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Oh deary me, I'm in pieces...

Lordxana: If you think about it we are the perfect people to save the world.
When the hero in a show is following the same tired trope who are the ones that point it out? That's right we do. We know every single piece of media to date and we know every trope to avoid and every trope to follow. We are TV Tropes, and we are the last line of defense in a world with a broken wall.
Goldude: Besides Lime Man.

The Wall Will Fall is the Fan Nickname for the Echo Chamber's Alternate Reality Game, launched shortly after the ending of EC's second season. It began with a grave announcement from Mister Administrator, posted on this very website. In this announcement, he stated that The Fourth Wall had started to crack, and that fictional characters were now crossing over into the real world. The tropers' mission is now to find all the characters who managed to cross the wall, bring them back, and fix the wall. If they were to fail, it could have disastrous consequences for both the real and fictional realities.

In early September 2012, both Echo Chamber's facebook page and Zack Wallnau's twitter account posted a link to a Youtube channel started by someone named Average Joe. Joe had received several videos, appearing to show fictional characters in the real world. As time went on, Joe started receiving threatening letters. Worried about his safety, Joe decided to go on the run. With help from his friend Edward, he set up a website, watchthefootage.com. With Joe's aid, and through several puzzles solved by tropers, many fictional characters and real people were found. Some of them are friendly and cooperative. Others... not so much.

The ARG ended on December 27th, 2012.

Has a character sheet, as well as the timeline, if you have trouble catching up. In fact, check all the subpages on the left. You won't regret it.


