The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You / Web Videos

• Ben Drowned:
  • It, is heading this way with its final stage, by allowing a game with active Interface Screw as part of an Alternate Reality Game.
  • In-universe example: Ryukaki. He was just following the game like the rest of us...and somehow ended up with BEN on his case. We later find out why. "Something about a boy dying here some time ago. It's meaningless to me, but peoples' superstitions make for great house prices."
• hololive:
  • Apparently, not even the colorful world of cutesy idols is immune from a good old fashioned creepy fourth wall break. Seeing as how all the members are able to interact with their audience, this can sometimes take a turn for the worse. Whether it be Haato’s attempts to brainwash her audience into becoming crazy, Calliope’s assurance that all her viewers have given up their souls to her, or Watson drugging her audience with the Watson Concoction.
• The Slender Man Mythos and its followers are fond of this, often showing Slenderman attacking the cameras outright.
  • In one Marble Hornets entry, the masked man stares right at you. Not the camera, you.
    • Some fans take this one step beyond with the Tulpa Theory. Basically some fans hold that the concentrated fear, imagination and fascination of the fandom can will the Slender Man to existence. It also somewhat inverts the process, as the existence of the fourth wall becomes part of the belief-generating process. Meaning: If you watched/read Slender Man related things, that means you are thinking about him, thus helping will him to existence.
  • It's implied that this has happened in-universe in Everyman HYBRID. Slendy only started stalking the main characters after they tried to do their own (painfully obvious) Slender series, which seems to have willed him through the fourth wall to show them how it's done. Just think what that means for us, the viewers. It's eventually revealed that this isn't the case, for them at least. They've been getting stalked by Slendy since at least as far back as the 1970s. After he kills them they hang out in some kind of limbo/afterlife for a while before reincarnating back on Earth without any memories to do it all over again. It was just a coincidence that they became aware of Slendy through the internet before encountering him for real this time around. This is the case for the viewers, however. By watching the series, or any series in the Slenderverse, you become dragged into Slendy's sphere of influence, so he can now come after you. It's for this reason that, at the end of the series (after they're all dead and back in the afterlife), they decide to leave the camera behind so that nobody else gets dragged into their Hell with them.
  • There is a theory that Slender Man has some control over his victims, and that he's compelling his victims to post videos of him to the internet, to help the spread of knowledge about him, and will him into existence.
  • The girls from One Hundred Yard Stare invoked this to get rid off the Slender Man. As they made the series with the explicit intent to spread the word about him and give him someone else to stalk and harass (so not them). To date it didn't work, as they still getting visits from tall, dark and faceless.
• The Entity from Atop the Fourth Wall. In August, near-subliminal messages from it started appearing in the credits, and Linkara responded to any questions about this by saying that he didn't see anything, despite his usually posting out of character in the comments.
  • The Entity also supposedly posted comments on his videos as well. After the storyline was finished, though, Linkara revealed that it was entirely done by the fans and was not official. However, he did admit that he wished he had thought of that.
  • Near the end of the King of Worms storyline, Linkara is mentally tortured and we see flashbacks to all his previous villains. The Entity in the flashback turns and looks at the viewer.
• YouTube promoted this in preparation for the 2011 version of The Thing (2011).
• From the YouTube account 666 video, a Creepypasta, there's a reason you shouldn't watch it in fullscreen, and it isn't a screamer.
• The Pokémon Creepy Black DS retelling.
• The Nostalgia Critic
  • During his review of The Wicker Man (2006), the episode ends like normally... until the credits music stops and Tamara peeks in from the right, taking the credits off, continuing the episode!
  • Critic does it himself in every reboot episode. Look at the beginning of the credits. He's shooting the forth wall, and looks very angry while doing it.
• In The Stinger of 10 Most DISTURBING Children's Toys Ever Made! by Matt Santoro, a puppet version of Matt goes towards the camera and says "I'm coming for you".
• As seen during docfuture's Let's Play of Sonic the Hedgehog 2: Special Edition, Tails has such advanced A.I. that he remembers if you mistreat him and will resent you for it. Not Sonic, you, the player. He also banters with docfuture during the game and even has some "protips" that seem aimed at those watching the LP online.
  Tails: GET OUT OF THIS THREAD WHILE YOU STILL CAN!
• Car Boys begins as a humorous let's play of the video game BeamNG. Eventually, though the glitchier elements of the game begin to infiltrate the realities of the players, Nick and Griffin. In the final episode they are apparently trapped in an Eldritch dimension beyond the game for eternity.
• The Angry Video Game Nerd reviewed Polybius, the selfsame arcade game of urban legend, for Halloween in 2017. Multiple times, he tried to prevent himself from showing the gameplay to protect the viewers, but the game forced him to anyways. The Nerd shows a few moments of its gameplay, which then suddenly transforms into a demonic version of his own face before causing the YouTube player to crash...and his demonic head to appear again!
• The Cry of Mann: Both Ghost Lady and Gergiev could communicate with the stream's chat. Played down with Ghost Lady, as she was her usual kooky and adorable self. Played straight with Gergiev, who actively threatened the chat on a regular basis. After Jouglat dies, he also joins the chat, wondering where he is and eventually gets comforted by those in the chat. Once Tank Mann returns, he begins answering calls himself, all while staring at the viewers the entire time.
