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"It seems to me that neither I — nor for that matter anyone else — will be interested in the unbosomings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl."
Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl (June 20, 1942)

The most common gag that leans on the fourth wall is when the characters are associated with a movie or TV production of their own adventures. If the idea is not just laughed off, the adventurous group have Hollywood types wanting to make an adaptation of their exploits. Further fourth wall fun can be had if the production crew within the show are made to resemble the production crew of the show itself, or parodies of them.

Expect Executive Meddling, dismissing of the unrealistic issues, Flanderization of characters, and if the show does get produced, a show that bears little resemblance to the stories we're used to (possibly it creates a rival show as a Take That!). A subset of Show Within a Show. Often an excuse for Recursive Canon.

Compare the Documentary Episode and I Should Write a Book About This. Compare and contrast Direct Line to the Author, in which the book/film/show/etc. about the cast's adventures is the actual book/film/show/etc., or Literary Agent Hypothesis, for when that is stated by fans instead of creators. May overlap with Film Felons if the character is using the production as part of some other plan. May overlap with Self-Parody if the in-universe show is Played for Laughs or indulges in melodramatic excess. See also Oh, Crap, There Are Fanfics of Us! and Other Me Annoys Me for cases where the character doesn't appreciate the way he's being portrayed.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • Sailor Moon and Codename: Sailor V, the series of which is a spin-off, have this as somewhat of a Running Gag:
    • In Codename: Sailor V Minako is confronted with the Sailor V Game before becoming famous. Justified as Artemis had it made as a simulator because he had realized she learns a lot from video games. The Sailor V Game would return in the Sailor Moon manga and both anime;
    • In the Sailor Moon manga, a Sailor Soldiers franchise (somehow spun-off by the Sailor V Game) shows up statutorily, with a side story showing the existence of a cosplay shop dedicated to them.
    • Episode 21 of the first anime has Usagi (after seeing the Sailor V anime) wishing someone would make an anime of her, to which Luna replies that nobody would be interested. This episode was also a small Take That! at the fact there was supposed to be a real life Sailor V anime (or at least an OAV) but the creator was asked to expand the series into a team format and ended up creating Sailor Moon;
    • In the S season Sailor Venus, (badly) disguised as Sailor Moon, convinces Kaolinite and the Outers that Usagi is not Sailor Moon, and in the process dismisses the Cosmic Heart Compact as merchandise.
    • In the Cloverway dub version of episode 104, the Shin-chan Expy is a Sailor Moon fan who shows off his Sailor Moon underwear to Rini, which disgusts her.
  • In Haruhi Suzumiya, the characters are the one putting on the production. In this instance, however, Kyon does have a point.
  • Dragon Ball Z:
    • A Filler bit of the anime has Gohan, to his surprise, run across a movie being made about his superhero alter-ego, the Great Saiyaman. The director mistakes him for Saiyaman's stunt double, and Gohan, being Gohan, decides to go along with it. Until he realizes it's getting late and he still has to visit Krillin, so he flies off.
    • There's also the Super Sentai parody/remake (complete with rubber masks and obvious special effects) of the Cell Games shown at the Tenkaichi Budokai that year, which horrified the main characters (except for Goku, whose response was "Well, it was ridiculous and... untrue, but it kept me entertained"). Even Hercule, the one being celebrated by the movie, finds it cheesy and low budget.
  • 20th Century Boys features a supporting character who is a manga writer and often comments that the events seem like something out of one of his stories. The best comes halfway through the story, when it seems like everything's over but there are still a few unanswered questions, and he says that if the story stopped now, it would be like a manga that didn't sell well and had to rush its ending.
  • In Naruto, during the chunin exam arc, Chouji comments that Naruto could not be the main character of his own life, let alone a series.
  • When Asakura of Negima! Magister Negi Magi first confronts Negi about being a mage, she immediately proposes the scenario of Negi becoming popular enough to have his own TV series, novels, and movies. Naturally, Negi was absolutely horrified about the idea and its repercussions.
  • The start of volume 3 of Hidamari Sketch has the four girls discussing yonkoma manga, the format of their own series. They try their hand at drawing it, with varying results. In the end, Miyako says, "Nothing around here happens that would make a good manga."
  • Spider Riders: The episode "Hero Act" has the main characters viewing a play detailing the exploits of a legendary Spider Rider, only the real actors decide to quit before the next showing. So Hunter (naturally) volunteers himself and Shadow as replacements. And as one would expect Character Exaggeration and bad acting ensues.
  • In Rave Master there's a village of "manga-publishing demons", and one of them has a weekly series known as Rave Master, a story about a blond sword fighter with magical stones. It's apparently based off a true story. To the cast's despair, the characters are far from accurate (with the exception of Ruby).
  • Sgt. Frog:
    • Parodied in an episode where they try to make an anime as part of one of Keroro's plans to invade the Earth.
    • And Aki Hinata, manga editor, uses Keroro as the basis for a new series. Keroro, his mind and body reactions sped up from the rainy weather, reads one chapter...
      Keroro: WHAT THE HELL IS THIS CRAP?! This 'Baron Keroro' character is a buffoon!!!
  • In the first season of Slayers, Lina comes across a somewhat insane playwright who is producing a theatrical adaptation of her life. Given that Lina is also known as "The Dragon Spooker" and "The Natural Enemy of All That Live", she is portrayed as a terrifying monster in it.
  • In an early episode of Pokémon: The Series, Pikachu is cast to star in a movie by an Akira Kurosawa look-alike. Ash is enthused but Misty responds "Who'd want to watch a film about us?" And the kicker? The episode takes place at close to the same time as Pokémon: The First Movie.
  • In Monster, a Czech artist who has a puppet show with the premise identical to the series at large bemoans the lack of people's interest in his story, especially since he finds it to be so good.
  • In Sket Dance, a manga artist wants to make a manga based on the Sket-dan. Eventually he decides that nobody would read that and does one based on the student council instead.
  • In HeartCatch Pretty Cure!, Tsubomi and Erika find out that a fellow student is making a manga series based around them — or at the very least, them as if their hero identities were also their civilian identities. The interesting thing about this is that the girls aren't weirded out by it, they actually help him finish an issue by acting out a scene then helping him ink it and, for the rest of the series, we watch him expand it, adding Itsuki and Yuri once they take on Cure personas.
  • In the Neon Genesis Evangelion AU manga Shinji Ikari Raising Project, during a field trip to see the Humongous Mecha Jet Alone, one of the students wonders why such a thing would be used. Shinji speculates that it could be used if giant monsters attacked, but Asuka interrupts, saying that it sounds like the plot for a cheesy, pseudo-symbolist anime, with a low budget and ambiguous ending.
  • When the You and Me characters try to make a manga, Chizuru changes the genre from action-fantasy to school drama. The others get confused to why anyone would want to read such a boring concept.
  • The very first scene of the anime adaptation of Joshiraku has Tetora questioning why anyone would want an anime version of a dialogue heavy manga based on an obscure form of Japanese wordplay comedy.
  • Genshiken: In the bonus content included in Volume 6, one of the guest artist omakes is "The 121st 'Could they actually make a manga about the Genshiken?' Meeting", where Madarame, Sasahara, and Kugayama discuss whether their lives would make a good manga.

