"Let's Watch Our Show" Plot

A genre of Fan Fic — though there do exist canon instances — where the characters have somehow found themselves in the position of viewing the events of canon and commenting on them MST3K-style. Maybe they've been summoned to an inter-dimensional movie theater. Maybe they got a package in the mail with instructions to view a DVD with friends. However it happens, everyone has been gathered together and told they effectively have to binge watch a good portion of their lives. Don't worry; there will be intermissions and snacks have been provided.

Let's Watch Our Show can be divided into two types of stories: retrospective and prospective.

In the former, the events of the canon have already occurred, so this is mostly a walk down memory lane for everyone involved. Expect a lot of shared embarrassment, pride, laughter, and even shame over past behavior, and characters who weren't present for some plot events finally being able to give their reaction to them.

In contrast, prospective LWOS fics pluck characters from early on in the canon, sometimes to the point where most of them don't know who each other is yet, and have them watch the show's future events. Expect more grandiose reactions as characters witness themselves undertake actions and go through scenarios that they would have never expected, up to and including witnessing their own deaths. These also tend to be more serious in tone, as the goal of whoever is presenting all this is often to give the characters enough knowledge to avoid similar fates.

A variation also has characters not view their reality at all, but instead comment on the oddities of their alternate selves in a different continuity; they're still watching the show, just not their show. This means versions from one incarnation commenting on another (e.g., the book characters watching the television adaptation).

Related to Oh, Crap, There Are Fanfics of Us!, where the characters learn that people are writing stories about them. Compare Alternate DVD Commentary, The Abridged Series, and The Heckler. If it's the work's real-life cast riffing on everything, then that goes under MST.

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Fan Work Examples (sorted by source material):

Anime and Manga

• Assassination Classroom:
  • My Child Assassin: Parents React to Assassination Classroom: Set after graduation, the class is fed up with their parents believing the lies about Koro-Sensei and being unable to tell them the truth. Kirara Hazama's frustration is particularly acute, and she finally resorts to using magic—legitimate magic, much to the shock of the rest of the class—to create a way to show them the truth. The end result is transporting the parents of the entire class to the old campus building and, supervised by Ritsu, coercing them into watching the true story of the monster who threatened the earth. Of course, they overlook the possibility that their parents won't get along. Unfortunately, the work has since been deleted from both Fanfiction Dot Net and Archive of Our Own, although it has been saved for posterity here.
  • School watches Assassination Classroom has Ritsu travel back from a Bad Future to enlist E-Class's help evaluating the data of how things went wrong to avoid it, resulting in them watching the memories she's accumulated from her classmates and edited into an anime. But she miscalculates the trajectory, leaving no choice but for almost the entirety of Kunigigaoka Junior High (notably excluding Principal Asano) to join in the watching. The fanfic is completed in 1-24-2021, with a Here We Go Again! sequel being planned as the cast will be reacting to the non-canon Koro-Sensei Quest! spin-off.
• Power to Strive & Power to Strive II is about the Shiganshina Trio and several other characters being led into a room where they able to watch Season 1 & 2 of Attack on Titan through someone's (possibly Author Avatar) reaction video series, with Ymir eventually tells the more shocking revelation after she think that the eldians in the room can be trusted.
• Bleach:
  • In The Big Screen and Hat N' Clogs Fault, before canon starts, Ichigo, his classmates, family & the Gotei 13 got stuck in a room with a big screen, with a message from Future!Urahara tells them that they need to see the incoming future to prevent it.
  • In Gotei 13 watches anime - Pendulum Cast, All of the Gotei 13 Captain Vice Captain pre-Turn Back The Pendulum timeline is kidna-*Ahem*, taicho-napped into a theatre to watch Turn Back The Pendulum Arc of the anime to prevent it from happening.
• Code Geass has an entire community of these stories on FanFiction.Net, but most of them are Dead Fics that never got past the ninth episode. The only Completed Fic is Truth Within The Trilogy, which uses the Compilation Movie timeline instead, though it has its own set of problems.^ExplanationAt its conclusion, the author revealed many of its developments were inspired if not copied whole cloth from comments made by the director's commentary and voice actors, causing accusations of the writer conflating said comments with canon characterization despite inconsistencies, and that the author was flanderizing all characters shown outside of their admitted favorite, Cornelia, who was instead given the accusation of being subject to Character Shilling.
• The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.:
  • Saiki K Watching the Show has the people from PK Academy got teleported into a suspiciously theatre-like room and asked to watch a show, which is about Saiki, much to his chagrin
