The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You / Western Animation

• Amphibia: In a collection of Twitter posts made by show creator Matt Braly, some of the voice actors of the show were recorded in-character asking viewers to not watch the leaked season finale of the show until it airs proper. Some of them are sweet and polite, as per the norm for their characters. But some like Grime and Maddie threaten the audience with experiences like sending them to the pain room and being turned into a turnip if they do.
• Animaniacs (2020) has two examples. Both in retaliation to the creators abusing the Warners.
  • One short has the Warners being forced into a cartoon's plot by the haughty conductor of the show's score and made to move along to his music. They get their revenge after phasing out of the screen and taking over the orchestra with dozens of clones of themselves. After rocketing him inside of the screen, they force him into a cartoon using the same conducting power he used on them.
  • In a short parodying Duck Amuck, after getting toyed with by the animator, Yakko flips the script on it's head and grabs the stylus she uses in order to drag her in the cartoon with him. With the tables turned, the animator pleads for Yakko to spare her. Naturally, Yakko obliges on the conditions that she use her Author Powers to mess with his adversaries.
• Archie's Weird Mysteries: In one of the time travel arc episodes called "Teen out of Time", Vinnie Wells terrorizes the Chock'lit Shoppe customers (including Betty, Veronica, and Jughead), with them staying inside. When explaining what happened to Archie, he looks directly to the viewers meaning that he's going to terrorize them as well.
• Courage the Cowardly Dog: In the final episode, "Perfect", Courage's Nightmare Sequence begins with a blue, deformed creature, confirmed to be Eustace's bugle, floating over to the screen and whispering to him (And the viewer), "You're not perfect". No wonder the poor dog woke up screaming in terror. Not only was Courage scared, but the creature also became very infamous for scaring multitudes of viewers, since he came out of nowhere without warning.
• The narrator in Danger Mouse was sometimes affected by whatever Evil Plan was afoot. When Baron Greenback interfered with the world's transmissions, the narrator kept talking over the end credits, saying he was probably going to be cut off soon. He was.
  • In "Play it Again, Wufgang", with all the music of the world destroyed, we're treated to DM, Col. K and Penfold's a cappella rendition of the theme song over the end credits.
  • "The Good, The Bad And The Motionless" has DM telling the football supporter (who showed up after DM mentioned it) that whatever he says appears. The supporter knows it, but DM glances to the camera and tells him "but they [the viewers] don't." The supporter suddenly becomes aware.
• Darkwing Duck:
  • One episode had Gosalyn somehow create evil clones of herself with Personality Powers, who are eventually captured and trapped somewhere. The villain, who had helped with the capture, warns the protagonists that the evil clones could come back if they wanted; all they'd need was a particular device. The screen fades to black, and then the clones appear onscreen, the leader saying "Hey, kid... we need you to get something for us." All three of them suddenly lean forward, giggling "Pretty pleeeaaase?" The device in question is a particle accelerator, which becomes doubly funny when you get older and realize that CRTs, found in every television set in the world back then, are particle accelerators.
  • NegaDuck once threatens a news reporter by crawling through the TV he's displayed on into the studio.
  • Megavolt develops a device that allows him to physically reach out of a TV screen and interact with the environment immediately in front of it. This allows him to steal stuff where people least expect it, such as an electronics store where multiple copies of him reach out of a TV screen each and snatch a TV placed immediately above it.
• Dave the Barbarian has The Dark Lord Chuckles, the Silly Piggy; in one episode, he kidnaps the narrator and use him to control the story. It would have worked, too, if the narrator didn't lose his voice near the start of the second act, prompting Dave and the crew to find another narrator that would help them defeat Chuckles.
• In the DC Super Hero Girls 2019 episode "Meet The Cheetah", Barbi who uses a face that resembles the cheetah after washing her hands laughs evilly as she looks directly to the screen at the end of the episode.
• Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood: Done at the end of every episode where the titular character lurches at the camera to hug the viewer. Eesh...
  • Not to mention at the beginning in one episode where Daniel holds out a tongue depressor at the camera which made a kid think that he's gonna stab you. How medical.
• Speaking of medical, at the beginning of Team Umizoomi "Dr. Bot" where the titular character turns in front of the camera and shines a mirror headband thingy at the viewer to blind you while staring at you. Welp, have fun trying to get that imagery outta your head...
