film/TheBlackStork'' begins with a geneticist explaining to his daughter's suitor why he can't have her until he's undergone a thorough physical examination to ensure that he's genetically fit. To illustrate his point, he takes the suitor on a tour of some institutions, then tells him the sad story of his old friend Claude Leffingwell and his defective child, which takes up most of the movie. |
| 159 | * ''Film/BroadwayDannyRose'' is told this way. A group of people has gathered around a table, recalling the events that make up the movie. |
| 160 | * ''Film/TheCabinetOfDrCaligari'' is the first example of this in film, and carries the interesting little twist that the story Francis is telling the old man on the bench is [[spoiler:[[AllJustADream a complete hallucination]]]]. |
| 161 | * ''Film/CitizenKane'' frames the story of Charles Foster Kane's life with the reporter's search to find out who or [[ItWasHisSled what "Rosebud" was.]] |
| 162 | * ''Film/{{Clawed}}'': The story is framed as Sheriff Reynolds telling the events of the Bear Claw Massacre to Dark Annie for her horror podcast. |
| 163 | * The very strange and fortunately all but forgotten Martin Short film ''{{Film/Clifford}}'' is framed by Short made up as a very old man being describing his childhood. The main story thus framed involves the bratty prepubescent child, played by Martin Short. |
| 164 | * ''Film/TheCompleatAl'' is a {{mockumentary}} that doubles as a framing device for Al's music videos. |
| 165 | * The stories in the AnthologyFilm ''Film/DeadtimeStories'' are framed as stories being told by an uncle to his young nephew who refuses to go to sleep otherwise. |
| 166 | * In ''Film/TheDevilsMessenger'', the stories are linked by Satan employing Satanya as his messenger and dispatching her to Earth. |
| 167 | * ''Film/Elvis2022'': The movie is framed from the prespective of "Colonel" Tom Parker in 1997 as he lays dying in a Las Vegas hospital after suffering an accident at home. |
| 168 | * ''Film/EverAfter'': The movie is about one of Cinderella's descendants telling Creator/TheBrothersGrimm about her real life. |
| 169 | * ''Film/{{Evidence}}'' is essentially a found-footage horror movie framed by police investigators viewing the footage to try and determine who the killer was. |
| 170 | %%* ''Film/TheFall'': The story told by Roy as it's imagined by Alexandria. |
| 171 | * ''Film/TheForbiddenKingdom'' was [[NeverTrustATrailer implied by its trailer]] and promotional material to be a kung fu film set in ancient China, starring Creator/JackieChan and Creator/JetLi. It was, in part. It was also a ''Literature/JourneyToTheWest'' inspired story, starring a modern day [[{{Southies}} South Bostoner]] [[TeachMeHowToFight learning to defend himself]] and getting {{character development}} through [[AllJustADream a dream]]. OrWasItADream |
| 172 | * ''Film/ForrestGump'' is mostly framed by Forrest telling his life story to random strangers while waiting for the bus, which also servers as a very long HowWeGotHere. |
| 173 | * ''Film/TheHobbit'' film trilogy seems to use this technique by using Bilbo's writing down of his adventure to the Lonely Mountain into the Red Book on his 110th birthday. It cleverly uses it to help establish the relationship between Frodo and Bilbo and the fact that they live together, which was never really done in the ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings''. |
| 174 | * ''Film/IAmAlone'' is framed by Mason and a professor trying to develop a cure for TheVirus watching the footage that Mason and Jacob recorded during the ZombieApocalypse. |
| 175 | * ''Film/TheIncredibleMrLimpet'': The main story, which takes place during World War II, is framed by present-day scenes of George and Harlock on an investigation to see if their old "secret weapon" Henry Limpet is responsible for increased intelligence in porpoises. |
| 176 | * In ''Film/TheImitationGame'', the main story is framed by the protagonist in a holding cell, telling the police officer his entire story, and leaving it to him (and by extension, the audience) to pass judgment on what exactly he is. |
| 177 | * ''Film/IronMan3'' is framed as Tony recounting the events of the film from WhenItAllBegan to how it ended. [[spoiler:As TheStinger reveals, he was telling the story to [[Film/TheIncredibleHulk2008 Bruce Banner]] as if Banner were his therapist, but Banner says that he's NotThatKindOfDoctor.]] |
| 178 | * 1915 silent film ''Film/TheItalian'' includes a seemingly pointless framing device in which lead actor George Beban, playing himself, is reading a novel called ''The Italian''. Then the story proper, with Beban playing the lead character, begins. The film ends with Beban-as-Beban finishing the book. |
| 179 | * ''Film/KindHeartsAndCoronets'' is framed by the main character writing his memoirs as he waits in prison to be executed for a murder he ''did not commit''. The memoir details the eight murders he ''did commit''. |
| 180 | * ''Film/TheLastCommand'' begins and ends with filming a ShowWithinAShow - movie about the Russian Revolution. Main character is an extra in this movie and a former general of Russian Empire. Main part of the film is his flashback to the Revolution, remembering HowWeGotHere. |
| 181 | * ''Film/LetterFromAnUnknownWoman'' is framed by a letter that is sent to Stefan, a musician. |
| 182 | * ''Film/LittleBigMan'' is framed by the very elderly main character, Jack Crabb, being interviewed (in a nursing home) by a collector of oral histories, about his younger life. |
| 183 | * ''Film/TheLoneRanger'': A young boy listens to the story of the Lone Ranger being told by an aged Tonto. |
| 184 | * The Creator/{{Disney}} film ''Film/LtRobinCrusoeUSN'' opens with the title character (played by Creator/DickVanDyke) writing to his fiancée about where he's been, and why he missed their wedding. It closes with him finishing the letter. |
| 185 | * ''Film/TheMalayChroniclesBloodlines'' begins with a man in ornate robes writing the events of what happened three hundred years ago, where majority of the story is set. The final scene goes back to the man, revealed to be Sultan Mudzaffar Shah of Kedah, recording the chronicles of his ancestor in the Kedah Annals. |
| 186 | * The film ''Film/MerlinsShopOfMysticalWonders'' features an elderly man telling his grandson a script idea that was rejected. This was added in post-production as a result of ExecutiveMeddling not only demanding a LighterAndSofter tone, but also insisting on a name actor (Creator/ErnestBorgnine as the grandfather) in the movie. When the film got the ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'' and Podcast/{{Rifftrax}} treatments, they spent a lot of time mocking how little effort went into making the story work as one being told to a child. |
| 187 | -->'''Servo:''' Man, Borgnine’s grandkid must be getting really bored by now.\ |
| 188 | '''Mike:''' (as Borgnine): And then he went into the kitchen and poured himself a cool drink. |
| 189 | * ''Film/MiracleAtStAnna'' begins in the 1980s, where the protagonist, a post office clerk near retirement, suddenly shoots a customer in public and allows himself to be arrested for the subsequent murder. En route to court-martial, the protagonist remembers his past in the 1940s, where he turns out to be a member of the 92nd Infantry Division in Italy during the second World War - his victim is a member of the LesCollaborateurs who arranged for the Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre after being bribed by the Germans before escaping to the US. |
| 190 | * ''Film/MishimaALifeInFourChapters'' takes place during Yukio Mishima's last day, mixed with flashbacks and scenes from his works. |
| 191 | * ''Film/TheMuppetMovie'' has a framing device of the Muppets watching the movie in a theater. At one point, [[spoiler:the film breaks, but the projectionist, the Swedish Chef, is able to fix it]]. |
| 192 | * ''Film/MysteryTeam'' begins and ends with the Mystery Team investigating a case. |
| 193 | * ''Film/{{Necronomicon}}'': In the wrap-around segment, H.P. Lovecraft visits an ancient library to read the TomeOfEldritchLore which contains the stories of the other segments. |
| 194 | * ''Film/NocturnalAnimals'': The bulk of the film's plot is a fictional tale written by Edward. |
| 195 | * ''Film/NoneShallEscape'' is a 1944 film about a trial against a Nazi officer following the end of the then-ongoing [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII second world war]], told via flashbacks from the points of view of the witnesses at the trial. The bulk of the story consists of the testimonies/flashbacks, with the trial serving as the framing device. |
| 196 | * The movie adaptation of ''Literature/OfMiceAndMen'' with Gary Sinise starts and ends with George on a train, recalling the events that led to Lenny's death. |
| 197 | * The 2004 ''Theatre/ThePhantomOfTheOpera'' movie is told as several flashbacks of the now aged Raoul as he attends the Opera House auction, purchases the music box Christine was so fond of, and travels to the cemetery to place it on her grave. |
| 198 | * ''Film/ThePrestige'' features a framing device ''within'' a framing device, as Borden reads in Angier's diary about Angier reading ''his'' diary. |
| 199 | * ''Film/ThePrincessBride'' is framed as a book being read by a grandfather to his sick grandson. The grandfather's elisions and commentary mirror the editorializing done by "editor" William Goldman in the original book. |
| 200 | * ''Film/RoadTrip'' uses Barry's college tour as a framing device to recount the events of the road trip. |
| 201 | * Most of the action in Creator/BusterKeaton's film ''Film/SherlockJr'' is presented as the protagonist's dream, and at the end he wakes up. |
| 202 | * Film/SantaAndTheIceCreamBunny has a story of Santa telling a weird version of Thumbelina to schoolchildren. Like ''Merlin'' above, Rifftrax derived a RunningGag of “Remember, Santa is telling this story on the beach” from the lousy effort. |
| 203 | -->'''Mike Nelson:''' And so the PA described how the Witch continued to mince about for a while, not speaking, just fiddling about mostly! Ho ho ho! |
| 204 | * The horror/comedy movie ''Scare Package'' and its sequel ''Scare Package II: Rad Chad's Revenge'' use framing devices as a means of showing off its various parody films: |
| 205 | ** The first film's device is about Chad, the owner of a horror-themed video store, walking a new employee through the motions of working at the store, while the [[ShowWithinAShow in-universe movies]] play on the store's screens. Though after the last of these, it turns into a horror movie of its own, as Chad is abducted along with others by a secret organization studying how horror movie tropes play out in real life. |
| 206 | ** The device for ''Rad Chad's Revenge'' is about how the first movie's FinalGirl attends Chad's funeral, only for her and the other mourners to be abducted by a LoonyFan of Chad's into a ''Franchise/{{Saw}}''-style series of torture traps, with the in-universe movies holding the clues they need to survive. |
| 207 | * ''Film/StandByMe'' is framed by the Writer (aka the adult Gordy) reacting to the news of his friend Chris being stabbed to death. |
| 208 | * ''Film/StormyWeather'' has Bill Williamson finding an old magazine article about himself, and then telling the story of his life to his neighbour's kids. |
| 209 | * ''Film/Summerland2020'': The film opens with Alice writing of her life before in 1975, showing what happened and how they led her up to that point via {{flashback}}s. |
| 210 | * ''Film/TheThirdSaturdayInOctoberPartV'' is a 2022 film presented as the fifth installment of a cheap series of ''Franchise/{{Halloween}}'' rip-offs that was released in 1994. An OpeningScroll explains this. The first original film, ''Film/TheThirdSaturdayInOctoberPartI'', was defictionalized as a sequel, released in 2023 but purported to be originally released in 1979. |
| 211 | * The Framing Device in ''Film/{{Titanic 1997}}'' is elderly Rose telling her story. |
| 212 | * ''Film/TheUsualSuspects'' is told as a testimony given by one of the story's main characters to the police who are interrogating him. |
| 213 | * ''Film/Vagabond1985'' uses a police investigation into Mona's death to actually take a journey with her through the last few years of her life. |
| 214 | * The bulk of ''Film/VanillaSky'' is framed as David telling his story to a psychologist while in prison. Much of the narration even sounds muffled due to David wearing a mask at the time. |
| 215 | * ''Film/WhenEvilCalls'' is framed as the janitor telling an unpopular student why wishing to be popular is a dangerous thing. |
| 216 | * ''Film/WhenTheLastSwordIsDrawn'' is told from several years into the Meiji Period, with ex-Shinsengumi Saitou Hajime and samurai's son Dr. Chiaki Ono recalling memories of their mutual acquaintance, samurai Yoshimura Kanichiro. |
| 217 | * ''Film/WhenTimeGotLouder'': After Kayden is badly injured, his family is interviewed about the events of the last few months. As the flashbacks show, they aren't entirely honest with the social worker about how well their lives were going. |
| 218 | * ''Film/{{Yamato}}'' has Kamio, a survivor of the eponymous battleship's last mission, telling the story of his service on board her. |
| 219 | * ''Film/TheYoungRebel'': The film starts with the titular rebel, Xiang Rong, and his bestie, Gen Lai, in the back of a police vehicle, with Gen telling his friend everything will be fine. Xiang Rong then imagines back on what happened three years ago. The film would go on to reveal that Xiang Rong ends up becoming a mob enforcer, his friend Gen Lai is a cop, and Xiang Rong is being taken into custody by his bestie after murdering his former boss, with the final scene providing an additional RevealShot not shown in the opening: Xiang is handcuffed to his best friend. |
| 220 | [[/folder]] |
| 221 | |
| 222 | [[folder:Literature]] |
| 223 | !!!'''By Author:''' |
| 224 | * Creator/PoulAnderson: |
| 225 | ** ''Literature/TheHighCrusade'' uses this ''twice'': the action is framed as being the chronicle written by a monk, which in turn is framed as a translation by a group encountering the subjects of the story. |
| 226 | ** ''Literature/TechnicHistory'' by the same author uses the common variation often found in SpaceOpera and EpicFantasy of writing a history of a fictional culture or civilization and placing the stories within it. |
| 227 | * Creator/IsaacAsimov: |