  • To be Seen on the Big Screen is similar, but Saiki cannot use his power within the room.
• Dragon Ball: DBS Reacts to DBZ Abridged has the Z-Fighters (& Frieza) post-TOP reacts to DBZA via a wish to the Super Dragon Balls made by Zeno as a gift to Goku.
• Elfen Lied has The Maple Inn Residents Watch The Show where, sometimes after Lucy returns to the inn and is mostly accepted by Kouta and others, a mysterious man delivers a box of DVDs to the inn about the anime, and everyone (besides Lucy, but reluctantly joins as well) watches it to find the answers to whatever unanswered questions they got.
• Fullmetal Alchemist has Truth Revealed (Archive.org link here) where all the characters who help take down the Homunculi get dumped in a room where alchemy doesn't work and told by a mysterious note that they are watching the future of how the country gets saved. This gets interesting due to where in the FMA timeline they got yanked from, and the fact that Scar is among the characters dropped in. It is highly implied to be Truth's fault that this is happening, perhaps working with a future Hohenheim, from the way Ed reacts to the second note. The story is unfortunately dead.
• Mob Psycho 100 has Past and Future where the Kageyama brothers, their friends, and their schoolmates & teachers watch the anime.
• My Hero Academia:
  • The Future Briefing Island has Class 1A, along with Tetsutesu, Itsuka Kendo and Monoma Neito from class 1B, and Hatsume Mei along with most of the staff from UA transported to an island with an isolated time flow to watch the series in order to decide whether or not to change certain aspects of the coming future. (This took place just before the Shie Hassaikai arc.) Unlike most watching the show plots, this one has the characters only watch six episodes "a day" breaking for Lunch and Evening activities which explores a Slice of Life B-plot with some shipping between characters as well as the teachers actually doing their jobs and addressing certain bad habits and flaws of the students such as Bakugo's utter disdain for Izuku or Kyoka's constant harping on Kaminari.
    • Meanwhile, on In the Grasp of Schadenfreude, an Emotion Eater trapped the parents of the students in his Pocket Dimension theater so they can watch the anime and reacting to it, which he can then feast upon, making him a considerably more malicious Author Avatar than most of the other examples here.
  • No Such Thing as a Painless Lesson, inspired by the Fullmetal Alchemist example, involves Truth whisking Class 1A and some of their teachers away after the ending of season 1. As in Truth Revealed, the characters can't use their powers and they experience the same pain as their on-screen selves as the toll they pay for getting this information.
  • Of Ghostly Futures and a Goddamn Kindle is about MHA characters from Yesterday Upon The Stair reading their story through a Kindle given by a panicking young girl, who initially mistaken the story as pure fiction for a long while, before she learns that not only the participants and event of the Sports Festival happens the way the story tells it, Ingenium also dies the same way the story depicts it.
  • "For The Want Of A Nail" things can change has the Canon version of the characters sit down and watch all of For the Want of a Nail Series' alternate timelines ^Specifically Deku? I think he's some pro..., Mastermind: Strategist for Hire, Viridian: The Green Guide, Cheat Code: Support Strategist, and Shadows: The Horror Movie Heroes.
• Naruto :
  • In A number of fragments, the Konoha 12, during their academy days, got summoned alongside their parents into the academy through a letter from a mysterious talking screen named Number who could show them fragments of time, jumping back-and-forth between past & future, that could be important to them.
  • In Reaction Ritual, Team Kakashi & Team Guy encounter an old man and a dying girl who needs loads of chakra. Naruto offers them his, but this activates her Kekkei Genkai, trapping him, team Kakashi, Team Guy, and other people he knows into his mindspace, where the old man explains that the only way for them to get out is to share Naruto's memories with the others in the mindspace.
• One Piece has Straw Hats and the entirety of One Piece, where the Straw Hats Pirates, just as Luffy lands Red Roc on Kaido's face, get transported into a theatre to watches their journey from the start.
• Oshi no Ko has Now Showing, where the Hoshino twins, Kana, Akane & Mem-Cho got transported into a small theatre, where a voice promises the truth behind Hoshino Ai’s death if they are willing to watch the anime in there.
• Mission 00: Watching Spy X Family has The Forgers and several other characters transported into a room with a TV that shows the story of the Forgers family life.
• Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun has Reacting to Demon School! Babyls-San!, where the Author Avatar wants to show the Babyls Demon School what would happen in the future to prepare them. However, it could expose Iruma's true nature as a human to the whole school...
• There exist at least two separate fanfics where the characters of Yu-Gi-Oh! watch Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series. The first, The Void pulls the characters mid-Battle City into the titular void to watch the series; this one is, unfortunately, dead. The second, YGOTAS Reactions features the characters pre-Season 5 discovering that there exists an abridged series about them and has them watching it on various electronic devices. Also unfinished, currently in Battle City, but ongoing.

