Breaking The Fourth Wall / Fan Works

Crossovers

• A Is A: In the stories Gridlocked and One Night in Orlando, thanks to the presence of the Muppets, there are multiple incidents of fourth wall destruction. Which often leaves those characters not familiar with the Muppet media either incredibly confused or existentially terrified.
• Code: Pony Evolution: Pinkie Pie breaks not only the fourth wall of the "show" but the fourth wall of the fanfic as well.
• Happens numerous times in PAW Patrol/Minecraft crossover Curse of the DualShock; usually by OC Shelly and Played for Laughs.
• I'm a Marvel... And I'm a DC: Everyone break the normal fourth wall at one point or another. However Deadpool takes it one step further.

  Deadpool: I always wanted my own action figure, and now I am my own action figure.
  Nite Owl: Um, What?

• In the Star Wars/VeggieTales crossover Larry Boy and the Little Man of Purpleness, the trailer ends with these lines:
  Han: Excuse me as I break character here: To the author: About this dialogue, are you on some form of illegal substance?
  Wedge: And could we please have some?
  • In context, however, Han's only breaking the fourth wall in a play they're rehearsing.
• The Metroid-Kamen Rider crossover fic, Metroid: Kamen Rider Generations, has such examples.
  • Stage 7, the Kamen Rider Drive tribute chapter shows Shinnosuke's shocking expression when Samus wakes up in the Drive Pit as he and the others attempt to forcibly dissect her Fusion Suit, he says while bringing up his series' main writer, "Is it just me or was the writer fond of police dramas?!"
  • Stage 17, where Samus, Takatora, Mitsuzane, and Go confront a resurrected Kaito Kumon, after they transformed, the song "Supernova" from Kamen Rider Kiva plays, leading Go to tell the writer the music is inappropriate, much to Takatora's annoyance.
    Go: HEEEYYY! This is NOT Kamen Rider Kiva! Why bother play that damn music?!
    Takatora: Jesus Christ! Eyes on the battlefield, Shijima-kun! Who are you talking to, anyway?
    Go: It's the writer! Nah, whatever.
  • Stage 29, Gandrayda even does it going as far as making out with the author and ranting about Gen Urobuchi.
• The Animaniacs in My Little Animaniacs do it the entire story.
• Once Upon a Studio: Version 2.0 has 3 major instances of this:
  • The first is Cinderella inviting the audience to join in with the final verse of "When You Wish Upon a Star", and throwing a wink at us.
  • The second is Cinderella and the Prince gently singing the opening line of "A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes" to the audience, during the song's climax.
  • The final and most notable is the epilogue scene set the following afternoon, showing Mickey, Cinderella, the Prince and a number of other characters giving us a heartfelt address, assuring us that Disney will always be there for us, and happily bidding us farewell.
• Turnabout Storm: Pinkie Pie gets a few of these moments, as it's usually done with her. She even had read some of the script beforehand to have an idea of what to do while investigating.
• Super RWBY Sisters:
  • In chapter 112 of Super RWBY chibi the fourth wall gets broken when Dark Xena, in an alternative version of the climax of The Healing of the Soul, gets interrupted by the title of the next skit. She is sure to let her displeasure be known to the audience.
  • The fourth wall gets absolutely mutilated in the second chapter of Galaxy. First Caboose mentions an early Chibi skit, then Travis mentions to Carolina that the chapter might be delayed and the age rating will go up if he told her his whole story and then Ibuki comes along and puts the fourth wall out of its misery, then Travis steps on its corpse as he's looking at the screen and doing the ol' cuckoo gesture while pointing at Ibuki.
  • In chapter 6 of Super Paper RWBY, Paper Bowser does this by ripping apart the boss title he was given before writing in a new title to replace it.
• Superwomen of Eva 2: Lone Heir of Krypton: The characters frequently break the fourth wall in the omakes: the author and Asuka talk about his discarded ideas, Asuka complains of a thug breaking the fourth wall when he accused her of doing blatant shout-outs, Shinji gets a present of the author, or the author decides to address the characters.