    Comic Books 
  • Spider-Man:
    • In The Amazing Spider-Man (Lee & Ditko), Spider-Man was once asked to star in a movie about himself — the offer turned out to be a trap set (somewhat ironically) by the Green Goblin, who made his debut in that issue.
    • In Ultimate Spider-Man, Spider-Man finds a movie about himself being made by none other than Sam Raimi, Avi Arad and starring Tobey Maguire. Since he is not an official entity of any kind and is not willing to reveal his secret identity, he is unable to stop the movie from going into production. The movie later becomes a hit, incorporating real life footage from the ensuing Spidey-Doctor Octopus fight, much to Peter Parker's chagrin. He ends up confronting the movie crew about this situation, but unfortunately does so utilizing his powers, mainly leaping about and sticking to things. The director simply has his crew start filming and he thanks Spidey for all the free footage he can now put, at no cost, into his film.
    • This is further touted some arcs later when it is revealed that Magnificent Bastard The Kingpin buys the company that produced the Spider-Man film and all merchandising rights. This means that every Spidey T-shirt and toy sold in the Ultimate Universe is funding the Kingpin's operations. And what is worse, Kingpin did it solely to spite Spidey.
    • In The Amazing Spider-Man (J. Michael Straczynski), Aunt May jokes about someone making a movie about Spider-Man. Eventually, they go to Los Angeles to visit Mary Jane, who is starring in a moving called "The Amazing Lobster-Man". Production is complicated by the filmmakers' debating whether the title character should be bitten by a radioactive lobster or something more important like a lobster god, and by Dr. Octopus.
  • The Fantastic Four have also had this pulled on them; the villain behind it was the Sub-Mariner.
  • She-Hulk also had this pulled on her; the villain behind it was Warlord Krang. Waitaminute...
  • The Ultimates: The team discusses who would play themselves in a film adaptation.
  • Mojo used films of the X-Men as TV shows on his world. This became a problem when Onslaught had seemingly destroyed them all.
  • Asterix:
    • In Astérix and the Cauldron, Astérix and Obélix are in need of money and discuss what to do:
      Obélix: Suppose we tell stories about our adventures? People would pay to listen!
      Astérix: I'm not much of a business man, but I have the feeling that that wouldn't work.
      Obélix: We could call it The Adventures of Obelix the Gaul and...
      Astérix: Oh, shut up.
    • In Astérix and the Roman Agent, Impedimenta yells at Vitalstatitistix: "If anyone were fool enough to write the story of our village, you can bet they wouldn't call it The Adventures of Vitalstatistix the Gaul!" This is possibly unique among examples on this page in that it is accurate. The previous pitch, where Astérix shoots down the idea for a story about Obélix, is just garden-variety Dramatic Irony like almost everything here: the main characters of the series doubting that one of them is interesting enough to carry the series. Impedimenta and Vitalstatistix, though, really are secondary characters, and apparently they realize it!
  • Disney Ducks Comic Universe:
  • Marvel Zombies 5: Wendell, the patient zero of the infection in "Earth-0000", considers filming his own Heroic Sacrifice to spare earth the possibility of a Zombie Apocalypse... and also for clout. He ultimately decides against it, thinking that everyone'll either assume it's bad CGI or accuse him of ripping off Diary of the Dead, because "that's exactly what I would say if I was reading me!"
  • Happens in the Angel sequel comics. After Los Angeles gets dragged to Hell and back, some bright spark gets the idea to do a movie based on Angel's adventures there called "Last Angel in Hell", with Nicolas Cage as Angel, which Angel and Spike go and see in the course of an adventure, and which has a Comic-Book Adaptation in our world as an Angel annual. Angel was offended by how inaccurate it was, while Spike thought it was funny how his counterpart in the movie was a woman and Angel's love interest. A man named Jeremy Johns who had personally been rescued by Spike during the crisis also protested how inaccurate the movie was.
  • In the final issues of Peter Milligan's Shade, the Changing Man after DC had decided to cancel, Lenny is describing Shade to her father.
    Lenny's father: What is he, Superman?
    Lenny: If he were, his comic would probably be canceled.
    (both look out of panel)
  • Y: The Last Man:
    • A theatre company stages a play called "The Last Man" that resembles the plot. When Yorick hears the ending, in which the last man commits suicide, he comments that it's a terrible ending. During his suicide intervention, he admits that he actually thought it was perfect and was just being his Sad Clown self.
    • Later on, the same duo who wrote the play make a comic book about a world where all of the women except one are wiped out. Yorick reads it, and his response is "Meh."
  • In the last issue of the 2004 miniseries Batman: Harley and Ivy, Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy go to Hollywood and take over a movie of the same title—at first to skim off the production budget and revenge themselves on the leading actresses (who call Harley a "dumb blonde" and endorse perfume made from endangered flowers, respectively), but then Harley takes the director's place and revamps the film to include things like a bling-covered costume for herself and a Chew Toy Batman who requires a procession of stunt doubles. At the end, she's been allowed out of Arkham for long enough to accept an Oscar.
  • A Billy & Mandy story in Cartoon Network Block Party has Grim conveniently using his scythe to find out what Nostradamus is talking about, prompting Mandy to turn to the reader and comment "Doesn't this comic have any standards?"
  • Italian stories of the Disney Mouse and Duck Comics have this as a somewhat recurring plot:
    • Most of the times someone decides to use the image of Paperinik (Donald's superhero alter-ego) to make a movie, a video-game, a reality show, or, in one occasion, a rock singer playing with (fake) martians. It almost always ends with Paperinik taking offense at something and sabotaging everything (the most epic being the rock singer, sponsored by Scrooge: Paperinik staged a fake alien invasion to force Scrooge to call everything off and refund whoever had been at one of the concerts), the exception being the movie where Donald himself played the lead role (after initially being cast as the stunt double), in which Paperinik only forced a change of script;
    • In an in-universe example of Ripped from the Headlines, one story of Paperinik New Adventures has the writer of a soap opera put the Evronians in the plot. It worked;
    • The Papernovela (a parody of South-American soap operas) had the in-universe cast blatantly based on Scrooge and family plus friends and some enemies, and played by them. One episode also had superheroes playing themselves, and another did the same with the Yeti.
  • The original comic book version of W.I.T.C.H. had its fun with this trope:
    • In a possible future the girls learn that Will is publishing a fantasy novel, However Magic, based on their adventures, with the stated intention of starting a series. She had been working on it for years;
    • In the short stories published alongside the New Power saga, Will was roped into writing the script for a musical. It was blatantly based on the Twelve Portals arc, with the actresses for the five main roles being very similar in personality to the girls (Will's actress was so like her that the girls were creeped out before asking her to do the part), and Hay Lin as the costume designer catching some flak by the rest of the staff because the outfits for the members of the Congregations were plain white tunics just as with their originals;
    • In a later story the girls find themselves on a world where they have a massive franchise (including at least one movie) and equally large fandom. And, in one of the funniest examples of Your Costume Needs Work, an Irma cosplayer doubted their identities because Civilian!Irma didn't look like her (to be fair, the cosplayer really looked like Guardian!Irma).
  • The first issue of the Pinky and the Brain comic ends with Pinky making a comic about the duo (with the same exact cover as the real issue!), to which Brain responds "Pinky, who would want to read about two lab mice trying to take over the world? Who would want to read about my failures?" (and Pinky responds "to a human our nightly exploits would be a humorous diversion that would magically transmute the workaday world into a fanciful realm of zany hijinks!")
  • The Blackhawk stories of the late 80s are set in 1947 onward, when the team is running an air charter service out of Singapore. At one point Blackhawk is dismayed to learn Milton Caniff is leaving Terry and the Pirates for another strip about... an air charter service. He can't imagine anything more boring than his business! Nobody would read about that!