Comic Books

• In The worst year of his life, The Justice Leage found a red book titled Red Robin detailing about Tim Drake's investigation of Bruce Wayne's demise.

Crossover Works

• DEATH BATTLE! has a lot of MST-style fics to the point that it's a Fandom-Specific Plot with the In-Universe crossover audiences.
  • Young Justice Watches Death Battle is an MST-style reaction fanfic written by Firestorm808 in which the members of the team and the Justice League (following the end of Young Justice (2010) season 1) watch and react to episodes of DEATH BATTLE!.
  • Tales of the Dekuverse is a series of reaction fanfics done by Zayden StormVoid (who's also done My Hero Pokedamia) where the students and staff of UA and various Pro-Heroes watch various series. Unlike many reaction stories where the cast simply reacts to what they're watching, the viewings have actually formed the backbone of the story, with the characters being motivated and growing from what they watch instead of simply giving commentary. This mixes in with plotlines that are concurrent and intersect with the viewings. The first story is Welcome to the MCU! (FF link & AO3-Though the latter link is dead) where the cast watches the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The second story is MHA Watches Death Battle where the characters watch the web series DEATH BATTLE!.
• The 40 is a Massive Multiplayer Crossover series of prospective reaction fanfics where the protagonists of dozens of different anime, cartoons, and manga are kidnapped by an unnamed, god-like, multiversal being to watch their respective journeys.^SpecificallySpike Spiegel, Zuko, Korra, Fujioka Haruhi, L, Ciel Phantomhive, North Italy, Edward Elric, Okumura Rin, Killua Zoldyck, Kuroko Tetsuya, Levi Ackerman, Naegi Makoto, Nanase Haruka, Mankanshoku Mako, Shouyou Hinata, Shiota Nagisa, Yukihira Souma, Saitama, Fujinuma Satoru, Midoriya Izuku, Kageyama "Mob" Shigeo, Katsuki Yuuri, Serinuma Kae, Saiki Kusuo, Kobayashi, Heine Wittgenstein, Suzui Ryōta, White Blood Cell U-1146, Emma, Fujiwara Chika, Honda Tohru, Kamado Tanjirou, Ishigami Senku, Satō Mafuyu, Legoshi, Suzuki Iruma, Hanako, Gojō Satoru, and Hasegawa Ranga. However, the first installment is a Prolonged Prologue where the characters first wake up in this new location and try to figure out what's going on.
• The All in One Watching their movies and reactions is a Massive Multiplayer Crossover where the characters from Dreamworks, Disney, Laika, and Illumination^{To be specific} Currently written: The Nightmare Before Christmas, Sing, Trolls, Madagascar, Flushed Away, Hotel Transylvania, The Book of Life, Disney Fairies, Strange Magic, Epic (2013), Brave, Home (2015), Tangled, Megamind. react to their movies in the style of Mystery Science Theater 3000..
• The Blue Rose Sword Hero is a fanfic about Eugeo being summoned post-mortem as The Sword Hero. Blue Rose Sword Hero Canon Cast Reactions is about characters from the canon version of both halves of the crossover watching the fanfic's story so the Four heroes can learn to be more properly heroic while giving Kirito and his friends some closure regarding Eugeo.
• The Elemental Hero in Teyvat is a story of how BoBoiBoy finds himself stranded in Teyvat, while RE: Elemental Hero's Journey In Teyvat is a prospective LWOS fanfic where the characters watching their upcoming future.
• Hollow is a story of how Nel ended up in Elemental Nation before being saved by Naruto with Fullbring power. Reading a Hollow Tale has the Soul King invite Gotei 13, Ichigo & friends to reacting to this story.
• Hunters of Justice is a crossover fanfic between RWBY and The DCU where Remnant is invaded by Brainiac, causing team RWBY & JNPR ended up on Earth by Mother Box. RWBY Watches Hunters of Justice has the Season 7 version of Canon characters reacting to the fic.
• Interdimensional Cartoon Discussion and Support Group is a Gravity Falls / Amphibia / The Owl House crossover in which Characters from said shows are all pulled into an interdimensional theater by a mysterious lone figure, who seems intent on making them witness each other's adventures.
• Kingdom Hearts: Shattered Memories is a crossover fic of My Hero Academia and Kingdom Hearts by Bola8, an Alternate Universe where Izuku was originally from Destiny Islands and a quartet with Sora, Riku, and Kairi that went through a version of the games before washing ashore in Japan with amnesia and being adopted by Inko. Re(action):Shattered Memories is a reaction fic by Sleppt in which the canon versions of Class 1-A, as well as Inko, Eri, Aizawa, All Might, and Nezu, are taken to an interdimensional theater by author avatars of Bola and Sleppt so they can watch the events of Shattered Memories, Bola later bring in Nemuri and Yamada to the viewings.
• Boldores And Boomsticks is a RWBY / Pokémon crossover where team RWBY ended up stranded in Pokemon world. Lazy Beacon Days: Reading Boldores and Boomsticks is about Blake receiving a book about the fic, with a note explaining that while the story is pure fiction to them, the facts about themselves and other Remnant characters are not faked.
• The Life is Strange. Watching it is Stranger... Debatably series started as just an It (2017) reaction before doing the sequel as well. It then expanded to add a reaction fic for Ready or Not that wasn't connected to the original two fics. There were later unfinished additions for Fear Street and The Umbrella Academy, as well as finished fic for season one of All of Us Are Dead, which has its own page, Good Luck <3. Instead of utilizing the script format, the media is translated through the character's explaining the scenes in their narration. It also makes use of character POVs, so specific scenes are described by someone with specific relevance to them. Fittingly, character development is quite important to the works in this series, to the point that the plots can be described as characters growing into their best selves and working up to a ship's Relationship Upgrade.
• Meanwhile, Back on Earth is less about this trope and more about its aftermath. Here, the people of Earth were shocked to find 3 shows on the internet starring 5 missing girls; Luz Noceda, Anne Boonchuy, Sasha Waybright, Marcy Wu, and Tulip Olsen, and the story focused on their reaction to seeing how people of the world saw their adventures and supports them upon their return.
• In Remnant's Maelstrom Shinobi, Naruto ended up on Remnant after Konoha is severely losing against Pein and taking over Jaune's place in team JNPR, before finding out that there are traces of Elemental Nation in Remnant. Reading RMS Book 1 and Reading Remnant's Maelstrom Shinobi is about Canon characters reacting to it, with the difference being how Jaune and the other characters reacting finding out that Naruto taking his place as the Beacon students.
• in Replay, someone hijacked all communications and released some of the world’s most kept secrets, revealing the existence of the supernatural, other worlds, and even the afterlife, following the adventures of Six, Molly McGee, both the pony and Human versions of The Mane Six, Luz Noceda and Charlie Morningstar.
• Ruby-B312 is a crossover fanfic where Ruby Rose ended up in Halo universe and becomes Noble Six and experiencing the fall of Reach before returning to Remnant. In Ruby-B312: The Fall of Reach, the friends and families Ruby left behind watch her experience the Fall of Reach in her eyes.
• stand in the ashes (ask the ghosts) is a fanfic about an orphaned Izuku Midoriya get stranded on Mass Effect universe and get adopted by Jane Shephard. MHA and Mass Effect React To "Stand in the Ashes" is about both class 1A & Normandy crew get invited to watch the fanfic in a pocket dimension theater.
• Team PHNK is a story of how Percy Jackson, Annabeth Chase, Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, Naruto, Gaara, Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark find themselves stranded on Remnant. Reading Team PHNK brings the Canon version of these characters plus Team RWBY & JNPR to read this fic.
• In Reading Twin Heroes Of Remnant, Team RWBY and associates reads about an alternate timeline where their world is visited by a pair of brothers who are reincarnation of Link & Ganondorf.
• Watching the Cipher-Verse has the characters from Gravity Falls, Amphibia, The Owl House, and Phineas and Ferb being told to watch their adventures to unite them against the return of Bill Cipher.

