Right. Or if they say something like “didn’t we do this last season”.
Or “This never happened to the other guy.”
Well, spoilers, but you might want to look at Redshirts by John Scalzi. The main character realizes that he is an extra in a Star Trek-like TV show (where extras tend to have very short lives). He evades the consequences by breaking the fourth wall and going after the TV crew. At the end of the novel he begins to realize that he is actually a character in a novel.
Agreed that the term is not limited to movies/television. Directing a inside element to the outside audience can occur in any medium. The audience’s knowledge/participation in the action is the desired reaction.
Season 4 of 30 Rock starts with Jack Donaghy making a speech directly into the camera and welcoming us to Season Four but then the camera backs away revealing that he is talking to his employees at a restaurant called Season Four.
In 3rd Rock from the Sun, when William Shatner’s character finally meets John Lithgow’s character they mention a character they both played in The Twilight Zone. In show, it means very little, but it’s only there because it’s an in joke to the knowledgeable audience. Does that break the 4th wall or not?
IIRC, they pretty much did this in Just Shoot Me, where Maya dates a Woody Allen-circa-Annie-Hall type — by which I mean the guy keeps acting like he’s breaking the fourth wall as if he’s a character in a movie — prompting Maya to note that he’s not a character in a movie (the gag being that, to us, he’s not, because he’s a character in a TV show; but she of course means that he’s not, because to her he’s a person in real life).
I’m pretty sure Deadpool did this a bunch of times, and will continue to do so. What else would you call using a time machine to not only kill his Deadpool character from a previous movie, but to also kill Ryan Reynolds before he can accept the part of Green Lantern in that abomination.
There’s a fan theory about The Big Lebowski along these lines: every character knows they’re in a movie, but none of them knows what genre it is. (The Dude thinks it’s a stoner comedy, The Stranger thinks it’s a Western, Maude thinks it’s an avant-garde art film, Bunny thinks it’s a porno…)
Kind of like Big Trouble in Little China
Jack Burton thinks he is the action-movie hero.
But he is actually the comic-relief sidekick.
In the recent series “The Fall of the House of Usher” on Netflix, there’s a scene where some characters are looking at security video. The following exchange occurs:
“Enhance.”
“That isn’t really a thing.”
“What, you can’t enhance this image? You see it all the time on TV, they hit a button, it enhances it.”
“You can zoom in, but that doesn’t actually enhance it.”
“Well then please zoom in!”
“All right, fine. [zooms] Recognize her?”
“Well it’s a little tough to tell. Maybe if you could, I don’t know, enhance it.”
I’m not sure if this counts: Stan Lee is famous for his cameos, but did you know he appeared on an episode of Teen Titans Go! as himself?
I don’t know about that, but he appears in the movie Teen Titans Go! to the Movies as himself, and even sings a song about cameos.
My favorite Fourth Wall breaking (which may or may not fit in this thread) is in the movie The Naked Gun. Leslie Neilsen (Frank Drebbin) is in a restaurant and asks the waiter “What’s the strongest thing you’ve got?” And out comes a body builder and flexes. Drebbin says “On second thought, bring me a Black Russian.”
The waiter glances toward the audience and gives the slightest of head shakes, clearly saying “No, you can picture it for yourselves. We’re not going to go there.”
I guess I should mention His Girl Friday
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Cary Grant says, " Listen the last man that said that to me was Archie Leach just a week before he cut his throat." Grant’s real name was Archibald Leach.
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Grant opens the rolltop desk with Earl Williams inside and refers to him as “Mock Turtle.” Grant played the Mock Turtle in the 1933 version of the film.
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Grant describes the character of Bruce Baldwin as looking like Ralph Bellamy, the actor playing the part.
Speaking of which, in Arsenic and Old Lace, Jonathan Brewster had plastic surgery to hide his identity, but the surgeon botched the job and made him look like Boris Karloff. Which was hilarious in the stage play, where he was played by Boris Karloff.
Unfortunately, Karloff was not available for the film, and was replaced by Raymond Massey. The make-up artist tried, but Massey does not look enough like Karloff to make the joke funny, and Massey was not famous enough that “he looks like Raymond Massey” would have been funny.
Mr. Burns on The Simpsons, narrating the story of how he escaped from prison:
Now, without further ado, here’s what happened next. But first, I’ll daydream about a sport utility vehicle, a crispy chicken sandwich, and a wonderful blue pill!
The entire hook of BATMAN v SUPERMAN is that, well, it’s for people who care about Clark Kent taking on The Batman — and so the movie was pretty obviously aiming to miss the 4th wall with the wink-to-the-audience line showcased in the trailer: Perry White opining that “nobody cares about Clark Kent taking on The Batman.”
For a bonus point, though: deep down, some folks would grudgingly admit that “Batman” is a little goofy as names go. And by “some folks” I’m pretty sure I mean the ones who made this movie, because I’m pretty sure the character never actually gets called that during it — you know, with the lone exception of that had-to-work-it-in line.
Why, it’s as if there’s no other reason for that line to exist!
This thread reminds me of some of the things 9 Chickweed Lane did with the Siamese cat
In Psych Shawn mentions that they average solving one crime a week, two around the holidays.