• The 1996 television series of Dennis the Menace and Gnasher featured an episode including a side-story about a game of tag getting out of hand and affecting adults. The episode ends with Dennis becoming 'It' once again, immediately before tapping the fourth wall and saying, "Tag, you're it! Catch me next time, if you can."
• In an episode of Earthworm Jim, Psycrow and Professor Monkey for a Head capture Jim by pointing a gun at the narrator and making him read out, "After Psycrow and Professor Monkey for a Head had captured Jim..."
• The Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends episode "The Trouble With Scribbles" has Bloo and the only Scribble left blow raspberries at each other again and again, until Bloo shoves his face directly into the camera facing the viewers and blows a big raspberry.
• The Futurama episode "Fear of a Bot Planet" has a movie within a show where robots are the heroes and humans are the villains. The ending has the robot general saying, "Even now humans are lurking in our playgrounds, our breezeways, perhaps even...our movie theaters!" Every robot in the theater gasps, with Fry (disguised as a robot) shouting, "God help us!"
• The Garbage Pail Kids Cartoon made use of this trope a couple of times.
  • One of the "Would We Lie to You?" segments informed the audience that their hand would turn green if they changed the channel to watch any other show. We then see a man's hand spray-painted green by a hand from inside the TV set.
  • A Parody Commercial for the Automatic Tattler, a robot that tattles on children when they misbehave, ends with the Automatic Tattler telling on the audience for watching the cartoon.
    Automatic Tattler: Mrs. Johnson, they're watching Garbage Pail Kids!
• Gravity Falls:
  • In the episode "Little Gift Shop of Horrors", Stan tells the viewer three stories in an attempt to coerce them into buying something from him. After the third story the viewer still won't buy anything, so he offers them a "potion" that puts them to sleep, and the episode ends with him having turned them into an exhibit at the Mystery Shack.
  • When Bill is released from his dimension and performs a Hostile Show Takeover, the backwards whisper Couch Gag is him telling the audience "I'm watching you nerds!", while the second part has him whisper "I'M WATCHING YOU!" more angrily.
  • Before Weirdmageddon begins, after Bill is released, we get a shot of his eye real close to the camera as he rambles, making it seem like he's staring at the audience.
  • The "Between the Pines" special has Time Baby imprisoning Alex Hirsch in a room and forcing him to disclose facts about the show.
  • The very last shot of the Grand Finale features live-action footage of a statue of Bill in some woods. This ended up being the setup for a real life scavenger hunt for Bill's statue that the show's creator arranged about a half-a-year later.
• One episode of The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy ends with Nergal deciding to make people be his friends by using his magic powers to turn everybody into Nerglings after Grim tells him that Billy and Mandy forced him to be their friend. At the very, very end of the episode, as they all go into the earth's core, he rises in front of the screen, says "And you... you will be my closest, most bestest friend of all", and transforms the viewer.
  • Every episode has this to some degree after the theme song, when Mandy turns to the audience to say something threatening.
• Justice League: "Wild Cards" is presented (sans opening and ending) as a real-life television program hijacked by the Joker, who has planted a number of bombs on the Las Vegas Strip and will detonate them unless the Justice League can stop him and his Royal Flush Gang henchmen. It's then revealed this is a Batman Gambit designed to trick as many people as possible into watching, because one of the Gang is a telepath whose gaze — even through the screen — can drive people insane. While the Joker explains all of this to you and his corny TV music ends to be replaced by ominous chords, her eyes are still staring at you from the top of the screen.
• Looney Tunes, being Born in the Theatre, occasionally involves gags with the audience. See that trope for details.
  • However, they do manage to invert this trope in one of their cartoons: Bugs Bunny, having just been captured by Gossamer (the large red monster with tennis shoes) points out the audience to Gossamer, who shouts "PEOPLE!" and dashes through the walls, leaving imprints of itself behind. So, the fourth wall will not protect the monster from the audience.
  • There was another short, The Case of the Stuttering Pig, that has a similar gag. The villain boasts at at least two points that the audience is powerless to stop him from doing away with Porky and his relatives, especially "you in the third row, you big cream puff!" Inverted, however, when "the guy in the third row" saves the pigs at the climax by throwing a chair at the villain.