Film — Animated

• Encanto:
  • In Help will always be offered by Casita, Abuela's silent plea for an answer to Casita's dying state causing the house to show the family a dark future they could have.
  • In The Miracle is You, The Casita prevents the Madrigals from leaving after a person named Ian offers their help to the house in saving the family by showing them an alternate reality that is the Canon timeline.
• A very common theme in How to Train Your Dragon fanfiction is to take the characters from early in the first movie, usually shortly before Hiccup is outed as a dragon ally to the whole village, and have them watch said movie from the beginning. One such example is Watching Future Mistakes, and a collection of these fics can be found here.
  • A rarer variant are fics such as this one, which have them watch the second movie before they've even gone through the events of the first, without any context on how they got to that point.

Film — Live-Action

• Descendants has Watch and Learn series, where The Blue Fairy decides that Queen Leah attempting to assault Mal is a Disproportionate Retribution case of Sins of Our Fathers and choose to simmer down the conflict by showing everyone what the future may hold for both the four teens and Auradon.
• The Good Omens fic The Tadfield Secondary Players does this with the script for a 1992 Good Omens film adaptation that mercifully never saw the light of day. The script is depicted as a stageplay written by an immature preteen who only heard about the canon events secondhand, and the three pairs of Crowleys and Aziraphales from the book, TV, and radio continuities are all appalled by the script's massive plot changes and its Crowley being a complete Jerkass who hates Earth and constantly belittles Aziraphale.
• Everything's About to Change is about a news studio, with the help of their privately hired hacker, gain access of live CCTV footage within Jurassic World, and uses it on their News Flash, sharing the world as to what happened within the park and why.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • The Part of the Journey is the End series feature the characters from the Marvel Cinematic Universe watching movies and series of the MCU. It's set before Avengers: Infinity War, that one being the first movie they watch.
  • The fanfic A Beautiful Journey features various characters from the MCU brought to watch the first three phases of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
  • A Warning from the Future takes the prospective approach, taking The Avengers and Guardians of The Galaxy from around post-The Avengers (2012) to watch Avengers: Infinity War to prepare them from Thanos
• Spider-Man:
  • In Spider-Man: Avengers (and Midtown High) React, Peter, along with the Avengers and Midtown High watch the events of Spider-Man: Homecoming.
  • In the fanfic Who Is Peter Parker? The Avengers, Peter-2, Peter-3, Venom, Betty Brant, Flash Thompson, Ned, and MJ watch the Spider-Man: Homecoming Trilogy to remember their Peter Parker along with the Spider-Man Trilogy and The Amazing Spider-Man Series.

