History Main / MediumAwareness

* The ''{{Franchise/Buildingverse}}'' in general. It's a 'verse of {{Meta Fic}}s with questionable fourth wall hardness. Main characters begin at the level of MetaGuy and {{Fourth Wall Observer}}s are not rare either (verse native charcters might go lower, but it's hard to keep insisting on being real after your [[WithFriendsLikeThese friends]] showed you your movie/book/etc.). For direct examples: James fixing his and Javet's speechbubble icons (''{{Webcomic/Roommates}}''), Sarah complainng about the story going on for [P]ages (''Webcomic/GirlsNextDoor'') etc..

** Or the episode where ''{{Dragnet}}''-like agents are trying to keep Rocky and Bullwinkle from spilling the beans, and so they gag our heroes. Then, when the off-screen narrator starts the episode wrap-up, the agents hear it and gag the narrator too. The rest of the episode has nothing but "mmm mmmp mmmn" sounds from the gagged narrator.

* In {{Lano and Woodley}}'s ''The Island'' the characters frequently talk to the audience, reference the theatre and city they're in, and discuss which props on stage are part of the island reality and which are not. It's arguably a show about two comedians doing a show about being on an island.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb'' episode "Voyage to the Bottom of Buford", [[NameAndName the eponymous characters]] have already got a submarine built and ready to use, prompting this conversation:

** Additionally the characters in ''Spamalot'' seem to be well aware that they are in a musical, most notably when the Lady of the Lake proceeds to bitch about her lack of involvement in Act 2 in the song 'The Diva's Lament'

->'''Abed:''' Uh oh, I feel a bottle episode coming on.

'''Abed:''' Uh oh, I feel a bottle episode coming on.

--->'''Abed:''' Uh oh, I feel a bottle episode coming on.

** [[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/TheBigBangTheory?from=Main.TheBigBangTheory Sheldon and Leonard]] are [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxWMCAU0s80 also puzzled about]] the TBS logo.

* In newer episodes, Adam Savage will have one-sided conversations with the ''MythBusters'' editors, asking them to replay a clip or put two scenes together in split-screen.

[[quoteright:250:[[{{Deadpool}} http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/DeadpoolFourthWall.jpg]]]]

* One of AndyKaufman's stand-up bits involved his writer and friend Bob Zmuda sitting in the audience and [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0a5cMX-0Pg heckling him]] by (among other things) saying the punchlines to his jokes before he does. Then they get into an argument, and Zmuda's character calls Kaufman out on the fact that he's a plant and the whole thing is scripted.

* Whether Galileo is aware of being in a Musical or not during ''WeWillRockYou'' remains open for debate, that his band knows that they're in a musical is established when they tell the BigBad that they've in fact been in the wings for the whole show.

* In ''{{Saiyuki}}'' the characters occasionally comment during some of the comic relief on things like Sanzo's fan coming out of [[{{Hammerspace}} nowhere]], the fact that they can't prove to the reader that Kanzeon is really a hermaphrodite as the rating isn't that high and Gojyo wonders why [[MrExposition Hakkai]] has launched into the recap of what the sutras are and they're significance is while they are surrounded by murderous yokai.

* Played with in ''FanFic/AkatsukiKittenPhoenixCorporationOverhaul'', where literally ''every'' major character is aware that they are in a fanfiction, though only two of the canon characters can actually hear through the fourth wall. Of the thirteen [[OriginalCharacter OCs]] introduced so far, eleven work directly for the author, and one showed up for only a single chapter. The last is the girl that should be the main character, and is functionally TheOnlySaneMan for the entire story.

* In the "Society for Putting Things on top of Other Things" sketch in ''Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus'', the characters are aware when the recording medium changes from video (inside the building) to film (any shots taken from outside):

-->'''2nd Policeman''': Namely, simply ending every bleeding sketch by having a policeman come in and.. wait a moment.
-->'''3rd Policeman''': Hold it!
-->'''2nd Policeman''': It's a fair cop!
-->(''The hand of a 4th policeman then enters frame to seize the 3rd policeman by the shoulder.'')

-->"Sorry about this. Normally we try and avoid these little pauses. ''Longeurs''. Only dramatically he's gone down to the basement, you see. 'Course, there isn't really a basement, but he just goes off and we pretend. Actually what happens is he just goes off there, off camera, and just waits there so it looks as though he's gone down to the basement. Actually, I think he's rather overdoing it. Ah!"\\

* ''{{Spamalot}}'' features The Lady of the Lake, who co-sings "The Song That Goes Like This" with Galahad and has "Diva's Lament" as a solo. Her awareness of the 4th Wall actually leads to the plot resolution: [[spoiler:The Grail is under an audience member's seat.]] (Sir Robin, on the other hand, is GenreSavvy about musicals, but doesn't realize he's in one.)

* While characters in ''AMomentOfPeace'' mostly exist in their own universe, they occasionally acknowledge the 4th wall in a casual way, going so far as to use it as a slide at one point.

* Art and Leaf of ''[[http://www.webcomichell.com/ Apple Valley]]'' frequently make references to the fact that they are in a webcomic, something most of the other characters either ignore or don't notice. The author has justified that, since this is their 4th webcomic (following [[http://www.theappleofdiscord The Apple of Discord]] and two previous comics) they've more than had enough time to figure out what's going on.

''(No, this isn't about when [[IThoughtItMeant characters realize they've met an oracle]], or [[IncrediblyLamePun pays the usual amount of attention]].)''

* The narrator and protagonist of ''TheCompanyOfMyself'' seems to be [[GenreSavvy aware]] that he lives in a puzzle platformer, and talks about his experiences therein in a near-omniscient manner. Even the preloader and volume control have relatively {{purple|Prose}} eloquence compared to nearly all other games. [[spoiler:It's all in his head....]]

''(No, this isn't about when [[IThoughtItMeant a character realizes they've met an oracle]], or [[IncrediblyLamePun pays the usual amount of attention]].)''

* A rare serious example appears in some of RobertAHeinlein's later works, most notably ''TheNumberOfTheBeast'' and ''TheCatWhoWalksThroughWalls''. In them, he developed his "World as Fiction" concept, where every fictional world ever created exists as an alternate reality. Eventually the characters come to realize that every universe, including their own, exist as fiction somewhere else.