    Comic Strips 
  • In the comic strip Bloom County, Opus gets a job as a cartoonist, and is pitching Milo on ideas for a comic strip:
    Opus: It stars two young boys, a guy in a wheelchair, a big-mouthed lawyer with sunglasses, a little hacker, a flightless Antarctic waterfowl, and a long-tongued, occasionally-dead Communist cat who barfs a lot.
    Milo: Needs work.
    Opus: Right.
  • About the time Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy movie came out, there was a storyline in the comic strip about Tracy getting involved with a movie being made about his life, which somebody is trying to sabotage. The saboteur turns out to be The Blank, who is mad about being left out of the film — very likely a comment on the fact that the villain of Beatty's film is The Blank In Name Only.
  • MAD has engaged in a lot of this over the years. Often coupled with quite blatant Self-Deprecation.
  • When The Hunchback of Notre Dame came out, Disney did a comic advertisement in Disney Adventures featuring the characters from Gargoyles. In it, Elisa Maza, Brooklyn, Lexington, and Broadway have just seen the film, and the Trio express displeasure with the way that gargoyles are portrayed therein, prompting them to muse that someone should make a movie or TV show that portrays their kind accurately. They laugh it off as a crazy idea, but Elisa remarks (while looking into camera, no less), "I don't know. Stranger things have happened."
  • In the third issue of Nodwick, Piffany asks Artax if he remembers the evil adventurers they defeated "about two months ago" (i.e., in #2):
    Artax: Why yes, I often mull over that tale! In fact, I wish I had it in a printed form, about 32 pages long, with pictures, clever drawings, and even a letters page. I'd buy as many copies as I could for about three silvers eachnote . They'd be a great gift for people of all ages!

    Fan Works 
  • Dragon Ball Abridged gives us the Ginyu Force's Wheel of Death. The mere concept sends Vegeta's blood pressure through the roof again.
    Vegeta: When did you have time to set this up? Is that a camera? What kind of sadistic retard watches this crap?!
    Frieza: Love this show.
  • Lampshaded by Da Chief in Death Note: The Abridged Series (kpts4tv) when he declares that watching his family on the surveillance cameras is "ridiculously boring."
  • The Cat Tales series by Chris Dee spends a great deal of time dismissing any Batman/Catwoman continuity the author dislikes as fabrication by a scurrilous tabloid or an equally irresponsible "true" crime writer named Frank Miller. But most recently, one of its spin-off series has had Batman having to protect the makers of a close facsimile of the most recent Batman movie from the Joker, and as usual footage from the resulting fight ends up in the movie.
    • The whole series starts because of the Frank Miller continuity on Catwoman, which forces Selina Kyle to defend her good name. In an off-Broadway show.
    • Catwoman even gets a chance to get even with "F. Miller" in a later story, with everyone you can think of helping out, including Wonder Woman, Black Canary, Oracle, and Batman. Not to mention Selina having a 'brainstorming' session with Joker, Two-Face, and a couple other Rogues. Hilarity Ensues.
  • In Equestria: A History Revealed, the Lemony Narrator remarks on one of the theories brought up being like "the premise of a bad fanfiction", and later remarks on her distate of fanfiction writers.
  • One chapter of Parsec's PowerPuff: Altered Destiny: Fame Over has the girls go into a dimension seemingly based on the real world where they of course find out about the TV shows based on their lives (as well as the fanfiction that usually comes with a famous property. Buttercup isn't amused). The show's creator, Craig McCracken, also turns out to be a evil mastermind bent on world domination. Yeah, wrap your head around that.
  • Weiss Reacts has the eponymous Weiss react to the fanfiction RWBY fans make and wonder why anybody would want to see her and Ruby together, among other things.
  • In Juxtapose, everyone jokingly discusses what their lives would be like as a manga series after the Sports Festival. They immediately peg Izuku as the main character.
    Ojiro: Midoriya, has anybody ever told you that you’re like some kind of shonen protagonist? I can completely imagine it, with you being on the front of a shonen manga… [everyone except Izuku bursts into laughter]
  • Us and Them: In the side-story "D-List Celebrities", Aeris' daughter Remi wonders why she keeps getting calls from TV networks wanting to do a reality show about their family.
  • Battle Fantasia Project: A number of Magical Girls has entertained the idea, with the Sailor Senshi having actually done it (Minako sang her own image songs), including a manga drawn by Naoko Takeuchi, Will Vandom (as in canon) keeping notes with the explicit purpose of doing this (as she actually did in a possible future) and the G1 of My Little Pony being based on Megan's own memories (under a false identity and a good disguise), with Friendship Is Magic being adapted by tales coming directly from the protagonists.
  • It happens in Worm/DC Universe crossover Echoes of Yesterday. After being told her life's history is probably a fictional tale in another universe, Taylor Hebert wonders: "Dear god, what sick twisted person would want to read something that dark and depressing?"
  • Springaling: When Springtrap complains about the Nightmares thinking the setting of a cartoon is their home, the Puppet asks if that's any sillier than a haunted marionette and a zombie in a rabbit suit talking philosophy.
    Springtrap: Yeah, you can't make up crap like that. And if you did, who'd read it?
    (Puppet, Springtrap, and Plushtrap turn towards the reader)

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Happened in Shanghai Knights, where Roy (Owen Wilson) tries to sell Jackie Chan's character, a Chinese cowboy named Chon Wang, on the idea of the then-new "moving pictures", even going so far as to suggest, "You could do your own stunts!" In a subversion, Chon nods and replies:
    Chon: Chon Wang, movie star? It could work.
  • In The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Sam speculates on what his and Frodo's adventures would look like in songs and tales — Frodo heartwarmingly insists that Sam and his bravery would be of as much note as him.
  • Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back uses this gag frequently.
    • When Jay and Silent Bob confront Holden over image rights for the upcoming Bluntman and Chronic movie, Holden says, "A Jay and Silent Bob movie? Who'd pay to see that?" (All three then glance silently at the camera; Jay winks, and Silent Bob grins comically.)
    • At some point, Marshall Willenholly reacts to hearing a rather asinine plot point with, "Sounds like something out of a bad movie." (All characters in the scene then again glance at the camera.)
    • At the end, while walking out of a movie theater, Alyssa (the female lead from Chasing Amy) says, "Chasing Amy? That would never work as a movie." (Amy is in fact the most critically succesful of Smith's movies)
  • Parodied in the Super Mario Bros. (1993) Movie. Anyone who stuck around for The Stinger was treated to a clip of two Japanese businessmen talking to the two "heroes" offscreen, proposing to make a video game based on their adventure. The "heroes" are then revealed to be Iggy and Spike (King Koopa's nephews), whose suggested title for the game is "The Super Koopa Cousins".
  • In the late second/early third act of Top Secret!:
    Nick Rivers: Listen to me Hillary. I'm not the first guy who fell in love with a woman that he met at a restaurant who turned out to be the daughter of a kidnapped scientist only to lose her to her childhood lover who she last saw on a deserted island who then turned out fifteen years later to be the leader of the French underground.
    Hillary Flammond: I know. It all sounds like some bad movie.
    (long pause; both look at camera)
  • Zack and Miri Make a Porno:
    Miri: No-one wants to see us fuck, Zack.
    Zack: Everybody wants to see anybody fuck!
  • In In Bruges, in a way: the protagonists meet a dwarf who's working on a film which mirrors the ending of In Bruges. He describes the film within the film as "a jumped-up Eurotrash piece of fucking bullshit."
  • Pee-wee's Big Adventure ends with a producer turning his story into a movie - an action thriller with James Brolin as "P.W.", Morgan Fairchild as his geeky girl-pal Dottie, and a high-end motorcycle as his bike. He leaves early at the premiere:
    Dottie: But Pee-Wee, don't you wanna watch the rest of the movie?
    Pee-Wee: I don't have to watch it, Dottie... I've lived it!
  • At the end of Entourage (based on the tv series of the same name), Billy Walsh proposes creating a tv show based on Vincent Chase and his entourage of friends and associate's experiences in Hollywood. Ari Gold thinks it's a terrible idea.