Literature

• Misfortune No One Sees, Until Now is a A Certain Magical Index fanfic, where the premise has a powerful, unknown female entity gathering the cast from the main series and its spin-offs to watch the tragic and interesting circumstances of Kamijou Touma.
• In Discovering The Future - A Game Of Thrones, Eddard Stark discovers a strange pile of books, with a note saying that he needs to read it alongside his wife and the first four of his children to see what the future holds for them.
• There is an entire genre of Harry Potter fanfic where the characters read the novels.
  • One of the few with a grander plot surrounding said reading is A Dramatic Reading by White Squirrel. The premise is that during the events of Order of the Phoenix (sometime between Chapters 25 and 26), Umbridge is trying to think of a way to dispel Dumbledore and Harry's "lies" and figure out the truth, and when she inadvertently summons the Room of Requirement with those thoughts, she finds all seven novels within. After reading and fact-checking the first half of the first book, she calls the Minister to the school and reads the book before all of the students and staff of Hogwarts in a bid to get Harry, Dumbledore, and anyone on their side arrested. This eventually backfires when Harry insists on finishing the book, which confirms that Voldemort in still alive. Other teachers at the school take turns reading it as well as the story continues, passing it on to a new orator for each chapter.
    • A Sensational Story is a sequel by Srikanth1808 (written with White Squirrel's permission) that covers the second novel. The premise is that Harry asks to continue with the public readings, as he wants to use the books to expose Lucius Malfoy for the Chamber of Secrets incident and get Sirius exonerated for Pettigrew's crimes. Meanwhile, Dumbledore, McGonagall and Snape start reading from Book 5 onward to find out how the war will progress (later progressing to Book 6 in the brief interlude fic A Daily Dossier. Though unfinished on FanFiction.Net, it was continued and eventually finished by a returning White Squirrel on AO3.
    • A Terrific Tale is a sequel by White Squirrel, focusing on the third novel.
  • All In The Family takes place during the Marauders’ time in Hogwarts and has a very creative setting. Due to a potion gone wrong, the Marauders, Lily, Frank, Alice and Regulus end up trapped in an alternate dimension where they have to read the books, being teleported to each chapter setting (classrooms, the Chamber of Secrets…) as they read. The catch is that while they don’t encounter any person, the creatures and magical devices are still around, causing them to almost die several times.
  • What We Do Today features an Alternate Universe where Sybill Trelawney, plagued by visions of a distant future, manages with her sister’s help to put her memories of the visions in seven books, which she brings to her job interview with Dumbledore. The original Order of the Phoenix (along with a couple of guests/prisoners) now will have to read the books in the hopes of preventing the Potters’ death and its aftermath.
• My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! has My Friends Watch My Next Life: All Roads Lead to Facepalms, where Maria experimenting with Light Magic on Katarina's mind, which led to their friends and herself being trapped in Katarina's mind, which conveniently shaped like a theater — with popcorn machine to boot!
• Watching My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, as I Expected has the casts from post-season 3 to watch DVD of their past by a God (after Hachiman ignoring the request to gather the audiences for a while).
• The Percy Jackson series is almost as popular with this fanfic genre as Harry Potter is.
  • In How Do You Say Gods series, Poseidon secure several Demigods in a isolated location and give them the books to prepare them for the future.
  • In Peeping on Percy Jackson and the Olympians, the other kids find several audiobooks on Chiron's desk about the books narrated by Percy.
  • In Percy Did What? series, The Fates believe that the only way to unite the divided mythical world is to lead them by example which is through using Percy's life experience as the lesson, much to his, Annabeth & Grover's chagrin.
  • PJO Watch the books ... and THINGS happen Series has The Hecate cabin demigods try to make a spell that lets them see the other demigods' background, only for the spell to go overboard...
  • The Reading Percy Jackson series, where the audience characters are from different time periods (the gods a decade before Percy is born while Chiron and demigods are sent to the past with the books courtesy of The Fates, Hermes, and Apollo, The Greeks are from one week before the final battle in New York, and Leo, Piper, Jason, and the Romans are from after the Quest to save Hera), stands out for both the fact it has successfully finished all PJO series and 2 books of the Heroes of Olympus with an astonishing update rate and quality of character interaction.
  • The series Blessing In Disguise. When Percy takes a curse from both Nyx and Tartarus, the Argus II crew plus several friends end up trapped with the gods from before the lightning bolt theft. They’ll now have to watch Percy’s quests with Percy suffering his past injuries all over again. It’s currently near the end of Sea of Monsters.
• Re:Zero Watching Him Die Again And Again has the cast (at the timespan where Rem is stuck in a coma after her fight against Gluttony and being forgotten by everyone else), along with a comatose-induced Natsuki Subaru and a reawakened Rem, taken from their dimension and placed in a theater created by a powerful, unknown entity known as "The Warden". There, after regaining their memories of Rem, they all watch and learn about Subaru's origins, traumatic experiences, and misadventures with his Return By Death ability, along with questioning their own views and relationship with him with all the hilarity, drama, tearjerking, and heartwarming moments that come with it.
  • Safe to say, the fic became so popular that many other authors are inspired to write their own Re:Zero reaction fanfics.
• In Sword Art Online: Invitation to the show, a hacker named Inviter took over the broadcast of Elsa Kanzaki's live concert to tell the world of the government-covered truth of SAO incident by broadcasting the Sword Art Online anime.
• Throne of Glass has Blessed Be the Wicked (We Were All Born Innocent) series, where the Gods answer Rowan's prayer of hoping that there's a way to stop the war without sacrificing Aelin by sending him a pile of books about her adventure, and goes to Adarlan in the past to show it to the people there, hoping that it'll be enough ripple effect to change things for the better.
• Trash of the Count's Family seems to be very popular with this type of fic in Archive of Our Own.
  • In Truth Shall Set You Free, after everything is over, God of Death decides to show Cale's friends & loved ones the truth about him to ease the burden on his shoulder.
  • In Reaction and Matchmaking Attempts, to save them from their original fate, the gods decided to show this story to the people from the original The Birth of a Hero world.
  • In an Instant has both people from the books and the original The Birth of a Hero characters suddenly appear in a fancy lounge to read the novel.
• In Commonality, a mysterious package was sent to the Cullens with a note that requested the package only to be opened when Charlie Swan, Billy Black, Harry Clearwater, and Quil Ateara, Sr are with them. It contains The Twilight Saga books, and the package sender hopes the story within shows that the opposing families have more in common with each other.
• In Meta, the story of Worm is posted on PHO by an anonymous, cryptic hacker, moments after Taylor triggered & hospitalized, effectively changing the course of canon & exposing secrets, both good and bad.

Live-Action TV

• An Unusual Gathering series features the characters from the Arrowverse to read the series to better prepare for the Crisis of Infinite Earths that will come to pass.
• Since the central conceit of The Hero of Three Faces is that characters like the Doctor can jump to "alternate fictional planes", this comes up occasionally; for instance this strip, where Missy is horrified to learn the accent she put on to mock the Doctor is Michelle Gomez's natural one.
• Watching OUAT has Henry, Emma, and characters from Storybrooke and elsewhere are sucked into portals in a locked room where the only way to get out is to watch the entire seasons of Once Upon a Time...while trying not to kill each other.
• Supernatural
  • SPN Watching the Show has Sam, Dean & Castiel find their family members in the Dean Cave, even those that already dead or should've been nowhere near it last time they heard of their whereabouts, because God wants to show the brother's life for them with the show.
  • Watching Supernatural has Sam & Dean, after went through All Along The Watchtower. receive DVDs from Chuck about their lives.