    open/close all folders 

    Important Websites 

    Tropes From The ARG 
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking
    • Dr. Joan Lawson's voicemail. Four death threats, and then this:
    "Hello Miss Lawson? This message is to inform you that your dry cleaning is ready. Thanks."
    Edward: This isn’t just a cool thing to do, Joe. You need to know you can face down a monster with nothing but a smartphone. You need to know that you have the ability to handle it with the finesse that the situation demands, or else you’re dead. We’re all dead. The world is over, forever, and there are no redos.
    And you also need to get a ride there, and your parents work on weekdays.
  • As Himself: The players were basically doing this throughout most of the game, leading eventually to some actual acting on part of the plays during the end game.
  • Augmented Reality: Used to find the cracks in the wall [1].
  • Badass Crew: All the Metaguards are Badass in one way or the other, but Adell and Sicon 112 are the two most badass Metaguards- the former for punching out CTHULHU and saving the world, the latter for taking down the Wicked Witch of the West, one of the most dangerous fictional villains of all time in the history of Literature.
  • Bittersweet Ending: Cthulhu has been defeated and sent back into the wall, but the 3 remaining members of the Cabal are dead and so are some of Lime Man's comrades.
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall: A rare example where this was not intended as a metaphor. The wall keeping reality and fiction separate actually exists and is breaking down.
  • Brick Joke:
    • The banana Adam was hired to send by the Phantom reached its destination.
    • The Noodle Incident between Brad and Quixote got this when Brad found a newspaper article which said that the donkey (the one with an equation on his ass) appeared at the Washington-Canadian border.
  • Brought Down to Normal: The magic and its equivalents did not work in reality (at least, until the Fourth Wall actually started to crumble), so the characters became mostly normal people, with the exception of Cheshire Cat, who could still talk and tweet.
  • Character Blog: All of the fictional characters have blogs or Twitter accounts.
  • Conflict Ball: The last (not chronologically) Cabal chats showed the more villainous part of the Cabal to hold it firmly, being overly suspicious of the metaguards, and even considering Deanna to be one of them, despite obvious backlash against her.
  • Continuity Nod: To Echo Chamber, Mr. A revealed that Ace of [citation needed] helped to write the refics for The Little Mermaid, the Plague Doctors, Cerberus and Dracula. Mr. A also states that he thinks he is not a good writer. While Zack's dad Mark was the one to send out the "spam" packages to the players.
  • Cool Cat: Cheshire Cat. Also, Dr Joan Lawson has two polydactyl cats.
    • Shelly, Adam's polydactyl cat.
  • Credits Gag: The credits have Sir Not Appearing in this ARG for Junior Fallon. Zack Wallnau is credited as "The Voice Behind the Camera", Hummingbird is credited As Herself and the last line is "SPECIAL THANKS TO MR. ADMINISTRATOR, WHO MADE THIS CREDIT ROLL, AND IS TOTALLY AWESOME".
  • Creepy Doll: Spejbl and Hurvinek puppets, who happen to watch you. What creeped out the tropers even more is that their video was posted without any explanation or comments, right when the Genre Savvy ones were expecting Joe to get kidnapped (which didn't happen after all).
  • Darker and Edgier: Things suddenly went straight downhill from Halloween, starting with Tara's death and Todd hacking the therapist's blog.
    • And then Deanna Hackins came in to make things even worse by killing Tripky, wounding Quixote, announcing herself as a loose cannon and then declaring war on the Metaguards.
    • And then Cthulhu came around.
  • Dumbass Has a Point: This alleged former teacher is a barely literate stereotypical Conspiracy Theorist. He also happens to be Properly Paranoid.
  • Entry Point: Mysterious Employer Mister Administrator posted a very ominous announcement about the Echo Chamber Fourth Wall cracking on Youtube and TV Tropes. He assigns you the mission to fix the wall and find every fictional character who has managed to trespass.
  • Explosive Overclocking: It is unknown what Mr. Administrator's final app did, but it melted the phone it was used on.
  • Expospeak Gag: The endgame plan to "fictionalize the ARG and enforce our own canon", involving complicated references to the metaverse model, was soon aptly summarized as "throw a tantrum and stop playing".
  • Fan Nickname: Metaguards. The name was proposed for the guardian characters, but was eventually taken up by the community in general. Those who perform some real-world activities get promoted to meta-knights (no relation).
  • Foregone Conclusion: The fan nickname for the game, The Wall Will Fall shall hopefully not turn out to be prophetic. Fortunately, it wasn't.
  • Foreshadowing:
  • Fun with Acronyms: Watch The Footage.
  • Glasses Pull: The judge, before defying an Amoral Attorney in Peter Pan's last video.
  • The Group: The Cabal, a group of fictional characters who intend to stay in the real world by any means.
  • Let's You and Him Fight: Holmes and Poirot, having been tricked into suspecting each other of commiting a murder, were holding the Idiot Ball for quite some time before agreeing to meet in a civilized manner. Even then, it didn't go well the first time.
  • Like a Duck Takes to Water: Most fictites seem to adapt rather well to our real world, even learning to use phones and social media to communicate.
  • Loophole Abuse
    • It was established early into the game that the characters can't read their stories (they see it as blank pages), and, as it turned out, can't watch adaptations, either. The solution? Show them their page on The Other Wiki. This was used to calm Sweeney Todd.
    • Pixelmage's Don Quixote refic basically described his adventures in reality, but the details were omitted, so it could just as well take place in his own setting. It worked.
  • Magic from Technology: Upon finding themselves in this side, magically inclined characters became unable to use their powers, but exhibited a higher affinity to technological devices than the other, non magical, characters.