| 228 | ** In the ''Literature/BlackWidowers'' story, "{{Literature/Northwestward}}", the FancyDinner and grilling provide a location and characters to hear about the mystery second-hand, allowing the [[PhoneInDetective deductions by Henry the waiter]] to be more impressive. |
| 229 | ** "Literature/FirstLaw": The story takes place in a bar, while Donovan tells the other patrons a story about a robot that gave birth and disobeyed the [[ThreeLawsCompliant First Law of Robotics]]. |
| 230 | ** ''Literature/IRobot'', a collection of short stories, uses the framing device of an interview with famed roboticist Susan Calvin to connect the various stories. |
| 231 | ** ''Literature/Opus100'': This [[{{Biography}} Autobiography]] is also an excuse for Dr Asimov to reprint [[CompressedAdaptation excerpts]] from his books and columns, and a small [[{{Anthology}} collection]] of his short fiction. He breaks everything into eleven sections, talking about them in relative isolation, even when they overlap due to his eclectic nature. |
| 232 | * The French sci-fi writer François Bordes with at least two of his novels (under the pen name Francis Carsac) using this trope: in ''Literature/TerreEnFuite'' (Fleeing Earth), the protagonist is reading the diary left to him by his late friend Paul Dupont, who explains that he is, in fact, a man named Haurk Akéran from the distant future, who gives a brief overview of the fall of humanity and the rebirth of civilization after several ice ages, as well as his own story and the part he plays in in the events that lead to [[spoiler:Earth and Venus being moved to another star system]]; in ''Les Robinsons du Cosmos'' (The Robinsons of the Cosmos), the FramingDevice is an old man telling the story of how he ended up on an alien planet to his grandchildren, as well as the formation of the human civilization there. |
| 233 | * Creator/PGWodehouse often used this in his stories, particularly the ones about golf, and Mr. Mulliner's tall tales. |
| 234 | |
| 235 | !!!'''By Work:''' |
| 236 | * ''Literature/TheAdventuresOfAminaAlSirafi'': The story is framed as the scholar Jamal al-Hilli recording Amina's account of her voyage, with occasional interludes of supporting historical records and legends. [[spoiler:Jamal is formerly known as Dunya, the person Amina was hired to rescue.]] |
| 237 | * ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' does this with all of the Chronicles spin-offs. ''The Andalite Chronicles'' is presented as Elfangor's last testament (known by Andalites as a ''hirac delest''), given in the final moments of his life. ''The Hork-Bajir Chronicles'' is framed as a story Jara Hamee is telling Tobias. ''Visser'' has, by far, the most in-depth one, switching back and forth between Visser One's memories and her present-day trial. Finally, ''The Ellimist Chronicles'' is narrated to a then-unnamed dying Animorph, indicating that at least one of them will die. |
| 238 | * ''Franchise/AssassinsCreed'' novel ''The Secret Crusade'', charting the life of Altaïr, adapting both [[VideoGame/AssassinsCreedI the first game]] and his sections of [[VideoGame/AssassinsCreedRevelations]], uses the framing device of Niccolò Polo recounting the life of the master assassin. Taken further with the final chapter, which reframes this recounting as a journal Niccolò had written, which was being read by Ezio Auditore, on his way to Constantinople. |
| 239 | * ''Literature/TheAutobiographyOfMissJanePittman'', a story about a 110 year old woman who lived from slavery to the civil rights movement, has a framing story that a teacher is interviewing Jane to tell his students about her. |
| 240 | * ''Franchise/{{Barbie}}'' had the "Dear Barbie" book series, which featured a bookended sequence of Barbie answering a letter from someone having a problem, and she begins recounting the story of one of Barbie's friends or sister having a similar problem. The book ends with Barbie finishing the letter based on the lesson learned. |
| 241 | * The ''Literature/BekaCooper'' trilogy is framed as a young George Cooper reading a cop ancestor's journal at his mother's insistence, to try and dissuade him from being a thief. |
| 242 | * ''Literature/BlackLegion'' is written as the main character's account of the eponymous Legion's history, told first to an Inquisitorial transcription drone and then to the Inquisitors themselves. |
| 243 | * ''Literature/TheBookOfLostTales'' -- the original draft of the book that would later be published as ''Literature/TheSilmarillion'' -- employs a Framing Device in which a Man from England, [=Æ=]lfwine/Eriol, discovers the lost island of the Elves and is told the ancient tales of their folk by a succession of characters. |
| 244 | * Many of Creator/EdgarRiceBurroughs' stories had introductions in which the story was said to be a [[DirectLineToTheAuthor manuscript written by a character]]. |
| 245 | * ''Literature/TheButterflyGarden'' uses the form of a police interrogation; the FBI have rescued the kidnapped women and want Maya to explain what exactly happened at the Garden. The bulk of the story is her flashbacks to her past and time as an object in [[TheCollector the Gardener's collection]], waiting [[YourDaysAreNumbered until he kills her]]. Plot points are brought up by the interrogating agents and they need her to elaborate on details, in particular because they're trying to figure out her involvement. Unfortunately for them she's a BrokenBird who doesn't trust them and is trying to BeAsUnhelpfulAsPossible. |
| 246 | * In Creator/MikhailAkhmanov's ''Literature/CallOfThe Abyss'', people with psychic potential receive strange visions when located in a specific spot above Mars. It turns out that the visions are being sent from an AlternateUniverse and appear to show events in the life of people in the past. The stories diverge from historical accounts after the Renaissance, suggesting that this is where this world's history split off from ours. However, the main story experienced by the characters is actually from way back in Ancient Egypt, the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_of_Wenamun story of a priest named Un-Amun]][[note]]It is now believed by historians that the story does not, in fact, portray RealLife events but is an early example of historical fiction[[/note]]. The sequel, ''First after God'', continues with the exploration of the signal, aided by the discovery of a psychic alien race, whose representative helps decipher the messages. The vision in this case is that of Captain Peter Shelton, a brave 17th century English sailor seeking to find the lost Incan treasure. |
| 247 | * In ''Literature/TheCandlemassRoad'', the novel is presented as the memoir of Frey Luis Guevara, an elderly priest who witnessed the events. |
| 248 | * Creator/GeoffreyChaucer's ''Literature/TheCanterburyTales'' has the framing device of a group of pilgrims telling each other stories to pass the time on their journey. |
| 249 | * Mil Millington's ''Literature/ACertainChemistry'' is framed by God telling us how all our emotions, actions and thoughts are governed by our bodies' chemistries, using the main character's story (in which a writer cheats on his girlfriend with a soap star) to illustrate his points. |
| 250 | * ''Literature/CloudyWithAChanceOfMeatballs'': The main plot is a bedtime story that an old man recounts to his grandkids. |
| 251 | * Joseph Conrad's stories ''Literature/HeartOfDarkness'' and ''Literature/LordJim'' both employ this: the former having the story told by Marlow to a group of people on a boat, the latter having the story told once again by Marlow first at a dinner party, then later through a letter. The second example is notable in that Marlow's recollections are mixed in with those of other people telling Marlow the details of Jim's various misadventures, which fits into the book's themes involving [[UnreliableNarrator unreliable narrators]]. |
| 252 | * In each book of the ''Literature/CronusChronicles'', the story is separated into four parts, each with a clever title (ex. in ''The Shadow Thieves'', the parts are called ''We Start in the Middle, Now the Beginning, The End of the Beginning'', and ''The Beginning of the End''). |
| 253 | * [[Creator/IainBanks Iain M. Banks']] [[Literature/TheCulture Culture]] novella ''The State of the Art" is framed by the protagonist writing a letter about the events to a historian interested in their setting ([[InsignificantLittleBluePlanet Earth]]), translated (with snarky footnootes) by her [[RobotBuddy escort drone]]. |
| 254 | * ''Literature/TheDalemarkQuartet'': Book three, ''The Spellcoats'', is framed as protagonist Tanaqui weaving the story into the titular spellcoats. [[spoiler:This also results in an unusual form of NoEnding, as the spellcoats become vital to the resolution of the plot, and thus Tanaqui cannot weave the actual ending, although she ''does'' weave what she's been told will happen when the coats are done.]] The book ends with an InUniverse note from a historian who's commenting on the coats, which were dug up from a hillside centuries after the events of the book. |
| 255 | * ''Franchise/TheDarkTower'': |
| 256 | ** Book 4, ''Literature/WizardAndGlass'', is a back story told by Roland to his group. |
| 257 | ** Similarly, in the next book, ''Literature/WolvesOfTheCalla'', we get a another story within a story. This time, it's Pere Callahan explaining the to [[TrueCompanions ka-tet]] what happened to him in-between ''Literature/SalemsLot'' and now. |
| 258 | ** This continues in ‘’Literature/TheWindThroughTheKeyhole’’ where the framed story told by Roland to his ka-tet is about an adventure from his youth where he goes after a skin-man. This then serves as the framing device to a fairy tale told by the younger Roland to Bill, which makes up the majority of the text. |
| 259 | * "The Story of Samson Yakovlich" in ''Literature/TheDeathOfTheVazirMukhtar'' provides some [[StartOfDarkness backstory]] for one of the antagonists. |
| 260 | * It's possible that Chaucer was familiar with Creator/{{Boccaccio}}'s ''Literature/{{Decameron}}'', featuring a group of young men and women retreating to a country estate to avoid the plague and passing the time by telling stories as a framing device. |
| 261 | * The ''{{Literature/Dinotopia}}'' prequel ''First Flight'' is told as a story that one of the main characters from the main book is studying. |
| 262 | ** The first and fourth books are also presented as journals the author had discovered. |
| 263 | * Hiob's account of his voyage to India frames the story of the fall of Pentexore in ''Literature/DirgeForPresterJohn''. |
| 264 | * Some ''Franchise/DoctorWhoExpandedUniverse'' books use this: |
| 265 | ** In the first ''Decalog'', a psychometrist gets the stories from the things in the Seventh Doctor's pockets (including a scene where the psychometrist "goes deeper" to explain the first person stream-of-consciousness story). |
| 266 | ** In ''Short Trips: Repercussions'', Charley finds herself on a strange airship full of people who were removed from history as a threat to the Web of Time, and learns their stories. |
| 267 | ** In ''Short Trips: SevenDeadlySins'', the Eighth Doctor makes seven jaded and sinful people experience one of his past adventures that illustrates the sin they examplify. |
| 268 | ** The ''Literature/DoctorWhoNewAdventures'' Literature/SherlockHolmes crossover ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoNewAdventuresAllConsumingFire All-Consuming Fire]]'' has a framing story of the Doctor and his companions reading ''The Adventure of the All-Consuming Fire'' by [[DirectLineToTheAuthor John Watson]]. Includes a few "that's not how I remember it happening" moments, as well as letting the author state that "Sherlock Holmes" and "John Watson" are pseudonyms invented to protect the privacy of the real Holmes and Watson without having to say what their real names were. |
| 269 | * ''Literature/DonQuixote'' is framed by a historian finding stories about the "famed" knight. |
| 270 | * The novel of ''Film/DrStrangelove'' has a prologue and coda written by an alien, who [[DirectLineToTheAuthor found a record of the story]] buried in the deserts of the north-western continent of an uninhabited planet they're currently exploring. |
| 271 | * Jack Higgins's [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII Second World War]] espionage thrillers ''The Eagle Has Landed'' and ''The Eagle Has Flown'' are framed by the conceit that Higgins himself has stumbled upon evidence of never-before-revealed plots from the war some 30 or so years later. |
| 272 | * ''Literature/EatersOfTheDead'' is framed as an analysis of an ancient manuscript written by an Arab traveling to Scandinavia. |
| 273 | %%* The same framing device is used in Mika Waltari's ''Literature/TheEgyptian''. |
| 274 | * ''Literature/EncounterWithTiber'', by Buzz Aldrin (yes, [[UsefulNotes/{{NASA}} Apollo 11]] Buzz Aldrin) and John Barnes, uses the framing device of a scientist who writes novels. She's selected to be on the first manned voyage to another star. Because of the length of the trip, she has time to write four novels (well, two novels and two translations of existing novels), which together explain [[HowWeGotHere how humanity was contacted by an alien race and developed the technology for interstellar travel]]. |
| 275 | * ''[[Literature/{{Temps}} EuroTemps]]'' by the Midnight Rose Collective has a framing device of powerful sorcerer and DPR offical Loric looking through reports and using magic to turn them into narratives. |
| 276 | * Creator/RobinHobb in her ''Literature/{{Farseer}}'' trilogy uses a framing device of the protagonist writing down his memoirs (which is probably the most common framing device of them all). It's played with a bit: [[spoiler:the narrator makes occasional references implying that he's writing as an old man, housebound by the ravages of age. The end of the last book reveals that he's still quite young; his life has been that rough on him]]. |
| 277 | * ''Literature/TheFinalReflection'', a novel in the Franchise/StarTrekExpandedUniverse, has a prologue in which Captain Kirk learns about a popular new in-universe novel, said to be BasedOnATrueStory, acquires a copy, and sits down to read it; and an epilogue in which, having finished the novel, he discusses it with his friends. Everything in between is the text of the in-universe novel Kirk is reading. |
| 278 | * In ''Literature/AFoxsTale'', Marcus Minev, a historian, asks [[TheProtagonist Ember Wulf]] about her life. The story alternates between Marcus talking with Ember in the present, and Ember narrating the past. |