Video Games

• Noelle and Rudy play Deltarune, as one might gather from the title, is a Deltarune fanfic, in which a pair of Deltarune characters play Deltarune. As for why they're being given this opportunity... someone very interesting seems to be behind it.
• In Advanced Release, Sephiroth received a package containing the original 3 discs version of Final Fantasy VII, 3 years before his Face–Heel Turn, which turns the SOLDIERs impromptu bonding time into an investigation into Shinra's closet to prevent future disaster. Things get more difficult when other people receive different adaptations of the story, such as how Zack receives a copy of Crisis Core and young Tifa receives a copy of Final Fantasy VII: On the Way to a Smile...
• Genshin Impact has Time-capsule for the future where Lumine, Paimon, and various characters are teleported into a room by an Author Avatar to see what the future may hold for them. The story started with characters from Mondstadt, Liyue, and Inazuma, but later added more people, including those from Sumeru.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • In Kingdom Hearts: Watching Their Fate, most of the heroes are brought together by Merlin, from different points in time, to watch the original Kingdom Hearts: Sora, Kairi and Riku come from just after the end of Kingdom Hearts II, Aqua, Terra and Ventus are from the beginning of Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep and Lea, Roxas and Namine are from just after Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] (the latter two having bodies isn't explained).
  • Watching a Time of Fairytales has the cast of Kingdom Hearts III being brought together by Foreteller Ava to watch Kingdom Hearts χ.
• Movie Mode is a Minecraft: Story Mode fanfic whereas the cast is taken to a mysterious mansion, the only purpose being that they have to watch the game being played out (in which the choices are that of the author's to fit the story). While it may have some lighthearted and even funny reactions from the cast, the later chapters show that it can get a little... dark.
• OMORI has a couple of fics where the party members play the game:
  • OMORI happens post-good ending where, since Sunny's confession only left them more confused than anything, he gives them his laptop that contains the said game, claiming that "the truth" is in it.
  • OMORI.exe happens 10 years after bad ending, where Sunny's mother hand over his flash drive containing said game to Kel after encountering him at the graveyard, believing that it can only be opened by his friends.
  • A Journey Through Headspace happens post-good ending, where the game mysteriously appeared in Kel's laptop.
  • One More Time happens six months after bad ending, where Aubrey was invited by Kel & Hero to check out this mysterious game that follows Sunny...
  • In The Past Will Always Come Back To Haunt You, the party is trapped in a white room and told that they can only get out if they played the game. However, everyone learns early that Sunny has been covering Mari's album with markers and Basil took the blame.
  • Closure, Moving On, And Other Such Impossible Things is also a post-bad ending LWOS fic. However, there be little to no supernatural element, and the focus of the fic is to seek closure for Sunny's suicide.
• In the fanfic SEES Plays Persona 3 FES, the surviving members of SEES play the titular game several years after its events.
• Persona 5:
  • In Phantom Thieves Play Person 5 Royal, Ren returns to LeBlanc and reunited with the other Thieves after Strikers, only to find a box containing video games and films and a TV from an alternate reality on his room in the cafe's attic, with a note from its owner saying that said alternate reality is ending and hopefully whoever find the items can enjoy it as they do. However, one of the games is Royal...
  • In Let Us Start the Game, Akira & Makoto learn that their daughter receives a game CD from Igor and, after seeing the cover depicting The Phantom Thieves, decide that they need the rest of the team to see this as well.
  • Recollections of Your Heart has a more realistic variation. Sometime after Royal, Sumire was sent a transcript of Ren's diary, with occasional edits made by Futaba. Most of the story is about her reactions to his thoughts on the events of the game, many of them involving her, with Ren himself later finding out and reacting alongside her.
• My Arms are Blue! is a Sonic the Hedgehog fanfic where the game canon versions of Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Dr. Eggman, Amy, and Shadow watch Sonic Boom together. Hilarity Ensues as they comment on their alternate selves in the show's continuity.

Visual Novels

• The fanfic Class 78th Watches the Future is this for Danganronpa, and specifically on the cast of the first game. This results in an interesting scenario, as unknown to them, the mastermind of the Deadly Game they're in, Junko Enoshima, is also watching with them, curious to see if they'll figure out her identity and also look how people will react to each motive.
• Fate Series:
  • In the fanfic Fate/Oracle, The fifth Holy Grail War is abruptly halted by a Harbinger-bringing Entity called The Oracle to show the characters their possible futures (all three routes and all bad ends), with two side stories, one with the show viewed at the time of Fate/Zero, and the other in an alternate world where magic was exposed and has become public knowledge before the original story started.
    • Its author, Turniphater, taught their method to write their version of prospective LWOS fics that has the entire fiction's world as the audience instead of just the characters involved, using Attack on Titan as the example of how to apply it.
  • In Fate revealed, characters from both Fate/Zero & Fate/stay night ended up in a theatre showing the anime of the former.
• In the fanfic Your Turn to Live, the death game participants of Your Turn to Die open the box at the beginning, only instead of a doll head, there's a projector. This fic is interesting in that the reason they're able to watch the game's events actually makes sense in relation to canon: the people organizing the death game created multiple simulations of how the game would go, and the one loaded in the projector is the one determined to be most like how the game would've gone (i.e. the canon plot). The fic is no longer accessible.

Web Animation

• Hellaverse:
  • There are Fanfics where a powerful Sinner managed to hijack both Hell's and Earth's internet and TV signals to show the existence of hell for the latter.
    • For All Hell Breaks Loose, the sinner is Hellbent on exposing the existence of the afterlife, and broadcasting both Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss
    • in Hellish Broadcast, The sinner only broadcast Hazbin Hotel, but also managed to hijack Heaven's, and certainly doing it for their own entertainment.
  • In Reacting to Hazbin, characters from both Hazbin Hotel & Helluva Boss ended up in a theatre to see their future to "save everyone some time on some developments with less carnage and damage" - and because the Author Avatar is a Gadfly that wants to see the character's reactions.
• RWBY has a lot of MST-style fics to the point that it's a Fandom-Specific Plot and it isn't surprising as Roosterteeth is also responsible for creating DEATH BATTLE!. Most have the main characters riff on alternate universes based on other works, but there are a few that focus specifically on the show itself.
  • RWBY and JNPR Watch the Show (Spacebattles link here) is one of them, taking the characters from between the events of seasons two and three and having them view everything starting from the original trailers.
  • Two Minutes Silence is not an example of this trope. Chapters 12 and 13, where Jinn explains how the cast reached this point, very much is this trope (though with less open commentary and more introspection from the cast).
  • Describing The Series Via References puts an interesting spin on the premise by having the Team RWBY girls read the TV Tropes meme page instead of anything directly related to the show, thus giving their early Season One selves almost no context to work with.
• If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device has spawned If The Emperor Watched the Text to Speech Device. Set sometime before the Horus Heresy, his sons, the Primarchs, watch it along with him. Wild reactions to their apparent future ensue.

