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What are the best "4th wall" breaks?
- Thread starter Soapbox Killer
- Start date
That's a good movie but that's not breaking the 4th wall. Breaking the fourth wall is when characters in the media aware that they are fictional and talk to the fourth wall aka the audience.
That's not breaking the fourth wall either.
I like that one...I miss the 12th Doctor. :(
Came in fully prepared to post "none, they are awful" but you got me, this part in Animal Man was actually incredible
It's the Vision's comment that is somewhat a 4th wall break. It's more meta. Referring to Tony becoming Iron Man and how everything in the world just escalates after that moment.
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It wasn't until years later that I realized that the people sharing the adventures of Bastian were in fact the same people that were watching the movie, and when that moment clicked...HOLY SHIT!
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Magnum PI - Magnum narrated most of the events to the viewers throughout the show via off-screen monologues. I was very young when this was on and it confused me that he was talking directly to the audience.
Trading Places - Billy Ray Valentine looking at the camera when the Dukes are explaining what a BLT is to him.
Sean's Show - One for UK members. This entire show basically broke the fourth wall.
Eerie Indiana - That one episode when the two main characters ended up in the TV production of the show. The characters were all "played" by their actors and referred to by their real names and they had to work out how to get back into the show version.
Trading Places - Billy Ray Valentine looking at the camera when the Dukes are explaining what a BLT is to him.
Sean's Show - One for UK members. This entire show basically broke the fourth wall.
Eerie Indiana - That one episode when the two main characters ended up in the TV production of the show. The characters were all "played" by their actors and referred to by their real names and they had to work out how to get back into the show version.
Chowder is like the king of fourth wall breaks. I think my favorite is when Chowder tries to clean the "Cartoon Network" logo off the screen but cannot.
I quite like Pinkie Pie's fourth wall breaks in MLP as well. They're never super heavy handed, which is nice.
I quite like Pinkie Pie's fourth wall breaks in MLP as well. They're never super heavy handed, which is nice.
Nope. Self-referential meta humor, sure. But not a 4th wall break at all.
That is seriously one of my favorite fucking scenes of all time. I laugh every time.
As always in any thread like this, people who post a GIF or an image with no name and no context are by FAR the absolute worst posts.
You contribute literally fucking nothing.
You contribute literally fucking nothing.
I never saw the John Wayne version. I still prefer the Hulk Hogan one because I fell for it when I first saw the movie.
Too many cartoons to mention do this, though shoutouts to Animaniacs for so routinely mixing it with a little "biting the hand" humor towards its own network execs, Angry Beavers for getting its own finale canned over it, and Gumball for actually making the fourth wall an antagonistic force that toys with the lives of the characters, in which chaos ensues if the facade ever breaks.
To share specific examples, though, I nominate basically all of the Wheel of Morality segments of Animaniacs:
To share specific examples, though, I nominate basically all of the Wheel of Morality segments of Animaniacs:
Fanfiction is probably one of the funniest episode of Supernatural. Along with French Mistake and Changing Channels, the last one is specially good on breaking the 4th wall
I haven't seen this before, but it looks like a remake of the protracted fourth wall scene in Blazing Saddles.
I love that, right down to the Magpie logo on the electronics. The paradox Doctor Who describes here is exemplified in a very pure manner by Michael Moorcock's Behold the Man.
My favorite part of the entire AC series. Still felt that was the perfect send-off for Ezio, too. Thankfully, the ending to Revelations played back on this with Ezio adressing us/Desmond directly, which was great.
You are right, wasn't thinking. Maybe best ever meta? Was some how thinking they literally broken through the fourth window and entered our world
Nier Automata
And it's not even really breaking the fourth wall since it's actually a different word and not the one you're thinking of. Lol.
It's not breaking the 4th wall, regardless.
Oh man, yeah, Changing Channels! Good one! (Personally, I always liked that character a bit more as just The Trickster.)
They definitely did some great things with that episode. I also thought it was kind of risky for them to establish that they were in the world where Supernatural is a show (so "our" world), and then definitively say that world had no angels, god, etc. But I never heard any stink about it. Probably a lot of people didn't think about that line, but it surprised me.
Also, lol at "fourth window."
Behold the Man is definitely a great one. For a twistier one, I also like All You Zombies by Heinlein. (His By His Bootstraps is, of course, an obvious one, and the book in the story is a more "pure" example.)
I would have never thought of A World of His Own on my own. That's a really fun example of this type of story; and I agree people should check it out on 'flix.
It and The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack were the only saving graces of Cartoon Network in the mid 2000s until Adventure Time debuted.
Best part about that second scene is that everything from when the girl turns to the screen to the end was actually a deleted scene. You never would have seen it unless you were watching the DVD deleted scene special feature (or whatever way they handled deleted scenes before DVDs).