| 279 | * The above mentioned ''Literature/{{Frankenstein}}'' actually has framing devices nested three deep at the point where the monster tells his own story to Victor; Victor is talking to the Arctic explorer Robert Walton, who's writing a letter to his sister. There is actually a thematic reason for the Walton frame: Walton is in danger of turning out like Victor, but in the end he gives up his crazy ambitions and goes home to his family. |
| 280 | * ''Literature/TheGoBetween'' is narrated by an elderly man reminiscing about a summer fifty years earlier. Only at the very end do we see any live action. |
| 281 | * Creator/StephenKing used a nursing home and the narrator's old, ''old'' age to frame his re-entries into the serial story of ''Literature/TheGreenMile''. |
| 282 | * ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'': |
| 283 | ** ''Literature/TheForerunnerSaga'' books all have this: ''Literature/HaloCryptum'' is framed as an archived testimony of the [[{{Precursors}} Forerunner]] Bornstellar Makes Eternal Lasting. ''Literature/HaloPrimordium'' is presented as a recovered Forerunner AI recounting its past to an ONI science team. ''Literature/HaloSilentium'' is framed as a series of Forerunner logs being researched by ONI. |
| 284 | ** ''Literature/HaloNewBlood'' opens with an "Archivist's Note" stating that the entire story is an in-universe report given by protagonist Edward Buck. |
| 285 | * ''Literature/HandsHeldInTheSnow'' begins with the framing device of a grandmother telling a story to a grandchild. The narrator usually disappears into the story, but sometimes makes side comments. |
| 286 | * ''Literature/HouseOfLeaves'' takes this trope to MindScrew levels. It's about a supernatural house, which is documented by the house's owner, Navidson. The documentary is described in a massive, incomplete essay by Zampano. The essay is edited and commented upon by Johnny Truant, who also relays his own story in the footnotes. Truant's story is commented upon by the book's editors. There's a lot of UnreliableNarrator to be had all around. |
| 287 | * The short story "Literature/HowKazirWonHisWife" by Raymond Smullyan has a framing story in which a sorcerer on an island where the KnightsAndKnaves puzzle is implied to have occurred tells some travellers a story which he says is from the ''Literature/ThousandAndOneNights''. The sorcerer's story takes up most of Smullyan's story. |
| 288 | * ''Literature/HyperionCantos'': ''Hyperion'' is more or less explicitly based on Chaucer's ''Canterbury Tales'', down to the fact that the storytellers are on a pilgrimage. Literary allusions abound. As it turns out, the stories framed all shed light on the frame story, and the sequel ''The Fall of Hyperion'' picks up from the end of the frame story. |
| 289 | * In ''Literature/TheIronDream'', we have a ScienceFiction story by UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler, a USA emigrant, followed by a Framing Device in-universe essay to explain the point of this story. |
| 290 | * The 500+ Buddhist ''Jataka Tales'' are presented as folk tales being incorporated into sermons given by the Buddha, in the context that the hero of each tale was one of the Buddha's previous incarnations. Each tale typically concludes with the Buddha tying it to Buddhist scripture in some way. |
| 291 | * ''Literature/KimJiyoungBorn1982'' is set up as the notes written by the titular character's psychiatrist. |
| 292 | * ''Literature/TheLastWish'' is set up as six short stories framed by "The Voice of Reason", where a priestess treating injuries Geralt sustained in the first of the tales, "The Witcher", asks him to recount some of his adventures to her. [[Franchise/TheWitcher The later novels]] frequently employ similar after-the-fact recollections as framing devices for story segments (to the point of smothering the actual story at times). |
| 293 | * Creator/DrSeuss's ''Literature/TheLorax'' has the Once-ler telling the story of how he destroyed the environment to an unnamed boy passing by so someone else would understand that it needs to be restored. |
| 294 | * ''Literature/LumbanicoTheCubicPlanet'': The final chapter is framed as Pirela writing a report of the final part of her and her friends' journey for their group's council of leaders. |
| 295 | * The book ''Literature/TheManuscriptFoundInSaragossa'' and its later [[TheMovie adaption]], ''Film/TheSaragossaManuscript'' take this trope to extreme lengths, telling stories within stories within stories ''within stories''. The initial Framing Device quickly disappears among the layers of narrative. |
| 296 | * "Literature/TheManWhoGotOffTheGhostTrain" is the story of Richard Jeperson's first mission for the Literature/DiogenesClub, with a framing device in which he's telling one of his sidekicks the story shortly before his retirement from active service. The frame story has a denouement in which one of the loose ends from that first mission resurfaces in the present day. |
| 297 | * ''Literature/MaureenBirnbaumBarbarianSwordsperson'': Each of the stories of Maureen's adventures has a framing story where Maureen reappears on Earth to visit her old friend Bitsy Speigleman, and, usually, wreaks some havoc on poor Bitsy's life, before settling down to tell her story to Bitsy. |
| 298 | * ''Literature/MirrorProject'' presents itself as code comments hidden inside the titular app, a perfectly secure anonymous browser that's also sentient. |
| 299 | * ''Literature/MonsterGirlDoctor Zero'' is a prequel novel that opens with Lime the SlimeGirl visiting the Litbeit Clinic only for her and Sapphee to have a series of conversations about their time in medical school. |
| 300 | * ''Literature/TheNameOfTheWind'' has Kvothe narrating his story to a scribe. The book is the first in a trilogy, and each book is a day's worth of narration. |
| 301 | * In ''Literature/TheNeverendingStory'', Bastian's story is initially used as a frame for Atreyu's, as Bastian reads a stolen storybook. When Bastian finds that the book he is reading contains descriptions of his own life and actions, the line between framing and framed story becomes blurry. |
| 302 | * ''Literature/OldestLivingConfederateWidowTellsAll'' is framed as the 99-year-old narrator, Lucy, telling stories of her life (and the lives of many people she's known) to a journalist interviewing her. The stories get more personal, revealing, and risky as the book progresses, until TheReveal in the penultimate chapter. |
| 303 | * ''Literature/OneThousandAndOneNights'' is a collection of Arabic folktales connected by a framing device. Shahryar has decided to marry (and execute) a new woman each day. His newest wife, Scheherazade, prolongs her own life by telling her murderous husband fantastical stories, each of which ends with a promise of an even more amazing tale. Some of Scheherazade's stories are framing stories themselves; ''One Thousand and One Nights'' contains triple- and quadruple-nested framing devices. This made it dead easy for the ''Nights'' to be expanded with supplemental material over the course of its many editions. |
| 304 | * ''Literature/TheOrphansTales'' is about tales told, well, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOntheTin by an orphan]]. Like an updated version of the ''Literature/ArabianNights'', the four books are framed by the story of the prince who seeks out the outcast orphan by night, and asks to hear her tales, which nest inside one another to sometimes six levels deep. |
| 305 | * ''Literature/APackOfLies: Twelve Stories in One'' is a short story collection by [=Geraldine McCaughrean=]. It contains eleven short stories, each in a different genre and style. The twelfth is the frame story, in which a mysterious young man starts working at a secondhand shop and sells objects to unlikely buyers by telling intriguing tales about their origins. |
| 306 | * ''Literature/ThePendragonAdventure'': This is how most of the books in the 10-book series are told. The protagonist Bobby Pendragon writes down his thoughts in a sort of diary as a way of organizing his thoughts and keeping himself sane and sends them to his 2 friends back on present-day Earth who read it along with the audience. Though some of the 5th book and all of the 10th are in his first-person point of view. |
| 307 | * ''Literature/PeterPaysTribute'' is split between the story, and the story the main character is writing. |
| 308 | * The ''Literature/PinkCarnation'' books, featuring the successor to Literature/TheScarletPimpernel, has a framing device in which a modern-day grad student in England is researching the Carnation's exploits, with the help of another spy's descendant. |
| 309 | * ''Literature/PlanetOfTheApes'' is framed with two astronauts finding a strange manuscript floating in space that turns out to be Ulysse's story. They're revealed to be chimpanzees in the end of the book. |
| 310 | * In Creator/GeorgeMacDonald's "[[http://www.online-literature.com/donne/3643/ Port in a Storm]]", the whole story is told by a man to his children, about how he and their mother came to marry. |
| 311 | * ''Literature/APrayerForOwenMeany'': The story is being told in 1987, but most of it is set in the tumultuous years of the mid-20th century, Johnny and Owen's youth. It sometimes dips back into the present day to highlight how much Johnny hasn't grown since Owen's death. |
| 312 | * In the novel version of ''Literature/ThePrincessBride'', the actual author explains that he's condensing the original book, by "S. Morgenstern". He also goes on and on about things that supposedly happened to him throughout a long period of his life in the process that led to his "editing" the book. |
| 313 | * Three of M.P. Shiel's novels present themselves as being related by a {{seer|s}} who can look into the future and read as yet unwritten texts: ''Literature/ThePurpleCloud'', ''Literature/TheLastMiracle'', and ''Literature/TheLordOfTheSea''. |
| 314 | * Several ''Literature/{{Redwall}}'' books are framed by an Abbeydweller telling a story to a group of Dibbuns. At the end, a character from the framed story would turn out to be the NarratorAllAlong. |
| 315 | ** ''Marlfox'' instead presents itself as a stage play put on later by the theater company involved in the story, but that does raise the question of how they learned about certain plotlines when everyone involved in them dies without telling anyone else. |
| 316 | * ''Literature/SherlockHolmes'': |
| 317 | ** The novels ''Literature/AStudyInScarlet'' and ''Literature/TheValleyOfFear'' use the stories of Holmes solving a mystery as frames for the perpetrators telling their stories of why they done it. |
| 318 | ** Similarly, Holmes's investigation in the short story "The Crooked Man" is a Framing Device for a story about a soldier in India, and his involvement in "The Adventure of the Gloria Scott" is entirely incidental. |
| 319 | * ''Literature/ShutterIsland'' is presented as Dr. Sheehan's desire to set the record straight at last. |
| 320 | * In the novel ''Slumdog Millionaire'' the hero of the story, Raj Mohammed Thomas, frames the story as testimony to the police who have arrested him. |
| 321 | * {{Lampshaded}} in a later chapter of ''Literature/SophiesWorld''. ThePhilosopher, after coming to the conclusion that they are [[NoFourthWall characters in a book]] written by a UN Major for his daughter's fifteenth birthday, says that the latter two shouldn't get too cocky either, because even they themselves might be just a Framing Device... which they are, of course. |
| 322 | * All William King's ''Literature/SpaceWolf'' novels are framed - the first two as his flashbacks because something reminded him, and the third as his recounting to [[NewMeat younger Marines]] an episode as an explanation. |
| 323 | * The ''Franchise/StarCraft'' novel ''Liberty's Crusade'' is a {{novelization}} of the Terran campaign, framed as an anti-Terran Dominion documentary by reporter Michael Liberty. |
| 324 | * ''Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse'': |
| 325 | ** ''Literature/TheWeaponOfAJedi'' is framed as a group of Resistance members, not more than a few years before the events of ''Film/TheForceAwakens'', being told about an adventure Luke had shortly after the destruction of the [[Film/ANewHope first Death Star]]. |
| 326 | * ''Literature/StrangerThingsDarknessOnTheEdgeOfTown'' is framed by Hopper, in 1986, telling El about his time in New York City in July 1977. |
| 327 | * Meridion's story in ''Literature/SymphonyOfAges'' is set in an apocalyptic future as he observes and manipulates the past (i.e., the present to the rest of the story) in order to avert the end of the world. |
| 328 | * Creator/{{Plato}}'s ''Literature/{{Symposium}}'' is doubly framed, with Apollodorus telling his companion a story that Aristodemus had told him, and which he had already told once to Glaucon. Then everyone gets drunk. |
| 329 | * ''Literature/ATaleLostForTheWorld'' by Osip Senkovskiy provides a subversion by being an ''annoyingly'' intricate framing device for a story, that, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin well,]] is not actually included. |
| 330 | * "Literature/TalmaGordon": Dr. Thornton is telling the story of the Gordons to guests at his house. |
| 331 | * Though the frame of Margaret's story in ''Literature/TheThirteenthTale'' is its own story as she goes through her own discovery and development, the business of writing a biography is mainly to tell the story of Vida's past. |
| 332 | * In ''Literature/TimeEnoughForLove'', the ScheherezadeGambit for Lazarus Long's memoirs in the first part. In the second part, much of the TimeTravel segment is retold through Lazarus' letters that he writes and sends to his Tertius family via [[TheSlowPath Delay Mail]]. |
| 333 | * ''Literature/TheTimeMachine'' is told through a guest at the Time Traveller's party, who for all but the first two chapters and the final chapter is taking dictation from the Time Traveller. |
| 334 | * The medieval Indian work ''[[https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2400/2400-h/2400-h.htm Twenty-Five Tales of Vetala/Betal]]'' has as a framing device Indian King Vikram talking to a vetala, a monstrous being of Hindu religion, and listening to its tales. The work was later translated into [[https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/66443/pg66443-images.html Tibetan]] and [[https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/40402/pg40402-images.html Mongolic]] languages, migrating to and spreading in Central Asia as ''The Bewitched Corpse'', ''The Enchanted Corpse'' or the like (in Mongolic, ''Siddi-Kür''). However, the Tibetan and Mongolic compilations do not match the contents of the Indian ''Vetala'', although they keep the framing device of a character interacting with a demon/corpse and listening to its tales. |