    Literature 
  • Adrian Mole:
    • At the end of Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction, the protagonist's wife asks him why he's starting another diary despite having just ended the previous one saying that "diaries are only for unhappy people". Adrian replies he is thinking of writing an autobiography but his wife says that other people would find him uninteresting.
    • This was inverted in Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years where Barry Kent writes a novel named Dork's Diary with a loser protagonist named "Aiden Vole". The book becomes a best selling success, much to Adrian's chagrin.
  • Arly Hanks: In Merry Wives of Maggody, a Deadpan Snarker dismisses the possibility that an inquisitive visitor might be writing a book about the town, on the grounds that nobody would want to read one.
  • As the page quote demonstrates, Anne Frank wrote that she could not imagine anyone finding much interesting to read about in The Diary of a Young Girl. Several decades after her death, this has proven not to be the case.
  • Combined with Direct Line to the Author in Jennings Goes to School:
    Jennings: [Mr Carter]'s super screwy-squared! Why, I bet you a million pounds no-one would ever want to read about chaps like us!
    Mr Carter: (overhearing) Wouldn't they? I'm not so sure...
  • In one of The Littles books, Lucy Little wrote to an author of books about giants suggesting she write a book about little people with tails. The writer likes the idea of little people, but finds the idea of them having tails silly.
  • A serious version appears in The Lord of the Rings, when Frodo and Sam spend some time discussing whether or not their adventure would make a good story in the future, and who would be people's favourite character. More importantly, they wonder if it has a happy ending.
  • This happens a lot in Sherlock Holmes, where Holmes frequently alludes to Watson's stories during his cases, e.g., wondering what his readers would think if Watson described the screw-up Holmes just committed in one of his future memoirs; or chiding Watson for "sensationalizing" cases that, to Holmes, are simply cold, dry facts to make them into exciting mystery stories. And since the Sherlock Holmes stories are Watson's memoirs, that means Watson records Holmes' suggestions or comments about his stories into his next stories, apparently for his fictional readers' amusement. Watsonception!
  • In Snuff, while talking to budding authoress Jane Gordon, Commander Vimes blurts out an idea for a book about "the relationship between the hunter and the hunted, the policeman and the mysterious killer, the lawman who must think like a criminal sometimes in order to do his job, and may be unpleasantly surprised at how good he is at such thinking, perhaps," which is pretty much what author Terry Pratchett does in the later City Watch books.