    • The Cheshire cat was able to send a video to Joe from a non-existent email address and managed to get access to an active Cabal chat session.
    • The Wicked Witch, while unable to make her curses take effect upon the Metaguards, was able to work scientific experiments beyond those deemed possible with our current knowledge.
    • Morgana Lefey explained it herself in an email exchange.
    "I came to magic in my own world because all of a sudden, things were possible that had never before been imaginable. I feel that your technology is analogous. I wish to embrace it as I embraced magic."
  • Sadistic Choice: Metaguards were expected to vote on one of their friends from a list of ten to send on a Suicide Mission to fight Cthulhu.
  • Secret Test of Character: Mr. Administrator claims that the purpose of the puzzle with URL fragments was to test if the tropers were fit for the job.
  • Sequence Breaking: On a couple of occasions like locating several blogs beforehand and finding the emails of Don Juan and The Phantom. Eventually subverted when it was revealed that the blogs were intended to be found by the players, and that the emails they discovered were never used.
  • Shout-Out:
    • Cheshire Cat, running with the flood of letters sent to Joe, sent him an invitation to Hogwarts.
    • Don Quixote's two doctors during his last hospital stay share the name of the creator of the web series ''Tribe Twelve (Adam Rosner) and the character he plays (Noah Maxwell).
    • Don Quixote's horse was first named Rainbow Dash, but then was later named Binky. He also has a spider named Charlotte.
    • Adam's polydactyl cat is named Shelly.
  • Solve the Soup Cans: The URL puzzle, because Mr. Administrator knew the address in question, and holding it back was actually counter-productive. He later explained it as a Secret Test of Character.
  • Stealth Sequel: Inverted. The cracks in the fourth wall were thought to be a direct consequence of Echo Chamber season 2 finale twist, but turned out to be an independent event.
  • Strongly Worded Letter: The first Morgan's action in her attempt to stop Joe's webshow was to send him a neutral-toned, but threatening letter. Then the other Cabal members joined, and decided to scare him off by taking it up a notch. Joe snapped at 97 letters.
  • Suicide Mission: One Metaguard will have to fight Cthulhu. Mr. A has made it very clear that whoever is chosen may not survive the attempt.
  • Suspiciously Specific Denial:
    "What are you insinuating? That I, Don Quixote, was once brought to temptation and read a girl's private thoughts? Something I could be forgiven for I'm sure? Not that it matters because I never ever did. ...Even though she once left them out as if tempting me and it was so easy. I still didn't! Don't ask again!"
  • Timed Mission:
    THE WALL WILL FALL 21 12 2012
  • The Stinger: The credits shown to the players by Mr. A are also being watched by Joe who remarks after seeing himself credited as being played by Alexander Moser:
    Joe: "Alex Moser? Who's that?"
  • Tempting Fate: When discussing the dangers of the fourth wall breach, Cthulhu was mentioned every time Eldritch Abominations were meant. Eventually, he decided to cross, and the Metaguards had to fight him. Mr. Administrator referenced the trope in his post, proposing the theory that the constant mentioning of his character drew him towards the fourth wall.
  • The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You
  • The Password Is Always "Swordfish"
    • The therapist's voice mail PIN is her cat's name (Jung).
    • The password of Tara Coulson's blog account was swordfish.
  • The Un-Twist: In-Universe and Out. See Tempting Fate above. When Gurt mentioned that the characters leave their stories, but don't cross the wall for some reason, a major theory was some kind of Eldritch Abomination (which, naturally, came to Cthulhu), but everyone expected some kind of twist and a spanner in the works. It was Cthulhu.
  • This Is Reality: Joe was aware that everyone assumed it was an ARG, but kept denying it (for obvious reasons). As it didn't hinder the productivity, he didn't mind.
  • Throw It In!: A stray idea to create characters to defend the Fourth Wall on the other side suddenly got accepted, as it was a good excuse to give the tropers something to do, while also setting the mood for writing the refictionalization stories later.
  • Violation of Common Sense:
    • At one point, the tropers had to break into the therapist's voice mail to proceed. Most people were very reluctant, as it was considered an illegal act.
    • Some things stemming from the Metagame, such as full disclosure of the Metaguards' actions (so that the Puppetmasters can react), violates what should be done from an in-character POV. It became Egregious when the most anti-Cabal Metaguards have decided to retrieve a piece of the Fourth Wall, assuming it would do something to advance the plot, and used multiple hidden chats to come up with plans.
  • Void Between the Worlds: The White Void, where Mr. Administrator resides. According to his own words, the Void is a place between fiction and reality that makes up the interior the Fourth Wall.
  • Wham Episode: Halloween, with Tara being Killed Off for Real, and the therapists blog's being hacked by Sweeney.
    • The discovery that the ARG is now a Timed Mission, and the metaguards have 3 weeks to refic 13 characters, with at least 4 of them actively working against them.
    • December 13, with the reveal that Cthulhu is coming, players must write stories featuring all the metaguards to defeat it and that all the wall pieces must be retrieved and scanned.
  • Wham Line:
    Oberon entered the chat room.
    Bradley: They just moved Don to the ICU... followed by Bradley: Official word from the doctor: He thinks Don has 18 days.
    Prime: THAT'S RIGHT. I DIDN'T BUILD THE FOURTH WALL. I BROKE IT.
  • What the Hell, Player?
    • So much time was spent arguing about the notebook instead of actually retrieving it that the Cabal found it first. Needless to say, Mr. A wasn't happy.
    • The GMs delivered one via Quixote to the Metaguards who thought it would be a good idea to message a couple of suspicious people following Quixote on twitter, assuming that one of them would be Deanna.