| 335 | * The ''Literature/VorkosiganSaga'' book ''Borders of Infinity'' opens with the protagonist lying in a hospital bed recovering from surgery, with nothing to do except answer his superior officer's questions about his recent missions. |
| 336 | * The ''Literature/WarriorCats'' guidebooks ''Code of the Clans'' and ''Battles of the Clans'' are framed as the reader being a cat that visits the Clans, with the beginning and ending, and a few chapters inside the book, set up this way. In ''Code'', Leafpool tells them stories about the warrior code, and in ''Battles'', they visit all four Clans and attend a Gathering, not only listening to stories told by cats, but also being visited by deceased warriors in their dreams for stories that the current Clans couldn't possibly know. |
| 337 | * Someone tells the story of ''Literature/WhoMovedMyCheese?'' at a high school reunion. |
| 338 | * ''Literature/WinnieThePooh'' has the frame of bedtime stories told to Christopher Robin. It's dropped for ''The House at Pooh Corner''. |
| 339 | * ''Literature/TheWonderfulStoryOfHenrySugar'' by Creator/RoaldDahl has two layers of framing. |
| 340 | * ''Literature/WorldWarZ'' is briefly framed as initially being for a report on the zombie war, but when the author handed it in to his superiors, they said it was too personal. So he made it into a book. |
| 341 | [[/folder]] |
| 342 | |
| 343 | [[folder:Live-Action TV]] |
| 344 | * ''Series/YediYuz'': A game of "[[INever never have I ever]]" at a New Year's Eve party provides the frame through which Mete relates his story in the episode "Büyük Günahlar". |
| 345 | * ''Series/{{Acapulco}}'': The bulk of the story is in flashbacks told by the present-day Maximo to his nephew. |
| 346 | * The Nickelodeon series ''Series/AreYouAfraidOfTheDark'' sets up each episode with the Midnight Society, a group of teens, gathering around a campfire in the woods to tell ghost stories. After the tale was finished, the episode would end with the Midnight Society calling their meeting to a close. |
| 347 | * The ''Series/BabylonFive'' TV movie "In the Beginning" has the story of the Earth-Minbari war being told by an elderly Centauri Emperor Mollari, with a neat tie-in to the 3rd season two-parter "War Without End". |
| 348 | * ''Series/{{Chespirito}}'' made a lot of sketches involving public domain characters, most of them were stories that were told by el Chapulín himself in his [[Series/ElChapulinColorado own series.]] |
| 349 | * The ''Series/{{CSI}}'' episode "Rashaomama" had, as you might guess from the title, a ''Film/{{Rashomon}}''-style retelling of the murder investigation done from the very different points of view of Nick, Sara, Grissom and Greg. |
| 350 | * ''Series/DeadtimeStories'' does this to remind the younger viewers that no matter how scary the events may be, it's just a story. The show has a babysitter show up and read two kids a "deadtime story". During the story, it occasionally stops so the babysitter and kids can talk to each other about it. Near the end of every episode, the babysitter tells the kids to "buckle your seatbelts, because you're in for a bumpy ride", as the show switches back to the story being told and the inevitable CruelTwistEnding, which results in the characters in the story, and the kids being read the story back in the real world, both screaming at each other. |
| 351 | * ''Series/DoctorWho'' has experimented with them on occasion: |
| 352 | ** The season-spanning "The Trial of a Time Lord", where [[Recap/DoctorWhoS23E1TheMysteriousPlanet three]] [[Recap/DoctorWhoS23E2Mindwarp complete]] [[Recap/DoctorWhoS23E3TerrorOfTheVervoids four-part]] stories were presented as evidence in the Doctor's trial. |
| 353 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E10LoveAndMonsters "Love & Monsters"]] is framed as Elton Pope recounting the story of his encounters with the Doctor on camera. However, he's an UnreliableNarrator, so his tale can't be taken at face value. |
| 354 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS33E3ATownCalledMercy "A Town Called Mercy"]] begins and ends with a woman narrating how her great-grandmother, the little girl seen at several points in the episode, witnessed the events. |
| 355 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS35E12HellBent "Hell Bent"]] is framed as the Doctor telling a waitress at a diner in Nevada ([[spoiler:Clara Oswald]]) the story of the episode. It also pulls a BaitAndSwitch, as it initially seems that [[spoiler:the Doctor is telling either an amnesiac Clara, or maybe one of her echoes, the story of the events. At the end, it turns out that the ''Doctor'' is the one who doesn't remember, as he had to get LaserGuidedAmnesia for his own sanity. And the diner is a TARDIS.]] |
| 356 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS36E6Extremis "Extremis"]]: The frame is [[spoiler:the real Doctor watching the memory-print emailed to him by the simulated Doctor of the last several hours of the most recent simulation run by the Prophets of Truth in preparation for their planned invasion of Earth.]] |
| 357 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS37E1TheWomanWhoFellToEarth "The Woman Who Fell to Earth"]]: With the exception of the denouement, the episode is framed by a video Ryan uploaded to Website/YouTube recounting the events [[spoiler:that led to his grandmother Grace's death]]. |
| 358 | * ''Series/Dracula2020'': |
| 359 | ** Episode 1 switches back and forth between Jonathan Harker recounting his time with Dracula to two nuns in a convent. |
| 360 | ** Episode 2 has the Count and Van Helsing playing a game of chess while Dracula tells the tale of his journey to England aboard the ''Demeter''. |
| 361 | * ''Series/TheFallOfTheHouseOfUsher2023'': The story is being told by Roderick Usher to Auguste Dupin in the former's decaying childhood house. This is occasionally lampshaded, such as when Dupin asks how Roderick could narrate things he wasn't present for. |
| 362 | * ''{{Series/Firefly}}'' “Out of Gas” switches between wounded Mal struggling to replace a broken ship part to restore power and first how they got to that point followed by how Mal met his crew members. |
| 363 | * ''Series/TheFlash2014'': The first part of the "[[Recap/TheFlash2014S3E2Paradox Paradox]]", explaining [[spoiler:the changes Flashpoint caused]], is framed by Barry narrating it to [[Series/{{Arrow}} Felicity]]. |
| 364 | * ''Series/GoldenBoy'' was framed with a FlashForward in the OpeningNarration to seven years in the future ([[TwentyMinutesInTheFuture the year 2020]]), when the protagonist is the youngest police commissioner in the history of New York, and is looking back on HowWeGotHere. |
| 365 | * ''Series/TheGoldenGirls'' had several episodes constructed of three or four shorter stories, always framed by the girls recalling events fitting a particular theme. (For example, in one episode the girls are dieting, and they recall past attempts at self-improvement.) The show also did several [[ClipShow clip shows]], in which the framing device was usually a time of crisis, such as Blanche considering selling the house. |
| 366 | * ''Series/GossipGirl'' is told from the perspective of a semi-omniscient gossip blogger. What makes this unique is said blogger is an actual (albeit anonymous) character, and the rest of the cast is fully aware of the fact that she is telling the world all about their lives with much of the story conflict revolving around keeping her from knowing too much. |
| 367 | * The whole of ''Series/HowIMetYourMother'' is a framing device. It's older Ted telling his kids [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin how he, well, met their mother.]] |
| 368 | ** The device is used again in the SpinOff, ''Series/HowIMetYourFather'', with a middle-aged Sophie doing the same thing as Ted with her son. |
| 369 | * ''Series/InterviewWithTheVampire2022'': The outer story involves Daniel Molloy interviewing Louis de Pointe du Lac for the second time in 2022, with Rashid as the latter's personal assistant. The inner story is a {{Flashback}} of Louis' life in the 20th century, focusing mainly on his interactions with his lover Lestat de Lioncourt and their vampire daughter Claudia. |
| 370 | * ''Series/InTheHeatOfTheNight'': As Carroll O'Connor wanted to have the episode "Rape" be the first episode of the third season instead of "Anniversary" - which was the resolution to the second season Cliffhanger "Missing" - "Anniversary" was the sixth episode shown in the third season. As a framing device Gillespie was speaking on the phone with a government agent concerning the circumstances around his kidnapping and murder of Acting Chief Dugan. |
| 371 | * Most of ''Series/{{Lost}}'''s flashbacks do ''not'' have a Framing Device. The continuous flashbacks, however, do. "Meet Kevin Johnson" is a story Michael is telling Sayid and Desmond. The other ones launch off due to prompting in the frame story: Charlie and Hurley getting Desmond drunk, Locke remembering his death... |
| 372 | * ''[[Series/Napoleon2002 Napoléon]]'': The miniseries is framed as UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte relating his life history, from the Revolutionary Wars until his defeat in 1815, to Betsy Balcombe on the isle of St. Helena. |
| 373 | * On ''Series/NoSoapRadio'', the {{Sitcom}} shenanigans of the Pelican Hotel typically serve as a framing device for the various [[SketchComedy sketches and skits]]... except [[RuleOfFunny when it's funnier]] [[NoInnerFourthWall for them to cross over and interact]]. |
| 374 | * The ChristmasEpisode of ''Series/PowerRangersZeo'' consisted of Tommy and Cat telling a grandchild of theirs about how King Mondo almost ruined Christmas and [[DivideAndConquer set the rangers apart]]. |
| 375 | * Not only is most of the ''Series/RoundTheTwist'' episode "Santa Claws" a flashback told by Pete, explaining to his classmates how his mouth was shrunk, [[AllJustADream this was a dream]] as well (which we knew from the opening scene). |
| 376 | * Tends to happen a lot in the ''Series/SesameStreet'' [[ChristmasSpecial Christmas specials]]. |
| 377 | ** ''Film/ElmoSavesChristmas'' has Maya Angelou telling the special's story to Telly and Zoe after they wish it was Christmas every day. |
| 378 | ** ''Elmo's Christmas Countdown'' has Stiller the Elf telling his snowball friend Stan the special's story. |
| 379 | ** ''Once Upon A Sesame Street Christmas'' has a framing device of Elmo's dad telling him the special's story to answer a question he has. |
| 380 | * The ''Series/{{Sliders}}'' episode "Post Traumatic Slide Syndrome" was framed with Rembrandt telling the story of the episode to a psychiatrist. |
| 381 | * The final episode of ''Series/{{Smallville}}'' featured Chloe Sullivan reading a comic book to her son titled "Smallville" that framed Clark Kent's transformation into Superman. |
| 382 | * * ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'': |
| 383 | ** The episode "Trials and Tribble-ations" (in which the cast go back in time to sneak about on [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries Captain Kirk's]] ''Enterprise'') is framed with Sisko is recounting the events of the episode to agents from the Department of Temporal Investigations. |
| 384 | ** Also the episode "Necessary Evil". |
| 385 | ** Also the episode "In The Pale Moonlight", which is framed with Sisko recording his captain's log entry after the fact. |
| 386 | * The ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' GrandFinale had the episode being run as a holodeck simulation as its framing story (though the fact [[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration Commander Riker]] kept intruding into the events it might as well not have been a Framing Device at all). |
| 387 | * And let's not forget the original ''Series/{{Star Trek|The Original Series}}'' frame story, "The Menagerie," the only 2-parter of the original series, which was a frame story added around the original pilot episode -- whose differences from the regular series were justified by claiming it took place 13 years earlier. |
| 388 | * In the ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' episode "The Haunting of Deck Twelve", Neelix tells the four former Borg children a story about an entity that was accidentally sucked into the ship and has been living aboard for several months while they ferry it to a new home. The children don't entirely believe him, thinking he likely made the story up, but the final scene of the episode confirms that it was true. |
| 389 | * Every episode of ''Series/TheStoryteller'' is set up with the titular storyteller narrating an old folk tale or Greek myth to the audience, while [[TalkingAnimal his dog]] chimes in every once in a while to comment on the story. |
| 390 | * Creator/{{Sprout}}'s blocks, (including the live ''[[Series/TheSunnySideUpShow Sunny Side Up Show]]'') consisted of links in between shows, which were introduced by the block's hosts, who also appeared in split-screen credits at the end of the show before leading into a commercial break. |
| 391 | ** ''Series/HolaSproutitos'', a Time Warner Cable on Demand spin-off of ''Series/TheGoodNightShow'', utilized ''Sesame English'' clips in between segments. |
| 392 | * The first-season episode "Celestial Navigation" in ''Series/TheWestWing'' is Josh at a university speaking engagement, recounting the events of a "typical" day at the White House (or in other words, things go FromBadToWorse and HilarityEnsues) in a series of flashbacks to each event and escalation. This also happens concurrently with a snafu that is ''still'' going on that evening and which wraps up at the episode's end. |
| 393 | * The BBC mini-series ''Series/IClaudius'' is presented as the aged Emperor Claudius reminiscing, with each episode opening on him as he writes his history of the early days of empire. |
| 394 | [[/folder]] |
| 395 | |
| 396 | [[folder:Multiple Media]] |