    Live-Action TV 
  • They do this in Walker, Texas Ranger, where Trivette, using another one of his Get Rich Quick Schemes, suggests they make a show about their lives as Texas Rangers. The rest of the cast wave him off; however, they do play with the idea of who would play their characters if the show was real, ironically using their actual actors' names.
  • During the first series of Big Brother Australia, the contestants had to write a song about their time in the house. The song ended up revolving around this trope.
  • Seinfeld: NBC execs are skeptical about Jerry and George's "show about nothing" idea (as was Jerry himself when George first came up with it). Which resulted in a Defictionalization of something that already really existed. Jerry and George's concept represented Seinfeld itself, but later on it became Curb Your Enthusiasm.
  • Mid-nineties Venezuelan Soap Opera Los Amores de Anita Peña (roughly "Anita Peña's Beloveds"), after an All Just a Dream revelation, spends half of its last episode with the title protagonist telling a man (the original author and main writer of the show, in a Creator Cameo) all her (dreamed) history. Later, the man is seen presenting "his" idea in a meeting with producers and executives of the TV channel which actually produced and broadcast the soap opera... and the meeting ends with the writer literally kicked out, his idea dismissed. Since this show, while very funny and based on the subversion and parody of every trope related to the Latin American take on soap operas, was not as popular as the executives wanted, it can be seen as a subtle revenge or as the awful truth.
  • The first run (2003-2006) of Arrested Development ends with Maeby pitching her story to Ron Howard, who says he doesn't "see it as a series — maybe a movie". note . Indeed, one of the main driving forces of the fourth season of the show is about Ron Howard wanting to make the said movie and hiring Michael Bluth as its producer.
  • In an episode of the lampshade-riffic Community, Abed and Troy use this virtually word-for-word with reference to their fake morning show, "Troy and Abed in the Morning." It's made doubly ironic since there's a crowd of fans watching them in the background, though they may have just been paid to do so for effect, given that it was 6am.
  • ALF: In one episode, after confessing over the phone using his "real name" Gordon Shumway, to an NBC executive about having manipulated the ratings readings of his favorite show to prevent it from being cancelled, Alf suggests the idea of making a show about "a lovable alien who crashes into Earth and lives with a human family". The exec immediately dismisses the idea claiming it's "too far-fetched".
  • Stargate SG-1:
    • The 100th and 200th episodes of deal with Wormhole X-treme, a TV series created by an alien based upon his subconscious knowledge (his memories had previously been erased) of the Stargate Program. The two Wormhole X-treme episodes are exercises in wall-to-wall Lampshade Hanging (indeed, in "200" the producer character even references that trope, though he calls it "hang[ing] a lantern on it"), taking great and obvious joy in spoofing every Stargate trope they possibly can, and laden with vast numbers of in-jokes and shout outs. Not to mention that the production crew of Wormhole X-treme is actually the crew of Stargate SG-1 too. In a statement that makes you wonder about the entire series, the US Airforce decides not to axe Wormhole X-Treme as it will give them Plausible Deniability. Anyone coming forward with details of the Stargate program or other alien encounters can be accused of having watched the show. Hmmmm....
    • Another episode, "Citizen Joe", features a barber receiving psychic flashes of Jack O'Neill's missions and writing them as short stories. He submits them to literary magazines, all of which turn the stories down. However, one can easily tell which episode he is referring to, because his titles, like "Holiday" and "Hathor" are the same as the titles of the episodes all those seasons back. At the end of the episode, the cast realizes that O'Neill has spent the past few years having psychic flashes of being a barber. When asked why he never told them, he answers, "It was relaxing."
  • In the last Blackadder the Third episode, despite being unaware of the future medium of television, Edmund nonetheless hopes that "Hundreds of years from now I want episodes from my life to be played out weekly at half past nine by some great heroic actor of the age." (To which Baldrick replies: "And I could be played by a tiny tit in a beard.")
  • In one episode of Farscape a producer of virtual reality "game blobs" uses the memories of Crichton to produce a game based upon the adventures of him and Moya's crew... leading to a rather bizarre episode that begins with Crichton being rescued from Scorpius by a minigun-toting Stark and only gets stranger from there.
  • The X-Files episode "Hollywood A.D." has "The Lazarus Bowl", an episode where a movie is being made about Mulder and Scully (and getting them very wrong). The real Tea Leoni, David Duchovny's wife, was cast as Scully. When Scully observes that Leoni seems to have a crush on Mulder, he scoffs: "Like Tea Leoni would ever be attracted to me." When discussing about who to cast as Mulder, he suggests Richard Gere. Garry Shandling was cast instead.
  • The O.C. has a long-running in-world version of their show, The Valley. They go out of their way to create similarities between the shows: The Summer character is named April, the Seth character ad-libs his lines, the Seth and Summer actors dated in "real life," until they broke up, a reality show about "The Real Valley" was created after Laguna Beach happened. Was lampshaded in the series finale, when Summer states that The Valley had been picked up for seven more seasons.
  • Boy Meets World has an episode where Eric becomes an actor on a Boy Meets Word-style sitcom. The sets from Boy Meets World are shown as actual sets, and it is explained that the classroom is made to look bigger through camera angles.
  • Hercules: The Legendary Journeys has two episodes that used this premise as a plot: "Yes Viriginia, There is a Hercules" from season 4 and "For Those of You Just Joining Us" from season 5.
  • In one episode of The Lucy Show, Lucy mistakes actor/producer Sheldon Leonard for a bank robber and sets traps for him. After the requisite hijinks and clearing-up of misunderstandings, Leonard confesses that Lucy's antics gave him an idea for a new TV show about a "kooky redheaded girl" who "gets into all sorts of impossible situations" but instantly dismisses it as too unbelievable. This was in 1967, making it a fairly old example.
  • Early Edition: Chuck tries pitching a series about a guy who gets tomorrow's newspaper with no success.
  • Star Trek:
    • The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Far Beyond the Stars" does some Fourth-Wall busting by putting Sisko through a Cuckoo Nest plot of being a black sci-fi writer in the 1950s... who comes up with a great idea about an alien space station commanded by a Black man. Of course, his editors reject the stories.
    • Star Trek: Voyager. In "Muse" a playwright on a pre-industrial world discovers B'Elanna Torres in her crashed shuttle and starts writing a play based on her logs. His muse is not amused by the blatant Shipping.
      B'Elanna: Well, you're going to have to do a lot better than Harry Kim kissing the Delaney sisters.
      Kelis: Why?
      B'Elanna: Because when you think that you are surrounded by enemies, when you're up against the Borg, or Species 8472, the last thing on your mind is romance!
  • In Corner Gas, Hank describes what Brent's life would be like if it were a TV show, causing him to respond:
    Brent: My life as a TV show? Who would want to watch that?
    Hank: ... Well, maybe if there were some really cool cameos
    Random Woman: Hi there! I'm 6-time Olympic Medallist Cindy Klassen!
    Brent: Hi, we're just kinda in the middle of something...
    Cindy: Oh...
    Hank: Good job, though!
  • In the Kamen Rider Den-O Spin-Off Imagin Anime, one episode of the second season has the Taros' cast as the staff of their own show, coming up with the idea for it while sleep deprived, bored and desperate. The short ends with a card stating "Who knew the show would still be on the air two years later?"
  • Both Married... with Children and Sanford and Son had plots in which unscrupulous TV executives stole their lives and made a sitcom out of it.
  • In Sanford and Son's case, a cousin of Rollo's creates a show about a Jewish version of Fred's life. When asked why he didn't just make it a black version, the cousin replied this trope's title as Fred turns to the camera in disbelief. Of course the Sanfords already are the "black version", of the English Steptoe and Son.
    • Then in the very next scene, they find out the show was quickly cancelled due to low ratings.
  • Supernatural:
    • It turns out that a prophet has been writing a book series about Sam and Dean (with titles the same as those of the respective episodes). It was only popular with a cult following, and got cancelled after "No Rest for the Wicked" (the book), but Chuck keeps writing since he still gets the visions. In "The Real Ghostbusters" (about a third of the way through season five), Chuck says the book series is going to be revived. Chuck vanishes before that ever happens, but his ex-girlfriend fangirl posts his stories online.
    • There's also a couple of incompetent ghost hunters who make a film including Sam and Dean, and on one occasion Sam and Dean rescue a Hollywood director from a ghost and he gets inspiration for his movie from that.
    • And again when Sam and Dean are transported to an alternate universe... where they're actors named Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles on a TV show called Supernatural.
      Dean: Why would anybody want to watch our lives?
      Sam: Well, I mean, according to the interviewer, not very many people do.
  • In That's So Raven, when Eddy gains psychic powers and one of his many friends he gained with this suggests that he gets his own show, Raven comments: "That is ridiculous! Who'd want to watch a show about a teenage psychic?" along with an Aside Glance.
  • In Flight of the Conchords, the last episode has the protagonists appearing in a musical as themselves. The real Bret and Jemaine play themselves in the show, so it's two guys playing themselves playing themselves.
  • In the NUMB3RS episode "Graphic", after Don and Charlie have returned a rare comic to its artist, said artist begins drawing them and suggests a complete comic series about an FBI agent and his Mathematician brother. Cue Don's line of "Aw, no-one would believe it."
  • A long-running plot in The L Word concerns Jenny's writing of a novel which is a thinly-disguised autobiography with very unflattering (though fairly accurate) depictions of all the other characters. It's a huge success, and gets picked up to be made into a film, which leads to a very confusing fifth season in which we see the original characters hanging out with the actresses playing the fictional versions of the characters, and also some reconstructions of the events of the first season played out with different actresses and slightly different dialogue... designed to make Jenny look good, of course.
  • Recent promos for USA Network's Psych have Shawn and Gus wrestling with this question.
  • At the end of one Murder, She Wrote episode set around a TV studio, one of the characters proposes The J.B. Fletcher Mystery Hour, a series based on the true-life adventures of a crime-solving author.
    Jessica: I don't write gunfights, car chases or bedroom scenes, so who would watch?
  • Baywatch spent an episode on this. In the end the show isn't picked up for national broadcast but does get sold to foreign markets.
  • On a notoriously anvilicious episode of Saved by the Bell, "No Hope with Dope", someone from NBC suggested producing a show about high school kids while creating an anti-drug use PSA with the gang. They all remarked that it was a bad idea. Saved by the Bell was on, of course, NBC, and, in fact, the person in the episode suggesting the idea was then NBC Entertainment president Brandon Tartikoff.
  • One episode of One Foot in the Grave has the Meldrews' cleaner writing a play about their life, which is then acted out on stage by actors suspiciously similar to the real Meldrews. Everything that happens in the play actually happened to the "real" Meldrews, including the utterly unexplained appearance of a giant, lifelike housefly, but a producer who has come to watch the show claims it's utterly unrealistic and silly, and refuses to endorse it for a "proper" theatre.
  • Black Books:
    [discussing what film to see at the cinema]
    Bernard: Whats this? "Blue Tunes — Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Minnie Driver...
    Fran: Oh, I hate her.
    Bernard: "...Grouchy Leonard Blue runs a second hand record shop with his half-wit mustachioed assistant Danny. (Manny tuts) When this zany pair team up with bitchy, neurotic neighbour Pam things are sure to be a riot of laughs". Where do they get this crap?
  • The Power Rangers: Dino Thunder episode "Lost and Found in Translation" plays with this, turning an episode of Bakuryuu Sentai Abaranger into a Japanese TV series based off of the Dino Thunder Rangers. Conner initially dislikes it because he thinks they're making fun of the Rangers, but eventually he recognizes it as different, but not bad. This was intended as a poke at the "Sentai purists" who despise Power Rangers as an embarrassment to Super Sentai; ironically, their attitude towards this episode was nearly identical to Conner's In-Universe reaction.
  • In Blossom, a friend of the family who's a producer tries to start a show based on their lives, called "Rosie". Blossom's best friend Six gets cast as the lead, causing a good bit of jealousy, but several rounds of Executive Meddling distort the show to where it eventually becomes a show about a crime-solving chimpanzee.
  • In one episode of Drake & Josh, Drake watches a TV show called Drew and Jerry (who were their friends) with Josh. The actual show had the EXACT SAME premise as the fictional one. They end up laughing at how stupid it was and saying "Who would watch this?"
  • In the beginning of an episode of Coach, the coaching staff is discussing their lives as a TV show. When Hayden asks who'd want to watch a show about Minnesota football coaches, Luther and Dauber both say they'd watch it. Hayden immediately points out they're both Minnesota football coaches.
  • Pair of Kings: King Brady and King Boomer invited the host of one of their favorite shows to the island. When complaining about the island's weirdnesses to his agent, he was asked about making a series off it and he didn't find it a good idea.
  • At the end of The Nanny episode "Frannie's Choice", Fran is shown speaking to a CBS executive explaining how her life would make a great sitcom, quoting the first few lines of the title theme. This is based on how Fran Drescher actually first pitched the idea of the show to a CBS executive.
  • Ellery Queen: In "The Adventure of the Sinister Scenario", Inspector Queen and Ellery go to Hollywood to watch the filming of movie based on one of Elley's novels that features both of them as characters. Neither is impressed with the casting.
  • UFO (1970): Played for Drama in "Mindbender". Alien crystals make Commander Straker hallucinate that he's an actor in a sci-fi television series. As he remembers being Straker but can clearly see the cameras and backstage crew around him, he naturally starts to go insane.
  • Dream On has a couple-episode plot of a movie being made of the protagonist's ex-wife's perfect husband's life. Protagonist falls in love with the woman playing his ex-wife.
  • Israeli sitcom Shemesh had a rather strange version of this: while the first season featured the occasional Breaking the Fourth Wall moment, including Lampshaded Gilligan Cuts, the second season had a dialogue between Eti, a waitress working for the eponymous protagonist, and a regular client, about they might be living in a TV series or something, but bring up this trope as a counter argument; then they come up with the answer, ‘Channel 2’, because ‘they’ll air anything’, and use a Slapstick gag taking place behind them as evidence.
  • The Borgias had an example in the episode "Banquet of the Chestnuts." The title banquet was organized by Giulia Farnese as a gambit to compromise the cardinals' morality and therefore create loyalty. It worked splendidly. Pope Alexander VI tells the chronicler to put the record away for history, but doubts future generations will actually be interested in such a thing. This actually overlaps with It Will Never Catch On, as even before this particular show, the Borgias remained infamous and popular HistoricalDomainCharacters and that specific event was one of the most mentioned.
  • Murdoch Mysteries:
    • In "The Filmed Adventures of Detective Murdoch", Murdoch is baffled by the idea of a moving picture based on his cases.
    • In "Elementary, My Dear Murdoch", Arthur Conan Doyle suggests that forensics may one day be the future of entertainment. Murdoch says the public would find it "too dull and too bloody".
  • Sherlock does this. Watson proposes writing a blog, and Sherlock says "nobody wants to read this". Watson writes the blog and it goes viral. Then at various points in the series Watson "edits" the adventures so that they're better for the blog and Sherlock dislikes the edits. Also, Sherlock gets approached by fans a lot. All of this is an excessively elaborate setup for a moment when Sherlock puts on the famous hunting cap, thinking it will make him inconspicuous. Predictably enough, it becomes his new trademark and he has to start wearing it all the dang time. Sherlock is completely baffled by this whole thing, which is a really really obtuse way of showing why he's the hero despite being well, as he puts it "I'm not a psychopath, I'm a high-functioning sociopath".
  • In one of the host segments in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode "The Slime People", the Bots pitch a TV show to Joel about a man trapped by two evil commodores on a desert island and forced to watch bad old TV shows with only a pair of mechanical friends made out of pieces of his boat for company. Joel doesn't think anyone would be interested in a show like that.
  • In an episode of Columbo, Lt. Columbo is investigating a Hollywood director for murder. The director tell Columbo he always wanted to make a detective film and suggest that Columbo's job would make an interesting film. Columbo responds that he doesn't think most people would find what he does all that interesting.
  • Lucifer (2016) has in one episode,¡Lieutenant Diablo! which has the same premise as the show, except Lucifer's character ("Diablo") is much more heroic and Chloe's character ("Detective Dancer") is a former stripper.