Avatar: The Last Airbender

• Avatar: The Abridged Series: Iroh actually teaches Zuko how to break the Fourth Wall. He ends up using it to re-write the episode to make Sokka's life hell.
• In The Last Airbender parody Bring Me All Your Elderly!, the Animated!Characters not only are aware that they are animated (and discuss it very casually), they also leave the Animated!Universe to enter the Movie!Universe, generally blame all unexplained events either on the fanfic author or M. Night Shyamalan, read their own fanfic and comments straight off the internet, and basically suffer severe existential crises as a result. The fourth wall itself actually makes a brief appearance at one point in the story, along with a sign that says "fragile."
  Mai: But for future reference, guys — try to be careful about breaking the fourth wall around Zuko, okay? He doesn't know, and it tends to freak him out a little.
  Zuko: Fourth wall? What wall? Someone broke a wall?
  Mai: Nothing, Zuko. Just don't worry about it.

Harry Potter

• How Harry Got a Date:
  Luna: Nobody asked me to the ball. I'm just here because the author told me to.
• Snapped:
  Hermione: You can't befriend a basilisk!
  Harry: We're in a Crack Fic, Hermione. It's expected.
• The Staircase Time Froze:
  Ginny: I can't believe that was only yesterday. It seems like one day lasted several chapters for no particular reason.
• Wear Me Like a Locket Around Your Neck:
  "I can't believe I suspected that guy of murder," Harry said in wonder, watching Caspar walk into a window.
  "You did what?" Orion asked.
  Harry shook his head. It was far too elaborate to go into- it would take something like 4 hefty chapters to cover it all. "Nothing."
• Magic Knows No Boundaries But Those We Believe In:
  "Planning to master double knots next?" [Harry] asked.
  
  "Actually, I'm thinking about putting that off until later." [Ollivander] said. "I want to take your idea about experimenting with the two identical wands and seeing what kind of results I get out of it. Might reveal the key to developing a duel-core wand."
  
  Harry couldn't stop his eyebrows from racing to his own hairline at that. Wandmakers have been trying to make wands with duel cores for centuries. The why is long-winded and complicated and, at risk of breaking my own rule against fourth wall jokes, Ollivander will in all likelihood explain the many advantages of a duel-core wand in a future chapter.
• Like Tenfold Shields:
  McGonagall: What's really bothering you? Are you feeling left behind? Unsure how to deal with these changes, or perhaps like you're in the plot of a badly written fanciful story?
• He's Not Dead Yet:
  Albus Dumbledore was furious.
  
  He'd just had the most miserable Christmas of his entire life; it was even worse than the one after his boyfr – after Gellert Grindelwald had left. He'd been abducted from the school by the Goblin Inquisition (amongst whose weapons were such diverse elements as fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and an almost fanatical devotion to Gringotts and a nice red uniform). The nasty little creatures had dragged him off to a Gringotts holding-cell and subjected him to such torments as "The Soft Cushions" and, Albus shuddered, "The Comfy Chair." Now, while those might not sound like they are too horrible, the goblins have their own, sinister twist to the torments that are just not acceptable for repetition in a T-rated story. Finally, Albus had been released once he had confessed to having stolen money and heirlooms from the Potter family; he had then been made to hand over everything he had stolen and pay back all the money, plus interest. It goes without saying that the Headmaster was no longer able to afford sherbet lemons.
• Bound Through Time:
  "Huh? Oh! Voldetort was making some dramatic speech and I called him a Drama queen when he very rudely interrupted me with a killing curse."
  
  Then Harry and Hermione heard a woman's voice start talking.
  