| 397 | * The novels, comics and movies of ''Toys/{{Bionicle}}'''s 2004 and 2005 run told the ancient tales of the abandoned city Metru Nui, with the framing story of the village elders recounting them the Toa Nuva (2004) and Turaga Vakama explaining his personal account of the events to Tahu Nuva (2005), in order for them to be ready for whatever may await them when they return there. |
| 398 | ** The novel ''Tales of the Masks'' is a prelude to this, with the six Turaga elders discussing whether revealing this truth would be a wise decision. To support their position, each tells a story of how the Toa have retrieved their Nuva masks, which happened between the scenes of the last novel. This was an effective way of keeping this [[GottaCatchThemAll item-hunt]] from interfering with the previous book's story. |
| 399 | [[/folder]] |
| 400 | |
| 401 | [[folder:Music]] |
| 402 | * Music/PinkFloyd's ''Music/TheWall'' is framed by a concert where Pink sings about how his wall went up and came back down. |
| 403 | * Music/SoundHorizon's ''Moira'' starts with a Russian billionaire trying to discover the truth behind the Elefseya, an ancient Greek [[TheEpic epic]] that tells the story proper. In a case of StealthPun {{Lampshading}}, the song makes a number of references to [[NestedStory Matyroshka dolls]]. |
| 404 | * Music/ChildishGambino's "III. Telegraph Ave. (Oakland by Lloyd)" is framed as the narrator getting in a car and turning on the radio, hearing a radio DJ introduce the next song, "Oakland", by Lloyd (not a real song). The song starts playing and ambient noises (such as car noises, phone ringing) are heard in the background as the narrator sings along to the song. Finally Childish Gambino takes over singing at the chorus. |
| 405 | [[/folder]] |
| 406 | |
| 407 | [[folder:Mythology]] |
| 408 | * A good third of ''Literature/TheOdyssey'' is Odysseus telling the story of his return from Troy to the Phaeacians. |
| 409 | * OlderThanDirt: [[Myth/EgyptianMythology The Egyptian]] Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor, from the 6th dynasty (c. 2300-2100 BCE) in the Old Kingdom, is framed by the sailor explaining his survival to an official, and the official telling him not to overstep his station by dispensing advice. |
| 410 | [[/folder]] |
| 411 | |
| 412 | [[folder:Pinball]] |
| 413 | * ''Pinball/CreatureFromTheBlackLagoon'' takes place in a DriveInTheater where the titular movie is playing. The bulk of the game has the player waiting for the film to start and trying steal a kiss from his girlfriend. The action switches to the film itself during multiball, where the goal is to rescue Kay from the Creature. |
| 414 | * ''Pinball/FooFighters2023'': The premise, which involves the Foo Fighters traveling the country to fight an AlienInvasion, is presented as a fictional SaturdayMorningCartoon (aptly titled ''Foo Fighters Saturday Morning Action Time!''). |
| 415 | [[/folder]] |
| 416 | |
| 417 | [[folder:Podcasts]] |
| 418 | * Each episode of ''Podcast/TheMagnusArchives'' (with a few exceptions) takes the form of Jonathan, the archivist, making a recording of himself reading an old statement about an alleged supernatural encounter from the Institute's archive, or occasionally recording someone else making a new statement, and adding his own comments at the end. Thus the listener gets a different narrator's story each time, but always (or mostly) via one overarching narrator. |
| 419 | * Both of ''Podcast/PodcastTheRide'''s [[StoryArc Story Arcs]] use a narrative of the show's hosts attempting to save the soul of the Sector Keeper, a FriendlyGhost whose died at Ride/UniversalStudios' [=CityWalk=] and whose soul cannot rest until these three "childless men in their thirties" talk about every shop in either [=CityWalk=] or [[Ride/DisneyThemeParks Downtown Disney]]. The hosts regularly refer to this as an obvious framing device in-universe, playing for laughs how flimsy an excuse it is for justifying why anyone would devote over 24 hours to discussing such a mundane topic. |
| 420 | [[/folder]] |
| 421 | |
| 422 | [[folder:Print Media]] |
| 423 | * In ''Sinclair User'' magazine, the long-running adventure tips column, "At the Sign of the Dancing Ogre", was supposedly narrated by Gordo Greatbelly, the landlord of the Dancing Ogre inn. He would open each column by recounting an instalment of his adventures, before answering requests for help with games as if they were from travellers he'd met on his quest. In 1986 the opening narrative was dropped, but there was still an occasional nod to the column being set at the Dancing Ogre. A couple of years after that, Gordo himself was written-out and the narrative element was briefly revived to describe his handover to "The Sorceress", another character in the same fictional universe. |
| 424 | [[/folder]] |
| 425 | |
| 426 | [[folder:Radio]] |
| 427 | * [[Creator/CharlesDickens Dickensian]] {{parody}} ''Radio/BleakExpectations'' tells the story of Pip Bin surviving his HilariouslyAbusiveChildhood and going from "[[RagsToRiches riches to rags to riches to rags]] to ''worse'' rags to riches to rags to riches again" presented by the now-elderly (and extremely wealthy) Sir Philip Bin telling his story to a journalist for serialisation in ''The Times''. |
| 428 | * Every episode of the radio serial ''The Adventures of Sam Spade'' (based on the novels by Dashiell Hammett, and Humphrey Bogart's character in ''Film/{{The Maltese Falcon|1941}}'') opened and closed with Sam dictating a record of the episode's events to his secretary, Effie. Sometimes subverted when Effie was, herself, involved in events. |
| 429 | [[/folder]] |
| 430 | |
| 431 | [[folder:Theatre]] |
| 432 | * Oddly, Creator/WilliamShakespeare's ''Theatre/TheTamingOfTheShrew'' begins with a framing device, but never follows up on it once the story proper starts. There's speculation that there was a follow up, but it's been [[MissingEpisode lost to the ages]]. The additional frame story passages have been restored in The Oxford Shakespeare, edited by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor. |
| 433 | * The same goes for ''Shrew's'' musical adaptation, ''Theatre/KissMeKate''; the show ends during the play-within-a-play and not with an external sequence. |
| 434 | * ''Theatre/{{Brooklyn}}'' is framed as five street musicians putting on a play for passersby in hopes of donations. |
| 435 | * Cervantes and the Inquisition in ''Theatre/ManOfLaMancha''. |
| 436 | * ''Equus'' is the story narrated by a psychiatrist about a particularly disturbing case, inside the same story his patient recalls the events that led to his hospitalization through hypnosis. |
| 437 | * ''Theatre/{{Drood}}'' is essentially both an adaptation of ''Literature/TheMysteryOfEdwinDrood'' and a portrayal of the actors in the Victorian music hall putting on the show. |
| 438 | * The prologue of ''Theatre/{{JB}}'' introduces Mr. Zuss and Nickles, who take on the masks of {{God}} and {{Satan}} for the play, as two veteran actors currently employed selling balloons and popcorn at a circus. |
| 439 | * ''Theatre/TheCaucasianChalkCircle'' opens in UsefulNotes/TheCaucasus, where a dispute over the ownership of some farmland is suspended so everyone can watch a group of traveling players perform the story of "The Chalk Circle"; the players' performance makes up the rest of the play, with the lead player popping up from time to time as a narrator, and at the end to deliver a moral that can be seen as applying both to his story and to the land dispute. |
| 440 | [[/folder]] |
| 441 | |
| 442 | [[folder:Tabletop Games]] |
| 443 | * The TabletopGame/{{Traveller}} universe has a StandardSciFiHistory as a sort of Framing Device. |
| 444 | * The 3.5 Edition ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' module ''The Vortex of Madness'' is actually five separate adventures, the first one (involving the dreaded Machine of Lum the Mad) a possible Framing Device for the other four. (Although, the DungeonMaster can disregard it and run any of them as stand-alone adventures.) |
| 445 | [[/folder]] |
| 446 | |
| 447 | [[folder:Video Games]] |
| 448 | * ''VideoGame/AceCombat'': |
| 449 | ** ''VideoGame/AceCombat04ShatteredSkies'' is framed by a letter written to the protagonist, detailing the author's life during the game's war. |
| 450 | ** ''VideoGame/AceCombatZeroTheBelkanWar'' is presented as a Osean television documentary centered around the hero's journey, with the cutscenes presented as footage and interviews of your enemies. |
| 451 | * ''VideoGame/PrinceOfPersiaTheSandsOfTime'' has the Prince narrating his adventure to an unseen individual, explaining the story and "backing up" when the player dies and restarts. Near the end of the game, it's revealed that his audience is [[spoiler:Princess Farah, who doesn't remember any of these events due to the Prince's large-scale rewind.]] |
| 452 | * The text adventure game ''VideoGame/SpiderAndWeb'' is known primarily for its ingenious framing device, wherein the player is a spy who has been captured and is being interrogated using a machine that causes them to relive their actions. If the player ever strays too far from the correct path, the interrogator interrupts them and says, "That's impossible, that's not how it happened" and makes you try again. He also presents you with various items found on your person, or demands you explain certain actions you took, allowing you to use them in the gameplay. [[spoiler:During the flashbacks, you happen to set up your escape route. When you use it, the framing device is dropped and you complete the rest of the game in the "present".]] |
| 453 | * ''VideoGame/DragonAgeII'' is framed by Varric, a dwarven merchant prince, telling Cassandra, a Chantry Seeker, the tale of [[PlayerCharacter Hawke's]] rise to power. |
| 454 | * The overarching narrative of ''VideoGame/{{Okami}}'' is told by a mysterious narrator, beginning with the legend of {{Orochi}} and [[PhysicalGod Shiranui]] one hundred years ago. By the end of the game, if you haven't figured out the narrator's identity, he'll berate you and switch to more familiar speech patterns that make it easier to recognize him. |
| 455 | * ''Franchise/AssassinsCreed'': |
| 456 | ** The franchise is framed around the idea that a modern-day MegaCorp has developed technology ([[ImportedAlienPhlebotinum reverse-engineered from the leavings of an ancient civilization]]) that allows GeneticMemory to be experienced in real-time and recorded. Thus, you play as a character who is reliving the lives of his ancestors (or other people's ancestors). This [[JustifiedTrope justifies]] the use of GameplayAndStorySegregation in the Animus portions of the game, since you are "playing" it through a VR interface that simplifies the memory-reality. |
| 457 | ** ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedRevelations'' makes the framing device recursive by having Ezio (the Renaissance-era ancestor) use First Civilization artifacts to experience memory-recordings left by Altaïr (the Crusades-era ancestor), thus crossing over the bloodlines since Ezio was not Altaïr's descendant. So you're playing a character experiencing the memories of a character who is himself experiencing the memories of a character. |
| 458 | ** ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedIIILiberation'' and ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedIVBlackFlag'' take this a step further by postulating that Abstergo has formed an entertainment division dedicated to bringing Animus technology to the mass-market in the form of video games and movies, providing streamlined and carefully edited excerpts from the memory-sequences that are researched in their labs. As a meta-joke, the company they hire to deliver these products is Creator/{{Ubisoft}}, the developer of the real franchise, and ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedIVBlackFlag'' contains multiple in-jokes and {{Fandom Nod}}s as a result. |
| 459 | * Used in a memorable way as part of a TwistEnding in ''VideoGame/SecondSight'', where the player character, an amnesiac with psychic powers, seems to be having flashbacks to his past self...[[spoiler:until it turns out that the flashbacks were instead in the present day, and everything else was a part of his premonitions of things to come]]. |
| 460 | * The [[CanonDiscontinuity old Satellaview sequel]] of ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'': ''VisualNovel/RadicalDreamers'' starts with Serge's grandson opening the diary of his grandfather, the story ends in a similar way. |
| 461 | ** So does ''VideoGame/ChronoCross'', except it's Kid's diary in [[AlternateContinuity this version of the tale]]. |
| 462 | * The story of ''VideoGame/OdinSphere'' is told when a little girl finds the books telling each character's role in the tale of Armageddon in her attic and starts reading them. In the end when she finishes reading the last book, she notices that a Pooka coin is lodged in the back cover. She offers a silent prayer to the people in the story before leaving the attic [[spoiler:and in the True Ending Pooka!Cornelius and Pooka!Velvet take the coin to complete their collection to make the wish that restores their humanity.]] |
| 463 | * ''{{VideoGame/Catherine}}'': |
| 464 | ** The whole game is presented as an episode of the show The Golden Playhouse, with your hostess, Trisha: The Midnight Venus. It plays out as if it's a TV series that shows late night movies, complete with opening and closing narration by Trisha. There's even a watermark in the corner of some cutscenes. |
| 465 | ** The game is an unusual example in that it is a framing device ''within'' a framing device. [[spoiler:The Golden Playhouse segment of the game which is styled after a late night TV show, is actually a means devised by Trisha (who is actually Ishtar: The Goddess of Love, using an anagram of her true name) of finding a person worthy enough to challenge Babel and become her new love partner, due to Dumuzid cheating on her.]] |
| 466 | * The epilogue voiceover for ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid4GunsOfThePatriots'' strongly suggests that the ''VideoGame/MetalGear'' series was created by Otacon to tell Snake's story. [[IShouldWriteABookAboutThis Otacon could be thinking of writing a book]], but video games are the perfect medium for an {{Otaku}} and GadgeteerGenius. Also, Hideo Kojima looks a bit like Otacon if you squint. |
| 467 | * ''VideoGame/{{UnMetal}}'' opens with protagonist Jesse Fox escaping in the helicopter and getting shot down by Allied forces before being taken prisoner and being interrogated, whereupon he relays the events of the game. And this even turns out to be a story within a story, as he's telling his girlfriend about the events of the interrogation after his release. [[spoiler:Or maybe not, since it's implied he's making the whole thing up.]] |