  • Yosemite Sam does this in Rabbit Every Monday where he threatened a silhouetted audience member at gunpoint into returning to his seat when he tried to exit. Ol' Sam even threatened to shoot anyone in the audience who tries to warn Bugs about him, he even at one point straight up looked directly at the camera while making that warning.
  • In "Hare Tonic," Bugs convinces Elmer he's come down with the dread disease "rabbititis," which causes the infected to turn into rabbits. At the end, he scares off Elmer by convincing him that some of the people out in the audience look like they're turning into rabbits. He then assures us that we certainly don't have rabbititis. Why, if we did, we'd be seeing spots in front of our eyes... and they'd start swirling around... and then, suddenly, everything would go black!
• It was common in the early days of film projection for hairs to get caught in the projector's shutter and dance annoyingly across the screen until they either worked themselves out or an annoyed projectionist stopped the film and removed them. Tex Avery's "Magical Maestro" played with this, animating a hair onto the picture, annoying the audience until the main character, the opera singer, grabbed the hair and disposed of it.
• The 2013 Mickey Mouse short Get a Horse! has Mickey literally being knocked out of the movie screen and into the theater by Pete. This cartoon then inverts this trope with Mickey then controlling the screen itself and thus the action onscreen to defeat Pete.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • in the episode "One Bad Apple", during a music sequence a gigantic Babs Seed shows up on a movie theater screen, then steps out of the screen to attack Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo. Although, being part of a music sequence, it probably doesn't have to be taken too seriously.
  • In the end of the episode "School Raze Part 2", Cozy Glow tells Tirek "Hey neighbor. Wanna be friends?" while sporting a Slasher Smile and looking at the camera, almost as if she's speaking to the audience.
• The Narrator of The Powerpuff Girls (1998) is commonly shown to be affected by the happenings in the series.
  • In "Monkey See, Doggy Do", where Mojo Jojo turns the world's population into dogs, Mojo turns the effect on the Narrator about halfway through.
  • In "Gesundfight", he ends up getting sick just like everyone else does, and is seemingly the only one who doesn't get cured by the end of the episode.
  • Also, a body-switching episode ended with everyone back to normal... except that Bubbles and the Narrator somehow ended up switched.
  • In "Insect Inside", when Roach Coach's army of cockroaches infests Townsville, the Narrator squirms as the critters find their way into the recording booth.
  • Not to mention the episode where Mojo kidnapped the Narrator, took over, and made the Powerpuffs commit crimes ("Simian Says," also done in the comic book story "See You Later, Narrator").
  • And once more in "Tough Love", wherein HIM manages to turn everyone in Townsville, including the Narrator, against the girls.
• Rocky and Bullwinkle was prone to this, notably in the "Banana Formula" story arc, where government agents bound and gag Rocky, Bullwinkle and the narrator. Fearless Leader does the narrator's job at episode's end:
  Fearless Leader: Be with us next time for "The Villains' Victory Dance" or "The Jig Is Up"!
  • The only reason they even bothered to release the narrator was due to the fact that without him, the plot couldn't advance.
  • The Bungling Brothers story arc had Rocky and Bullwinkle tied to stakes and about to be done in by Indians with bows and arrows. The narrator cracks "don't miss our next arrowing episode", after which he goes into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. Rocky and Bullwinkle are irritated:
    Bullwinkle: (to narrator) Come on! It's the end of the episode!
    Rocky: Oh, brother...
    Bullwinkle: The next episode is "The Flaming Arrow..."
    Rocky: ...or "Bullwinkle Meets His Match"!
  • Then we have the Goof Gas Attack arc, where one episode ends with Boris using the titular gas on the narrator to keep him from saying where they were going to use their goof gas next.
    Boris: (after gassing the narrator) You were saying?
    Narrator: Duh, gee whiz! I can't remember! Dehh, be with us next time for...durr, be with us Next Time anyway! Gee...!
• The Simpsons
  • In "Bye Bye, Nerdie", Francine, a bully who preys on geeks and nerds lunges at the viewer right before the show fades to black.