  "I have to say, Mr Potter, you are correct. Snake-Face has quite the flair for the dramatics, one that almost rivals that stupid rainbow-wearing, mind-altering manipulative Machiavellian little bumblebee..." Then she continued muttering "I swear to my father-in-law if I ever get my hands on that little shit, I'll mess up his face so badly he would lose a beauty contest with Umbridge and Voldemort." Then the woman continued threatening such violent things to do to Dumbledore that the author decided to not write it down for fear of getting his mouth washed with soap.
• When Is It a Contract:
  After the always tasty feast and the announcements of no quidditch (which Albus thought was well received), the Headmaster and his two most difficult heads of house were gathered in the office of the High Inquisitor, (er, wrong year), the office of the Glorious Dictator, (er, wrong story), the office of the befuddled and senile, (um, we are getting warmer), the office of the Headmaster (wimpy get out), to calmly discuss the events of the evening.

The Loud House

• Burning Secret: Lincoln tells the audience what he learned at the end of the episode.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

• Pinkie Pie breaking the fourth wall to acknowledge or even directly address the readers and/or the author is something of a Running Gag in FiM fanfiction in general. Sometimes other characters get in on the act, more often it's waved off as her just being Pinkie.
• In Amber Night and the Curse of the Diabolical Pastry Thief, Amber Night is apparently no stranger to the "sadistic hairless chimpanzee pounding away it the keyboard that controls the fate of the pastryless pony" on the other side of the fourth wall, demonstrated in the beginning when she grows inspired by his monologue without having heard it, and again later on when she convinces him to disable the gym's laser defense systems.
• Sweetie Belle does that in the beginning of Moody Mark Crusaders.
• In The Apprentice, the Student, and the Charlatan, Nova Shine appears to be well-aware that he is in a fanfiction, complains that they need to get past "the backstory part of this chapter", and come a couple of chapters later, outright refers to the fact that the fic is being rewritten. By the time of the Interlude, it has spread to other characters, such as Envy, who reads every previous short story to comment on how everyone seems to be drinking tea.
• The Iron Horse: Everything's Better With Robots! has Pinkie Pie and Discord both make reference to things that only happened in the comics. When questioned about it, they give the same reply:

  Pinkie Pie/Discord: It's canon to the comics, don't worry about it.

• In chapter 6 of The Monster Mash, this is played for a mixture of drama and dark comedy with side orders of Go Mad from the Revelation and Humans Are Cthulhu.
• In Ask King Sombra: Being that it's an ask blog, naturally, the characters respond to fan comments. It's a bit zigzaggy on whether other characters realize that that's what they're doing though.
  • Sombra is actually able to physically interact with the question boxes; at one point he tries to hide behind them, only to realize they aren't actually real.
  • At one point the author tries to derail the comic into a shipping fic, so Sombra and Coffee Talk open a portal and give his Author Avatar a Death Glare to make him get back on track.
• A brief gag in the Oversaturated World has Pinkie Pie conversing with the narrator, as a side effect of her magic becoming stronger.
• The Reading Rainbowverse has as its central concept the idea that various ponies are commenting on comics and answering questions. That's not this trope. What is this trope is when a reader pointed out to Gilda her blog had been hijacked by a mysterious "mod" person, resulting in the two having a bit of a tussle.
• Sweetie's Mansion: Pinkie Pie still has this ability even as a brainwashed ghost that is out to kill Sweetie Belle. Upon catching her, Sweetie gains this ability as well and unintentionally calls the author out for the direction the story is going when she's in Lotus-Eater Machine.
• Discord's New Business:
  • In Pinkie's chapter, the first thing Princess Pinkie Pie does is take over the narration and make the author fill in for her at Sugarcube Corner!! Don't worry, she exchanges back at the end of the chapter.
  • In Trixie's chapter, like Pinkie Pie, the alicornified Trixie takes over the narrative. She steals the author's USB drive and threaten to reveal publicly all his clopfics.