| 468 | * Yasumi Matsuno's ''VideoGame/VagrantStory'' is told as a collection of reports from VKP Intelligence Agent Callo Merlose, regarding an inquiry on VKP Riskbreaker Ashley Riot's apparent murder of Duke Bardorba and his subsequent disappearance. |
| 469 | * ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'': |
| 470 | ** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyTactics'' (also by Yasumi Matsuno) is the retelling of the contents of the ''Durai Papers'', the chronicle of the true history of Ivalice during the War of the Lions. Banned by the [[CorruptChurch Glabados Church]], and their author, Orran Durai, burned for heresy, they were uncovered centuries later by Orran's descendant Arazlam, who published them to reveal the truth behind the Zodiac Braves and King Delita's rise to the throne. |
| 471 | ** And for the Yasumi Matsuno hat trick, ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'' is narrated by Marquis Halim Ondore IV, uncle of Princess [[spoiler:and later Queen]] Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca, from his own memoir. |
| 472 | ** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'' does the same thing with the ''Heavensward'' expansion without Matsuno, but perhaps inspired by him. Specifically, every new zone the player enters triggers a cutscene with narration taken from the memoirs of Count Edmont de Fortemps, the player's main ally in Ishgard. ''Stormblood'' uses a similar framing device, with every new area triggering a cutscene with narration from the expansion's {{Deuteragonist}} Lyse. |
| 473 | * The story mode for ''VideoGame/{{Tekken}} 7'' opens each chapter with narration from a narrator covering the war between the Mishima Zaibatsu and G Corporation, a war that had claimed the lives of his wife and son. |
| 474 | * ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'': RailShooter spin-off ''[[VideoGame/ResidentEvilTheDarkSideChronicles The Dark Side Chronicles]]'' includes two scenarios that are recaps of the events of ''2'' and ''Code Veronica''; said scenarios are framed as flashbacks during the game's present storyline: |
| 475 | ** ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil2'': Krauser, having no experience with the zombies and monsters they're currently facing, asks Leon to recount everything he knows about them. Cue flashback to ''2''. |
| 476 | ** ''VideoGame/ResidentEvilCodeVeronica'': After it's revealed that the BigBad got his hands on the Veronica virus, the ''Code Veronica'' scenario is framed as Leon thinking back to Claire's experience fighting Alexia Ashford, the creator of said virus. |
| 477 | * In ''VideoGame/TheCompanyOfMyself'', it turns out that the whole thing is one long [[spoiler:therapy]] session. |
| 478 | * Many ''VideoGame/ProfessorLayton'' games are told as Luke writing a letter to the player. |
| 479 | * ''VideoGame/{{Drakensang}}'': The prequel is framed by two of the main characters of the first game. Forgrimm is telling Gladys how her parents came to be married. |
| 480 | * ''[[VideoGame/MafiaTheCityOfLostHeaven Mafia]]'''s story is told by the main character as he describes his time in the mafia to the chief of police. |
| 481 | ** ''Videogame/MafiaIII'' is framed as an in-universe documentary/investigation regarding the events of Lincoln's war against the Marcano family as well as Lincoln's CIA friend Donovan's trial for his involvement. Getting a NonStandardGameOver by failing mission objectives leads to the FBI agent investigating the case to say that Lincoln failed and died (or in the case of the prologue he looks at the case files in confusion). |
| 482 | * ''{{VideoGame/Penumbra}}'' is being told in an e-mail from the soon to be dead Philip to an unspecified individual, asking that person to complete what he started, though Requiem does away with this. |
| 483 | * The original ''VideoGame/EscapeFromButcherBay'' opened with Riddick during his years on the ice planet he was hiding on at the start of ''Film/TheChroniclesOfRiddick2004''. The Furyan woman in his visions tells him to remember his past, and what happened in Butcher Bay. Then the rest of the game begins, which is actually one long flashback. At the end Riddick awakens and is told of his destiny, and sees visions of the Necromongers. The framing story was dropped in the 2009 remake to better connect it to ''VideoGame/AssaultOnDarkAthena'', its immediate successor in the chronology. |
| 484 | * ''Anime/DragonBallZ: [[https://dragonball.fandom.com/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Z:_Idainaru_Son_Goku_Densetsu Idainaru Son Goku Densetsu]]'' tells the history of Goku's battles, from Mercenary Tao to Cell, through the lens of Gohan, circa the Majin Saga, regaling his little brother, Goten, with stories of their father's exploits. |
| 485 | * ''VideoGame/CallOfJuarezGunslinger''. The idea behind the game is that our hero is telling stories about his past as a BountyHunter to the other patrons in a bar. However, [[UnreliableNarrator our hero gets more and more drunk over the course of the game, and he starts exaggerating parts of his story, and eventually starts outright lying and making stuff up.]] [[spoiler:He isn't quite as drunk as he makes himself out to be, though, [[SecretTestOfCharacter and he has a reason to be lying.]]]] Interestingly, this actually affects the gameplay. Parts of the scenery and setting change as our hero points out things he didn't mention before, realizes that he isn't remembering what happened correctly, and, amusingly, when the other bar patrons misinterpret what he's saying or jump to conclusions about what happened next. |
| 486 | * ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands}}'': |
| 487 | ** In ''VideoGame/Borderlands2'''s fourth DLC, ''Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep'', is presented as the vault hunters sitting down at a table and playing a game of ''[[AlliterationAndAdventurers Bunkers & Badasses]]''. Just about every joke you could crack about this subject is made. |
| 488 | ** The story of ''VideoGame/BorderlandsThePreSequel'' is set up as Athena being interrogated by Lilith about the events on Elpis and the [[StartOfDarkness rise of Handsome Jack]]. The NewGamePlus is her retelling the story to Tiny Tina, who tells her to "make it sound more difficult" and adds in her own commentary. |
| 489 | ** ''VideoGame/TalesFromTheBorderlands'' is told by the two protagonists Rhys and Fiona, who are being interrogated by a mysterious bandit. The two occasionally [[UnreliableNarrator make their own embellishments here and there]] and offer [[RashomonStyle their own differing perspectives on the story]]. |
| 490 | * The story of ''VideoGame/VampiresDawn'' is told by a grandfather to his grandson. |
| 491 | * ''An Oriental Alphabet Primer'', a game for ''VideoGame/UnlimitedAdventures'', is a dark horror story... told through the medium of a cheerful word-learning book for schoolchildren, which uses excerpts of a supposed horror novel (fragmented, and in a more-or-less random order) as short usage examples for the words it's teaching. |
| 492 | * The entire plot of the three ''Franchise/MassEffect'' games is implied to have been told through one of these in TheStinger of the third game, where a young child asks his grandfather if that story about [[SpellMyNameWithAThe "The Shepard"]] was true. |
| 493 | * In the arcade game Rastan Saga (releases outside Japan as simply "Rastan"), the attract mode's OpeningNarration (given by the title character, a Franchise/ConanTheBarbarian expy) is implied to be this: |
| 494 | -->I used to be a thief and a murderer, otherwise I could not survive in such difficult times. Sit beside me and listen to my story of days full of adventure. |
| 495 | ** Furthermore, there is an additional intro that plays before the first level that further implies this trope, but it was cut from the non-Japanese releases. |
| 496 | * ''VideoGame/TheLongestJourney'' starts with an old woman named Lady Alvane being asked to tell a story to two children. Instead of the one they asked her, she tells them the story of [[PlayerCharacter April Ryan]]. At the end of the game, Lady Alvane finishes her story, and the children leave. [[spoiler:Then the old Crow walks in to talk to the old woman]]. |
| 497 | * The cinematics in ''VideoGame/DiabloII'' are of Marius narrating his adventures to Tyrael [[spoiler:or so Marius thinks]], and said narration actually occurs at the very end of the game, [[spoiler:after Diablo's defeat]]. |
| 498 | * The intro to ''VideoGame/DarkCloud'' notes that the game's events were an in-universe fable written in a book that was found in some old ruins. |
| 499 | * ''VideoGame/MapleStory'' has ''three'' of these in the Grand Athenaeum, in which the player takes the place of the character who witnessed these events in the story. The stories are [[spoiler:How the Black Mage came to be]], how Cygnus became Empress, and the story of the Black Witch, a character who nearly laid waste to Ereve. |
| 500 | * The main plot of ''Erayu'' is a video game being played by main character Josh, who gives comments on various events from time to time. |
| 501 | * ''VisualNovel/TheBottomOfTheWell'' is basically a conversation between the protagonist, Alice, and one of her online friends. She describes a strange dream she had of her future, which was remarkably realistic and long-lasting. However, the framing story is played with — after multiple playthroughs (which the game is designed for), Alice gets the feeling that she's already told the story. Towards the end, the framing story becomes recursive — the Alice in the dream also ''had'' the dream (and had dreamt of a future self who had dreamt of a future self who had... etc...). |
| 502 | --> '''Mad H:''' You retro-ante-actively re-remembered in your dream that you had this dream and therefore changed your life in order to have the real keys when you had the dream again? Or when it happened in real life?\ |
| 503 | '''Alice:''' Exactly.\ |
| 504 | '''Mad H:''' This is the weirdest goddamned dream. |
| 505 | * ''VideoGame/KingdomHearts02BirthBySleepAFragmentaryPassage'' is framed as King Mickey telling the story of Aqua's whereabouts between ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsBirthBySleep'' and ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsI'', shortly after ''VideoGame/KingdomHearts3DDreamDropDistance''. |
| 506 | * ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'': |
| 507 | ** ''VideoGame/HaloReach'' is a rather interesting variation on this. The Limited/Legendary Edition comes with various in-universe documents, one of which states that the game itself is an in-universe interactive record. |
| 508 | ** ''[[VideoGame/Halo2 Halo 2: Anniversary]]'' adds new introductory and ending cutscenes that frame ''Halo 2'' as the Arbiter recounting the events of the game to Spartan Locke during the events of the then-upcoming ''VideoGame/Halo5Guardians''. For reasons not fully known, these scenes were removed in a future version of the game, ultimately making it an aversion. |
| 509 | * The ''Videogame/{{Ratchet And Clank|2016}}'' remake is framed as Captain Qwark telling his version of the events after learning that there is an [[LeaningOnTheFourthWall in-universe film adaptation]]. |
| 510 | * ''Franchise/{{Persona}}'': |
| 511 | ** The story mode of ''VideoGame/Persona4DancingAllNight'' is framed as Margaret telling a tale about one of the Investigation Team's adventures to an unseen person (implied to be the player) who visits the Velvet Room in a dream. |
| 512 | ** The majority of ''VideoGame/Persona5'' is told in a HowWeGotHere format, with the Protagonist being interrogated by public prosecutor Sae Nijima about the events that started 6 months ago that led to the Protagonist and his friends becoming infamous [[PhantomThief Phantom Thieves]]. The story occasionally returns to the present day as Sae clarifies the Protagonist's story and leads him into the next part, Confidants are framed as Sae pressing the Protagonist to talk about the accomplices and skills that he must have had, and running out of time to complete the heist is framed as the Protagonist being too addled by the drugs used on him to properly remember events before being murdered by one of the conspirators he was fighting against. [[spoiler:When the story catches up to the present day, the device is dropped entirely.]] |
| 513 | * The first episode of ''VideoGame/FarnhamFables'' opens with the player controlling Cally as she looks around the castle. Once she encounters the King, the story proper begins, which is framed as King Farnham telling her a tale about an adventure the princes had. |
| 514 | * In ''VideoGame/DinkSmallwood'' mod ''Legend of the Duck'' the main game is framed as Dink telling a story to his Aunt Maria's children during his yearly visit. |
| 515 | * In ''VideoGame/DieReiseInsAll'', the game starts with a man picking up the novel 'Die Reise ins All' from his library to read for the night. |
| 516 | * ''VideoGame/BlossomTalesTheSleepingKing'' begins with an old man narrating a bedtime story to his two grandkids, one of whom will be the namesake for the player character of the tale he tells. Not only will he recap the story whenever the game is resumed, the kids will occasionally interject and influence the story (and, rarely, the gameplay) from time to time. |
| 517 | * The ''Videogame/DeusExMankindDivided'' DLC "A Criminal Past" is framed as Adam telling Dr. Delara Auzenne about a mission he undertook before the events of the game. Aside from the fact that the two provide narration over Adam's actions, if Adam dies in-game Delara will tell Adam to backtrack since he's clearly still alive. |
| 518 | * ''Videogame/ImmortalsFenyxRising'' is framed as a story that the Titan Prometheus is telling Zeus, with the two providing running commentary and pithy commentary over events as they unfold. |
| 519 | * ''VideoGame/HarryPotterPuzzlesAndSpells'': Each level is themed as the cover story for some publication in [[Franchise/HarryPotter the wizarding world]], such as ''The Quibbler'' and ''Wizarding World Weekly'', reporting on the plot point from the associated movie that's connected with that level. |