Webcomic

• unOrdinary has Omniscient series, where John, his friends, and some other Wellston students got trapped in a white room with a pile of books and a screen, which states that the only way to get out is to read the book provided, with a claim of it tells the story of their future.

Western Animation

• Watching Castlevania Brings the characters of Castlevania (2017) before season 1 to watch the future events of their show. The fic was discontinued.
• What Happened Here? is a react of Arcane, the Animated Adaptation of League of Legends. The hostess Mandy brings the characters of Act I (Vi, Powder, Claggor, Mylo, Vander, Benzo, Ekko, Caitlyn, Jayce, Mel, Heimmerdeinger, and Viktor) to watch the future events of their show.
  • Another one from a different author is Second Chance Where, instead of a "host" or an Author Avatar, making the characters watch future events, characters from the future (Ekko, Heimmerdeinger, Jayce, and Viktor)send an artifact that can show future events, to the past, they send it right when Vi and her siblings enter Jayce's apartment to steal) and end up changing the continuity.
• Watching Amphibia has, as the title says, characters from Amphibia watching their show, with the characters coming from different moments in season 3A. The original version featured a crossover with The Owl House since both shows take place in a Shared Universe. It would later receive a redux version after a change in writers due to the old writer losing interest.
• In A "Series"ous Revelation, Danny Phantom warns people not to carelessly even utter "I wish" as Desiree is on the loose, but the genie-ghost manages to persuade Paulina to wish that everyone can learn more about the ghost-hero, trapping the entirety of Amity Park in a theatre that plays the cartoon. As the title implied, it stripped apart the comedy filter, taking moments that were Played for Laughs and depicting them in a more serious light.
• In What The Pines Did This Summer, Dipper & Mable, their parents, some of the people in their hometown of Piedmont, and the gruncles get transported into a theatre that shows what the twins have been doing in Gravity Falls because the Author Avatar thinks that the twins deserve some recognition for saving the world from Bill.
• Reacting to The Loud House here is of the retrospective type, involving characters from The Loud House and The Casagrandes watching episodes of their own shows.
• This is extremely common in Miraculous Ladybug fanfiction, to the point of being a Fandom-Specific Plot. A lot of emphasis is usually put on how the watchers react to finding out Ladybug and Cat Noir's civilian identities, and in particular on how those two react to learning each other's identities.
  • Characters watching Miraculous Ladybug has Ms. Bustier's class suddenly dragged off the street to watch the show by an overzealous Author Avatar, with the characters loosely hailing from sometime during the future seasons of the show according to later chapters. Now a Dead Fic with the original link being dead.
  • The Right Plan has Master Fu pull this off by gaining access to episodes of the show from our universe, and using them so Marinette and Adrien can get a better perspective of the situation and more easily stop Hawk Moth, though other characters are also present to view them.
  • We're a TV Show! has Marinette's entire class along with Luka, Kagami, Marc, Her Parents, Ms. Bustier, Master Fu, and the Kwamis being teleported to a screening room by Angel (who is a real Angel by the way), to prevent Miracle Queen from happening. Originally it was supposed to end in Season 3. But is currently on Season 5.
  • Watching miraculous series has the characters taken away to a magical theatre after The Collector. Also promises to only cover Seasons 1-3.
  • In Hawk Moth's last mistake, Hawk Moth uses a spell that sends an Akuma across dimensions, akumatizing someone from the real world. But this Akumatized victim gains the power to control reality and his hatred is actually aimed at the villain, so they decide to ruin his life by exposing his identity — by showing the cartoon to people in the MLB world.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In the fan video Babs Reacts to 'Babs Seed' Song, Babs Seed watches the song about her when she used to be a bully and feels guilty about it.
  • In the fanfic Equestria Girls Watch Friendship Is Magic, the students of Canterlot High watch the events of the main series.
• The Owl House:
  • Owl House & Hexside Watches the Owl House sees an Author Avatar take characters from after "Covention"^note with the exception of Camila, who was retconned after "Yesterday's Lie" aired to have been taken from right after she decided to drive Luz to camp to watch the show for no other reason than his own amusement. At first it's just the Owl House residents, Hexside students, Principal Bump, and Camila, but more characters are added in later chapters.
  • The now-deleted fanfic What The Human Witch Did This Summer sees numerous Owl House characters (as well as some original human characters that Luz knew back at home) brought together after the first season by the Titan to learn as much information as possible about the Boiling Isles so as to stop Belos' plans for the Human Realm.
  • I'd Be Your Memory is an interesting example. It features the Hexsquad using Adrian's illusion mirror to project their memories of the Boiling Isles onto the TV in the Noceda house so Camila can learn what Luz did in the Demon Realm. While it does follow the episode-by-episode structure of this sort of fanfic, due to the nature of how the characters are watching the show, scenes where Luz, Amity, Willow, Gus, Hunter, or Vee weren't present are omitted. Some episodes are barely affected, while others have entire plots not shown.
• The She-Ra and the Princesses of Power fanfic she-ra watching the show has most of the major characters taken from near the end of season 4 (aka when the tensions between the characters reaches its highest point) to watch the show so that they can work out their issues and gain new perspectives on each other's lives.
• In The Simpsons fanfiction Must Love Ned Flanders, Naomi is transported into the Simpsons universe and believes that Ned has self-esteem issues, so she tries showing him the episodes of the show. Unfortunately, she shows him "A Star is Born Again", which gives him self-esteem issues.
• The Star vs. the Forces of Evil Fix Fic Averting The End has all the characters from just before the first episode brought together to watch the show, so they can make better decisions that would avoid the show's polarizing ending.
• Steven Universe has Progressing to the Future where somewhen after "Lion 4: Alternate Ending", Steven found a mysterious tape and a note that says that the tape would require several more audience to watch it.
• In the Total Drama Do Over chapter "Error! Sanity Not Found," the author possesses Sierra, reveals to the contestants that they're in a fanfiction, and makes them watch the canon Total Drama in order to trigger drama and existential panic in the fanfiction's contestants. The biggest surprise is Noah learning that he has a girlfriend, Emma, in the canon Ridonculous Race, which deeply upsets Abigail, his Original Character girlfriend in the fanfiction.