    Podcasts 
  • Random Assault: Many times the cast asks why anyone is even listening to the show.

    Puppet Shows 
  • The Muppet Show:
    • In the Zero Mostel episode, Statler and Waldorf watch television. They change channels, and:
      Statler: WHAT is THAT?!
      Waldorf: It looks like two ancient old guys sitting in a theatre box watching television!
      Statler: That's crazy! No one would watch junk like that!
    • In a more meta-example, in the Senor Wences episode, upon hearing Kermit's explanation on puppets (dolls being made to move about), Gonzo comments on how stupid that sounds and that he would never try it.
  • In Thunderbirds, Scott and Virgil are offered a chance to star in a movie about Martians, to which Scott replies "I guess we're not the movie star type." Despite this, they became stars in not one but two movies afterwards. (Well, technically three...)
  • In the Sesame Street 20th aniversary special, Ernie is using a video camera to record things on the street. Bert says no-one will want to see Sesame Street on television.

    Radio 
  • In Season 3 of Bleak Expectations, Pip writes his autobiography: My Life and Some or Indeed Most of the Things That Have Happened in It Up to a Certain Point by Pip Bin. The publisher likes it, but isn't sure about the title:
    Printy Bookington: Let's change it to something a bit more snappy like, er, Bleak Expectations.
    Pip Bin: Doesn't work.

    Role-Playing Games 

    Theatre 
  • Julius Caesar, act III, scene I, after killing Caesar, Cassius says: "Stoop then and wash; how many ages hence / Shall this our lofty scene be acted over, / In states unborn and accents yet unknown!"
  • The musical Avenue Q, about a recent college graduate named Princeton looking for his purpose in life while struggling through post-college poverty, ends with another recent college graduate showing up. Princeton realizes he could really teach this person something about life after college, and realizes his purpose is to take everything he's learned and put it into a Broadway show. Brian comments "Are you high?" and the kid flips him off and runs away.
  • [title of show] asks this, as the actors look over the plot of the musical they're writing, which is about "two guys writing a musical about two guys writing a musical".
  • Twelfth Night, Act III, scene iv: "If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
  • The Phantom of the Opera, where they actually conclude people would want to watch it:
    You'd never get away with all this in a play
    But if it's loudly sung and in a foreign tongue
    It's just the sort of story audiences adore
    In fact, a perfect opera
  • The Trail to Oregon! directly addresses the audience in the opening number when warning them that it's too late to change any of the characters' names and that they should probably go see a broadway musical instead.

    Video Games 
  • The epilogue to Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door shows White-Dwarf Starlet Flurrie making a triumphant return to the stage in a stage adaptation of the game's events. We see her and a Mario stand-in AKA Doopliss fighting a battle on a stage (which looks identical to every other battle in the game, all which inexplicably take place on a stage in front of an audience).
  • Guild Wars Nightfall:
    • The Player Character is invited to a play based on the plot of the first campaign, Prophecies.
    • And if you finish Nightfall, your companion Norgu (an actor and playwright) invites you to see his latest work, "Norgu's Nightfall".
  • The hero of Shining Force comes across an (extremely) short play about himself. Except this is in a neutral nation, and he's cast as a weakling. Once he saves the village, though, the play is rewritten with him as the hero.
  • In Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, in a conversation about films, Para-Medic tells Snake that in the future there will be films where you control the characters. Snake responds by expressing his disbelief.
  • Mass Effect 2 uses this for a brief gag. While passing through cities, you can hear advertisements for Citadel, a movie adaptation of the events of the first game. From the snippets we hear... it's not good.
    Actor: THEY'RE SEALING THE STATION!!!
  • Bang turns down the hermit's offer for an apprenticeship at the end of Clash at Demonhead so he can make a game based on his adventure.
  • The FarmVille-esque iOS game The Simpsons: Tapped Out begins with Homer playing on his "myPad":
    Homer: This Happy Little Elves game is so stupid! You tap and wait and tap and wait! And for what? So Pretend Town can have more Pretend Flowers and Pretend Friends! What a colossal waste of time!
  • In the third case of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies, Athena, Apollo and Klavier reenact a mock trial in a way that serves as a parody of the courtroom segments found in all Ace Attorney games. Athena and Klavier have fun with it, but Apollo doesn't understand the appeal.
  • In Muppet Monster Adventure, Robin's exploits in the game turn out to just be a dream (or maybe not). As he describes it to his Uncle Kermit and the others, Pepe the King Prawn remarks that it could be a good video game plot. Everyone then takes to the camera.
  • Two NPCs in Dragon Age: Origins have a conversation about "sublime, enlightened beings" who have invented their entire world, and they are just like "players in a play". One of them is ... not impressed.
    NPC: I got a boil the size of your nose on my big toe, and some "beings" are enjoying this? Disturbed, sick bastards if you ask me!
  • Many of Zachtronics's Programming Games feature dialog to this effect, pointing out the fairly niche appeal of their subject matter.
    Ember 2: "Hmm. This game isn't about hacking at all, is it? They took a lot of dramatic license. It's probably for the best. Way more people will enjoy a game like this as opposed to a game that would require you to put programs together... Can you even imagine?"