| 520 | * ''VideoGame/NoMoreHeroes2DesperateStruggle'': The story is told by Sylvia, reduced to working as an in-person phone-sex operator in a seedy strip club, to an unseen client. [[spoiler:At the end, the client is revealed to be Travis, and they leave the club together.]] |
| 521 | * ''VideoGame/MidnightFightExpress'': The story is set up as Babyface being interrogated by police and recounting the night's events leading up to his arrest. [[spoiler: He breaks out when it's revealed they're all in on the Boss' plan and attempt to execute him for his insurrection]]. |
| 522 | [[/folder]] |
| 523 | |
| 524 | [[folder:Visual Novels]] |
| 525 | * ''VisualNovel/NoCaseShouldRemainUnsolved'': You take the role of a police detective who is being asked about the events of an old unsolved case. A few scenes take place in the present time, but the bulk of the game has you sort through years-old memories. |
| 526 | [[/folder]] |
| 527 | |
| 528 | [[folder:Web Animation]] |
| 529 | * ''WebAnimation/BowsersKingdom'' episode 9 had the Karate Duo explain the story of they tried to steal the [[VideoGame/SuperMarioRPG Seven Stars]] and failed. |
| 530 | * The letters between the Director and the Chairman in ''WebAnimation/RedVsBlue: Reconstruction'' run parallel to the main plot and serve to put the central conflict in the context of the larger world the characters exist in. |
| 531 | * ''WebAnimation/{{RWBY}}'': During the episode "Kuroyuri", Ruby and Jaune are in the long-destroyed town of Kuroyuri attempting to locate medicine to save Qrow's life. Every so often, a MatchCut is used to switch from the devastation to the sight of the exact same town when it was a thriving hub of activity. The flashbacks are used to show how the town was destroyed, leaving Ren and Nora as its only survivors. Ren and Nora themselves don't appear in the present-day storyline until the end of the episode once their flashback story has been told... [[spoiler:having accidentally come across the trail of the creature that destroyed Kuroyuri, just as its about to destroy a different village]]. |
| 532 | [[/folder]] |
| 533 | |
| 534 | [[folder:Webcomics]] |
| 535 | * ''Webcomic/{{Erstwhile}}'' concludes "A Tale with A Riddle" with [[http://www.erstwhiletales.com/a-tale-with-a-riddle-0-6/#.T29zLdm6SuI the revelation that the mother is telling her daughter the story, so her husband can tell the daughter what the answer to the riddle is.]] |
| 536 | * Most of the "Catnip" chapter of ''Webcomic/ElGoonishShive'', is ostensibly a video shown to Sarah made by Tedd and Grace. |
| 537 | * In ''Webcomic/TheRedStar'', Maya is, nine years later, telling the story of the battle that destroyed their Union and killed her husband. |
| 538 | * The bulk of ''Webcomic/{{Spacetrawler}}'' is a personal history that Nogg is sharing with Mr. Zorilla. |
| 539 | * The second part of ''Webcomic/YuMeDream'' is apparently a story being read by Don, sometime after [[spoiler:Fiona and Lia leave the Dream World to reincarnate and find each other again on Earth.]] |
| 540 | ** And Don, [[spoiler:the current Dream King, was given the position by technically "killing" Fiona through sending her back, since ownership of Nod works via KlingonPromotion and she took the title from [[BigBad Sadako..]]]] |
| 541 | * The story of ''Arca: World of Faunaria'' is narrated by journal entires written by Arca herself with the intent of giving said journal to her son Matteo later. |
| 542 | [[/folder]] |
| 543 | |
| 544 | [[folder:Web Original]] |
| 545 | * Literature/DragomirsDiary is narrated through diary entries, with the eponymous character providing most of the entries - though other characters, including the diary itself, occasionally join in the fun. |
| 546 | * The Literature/NottingCove series is narrated by the muse Calliope (from Myth/GreekMythology) and apparently, all the other muses quit. |
| 547 | * Some episodes of ''WebVideo/TheCinemaSnob'' have a framing where Fat Grandma [[ActingForTwo tells the review as a bedtime story to]] [[WebVideo/AtopTheFourthWall Linkara]] (and the Snob [[NoFourthWall notices when he's freeze framing and transitioning]]). |
| 548 | * ''WebVideo/TwelveHundredGhosts'' has a twofold one, beginning with a narrator talking about Charles Dickens and the story he wrote that was frequently adapted, then transitions into the Looney Tunes watching Twelve Hundred Ghosts in a theater. |
| 549 | * ''WebVideo/HalfInTheBag'': Mike and Jay's movie reviews are usually sandwiched by a framing narrative of them being VCR repairmen who are typically exploiting their one customer Mr. Plinkett by charging him an hourly rate to fix his VCR while actually just drinking beer and discussing movies. Sometimes plot arcs get extended over a number of episodes, while other times they dispense with the pretense completely. |
| 550 | * ''WebVideo/UnwantedHouseguest'': The premise of "TRUE Scary Stories" is the Houseguest reading his audience (usually framed as a visiting friend) stories from his books. |
| 551 | [[/folder]] |
| 552 | |
| 553 | [[folder:Western Animation]] |
| 554 | !!!'''In General:''' |
| 555 | * As mentioned above, the concept of making a whole new show to frame a foreign cartoon or children's show was a common practice in the 90's because back then, the QuarterHourShort format wasn't used as much. Some examples include the following: |
| 556 | ** A show named ''Series/TheNoddyShop'' framed episodes of the BBC's stop motion ''WesternAnimation/NoddysToylandAdventures'' series as being stories Kate, one of the child characters, told to her brother Truman and her friend DJ while they were in the Book Nook of the titular shop. |
| 557 | *** In Korea, a variety show show called ''Hello Noddy'', starring a group of live-action kids and costumed actors of Noddy, Tessie Bear, Martha Monkey and Sly, was the FramingDevice for one of the 90's ''Noddy'' series. However, [[KeepCirculatingTheTapes due to there being a significant lack of information on the series]], it is unknown if it was a framing device for ''Noddy's Toyland Adventures'' or if it was one for a Korean ''Noddy Shop'' dub. |
| 558 | ** When ''WesternAnimation/ThomasAndFriends'' was released in North America, it was framed as being stories being told by Mr. Conductor in ''Series/ShiningTimeStation''. Furthermore, the early episodes featuring the narrow gauge engines were framed as Thomas telling the other engines a story about them. The 2018 reboot "Big World! Big Adventures!" does this again by having Thomas present the story as a flashback, followed by a scene at the end where he tells the story's moral. |
| 559 | ** The 1997 version of ''WesternAnimation/TheMrMenShow'' had framing device segments involving live action characters that were each tied to a particular theme such as exercise or carnivals. |
| 560 | ** Perhaps the oddest example of this was the show ''WesternAnimation/SaltysLighthouse'', which rather than play the stories unedited like the first three examples, would mash up random clips from ''WesternAnimation/{{Tugs}}'' as what the boats on the harbor were doing. |
| 561 | ** ''Series/FoxClubhouse'', a show featuring a woman and her puppet friends going on adventures in their clubhouse, was this for ''Series/JohnsonAndFriends'', ''WesternAnimation/BudgieTheLittleHelicopter'' and the first thirteen episodes of ''WesternAnimation/MagicAdventuresOfMumfie''. There were also a few shows made exclusively for this program, like ''The Animal Show With Stinky and Jake'' and ''Rimba's Island''. |
| 562 | ** ''Series/BigBag'' was Creator/SesameWorkshop's take on this genre, focusing on a general store run by a a girl named Molly, her dog friend Chelli and some anthropomorphic objects including the titular bag. It ran various cartoon shorts from around the world like ''William's Wish Wellingtons'', ''Slim Pig'' and ''Koki'', including two made specifically for the series: ''Troubles The Cat'', which utilized the themes established in the main story, and ''Ace and Avery''. |
| 563 | ** ''Series/{{Thunderbirds}}'' got this treatment when it aired on the ''Amazin' Adventures'' block. Like ''Salty's Lighthouse'' above, clips comprised of several episode's worth of material were intercut with scenes of live-action children interacting with the characters. |
| 564 | |
| 565 | !!!'''By Creator:''' |
| 566 | * ''Creator/{{Toonami}}'' is notable for not just creating a framing device with TOM and the Absolution, but for giving them a pretty extensive backstory and universe to boot. It even ties into the WesternAnimation/SpaceGhost universe, occasionally. [[note]] This was because the ''WesternAnimation/SpaceGhostCoastToCoast'' version of Moltar was the original host, when (in-universe) Toonami originated from Ghost Planet.[[/note]] |
| 567 | * Despite being animated cartoons, the Creator/VanBeurenStudios ''Toddle Tales'' and two of the ''Rainbow Parade'' shorts have live action openings and endings, with the cartoon segments inbetween that provide the "morals" of the cartoons. |
| 568 | !!!'''By Series:''' |
| 569 | * Episodes of ''WesternAnimation/TheAdventuresOfPaddington'' are framed by Paddington writing a letter to his aunt Lucy about the events of what happened in the episode. |
| 570 | * The "Graybles" episodes of ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'' are framed by the character Cuber, who [[BreakingTheFourthWall speaks directly to the audience]] and seems to exist outside the canon of the show in some kind of futuristic space setting. These episodes begin and end with him asking the viewer to try to guess the theme of five seemingly unrelated short clips of the show (called graybles), which he plays on a triangular screen. |
| 571 | * An episode of ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'' used a character (Klaus) explaining that he and another character are just a framing device, and not part of the actual story as a joke. |
| 572 | %%* ''WesternAnimation/{{Animaniacs}}'' also did this sometimes. |
| 573 | * ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'': [[Recap/AvatarTheLastAirbenderTheStorm "The Storm"]] has two simultaneous frame stories: Aang tells Katara of his days with the Air Nomads and when he learned he was the Avatar, and Iroh tells his ship's crew the story of why Zuko was banished. |
| 574 | ** Additionally, in "The Avatar And The Fire Lord" Avatar Roku visits Aang in his dreams; at the same time Zuko read old scrolls written by Fire Lord Sozin. These are used to frame the story of Roku and Sozin's lives and relationship. |
| 575 | * ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'': |
| 576 | ** "Showdown" is a Jonah Hex story set in 1883, presented as a recording left by Ra's al Ghul for Batman explaining his reasons for abducting Arkady Duvall from a rest home. |
| 577 | ** "Almost Got 'Im" has another framing device in the form of a card game played between the Joker, the Penguin, Killer Croc, Poison Ivy, and Two-Face. They tell stories of times they came close to killing Batman but failed as they play. |
| 578 | ** "Legends of the Dark Knight" has three kids telling stories about what they see Batman as, told in different styles throughout the caped crusaders comic career, ranging from the campy 50s to the grungy 80s era of Frank Miller. |
| 579 | * In ''WesternAnimation/BobsBurgers'', framing devices are often used to set up stories told by the three kids. |
| 580 | ** "The Frond Files": The kids write three stories for a school exhibition, but Frond says they are "inappropriate" and refuses to display them. When Bob and Linda ask why they are "inappropriate," he reads the stories to them. |
| 581 | ** "The Gayle Tales": To get out early from grounding, the kids have to come up with stories about Aunt Gayle. |
| 582 | ** "Sliding Bobs": The kids wonder how Linda an Bob's first meeting would go down if Bob didn't have a mustache. |
| 583 | ** "Mom, Lies and Videotape": After failing to record the the kids' Mother's Day performances, Louise, Gene and Tina come up with completely fictional and improved versions of their crappy plays to Linda. |
| 584 | ** "Bed, Bob and Beyond": After watching part of a movie, the kids take turns telling what they imagine happens next, hoping to improve Bob and Linda's moods, and thus get out of trouble. |
| 585 | ** "The Handyman Can": The kids take turns telling Teddy stories to restore his confidence in his handyman abilities. |
| 586 | ** "Diarrhea of a Poopy Kid": Louise, Tina and Bob take turns comforting a sick and bathroom-ridden Gene on Thanksgiving. |
| 587 | * ''WesternAnimation/BojackHorseman'' featured an episode told through Princess Carolyn's great-great-great granddaughter. She tells her class about Princess Carolyn's really bad day (such as her miscarriage and inability to conceive, firing Judah, and breaking up with her boyfriend), along with some "worldbuilding" side plots involving other characters. [[spoiler:At the end of the episode, it's revealed that the granddaughter is entirely fictional, and was made up by Princess Carolyn as a story to keep herself happy.]] |
| 588 | ** "INT. SUB" also uses this structure for the majority of the episode. It focuses on Diane's therapist and her wife (a mediator for Todd and Princess Carolyn) discussing their new clients to each other, but changing their names due to client confidentiality rules. So, Bojack becomes "Bobo the Angsty Zebra" (with the title sequence changed to reflect this), Diane becomes "Princess Diana", Todd becomes "Emperor Finger-Face", and PC becomes "a Tangled Fog of Pulsating Yearning in the Shape of a Woman." |
| 589 | * Early ''WesternAnimation/{{Caillou}}'' episodes start with a grandmother offering to tell her kids a Caillou story related to a problem they're having. [[note]] For example, in "Caillou's Friends", her grandson complains that his friends haven't come over to play with him.[[/note]] Later episodes ditched this beginning though. |
| 590 | ** Earlier episodes of the version aired on Creator/PBSKids showed segments involving Caillou's cat Gilbert and his toys Rexy and Teddy doing activities related to a theme that tied the three shorts in the episode together. |
| 591 | * ''WesternAnimation/CaptainPlanetAndThePlaneteers'': The actual plot of the episode "[[Recap/CaptainPlanetAndThePlaneteersS3E10HogTide Hog Tide]]" is the story that Gaia tells to entertain the Planeteers when they're stuck inside during a storm. |
| 592 | * The ''WesternAnimation/CloseEnough'' episode "Halloween Enough" sees the cast stuck indoors on Halloween and telling each other scary stories in an intentional homage to the Simpsons' "WesternAnimation/TreehouseOfHorror." |