• Undertale the Musical inverts this. Mettaton reassures the audience that his bombs will have no effect on them.
  Mettaton: Don't worry, folks, this is all part of the show!
  If they go off only the kid's gonna blow!
• The Spiffing Brit: In his Skyrim videos, he says that his character, Reanu Keeves, is so powerful that he risks breaking out of the game and into reality. He advises pledging your allegiance to Reanu Keeves as it will yield benefits like him taking you to a nice dinner, or just not killing you with his shouting power.
• In the "Coffee Time" episode of commodoreHUSTLE, it is taken to a few levels. (Note: you have to understand that every cH episode premieres during an episode of LoadingReadyLive, which is a Variety Show that has both live segments and prerecorded segments.) In the episode, when the Moonbase is being flooded with coffee gifted to them via "Mail Time," Graham drinks some of Paul and Heather's coffee. He develops a limited amount of Medium Awareness, and starts editing the episode that we're watching as we're watching it, also using the power of editing to move around at superhuman speeds. When Kathleen asks how the episode ends, he answers "Abruptly." Cut to black, and then we see Graham, Kathleen, Beej, and Ian beginning a Game Show during the next "live" segment of LRL. However, this is quickly stopped, because the Hustle versions of Kathleen and Graham interrupt the show to complain about ending the episode in the middle of the narrative second act being unsatisfactory. The "live" versions of the crew are visibly afraid and confused, so "live" Graham throws back to Hustle, as requested.
  Kathleen: Okaaaaaaaaaaaay, Graham, are you thinking what I'm thinking?
  Graham: Yeah, that bit won't play nearly as well on the replay.
  • After Graham passes out for about a month, The Stinger has him and Beej doing another "Mail Time" episode... only for them to be interrupted by themselves... from the past.
  • Taken to a third level when, 5 months later, the real "Decembruary" episode of "Mail Time" comes out. The episode starts, and they are immediately interrupted by their fictional past selves. ^note Graham and Beej went to the effort to make sure they were wearing the appropriate shirts and set the boxes in (almost) the same positions when filming the real episode of "Mail Time."
• Trolled!: "What Lives Under the Bridge?" has a troll that pushes DGR backwards and into his green screen, causing him actual physical pain.
• Nyctomatter 's Deltarune VHS series being an Analog Horror version of Deltarune, has videos relying on this:
  • "KRIS" ends with the titular Kris addressing the viewer/player and then reaching through the screen while sporting a Nightmare Face.
  • "MAN BEHIND THE TREE" starts with the titular man giving an egg to Kris before telling them to turn it around: it is written "Can't run". At this moment, the screen becomes monochrome, with the Mystery Man filling it to chase the viewer shortly after.
  • "TASQUE MANAGER" is less brutal but even more disturbing: while the titular character starts asking Kris questions about paintings like the original iteration, she then asks if you really are safe in your home, along with a Slasher Smile. The camera progressively zooms on her decaying face while her questions become more and more uncomfortable, then she gets an extremely realistic pair of eyes, asking if someone's behind you, and you can actually hear someone breathe in your ears.
• Done by The Templin Institute in some of their videos, indicating that the narrator's neutral, detached observation of the video's subject may not be a one-way street.
  • In the video on the Tyranids from Warhammer 40,000, the moment the narrator starts talking about the Tyranid Tyrant Guard, made with the DNA of the Adeptus Astartes, and notes the implication that this means the Tyrant Guard have some of the DNA of the God-Emperor of Mankind within them, the Inquisition hacks the feed on account of the massive heresy the channel is engaging in for even suggesting such a thing.
  • The video on Oceania from Nineteen Eighty-Four sees the feed get hacked by an agent of Big Brother telling the viewer, presumed to be a prole named Michael, to get back to work.
  • The video on the "Event Horizon Incident" opens by telling the viewer that it was never meant to be released, and heavily implies that not only is the universe of Event Horizon connected to that of Warhammer 40,000 (though with exact references to the latter censored out), but that both universes are part of a broader multiverse that includes every other one that they've explored — and that the Institute is not the only institution in this multiverse that has the means to travel between them. And given what is known of the interdimensional beings in the Event Horizon and 40K universes, that suggests that the Institute is not nearly as safe as it thinks. Dr. Emily Taylor, their previous narrator, went insane and killed herself upon realizing this, leading to her replacement with the current narrator.^note This is the in-universe explanation for Larissa Thompson, the Templin Institute's first narrator, departing the series.
  • The video on the USG Ishimura from Dead Space sees the HUD subtly but noticeably corrupted by the influence of the Marker, and some of the "extra" lines in the subtitles (PUT IT BACK THEY ARE WATCHING) imply that the narrator has started to succumb to it as well, especially when he ends the video by telling the viewer that "they are coming. They are hungry. They are here."
• In Random Encounters' Just Monika song the player exits the game only to see Monika has exited the computer and is standing next to him.
• In Stupendium's "Why did I say okie doki?" Song during the act 4 portion the player looks at the computer and asks "Wait a minute, weren't there other girls here?" And Monika answeres him from the computer screen "No".
• Dead Meat: In the Kill Count for The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals, James begins to do a joking parody of "La Dee Dah Dah Day" before getting to the numbers, only for the infected musical zombies, Ted, Emma, and Paul, played by their original actors no less, to join in on the song prior to attacking and infecting him too.

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