    Web Animation 

    Webcomics 
  • Shortpacked!:
    • Used in this strip, where Jazz and Bumblebee of the Transformers watch Pixar's Cars and complain about the silliness of a planet of vehicles without any drivers.
    • There's a followup gag strip for Cars 2 in which they also poke fun at a race of machines with two genders but a seeming 20:1 male:female ratio.
  • Done in the very first strip of Life With Kurami, combined with I Should Write a Book About This, as a means of introducing the strip's premise in a very meta way:
    Bree: Ana, I'm wanting to create a comic strip. It'll focus on your blind baby cousin, Kurami, and our big struggles as busty, plus-size women.
    Ana: That's a silly concept, Bree. Who will read a comic about THAT?
    Zane: Let's ask the readers.
  • In Sluggy Freelance, Zoe retells her friends' adventures on the radio, only changing their names slightly (Gwen instead of Gwynn, for example). Her friends are all humiliated by this, with Riff being extra-pissed that she claims he threw poop at a monkey. (He actually built a poop-hurling ballista.)
  • Gene Catlow uses it in the last two panels of this strip.
  • This strip of Brawl in the Family has taken this and manages to make it even more meta than it already is.
  • In Schlock Mercenary, the title amorph sells the image rights to make a TV show about Tagon's Toughs. No-one's too impressed to begin with; less so when it turns out they went with a kids' show where the Toughs are melonheaded cartoon characters enacting plots that have almost nothing to do with actual events. Comes back to bite them once when Schlock tries to join a circus as part of an undercover operation only to find out that the circus had amorphs who are now all out of work because none of them can compete with what his cartoon alter-ego can do.
  • In Sabrina Online, Sabrina is either oblivious to or in complete denial about the fact that her webcomic is a thinly-veiled retelling of her life.
  • The Polandball comic Art tripping has the countryballs visiting the Louvre and seeing famous works of art. The final exhibit is a Polandball comic that is immediately hated by everyone. Subverted when it turns out that they all secretly loved it.
  • All New Issues, now in indefinite hiatus, has one character become a regular reader of a blog. A friend suggests starting a blog of their own, to which he replies "Who'd want to read about us? We're pretty boring". There's a twist: the blog is about them — it's written by a common acquaintance who draws from their everyday lives, embellishing them to the point it takes them a while to recognize themselves.
  • Girl Genius: In this strip Dupree lampshades that, if someone wrote their history, it wouldn't be named after Gil.
    Dupree: You're surprised? She's outsmarted us before, right? I mean, if they write this down, they ain't gonna be calling it "Boy Genius."

    Web Videos 
  • Played for drama in Marble Hornets during Tim's "What the Hell, Hero?" rant to Jay.
    Tim: All you ever do is point your camera at every little thing that happens! How does that help anybody?
    Jay: In case something happens, I want people to know.
    Tim: Like who?! Who the hell is gonna' care?