    Tropes From The Forums 
  • Derailed Train of Thought: It happens all the time. Usually at some point a thread will derail into an irrrlevant topic. On one occasion it was even derailed in the very first post.
  • Drinking Game: Right here, created by The Finch (Apples Galore) and Adell!
  • Due to the Dead: Here.
  • Fire-Forged Friends: The forum Metaguards are required to refic characters such as Medusa and Sweeney Todd, in the process of trying to save the world. Needless to say they've grown rather close in the process.
  • Gender Bender: The spontaneously announced "Everyone's a Girl on the Internet Day".
    AS A SHOW OF GOOD FAITH, TODAY WE ARE MADAME ADMINISTRATOR.
  • Heart Is an Awesome Power: The Metaguards, mostly possessing neither combat experience nor professional mediation skills, have two talents that are helpful in this instance: puzzle solving, and the ability to write. Using these alone they prevented the incursion of characters such as Medusa, Anansi and even the Cthlhu to reality and actually saved the world... by writing.
    • The App used to defeat Cthluhu was powered primarily by the written words, camaraderie and even singing of the Metaguards. Word of God states it only worked because the Metaguards cared so much about the person who had to face Cthulhu.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Subsequent to Mr. A's announcement of the Suicide Mission, a number of Metaguards began to quibble about who would get to perform one, each not wanting their friends to risk death for them.
  • Intergenerational Friendship: With the Metaguards varying greatly in age from early teens/tweens to middle age. This trope was bound to result.
  • Mind Screw: The Coffee Shop. (AKA, Little Coffee Shop of Horrors.)
    • The Metaversal Model the players came up with delved a bit into this as well, particularly after the witch's theories got involved.
  • Overused Running Gag: The bees from SCP Foundation. The story was posted on the chat once, and now everything is bees, and they just won't die, much to everyone's chagrin.
  • Post-Victory Collapse: You really can't blame Adell for being out of it for a couple of hours after facing down Cthulhu at point blank range.
  • Power of Friendship: Believed to be an integral part of defeating Cthulhu, as powering up the App involved getting as many Metaguards as possible to contribute writing and songs about teamwork. This ended up saving Adell when he went up against Cthulhu in what would otherwise have been a Suicide Mission.
  • Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The Metaguards see themselves this way.
  • Someone Has to Die: The final attempt at stopping Cthulhu involves at least one Metaguard being involved in what Mister A insists very well may be a Suicide Mission.
  • The Cast Show Off
  • Trademark Favorite Food:
    • Limes. Also a rule of the Drinking Game.
    • Green Stuff, as seen in the Coffee Shop.
    • Bacon.
  • True Companions: The forum Metaguards, having faced down all manner of threats and puzzles, do not always agree, and have occasionally come to metaphorical blows about their morality and actions. Nonetheless their bonds with each other are undeniable, even amongst those who disagree.
  • Witch Hunt: After the metaguards got themselves a chat room, all new faces were treated with half-joking suspicion in the best case. Driven by fear of the Cabal's spies, paranoia ran rampant.

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