Naruto

• Naru-Hina Chronicles:
  • In the second chapter, in the panel where Sakura and Ino are doing their Big "WHAT?!", Kiba asks Shino "Why are we over here?", only for the latter to reply "I wanted to be in the picture."
  • Naru-Hina Chronicles Mini-sodes: In the 50th Mini-sode, Naruto and Hinata are kissing each other. After the kiss is over, she asks him if they gave their watchers what they wanted.

Pretty Cure

• Glitter Force: Into the Glitterverse: In Chapter 4, the author breaks from telling the story to tell the audience directly how she would handle the story's conflict.

Undertale

• TS!Underswap: Papyrus and Sans at the end of the demo's post-credits sequence, where Papyrus lampshades that people would've expected to encounter him instead of Sans (referencing how vanilla Underswap has Papyrus replace Sans in meeting the human first) and assuring fans that waiting for the full game to come out will be worth it.
• The characters in Undertale: The Surface don't usually say "remember that time when X?". Instead, they usually refer to events more along the lines of "they've been acting that way since chapter 76 or so".
  • Sans also breaks the fourth wall at one point, which Alphys (perhaps intentionally) ignores.

Sailor Moon

• A New Order: Helios does this when speaking with the ghost of Queen Serenity. He and she both know the secret of the Time Gates (him because he read her mind) but he asks her to explain it anyway because the people on the fourth wall don't know.

Yu-Gi-Oh!

• Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series: Ishizu mentions she can break the fourth wall in her first appearance, and this is unimpressive because everyone else has already broken it. She also says that if the fourth wall collapses completely, then Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged will be cancelled. Sure enough, Melvin defeating Florence is enough to bring the fourth wall down (for some reason), and 4kids (as run by Noah and the Big Five) cancel the show... And then LittleKuriboh announces Season 3. Yeah. Trippy, much?
  • And now we have season 3. First off Serenity tries to talk to Joey about the fact that she's frightened she'll get written out of the show because her character doesn't serve any significant point... And then all the main characters are told their show has been cancelled. Their reaction? "What the fuck?!" Just... There's no fourth wall any more. There's a fifth wall, but the fourth wall is just broken. And no, it is not going to be revived from the shadow realm.