    Western Animation 
  • The Powerpuff Girls (1998): An episode features a con-artist "director" allegedly making a movie about the girls. (The initial broadcast of this episode was suspiciously close to the release of the actual movie.)
  • Kaeloo and Stumpy discuss Stumpy's bedtime story the morning after in Let's Play Once Upon a Time, eliciting this response from Mr. Cat.
    Kaeloo: You know, Stumpy, I'm really happy you made me a superhero!
    Stumpy: I was thinking... Frog, transforms, when she gets mad... I think it'd make a pretty dope kids' show.
    Mr. Cat: (looks up from newspaper at viewer) Who in their right mind would watch crap like that?
  • Kim Possible has the season three episode "And the Molerat Will Be CGI", which was written to poke fun at a cancelled Live-Action Adaptation of the series (which ended up being reworked into "So the Drama"). Kim is surprised that anyone would want to make a movie about her and is not at all bothered when it gets cancelled by the end of the episode. The episode would become Hilarious in Hindsight over a decade later, when the series did get a live-action adaptation. And yes, the mole rat was CGI.
  • Captain Planet and the Planeteers: In the episode called "Who's Running the Show?", Ted Turner (playing himself) proposes making a series about the central pollution-fighting hero team. Wheeler replies, "It has a nice ring to it."
  • Codename: Kids Next Door offers a variant: "Cable TV" sees a guy giving the KND a TV show, which turns out be a saccharine Variety Show. They end up having to stop the guy from turning everyone into children (long story) using his de-aging device and their satellite network — he offered the KND a show to get access to the satellites.
  • In ReBoot, they had a group called the Mainframe Strolling Players, who would re-enact moments of the series as "True Stories of Mainframe". A Running Gag that averted the general use of this trope, but done most memorably at the end of the third season with a musical recap of the season that parodied "Theatre/The Major General Song" from The Pirates of Penzance.
  • In Men in Black: The Series, an episode ends with the Worm characters shown to have gone to Hollywood to make a movie called Men In Black. The clip of it has a Jay and Kay made to resemble more their movie counterparts. Unlike the real movie, though, the Worms themselves took a lead role...
    K: We'll neuralize the town. Won't be the first time.
    J: So that's why they keep making the same movie!
  • Done twice in Jackie Chan Adventures, both involving Jade pitching the idea of a show based on her uncle's kung-fu hijinks. Jackie however doesn't want to be a Hollywood star (a contrast to the real Jackie Chan) and in the end things happen that stall any talk of a show.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender: "The Ember Island Players" has the main characters viewing a play detailing their exploits up to that point, as based on the accounts of "singing nomads, pirates, prisoners of war, and a surprisingly knowledgeable merchant of cabbage". Their displeasure begins with their own Character Exaggeration:
    1. Aang as a Woman (actually a small woman playing a boy a la Peter Pan — and in a case of life imitating art, a woman did many of Aang's stunts in the live-action movie);
    2. Katara as a much older (and chubbier) melodramatic ham;
    3. Sokka as an idiot only concerned with food; Sokka's only offended that his punchlines aren't more varied.
    4. some obvious Ho Yay;
    5. and putting Zuko's scar on the wrong side of his face, along with an obsession with Honor... well more than the real thing.
    6. As for the playwright's shipping habits, Zutara makes The Hero cry and the characters in question cringe. Hilarity Ensues. And so do grief and regret.
    7. However, Toph, being such a Tomboy, was completely fine with being portrayed as a huge hulking man. Which was also a minor Development Gag, since "huge hulking man" was the original plan for Toph. (The character design was reused as The Boulder, a No Celebrities Were Harmed version of professional wrestler The Rock.)
  • Darkwing Duck episode "Kung Fooled" ends with Darkwing discussing an offer he received to do a thirty-minute martial arts instructional home video, to which Gosalyn responds: "Who would wanna watch you for a half an hour?"
  • One episode of the extremely creepy stop-motion comedy What It's Like Being Alone has the character Aldous having nightmares that she was a stop-motion animated doll. We also got a shot of who was "behind" the fourth wall: puppeteers in black top hats, with monocles and long cigarette-holders, cackling maniacally.
  • The Life and Times of Juniper Lee: Juniper Lee gets cast for a TV show about herself fighting monsters in "Star Quality".
  • Alias the Jester had a tongue-in-cheek version in which robbers pose as a documentary film crew to get access to the castle. Almost too late, the time-traveller protagonist realises what's been bothering him all episode: this is the Middle Ages, so film hasn't been invented yet!
  • Batman Beyond: In "Out of the Past", Terry takes Bruce to watch Batman the Musical. He is not amused, not least because it more resembles the '60s TV show than his own life.
    Bruce: (deadpan) You hate me, don't you.
    Terry: Come on, lighten up, it's your birthday.
    Bruce: Don't remind me.
    Terry: Hey, it took me weeks to get tickets to this show. It's shway!
    Bruce: It's shw-arbage.
  • A particularly recursive example: The Real Ghostbusters has an episode called "Take Two", in which the first Ghostbusters movie is supposedly being made. Points that were altered in the animated series are lampshaded as "inaccuracies" in a fictionalized account of the main characters' adventures. The broadcast version even used actual clips from the film to represent the movie, although these were later cut for syndication.
    Peter Venkman: That guy [Bill Murray] doesn't look a thing like me.
  • Arthur
    • In the episode "The Making of Arthur", an animalized version of Matt Damon comes to Elwood City after a video contest, which Arthur loses. Interested in Arthur's life, he has an idea for a new show. Cue the theme song.
    • "Buster's Growing Grudge" used this literally, with Buster and Binky speculating that their comedy skills could get them their own TV show:
    Buster: You and me and Arthur...
    Binky: Us maybe. But I don't know about Arthur. Who'd want to watch him on TV?
  • In the Code Lyoko episode "Contact", Odd offers to Sissi a role in his next film, which is about "... a girl, driven by a mysterious being, who tries to make contact with humans, all of which takes place in a virtual universe full of danger." (which is what just happened in the episode). Sissi's response: "No-one would ever believe such a ridiculous story."
  • CatDog once did a gag revolving around the popularity of its characters. One character is told that no-one likes him. Cut to some (live-action) children watching the show saying "We do!".
  • Subverted; The Drinky Crow Show has the characters inventing theatre (it's that kind of show) after realizing that Drinky's story of losing his girlfriend is captivating, in a tragic way. The local townspeople LOVE it.
  • The Simpsons have flirted with this at various times.
    • Either the family gets famous ("A Simpson on a tee-shirt? I never thought I'd see the day") or the Simpsons is symbolized by Itchy and Scratchy ("What? Cartoons don't have any meaning. It's just stuff that happens, like people getting hurt and stuff. Stuff like that. OUCH!")
    • To say nothing of the many potshots taken at Fox.
    • The Movie: "I can't believe we're paying to see something we get on TV for free! If you ask me, everybody in this theater is a giant sucker! Especially you!"
  • A gag in Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi features the girls sitting down for a rest after a long day of trying to please an unseen producer who wanted to change their cartoon in verious ways. They turn on the TV and see their live-action counterparts sitting with their animated manager. The girls wonder who those two women are, and who would want to watch a show with them in it.
  • "Someday maybe I'll have my own TV show like Edgar Eagle. We'll call it Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog!"
  • Pinky and the Brain:
    Brain: Pinky, who would want to read about two lab mice trying to take over the world? Who would want to read about my failures?
    Pinky: Oh, believe me, Brain, to a human, our nightly exploits would be a humorous diversion that would magically transmute the dreary workaday world into a fanciful realm of zany hijinks!
    • In another episode, Brain is trying to take over the world with a new TV pilot. At the end, their main rivals end up with the job (thanks to finding Brain's hypnotizing dentures), and create a show about two lab mice trying to take over the world.
    • In the final episode, "Star Warners", the title characters are re-imagined as robots in a parody of Star Wars. When the Once an Episode "Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering?" gag comes up, Pinky replies "I think so, Brain, but a show about two talking lab mice? It'll never get on the air!"
  • Johnny Test
    • After watching a cartoon he couldn't stand, Johnny asks the question, "A cartoon about a boy, his dog, and his genius older twins? Who would watch that?" Then he and Dukey look at the screen.
    • Johnny mocks the idea of "a show about a kid whose sisters do weird experiments on him."
  • Time Squad: The episode, "Child's Play" had Shakespeare create children's plays. While looking for a new idea, the Time Squad introduce themselves, with Shakespeare replying that, while the premise isn't exactly new, the characters are interesting. His plays end up being ruined by Larry (who acts as a Moral Guardian) and Shakespeare's agent wanting the plays to be merchandise-driven.
  • Episode 19 of Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated has the Rodney Dangerfield-like producer of a reality show muse about the potential of a show about meddling kids and their dog trapping knuckleheads in rubber masks; the gang's response is to laugh and say "Naaahhhh!!!" in unison after which the man says that nobody in their right minds would want to see that.
  • A blink and you'll miss it example in Danny Phantom, where Danny, after his identity is exposed, finds that a comic about his exploits has already been released. He complains about how no one asked for his approval.
  • In the The Amazing World of Gumball episode "The Tape", the title character introduces his classmates to the tape he's making, saying "And introducing all my other friends in 'The Amazing World of—'. Forget it, who's gonna watch that?"
  • A sorta-kinda example in an episode of Rocko's Modern Life; After Peaches fails to bring Heffer to Heck, he is punished by being forced to star in a show called "Peaches' Modern Life". Rocko, Heffer and Filbert watch the program and mention how lousy it is.
  • This was actually used in a 1963 Krazy Kat animated series. Kokonino Kounty is bankrupt and characters start throwing suggestions on how to gain money. Ignatz suggest that they sell themselves to television. Officer Pup laughs it out, only for Ignatz to throw a brick at him and say "Go ahead and laugh! They laughed at Al Brodaxnote , too!"
  • At the end of the Mr. Magoo short "When Magoo Flew", Magoo remarks that there was no cartoon with the movie he was watching (actually an airplane flight).
    Magoo: Do you ever run those cartoons about that ridiculous, little, nearsighted old man? You know the one that goes... [performs his trademark grumble]
  • A Christmas Episode of South Park had the boys attempt to get people to remember the Christmas spirit (commercialism) by making a video Christmas card... the exact same one that in real life featured the boys in their first appearance. When it winds up being successful, the mayor asks if they're interested in her funding them to make an ongoing TV series. They have absolutely no interest in doing so.
  • The narrator on Danger Mouse would often kvetch about why we would bother to watch the show.
    • In "All Fall Down," Mac the Spoon (brother of the episode's villain) asks who the viewers DM was talking about are. Penfold names four.
  • Miraculous Ladybug episode "Animaestro" is centered around the premier of a Ladybug & Cat Noir movie (Apparently made in the same style as the original preview). Upon being told that it's an animated feature, not live-action (And not staring the actual heroes), a doorman for premier remarks that no one would want to see Ladybug and Cat Noir as cartoon characters.

What a mess. Who'd want to read this page?

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