Canon Examples:

Film — Animated

• The Lion King 1 ½ starts with Timon and Pumbaa watching the original The Lion King in the style of Mystery Science Theater 3000. The duo fights over whether to fast-forward to the part they come in or watch from the beginning, and decide to tell their own story. At the end of the movie, other characters like Simba and Rafiki show up to watch the film, as well as several characters from other Disney Animated Canon films/franchises.

Live-Action TV

• In the Season 1 finale of The Comeback, a mockumentary-style series, Valerie gathers all her "friends" and co-workers at her home to watch the premiere of her sitcom (an edited version of the show thus far). She is absolutely horrified to discover she has been subject to Manipulative Editing that makes her look like an unlikable diva and her arch-enemy, head writer and workplace bully Paulie G, has pulled a Wounded Gazelle Gambit to look like the victim.
• My Name Is Earl has two episodes, "Our COPS Is On" and "Our Other COPS Is On", which feature the main characters on fictitious episodes of COPS. Despite how they come across in these episodes, the main characters enjoy watching themselves, hence the episode titles. Earl mainly uses them as an opportunity to check his list is complete.
• Power Rangers: Dino Thunder has an episode ("Lost and Found in Translation") where the Dino Thunder Rangers watch an episode of Bakuryuu Sentai Abaranger (presented in-universe as a Japanese adaptation of the Dino Rangers' adventures). As it was one of the sillier episodes, Conner is offended at the team being turned into a joke; but he eventually warms up to it.

Web Video

• In The Autobiography of Jane Eyre's "Binge — Ep:71", Jane attempts to comfort Mary after her breakup by discussing her own past with Rochester. Unable to do so, she decides to instead show Mary her entire vlog series from the beginning, which chronicles everything the viewer has witnessed up to this point. Mary acts as Audience Surrogate throughout the viewing, and Jane is able to reflect on what's happened to her.
• In The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, many of the characters have separately discovered and watched Lizzie and Lydia's vlogs, albeit offscreen, which causes certain plot developments:
  • Caroline at some point before or during the Netherfield arc discovers Lizzie's vlog, and tries to utilize it to make herself look good and to make Lizzie look bad in case Darcy ever discovers the videos.
  • Darcy dramatically discovers Lizzie's videos after his failed love confession in Ep: 60, and then watches them to understand why Lizzie hates him. This is what prompts him to write the letter in this adaptation.
    Darcy: It was illuminating. You called me a robot. And a newsie.
  • Lizzie finally watches all of Lydia's vlog after Wickham releases the sex tape countdown and realizes she completely misjudged her sister, bringing them to an understanding.
  • Bing finds out Lizzie's "letters to Charlotte" are actually public and while he says he hasn't watched all of them, he definitely saw enough to know he was wrong to let Jane go, prompting him to try to make amends.

Western Animation

• The Avatar: The Last Airbender episode "The Ember Island Players" is an In-Universe Recap Episode wherein the main characters watch and comment on a play that was made based on their adventures up to that point. Fittingly, the Series Finale Four-parter comes right after this episode, along with the ending of the play that the Gaang was watching being something of a Deliberate Values Dissonance Gecko Ending, especially with the Fire Lord winning.
• In Garfield and Friends, in "Mistakes Will Happen," Garfield addresses concerns that his show contains mistakes. To prove that it doesn't, he sits down with Odie and watches an episode titled "Mistake Will Happen"; the episode is filled to the brim with animation, coloring, and voice acting errors, with Garfield denying that anything shown is an error. He claims that the three errors are incredibly minor things, such as his picnic not having any mustard.
• As part of a The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius marathon called "Genius, Sheenius or Inbetweenius", the marathon ended with a version of the movie Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius with Jimmy, Carl and Sheen providing MST3K style commentary.
• The Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures episode "Mighty's Tone Poem" had the hero making four of his arch-foes watch his home movies of clips from first season episodes. As the film rolls, they make commentary on it:
  Oil Can Harry: I'd walk out of this movie on an airplane!
  Petey Pate: I've seen detergents that left a better film than this!
  The Cow: If this were any more of a dog, it'd have fleas!
• OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes: The episode "Let's Watch The Pilot" is a variant of this, with K.O., Rad, and Enid as Animated Actors on a talk show where the host suddenly forces them to riff on the cartoon's pilot episode, which they view as an Old Shame.
• Family Guy: The episode "You Can't Handle the Booth" involves the Griffins gathering in a sound booth to record a DVD Commentary track for an episode titled "New Phone, Who Dis?".

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