Unsorted

• Many stories written by HWWHOC have one particular character who is given the ability to break the fourth wall, regardless of the universe he's written into.
• Like the source material, the Bleach fanfics Phases of the Moon and Chasing the Moon have Omakes at the end of each chapter. These omakes leave the Fourth Wall fairly intact. However, in the companion fic The Trials of Kurosaki Karin, the omakes involve Original Characters Masaryu and Kohaku breaking the Fourth Wall with impunity as they discuss the events of the story and interact with the audience Arrancar Encyclopedia style.
• Advent Crossover Crisis: Utilized — the author gets SheHulk and DeadPool, two renowned fourth wall breakers, to address the audience directly in the opening to explain the fic in greater detail.
• Age Of Dragons: Kieran/Urthemiel takes a moment to yell at the author for railroading the party into the deep roads. He also figured out where the party needed to go by noting where the quest marker was, and can find his friends by looking at the locations of their character icons.
• Becoming a True Invader: Occasionally done with characters being aware of when flashbacks are occurring and/or that they're in a flashback.
• Calvin at Camp: Happens often, especially when the Hitchhiking Ghosts are involved.
• The Child of Love: In chapter seventh's omake, Asuka berates the author because he is lazy and hasn't updated his website.
• Cinderjuice (Beetlejuice) and its sequels: Much like the source material, this fic and its sequels take any number of shots at the fourth wall. One reviewer asked whether the fourth wall had killed the author's father, since it gets shattered with so much frequency.
• Clash of the Elements: In Chapter 13 of Part 2, after giving a eulogy to Smithy, Dimentio mentions to the audience about how he will "satisfy their desire for entertainment. Of course, when one takes into consideration his powers and that beyond the computer screen would probably qualify as another dimension for him...
• Dante's Night at Freddy's: The original fic was no slouch when it came to Leaning on the Fourth Wall, but its sequel, Animatronic Boogaloo went so insane that, around chapter 8 and especially in chapter 9, the author describes the events as, "Dante and MJTR destroy the fourth wall, take it around back, and beat it with its own body."
• "Deadpool — A Blurred Lines Parody": This video, along with several other Deadpool cosplay videos by D Piddy, make use of this. (It's downplayed compared to the original Deadpool.)
• Everybody's Gotta Leave Sometime: Charlie Brown gathers his friends to discuss their creator's retirement and the final of Peanuts. Lucy complains that Charles Schulz wouldn't even let them negotiate for an extension. Shermie grieves because he'll never be in a story again. Linus is kind of angry because Schulz never let him see the Great Pumpkin. To sum up, the fourth wall is well and truly shattered.
• "Iggy Pop Go The Zombies" (House, M.D.): A literal piece of wall collapses when another character tells House, "Quit making that face, you look like Bertie Wooster."
• Imperfect Metamorphosis: In a rare totally serious example, Yukari inadvertently weaponizes this against Yuuka when she reaches into her soul and generally rips things apart. This leads to Yuuka periodically taking over the narration and speaking directly to the reader, as well as adjusting her myriad plans to manipulate the established narrative.
  • The first hint towards this comes in a memorable Madness Mantra ("It can't be. Just words on a page. It's all paper. And not even real paper.") which Yuuka keeps muttering to herself while ignoring being pummelled into the dust by Yukari.
• The Institute Saga: Deadpool talks to the readers a couple of times. He even manages to (briefly) hijack an Author's Afternote before being restrained.
• It's a Small World, After All (Axis Powers Hetalia): The characters warn each other not to break the Fourth Wall often so that the fangirls reading the story (including the author) can't get in. However, a lot of the characters (usually Japan) end up breaking the Fourth Wall in the middle of the story (via looking up at the ceiling and complaining to the author) and cause a war in the author's note over 'keeping the Fourth Wall up'. Fangirls obliterate the Fourth Wall and take over the fanfic for a chapter, after which everyone agrees on inserting a Fourth Wall with a door.
• The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (a novelization of the video game): The narrator does this a lot. Examples include him assuring the viewers that they did not accidentally open the Cornish edition of the story upon the reader hearing Granny's snoring, him wondering if he had just accidentally popped in a copy of The Haunted Castle by mistake upon seeing Hyrule with its colour drained and him thanking the readers for reading his story at the end.
• New Reality: Mithos jumps into the real world to kidnap the heroine, making it an In-Universe example.
• Nocturnal: After the DC and Marvel universe's have been combined, Deadpool shows up and complains that he has "One cameo, in this entire one hundred chapter story".
• Origin Story: When Deadpool appears out of nowhere in Chapter 29, Alex asks him what he's doing there and if he intends to try and fight her. After hastily denying that he has a fight in mind, he openly admits that he's just there to provide a little Wolverine Publicity.
  "What are you doing here, then?" Alex huffed. The man was a pain in the ass.
  "Nothing much. This is just a pointless cameo! It's all the rage in comic books! Alexi Vandeberg, one of the writer's best friends in the world, bet the writer fifty bucks that there was no way in hell that he – the writer, I mean – would just drop me into the story at random, in the same way that all those comics back in the 90s would include Wolverine just to say he was in their title once." Deadpool shrugged. "Back when they were doing it with Wolverine, it was basically just a cheap grab for better sales, but it worked. TV Tropes even has a name for it: 'Wolverine Publicity.' Pretty neato, right? Of course, it sort of breaks the flow of the story, but fifty buck is fifty bucks, right?"
• Paper Mario X 2: The Thousand Year Door: At the end of the fic, Link puts out a velvet box out of his bag. Inside includes a ring which he uses to propose to Zelda. The very last line is Link addressing to the audience: "Can you guess what I'm going to do?"
• Pokemon: Johto Quest: The narrator constantly does this at the beginning and ending of nearly every episode.
• The Power That's Inside: Team Rocket occasionally pulls this off, with one example following:
  Jessie: What could we even use this thing as, a cannon?
  James: None of this is canon, Jessie.
• Rakenzarn Tales (a fan game): Two primary offenders — Axel Akamura, an OC who's implied to be from outside of Rakenzarn like Kyros and Kyuu, and Deadpool himself, who even does his own special skill descriptions.
• Sociopath With a Spellblade (Neptunia): This fic isn't exactly shy about abusing the fourth wall, whether it's referencing the title as Self-Insert Koei Tech's official title, Neptune herself yelling about her lack of limelight over nine chapters and thirty thousand words into the story, or most blatant of all, revealing that the entire story is being told as a flashback and deliberately talking to the audience.