| 593 | * Certain episodes of ''WesternAnimation/DoraTheExplorer'' are stories or flashbacks told by Dora. The viewer interaction even takes place in the story. |
| 594 | ** The episodes "Backpack" and "Dora's First Trip" are flashbacks narrated by Dora about how she first got Backpack in the former, and how she became an explorer and met her animal friends in the latter. |
| 595 | ** "What Happens Next?" has Dora and Boots imagining their own adventure that occurs after the end of a fairytale. |
| 596 | ** "Dora's Dance to the Rescue" is really a flashback to an earlier time told by Dora at the beginning of the episode. [[NeverTrustATrailer The trailers completely avoided showing this.]] |
| 597 | ** The trilogy of "Super Babies" episodes feature Dora telling a story that her twin baby siblings are superheroes. |
| 598 | ** "Catch the Babies" is framed by Dora telling the silly but true story to her family. |
| 599 | ** "Dora's Christmas Carol Adventure" is framed by Santa Clause telling the story to his elves at the North Pole. |
| 600 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents'' episode "Crash Nebula" also used the "watching a ShowWithinAShow" framing device, with Timmy, Cosmo and Wanda watching a TV special that Timmy wants to see about the titular hero. |
| 601 | * ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' used a similar Framing Device in its "Anthology of Interest" stories, using the "WhatIf" machine. In the first episode it turns out that the Framing Device was itself [[AllJustADream a result of the Professor asking the WhatIf machine his own question.]] |
| 602 | * All of ''WesternAnimation/KaBlam'', Nick's first AnimatedAnthology series, is framed by the show's hosts Henry and June, two ten-year-olds who would [[LampshadeHanging lampshade animation tropes]] and [[BreakingTheFourthWall talk to the audience]] while getting into their own mishaps. |
| 603 | ** The ''Life With Loopy'' segments are framed by Loopy's older brother, Larry, telling the episode's story to the audience. |
| 604 | * Most episodes of ''WesternAnimation/{{Horseland}}'' has Shep the sheepdog telling the events of the episode in flashback. This was mostly dropped by Season 3. |
| 605 | * ''WesternAnimation/HouseOfMouse'' showed the new Mickey Mouse Works cartoons as well as the classic theatrical cartoons with a framing device of the characters working at a nightclub where all the Disney characters would gather together. |
| 606 | * ''WesternAnimation/JakersTheAdventuresOfPiggleyWinks'': The series is a frame story where the adult Piggley recalls events of his childhood in rural Ireland to his grandchildren. |
| 607 | * ''WesternAnimation/JuroQueVi'': In this series retelling stories from Myth/BrazilianFolklore, all of the shorts are told by an unseen storyteller stating that they heard the story happened in Brazil's countryside, thus adding to the OralTradition aspect of folklore. |
| 608 | * The ''WesternAnimation/KimPossible'' episode "Rewriting History" has a story of Kim's great-grandmother (who vanished in disgrace at the start of the century), which is framed by Kim uncovering what really happened, while her ArchEnemy Dr. Drakken chases his own ancestor's involvement in the same events, piling up into GenerationXerox and ContrivedCoincidence [[spoiler:and ending as AllJustADream]]. |
| 609 | * WesternAnimation/RenAndStimpy: "Have Yourself a Stinky Little Christmas", a special home release of [[Recap/RenAndStimpy2x07SonOfStimpy Son of Stimpy]] that also featured the music video for Music/CatHairballs, featured a framing device where Stimpy, in an attempt to get Ren into the Holiday Spirit, puts on the episode and music video for him. At the end Ren is still a grump and heads off to use the bathroom, which it is revealed is being used by Rudolph. |
| 610 | * For that matter, any of the WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes anthology movies fit this trope. For instance, The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner movie presented the selected shorts as Bugs Bunny reminiscing about his "hare-raising" exploits. |
| 611 | ** ''Señorella and the Glass Huarache'' is framed as a man telling a sad story, which is ''Literature/{{Cinderella}}'' [[RecycledInSpace IN MEXICO!]] At the end, the person he was telling the story to comments that the story was actually pretty happy, but then asks what happened to the Wicked Stepmother. "That's the sad part," says the narrator... "[[spoiler:[[HenpeckedHusband I married her!]]]]" |
| 612 | * ''WesternAnimation/MickeyMouse2013'': The special The Scariest Story Ever: A Mickey Mouse Halloween Spooktacular" is a series of three tales framed by Mickey trying to scare his and Donald's nephews. |
| 613 | * Several episodes of ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' make use of various framing devices. |
| 614 | ** "[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS2E13HearthsWarmingEve Hearth's Warming Eve]]" has the ponies putting on a play about the origins of Equestria, with the cast appearing as the historical characters portrayed. |
| 615 | ** "[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS6E8AHearthsWarmingTail A Hearth's Warming Tale]]" has Twilight reading a story to Starlight Glimmer, again putting the show's regular cast into the roles of characters in the story. |
| 616 | ** "[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS6E10TheSaddleRowReview The Saddle Row Review]]" is a NestedStory where the cast are reading a newspaper article about the opening of Rarity's new boutique, where each pony was interviewed about the problems they encountered; the events themselves are shown as individual flashbacks framed by interview segments. |
| 617 | ** "[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS6E22PPOVPonyPointOfView P.P.O.V.]]" is a RashomonStyle episode where the framing device is Twilight trying to find out from Pinkie Pie, Applejack and Rarity what happened on their boat trip that caused them to end up angry at each other. |
| 618 | ** "[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS6E23WhereTheAppleLies Where the Apple Lies]]" has Applejack telling the story of how, as a filly, she told a small lie that [[FawltyTowersPlot spun out of control]] and ended up with the whole family in hospital. |
| 619 | ** "[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS7E13ThePerfectPear The Perfect Pear]]" is about the Apple siblings learning how their parents fell in love. |
| 620 | ** "[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS7E16CampfireTales Campfire Tales]]" is just that: a series of campfire tales told around a framing device of a camping trip. |
| 621 | ** "[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS9E23TheBigMacQuestion The Big Mac Question]]" is framed by a series of [[ConfessionCam Confession Cams]] where Spike, Discord, and the Cutie Mark Crusaders recall to Applejack what happened when preparing for Big Mac and Sugar Bell's proposal. |
| 622 | ** The GrandFinale "[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS9E26TheLastProblem The Last Problem]]" features the grown-up Twilight recall to her student Luster Dawn the day she moved back to Canterlot and became the new ruler of Equestria. |
| 623 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheOwlHouse'' episode "Knock, Knock, Knockin' on Hooty's Door" is mostly shown as a series of flashbacks while Hooty is writing a letter to [[spoiler:Lilith]]. |
| 624 | * ''WesternAnimation/RegularShow'': In "Skips' Story", Skips tells Mordecai and Rigby the story of how he became immortal. The entire episode consists of flashbacks, except the start and end. |
| 625 | * The framing device of ''WesternAnimation/RobotChicken'' is a MadScientist strapping the title character in a chair and forcing him to watch the show's sketches. |
| 626 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': |
| 627 | ** The early "WesternAnimation/TreehouseOfHorror" [[HalloweenEpisode episodes]] had them: |
| 628 | *** The first "Treehouse Of Horror" had Homer listening in on Bart and Lisa exchanging three scary stories in Bart's treehouse ([[ArtifactTitle hence the name of the series' Halloween episodes]]). |
| 629 | *** "Treehouse Of Horror II" had [[AcidRefluxNightmare Bart, Lisa, and Homer eating too much candy before bed]], with the ThreeShorts themselves presented as prolonged {{Nightmare Sequence}}s. The last short appears to have ended with a return to the frame story, only to continue where the short left off by [[spoiler:revealing that Mr. Burns had his head grafted to Homer's body]]. Cue fake OnTheNext. |
| 630 | *** "Treehouse Of Horror III" featured the family throwing a Halloween party, with Lisa, Grandpa, and Bart telling all the stories. |
| 631 | *** "Treehouse Of Horror IV" is the last one to feature a framing device, with Bart presenting the stories in the manner of ''Series/NightGallery''. |
| 632 | *** Whatever plot the subsequent Halloween episodes had outside of the three stories is mostly confined to the {{Cold Opening}}s nowadays. |
| 633 | ** "The Seemingly Never-Ending Story" containing several [[NestedStory stories-within-a-story]] before it turns out to be Bart telling Principal Skinner why he failed to turn in an assignment. |
| 634 | * Special episodes of ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'' used segments involving Patchy the Pirate as this to the actual episodes themselves, like "Party Pooper Pants" and "Truth or Square?". These became less and less in the newer seasons. |
| 635 | ** "Missing Identity" is framed by [=SpongeBob=] recounting the episode in a diner one rainy night. |
| 636 | ** The episode "The Bad Guy Club For Villains" is framed by segments showing [=SpongeBob=] and Patrick watching an episode of ''[[ShowWithinAShow Mermaid Man And Barnacle Boy]]''. |
| 637 | ** "Friend or Foe" consists of a series of flashbacks told by Mr. Krabs and Plankton (and later Karen), about the time they used to be friends as children until an argument over their own recipe caused the two to drift apart. |
| 638 | ** "Pull Up a Barrel" is framed by Mr. Krabs telling a story to [=SpongeBob=] and Squidward about his time in the Navy. |
| 639 | ** "[=SpongeBob's Runaway Roadtrip=]" aka the vacation miniseries, are recalled by the character having the respective vacation presenting a slideshow to their friends. |
| 640 | ** "Swamp Mates" is a story narrated by [=SpongeBob=] to Gary in his library. |
| 641 | * ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse'' primarily, but not always, uses this for its [[WholeEpisodeFlashback Whole-Episode Flashbacks]]. |
| 642 | ** [[Recap/StevenUniverseS1E24AnIndirectKiss "An Indirect Kiss"]] starts of with Connie and a downcast Steven having a picnic, and Connie persuades him to tell her about the events of the episode, explaining why he's so upset. |
| 643 | ** [[Recap/StevenUniverseS1E33GarnetsUniverse "Garnet's Universe"]] has Steven make up a story about how he thinks a recent mission Garnet was on went. |
| 644 | ** [[Recap/StevenUniverseS2E5StoryForSteven "Story for Steven"]], [[Recap/StevenUniverseS2E12WeNeedToTalk "We Need to Talk"]] and [[Recap/StevenUniverseS3E16GregTheBabysitter "Greg the Babysitter"]] involve Greg telling Steven about his and Rose's relationship. [[Recap/StevenUniverseS4E9ThreeGemsAndABaby "Three Gems and a Baby"]] has Greg and the Gems tell Steven about something that happened when he was a baby. |
| 645 | * The DVD releases of the 2003 incarnation of ''WesternAnimation/StrawberryShortcake'' feature segments which link two episodes together by having Strawberry recount those adventures through her Rememberin' Book. |
| 646 | * The ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitansGo'' episode "The Cape" has one of the Titans watching the ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans'' episode "Divide And Conquer". |
| 647 | ** There is also "Bottle Episode", which has the Titans stuck in a bottle remembering their past adventures. |
| 648 | * Many episodes of ''WesternAnimation/TinyToonAdventures'' used this trope to tie together otherwise unrelated skits. |
| 649 | * ''WesternAnimation/VeggieTales'' is framed by segments involving Bob and Larry reading children's letters on a countertop that usually related to the episode's theme. When the show was broadcast on TV on NBC, these segments were replaced by ones that took place at Bob's house. In Brazil, the show had another spin-off series called ''Os Amigos Vegetais'' involving costumed character versions of the [=VeggieTales=] cast playing in their house in between the stories, and it also included little segments where the characters toured different places. |
| 650 | ** ''WesternAnimation/VeggieTalesInTheHouse'' is the only piece of the franchise that does not use a framing device. |
| 651 | * One episode of ''WesternAnimation/AngryBeavers'' had the gang playing "Storyteller" (a game where the players tell part of a story for a few minutes and the next player has to go off of that) on a camping trip. Each participants "chapter" is accompanied by an ArtShift as well. It had something to do with a pair of spies capturing a CloakingDevice inexplicably shaped like a cocktail weenie and the rules were that each player's chapter had to pertain to the heroes or the antagonists (much to the annoyance of Winslow, who only cares about a truck driver in an 18-wheeler). Notably, Treeflower [[GenreShift turns the whole story]] into a MagicalGirl {{Anime}}. |
| 652 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheWackyAdventuresOfRonaldMcdonald'' was a series of animated videos, each one having wraparound segments of a live-action Ronald [=McDonald=], who interacts with an animatronic suit of his dog Sundae as well as monitors displaying CGI animations of Tika, Grimace, Hamburglar and Birdie before undergoing a ToonTransformation to transition to the animated portion for the first three videos, while the later three instead had Ronald already having experienced the video's adventure before starting a projector to play the animated portion and eschewed the interactions with other characters aside from Sundae's voice being heard from off-screen in "Visitors from Outer Space" and "The Monster O'[=McDonaldland=] Loch". |
| 653 | [[/folder]] |
| 654 | |
| 655 | ---- |
| 656 | |
| 657 | ''"...and I believe that's about it."''\ |
| 658 | ''"Good times. So what do we do now?"''\ |
| 659 | ''"What else? Go write more articles!"'' |
| 660 |
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