Sliding Scale Of Fourth Wall Hardness - Television Tropes & Idioms

I didn’t feel the need to appear before now, because I knew I’d face big shouty demands like this as soon as I broke the fourth wall. I think I might have to retcon everyone and go back to nice peaceful anonymity…

-L.O.G.'s Facebook Q&A

In fiction, Webcomics in particular, the Fourth Wall is sometimes nonexistent; sometimes it is so solid that you can lean on it. This is a sliding scale of how solid the Fourth Wall is.

From most solid/hardest, to least solid/softest (Note that promos and the like do not count for this scale):

Completely Solid Fourth Wall

This Is Reality holds sway; within the four walls of the series, there is no direct acknowledgment of the viewer. (Lampshade Hangings, some degree of Genre Savvyness, Leaning On The Fourth Wall and the like are allowed, but the Fourth Wall remains entirely intact).
Mockumentaries and the like: There are cameramen who the actors acknowledge, but This Is Reality still holds sway.

A Few Gaps, But Still Mostly Solid
^{The holes allow some things through, but not others (you talk to the audience in a soliloquy, yes, but only because the conventions of the theater say that doing so means that you're actually just thinking out loud at the audience.)}
^*

A Narrator (but not a Viewpoint Character) who speaks directly to the audience, but whom the characters do not know about; but only if the narrator's announcements amount to more than "Meanwhile", "see Issue #7", or other scene setting.
Soliloquies, Asides, and the like, as long as the audience is not directly acknowledged.
Painting The Fourth Wall sometimes goes here.
The Fourth Wall Mail Slot (where, outside of the plot, the characters respond, in character, to reader mail and/or reader content), if it is the only break in the fourth wall.
One character has full Medium Awareness, and the others write it off has him being insane.
In a video game, the characters are aware of the context of the game just enough to explain a concept of the game to the player, but do so within the context of the story. Common in Justified Tutorials.

Fully Transparent Fourth Wall

Partial Medium Awareness or No Fourth Wall; the characters sometimes directly acknowledge the mechanics of their medium and/or that this is just a show, but these acknowledgments don't actually effect the plot and/or the characters never acknowledge their fictionality.
Full No Fourth Wall.

Beyond No Fourth Wall

Mind Screws sometimes go beyond No Fourth Wall, and imply such things as the viewer being a fictional character, so this entry is for them.

No examples.

Well, maybe a brief comparison of Bob And George and One Over Zero:
- The characters of Bob And George know they're in a Web Comic, but it only sometimes directly impacts the plot, and the characters actual existence is never in question.
- In One Over Zero, Medium Awareness is the main plot, and the characters themselves acknowledge and debate their possible fictionality/nonexistance.
  - Both are examples of full No Fourth Wall, but One Over Zero clearly falls further down on this scale than Bob And George.
Maybe consider the game Eternal Darkness, wherein the game moves from a fairly solid fourth wall to none at all, actively mindscrewing the player directly by thanking them for playing the demo, adjusting the brightness and sound, lying to you about the condition of your save, cutting the video feed , and any number of other things. Or at least it did for me.
Played with in Big O, where the entire series is set on a huge stage and resets every 40 years.