  Koei: What? Guy can't get a drink while regaling his story, revealing the framing device for this entire fanfiction?

• A Spoof from the Castaways of the Flying Dutchman (Castaways of the Flying Dutchman): The author spoofs the story in an entertaining way using Self-Insert and brutally honest—sometimes exaggerated or downright made up—ways of depicting the events occurring, all the while beating the shit out of the fourth wall as they move the story along.
  Ben: Oh look, a note! (Reads note) Oh fun, I get to sneak out tomorrow. Maybe something interesting will happen in this story.
  Me: You mean like a faster update? Like that will ever happen.
• Star Trek Logical Thinking: At the end of every video, Spock reminds the audience not to use logical fallacies.
• Tales of a Reset Mind: The characters disintegrate the fourth wall by speaking directly to the reader on multiple occasions.
  Fear: Dear Reader, hey look, there's a spider on your back. A big one.
• Tamers Forever Series: A common source of humour — often it's the author doing the fourth wall breaking with random comments.
• Ten Random Characters (Super Smash Bros.): The fourth wall suffers varied degrees of abuse from the characters, and often, the author. It is broken so frequently that the wall is given a codename, the Norfair Alley. Sometimes, this trope is quite literal. In Chapter 11, a mob of fangirls invades after the fourth wall quite literally falls down dead.
• There's Someone Else (a Crack Fic): Tira remarks that she's been taunting Patroklos "throughout the whole game".
• This Bites!: A minor case shows up in Chapter 25, when Cross says that he couldn't make up the events that he was reporting if he tried. Soundbite, or perhaps B.R.O.B. possessing him again, noted the irony.
• Tom Swift and His War Tank: In the MST treatment, Joel and the bots become so frustrated at Ned's stupidity that they run out of ways to riff him and are forced to ask the readers for help.
• Total Sibling Rivalry (Total Drama): After the author's self-insertion, Chris wonders about buying a new fourth wall.
• Twice Upon an Age (Dragon Age): Varric Tethras is credited as the editor of the series, which is littered with his notations on the author's work. He frequently addresses her, but he also frequently directs his comments to the reader. Justified since, as he is the editor, he knows darn well that he has readers and reasons that they will want to know what's going on as the story is being written. The author herself also shows up as a character at certain points.
• Varric and Isabela Break the Fourth Wall (From the Wrong Side) (Dragon Age): Isabela introduces Varric to Archive of Our Own and the existence of the Black Emporium Rare Pair fanfic exchange. She points out that pretty nearly everyone is a village bicycle in the exchange and that "the tentacles usually have some kind of plot to their existence."
• What About My Character Development? (Mob Psycho 100): Reigen discovers that he's been psychic the whole time, thus nullifying all of his character development.
• With This Ring (a Young Justice (2010) Self-Insert Fic): The fourth wall is finally breached with the introduction of Ambush Bug in the Fool's Canon arc. Hilarity ensues.
• World as Myth (Medaka Box): Misogi Kumagawa recognizes when bold font and italics are used in dialogue, while Anshin'in seems to be aware of the events of the original manga.

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