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Playing With / No Fourth Wall

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Basic Trope: Breaking the Fourth Wall so often it might as well not be there at all.

  • Straight: One or multiple characters often breaks the fourth wall, talking directly or indirectly about or to the audience.
  • Exaggerated:
  • Downplayed: A character says something that, if you read it a certain way, could be intended toward the audience.
  • Justified: There isn't intended to be a fourth wall, as this is intended to have audience participation like many children's shows.
  • Inverted: A nonfiction work nonetheless is woven with a fictional narrative to such an extent that a fourth wall might seem to exist.
  • Subverted: The characters often say something that seems to be breaking the fourth wall, but it's always quickly revealed that it had a simple in-universe explanation.
  • Double Subverted: The characters often say something that seems to be breaking the fourth wall, but it's always quickly revealed that it had a simple in-universe explanation. Except this in-universe explanation always turns out to be false, and they really were breaking the fourth wall.
  • Parodied: An in-universe actor breaks the fourth wall for humor in his work in a way that mocks the shallowness of the overuse of the trope.
  • Zig Zagged:
    • The characters appear to break the fourth wall... only to find that there's an in-universe explanation... but that explanation turns out not to be true... but there's a different in-universe explanation...
    • The characters themselves do not break the fourth wall - however, there is a Show Within a Show whose characters can see through both fourth walls. And yet their actors can't.
  • Averted: The characters never break or seem to break the fourth wall.
  • Enforced: "Witty characters liked by fans always break the fourth wall, so of course Edgy Sarcastic Quiplord has to break it!"
  • Lampshaded: "It's not like someone's watching us. That'd be creepy."
  • Invoked: The characters see no other way out of the situation, so they ask for help from the audience.
  • Exploited: "Characters who break the fourth wall are never killed off, so I'm fine!"
  • Defied: The fourth wall is never broken, in fact the work pulls you in so deep you can't help but forget it's not real yourself.
  • Discussed: "Why do we talk to the writers?" "It's the way the writers told us."
  • Conversed: "Of course he's talking to the audience. Nobody seems to know how to make an edgy sarcastic character without breaking the fourth wall constantly."
  • Deconstructed: The viewer is acknowledged, but seen as a horrifying outsider, and those who are aware of the audience are seen as abominations.
  • Reconstructed: The viewer is commonly spoken to casually, but seems to be of no real importance until they become very relevant to the plot.

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