  • Also in the "Treehouse of Horror VI" segment 'Attack of the 50ft Eyesores,' Kent Brockman is reporting on the advertising menace, and states that the next time you see a commercial, it could kill you and your entire family. Homer then appears and says "we'll be right back." Then there's a commercial break!
  • Subverted at the end of part one of "Who Shot Mr. Burns?". Dr. Hibbert chuckles and says "Well, I couldn't possibly solve this mystery. Can you?" He points to the camera, seemingly at the audience, only for the camera to pull out to reveal he's pointing at Chief Wiggum, who says "Yeah, I'll give it a shot. I mean, it's my job, right?"
• SpongeBob SquarePants
  • "Valentine's Day" has a completely horrified SpongeBob bracing for the inevitable from a furious Patrick, who shows a beyond-terrifying Nightmare Face directly at the camera, almost as if he's threatening the audience.
  • The title character's driving is so bad that the episode "No Free Rides" had him run over the narrator.
  • "Whirly Brains" has a Jump Scare ending where Squidward runs up to the camera, shouting that Martians are coming and you're next.
  • "Krabby Patty Creature Feature" has Sandy develop new orange Krabby Patties that cause whoever eats them to transform into Krabby Patty zombies. The episode ends with Patrick, the only one still not cured of being a zombie, offering a piece of himself to the viewer as the episode irises out.
• The third season of Tales from the Cryptkeeper would often end episodes with the Crypt Keeper warning the audience by threatening "Creep out of trouble, because I'll be watching!"
• The Family Guy episode "Don't Make Me Over" concludes with Brian angrily chastizing, then barking at the audience for "assuming" he's racist for turning off Live at the Apollo.
• In Transformers: Prime, the Chaos Bringer Unicron makes an Early-Bird Cameo. He doesn't do much, but he's staring straight at you. Sweet dreams.
  • Just about any time he's not looking at characters in the show, he's staring directly at the audience. Considering that Unicron consumes worlds, it's likely he can see ours.
  • An amusing in-universe version occurs in "Patch": While Megatron is judging Starscream from his memories and actions against Megatron, Knock Out is monitoring them on a viewscreen. When Knock Out is brought up as an accessory to Starscream, Megatron delivers a Death Glare at him through the viewscreen.
• In Beast Wars at the end of the second season finale Megatron on the orders from the Original Megatron fires on the Original Optimus Prime at point blank with everything he has. As one of the most overly ham-tastic speeches ever is given, his camera angle and steadily magnifying mugshot make him look like he is also talking to the audience itself, giving the impression that even they are not safe from what he had just done.
  Megatron: The Autobots lose, evil TRIUMPHS, and you... YOU NO LONGER EXIST!
• The first season finale of Young Justice (2010) reveals that the Trigger Phrase to activate the mole is "Broken Arrow", which puts Red Arrow into a trance where his handler can retrieve information and plant subconscious instructions. This phrase also works on the audience: After it was uttered, the show cut to a commercial and returned after the counter-command was given, leaving the audience unaware of what had transpired, and ignorant even of the fact that anything had happened at all.
• Whenever the nameless monster in the Samurai Jack episode "Jack and The Haunted House" is on screen, the animation switches from its outline-free style to sketchy black-and-white line drawings while the soundtrack devolves into static, implying that this thing is so powerful it's overpowering not only the hand-drawn characters and the soundtrack, but your television.
• In the Tom and Jerry episode "Pecos Pest", Jerry is visited by his guitar-playing Uncle Pecos whom, every time a string snaps at his guitar, hunts down Tom in increasingly violent ways to steal one of his whiskers as a replacement. At the end of the episode, Tom and Jerry are watching Uncle Pecos play a concert on TV only for one his strings to snap again. Tom goes up to the TV and cracks up laughing, only for Uncle Pecos to reach his arm out of the TV screen to yank off Tom's last whisker. Tom is utterly bewildered.
• What's New, Scooby-Doo?: In "Roller Ghoster Ride", Terry (in her costume disguise) directly eats the screen as it zooms.
• In-Universe example for What If…? (2021): In "What If… Ultron Won?", Infinity Ultron becomes aware of the Watcher as he narrates what's supposed to be the end of his story, only for Ultron to hear his voice and see him, terrifying the Watcher. It gets worse when Ultron manages to break-in and enter the Void between Worlds.

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