Metafiction is crazy, man! We had to do what it said!
Tropes:
- 2-for-1 Show: A Show Within a Show has equal prominence as the main plot.
- Actor Allusion: A work references the career or personal life of one of the actors involved.
- Addressing the Player
- All Part of the Show
- Always a Live Transmission
- Animated Actors: Fictional characters act as if they're in-universe actors performing on the show.
- Ascended Meme: A meme is made officially canon by the work it is derived from.
- Audience Participation: A performance requires the audience to say things in response to what the characters say.
- Audience Participation Failure
- Audience? What Audience?
- Author Powers
- Behind the Black
- Better Than a Bare Bulb
- Body Wipe
- British Humour
- Cast Incest: Related characters are played by actors who are lovers in real life.
- Catch the Conscience
- Celebrity Paradox: The people involved in a work of fiction may not exist in that work's reality.
- Character Blog: A character has their own account on a real life social media website.
- Commercial Switcheroo
- Conversational Troping
- Death by Genre Savviness: A character tries to use their knowledge of how things usually happen in stories similar to their current situation, but gets killed anyway.
- Direct Line to the Author
- Easter Egg
- End-of-Series Awareness: The ending of a series has the characters acknowledge that their show has come to an end.
- Epistolary Novel
- Expy Coexistence: A parody or imitation of a copyrighted character is established to coexist with the character they are copying.
- External Retcon
- Fake Interactivity
- Fourth Wall: The invisible wall between a work of fiction and the real world.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: A character talks directly to the audience or points out that they're in a work of fiction.
- Breaking the Reviewer's Wall
- Exploiting the Fourth Wall
- Fourth-Wall Mail Slot
- Fourth-Wall Observer: A character who addresses the audience but is the only one who acknowledges the fourth wall's existence.
- Fourth Wall Psych
- The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: A character threatens to harm the audience.
- From Beyond the Fourth Wall
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: A character makes a statement that makes sense in-universe, but can also be interpreted as acknowledging that they are in a work of fiction.
- Logging onto the Fourth Wall
- No Fourth Wall: The fourth wall is broken so frequently that it may as well not exist.
- No Inner Fourth Wall
- Noticing the Fourth Wall
- Reaching Through the Fourth Wall: A non-real concept passes through the fourth wall and becomes a real, physical person, object, place, animal, or event.
- Scolding the Fourth-Wall Breaker: A character is reprimanded for breaking the fourth wall.
- You Bastard!: The audience is called out on enjoying the characters' suffering.
- Fourth Wall Shut-In Story: An author becomes trapped inside their own fictional world.
- Functional Genre Savvy
- Genre Savvy: A character who knows what to do in certain situations due to being knowledgeable on how similar events happen in specific works of fiction.
- He Knows About Timed Hits: Video game characters explain how the controls work.
- Hidden Track
- Hostile Show Takeover: A villain tries to take over the hero's show as their own.
- How Is That Even Possible?: A character points out that an action or event can't happen in real life by asking in bewilderment how it can possibly happen.
- I Should Write a Book About This
- I Wrote Our Story
- Imagine Spotting
- In-Character Commentaries: The audio commentary on the home media release of a work consists of the actors pretending to be their characters recounting their experiences in the movie or television episode.
- In-Universe
- Inspiration Nod
- Intrepid Fictioneer
- Lampshade Hanging: Characters point out when a trope is in play or address the tendency for the trope to be present.
- Left It In
- Left the Background Music On: Background music turns out to be coming from an in-universe source and is then turned off.
- "Let's Watch Our Show" Plot: Characters watch and commentate on the actual episodes of their own show.
- Life Embellished
- Literary Agent Hypothesis
- Medium Awareness: Characters are shown to be aware that they are in a work of fiction.
- Meta Casting
- Meta Fic
- Meta Guy
- Meta Twist
- Metafictional Device
- Mutually Fictional
- Mythology Gag: An adaptation makes a reference to one or more of the previous continuities.
- "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: A work mentions factual information that sounds like made-up nonsense, followed immediately by a disclaimer that the information is accurate in spite of how outlandish it may sound.
- Nested Story
- Nested Story Reveal
- Oh Crap, There Are Fanfics of Us!
- The Player Is the Most Important Resource
- Playing a Tree
- Pushed in Front of the Audience
- Postmodernism
- The Power of Language
- Production Foreshadowing: A work unintentionally alludes to another work that the same production company wouldn't produce until much later.
- Production Throwback
- Rage Against the Author: The characters try to defy what the author wants to do with the story.
- Rainbow Speak
- Reading Ahead in the Script
- Real World Episode: An episode where the characters find their way into the real world.
- Recursive Canon: A work of fiction somehow exists as a work of fiction within its own reality.
- Recursive Reality
- Ridiculous Future Sequelisation: The future shows a film series to still be ongoing with more sequels being made.
- Refugee from TV Land: An in-universe fictional character finds their way into the work of fiction's "real world".
- Retroactive Legacy
- RPG-Mechanics Verse
- School Play
- Scrapbook Story
- Screen Tap
- Sequel Snark: A joke is made about the movie getting a sequel.
- Self-Parody
- The Show Must Go Wrong
- Show Within a Show: A work of fiction within the work of fiction.
- Sorting Algorithm of Tropes: With many a Sliding Scale.
- Speech-Bubbles Interruption
- Sudden Game Interface
- Theme Tune Cameo: The work features an in-universe playing/whistling/humming/etc. of the theme song.
- Theory of Narrative Causality
- This Is Reality: A joke where a character points out that the real world isn't some cartoon, unaware that they actually are in a work of fiction.
- Title Drop: A work's title is mentioned within the work.
- Trapped in TV Land: Someone gets trapped inside a work of fiction.
- [Trope Name]
- A True Story in My Universe
- Unconventional Formatting
- Video Games and Fate
- Visual Title Drop
- Who Would Want to Watch Us?: The characters of a television show laugh at the idea of someone making a show starring them.
- Who Writes This Crap?!: Characters remark about the writing having quality that leaves a lot to be desired.
- The World as Myth
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Someone thinks they know what needs to be done based on what they've seen done in fiction, but are foiled by not knowing the kind of story they're actually involved with.
- You Just Ruined the Shot: Someone attempts to be a hero, but learns the hard way that the "disaster" was really a movie scene being filmed that their efforts have just ruined.
