The 4th wall

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The 4th wall is broken when a character acknowledges that they are in a movie, TV show, book, or video game. They also talk to the audience by speaking directly at the 'camera.'

I love it when that happens.

Does anyone else enjoy the breaking of the 4th wall?

I do. I don't know who does it better though, so here's a list of 4th wall breakers.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Family Guy
Looney Tunes
Animaniacs
The Simpsons (sometimes)

I'm cool with that. It's an effective technique, but I don't like when it's used randomly. I want it to make sense, just like anything else in a movie.

I don't understand why there are so many people who hate this.

Nope, I don't like this concept. I feel like it's been done too much, especially lately. I'd rather see the characters just living in their own world not knowing at all that they're in a TV show/movie/whatever.

I don't like it when characters break the fourth wall, it takes me right out of the fiction. The devise is used fairly often in cartoon strips and is usually an indication that the cartoonist has run out of ideas.

Like any narrative tool, it can be good or bad. It's unfortunately been overused in this modern hipster culture that worships irony, a refuge for untalented writers who want to appear "clever" without actually being clever.

I think the best example of fourth wall breaking is from the Metal Gear video games. In Metal Gear Solid, Psycho Mantis claims to be a telepath, and he proves it by reading off a list of other games you've been playing. (This is accomplished by the game reading the data on your memory card.) In Metal Gear Solid 2, there's a wonderful part in which you upload a computer virus to a ship, and it seems to affect the game itself. Your commander, who turns out to be a computer AI, tells you to turn the game console off and stop playing so close to the TV.

In the original Ninja Turtles cartoon the 4th wall was broken on many occassions. In the other one from 2003 it was never broken. But when the two shows were bridged together in the Turtles Forever movie 80's Raphael broke the wall 3 times when the villain Hun was present and he didn't know wtf was going on. The 3rd time it happened he grabbed Raph, shook him and forced him to tell him who he was talking. Funny.

don't forget

Saved by the Bell
Malcolm in the Middle

Also Garfield and Friends. An old favorite of mine. Lots of 4th wall breaking there.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o7V1f7lbk4[/youtube]

I like it used mostly as a way of comedy, serious fictions should be closed, but an unserious fiction can use ut well.

My all time favourite is Hayate the Combat Butler, most of the series acts as a parody, where the characters pages/scenes, most make allusions to knowing the genre they are in, though it being a parody will often be wrong. Then there is the insulting narrator, only who badmouths the characters and plot, and gets into fights.

Then there are Abridged series, which are shortened parodies of the original, the best Being YuGiOh Abridged, and TeamFourStar's DragonBall Z Abridged.

"Ferris Bueller's Day Off" is my favorite example. Anyone...Anyone...

The title character in Alfie breaks the fourth wall throughout the movie.

Ned's Declassified
The funniest I've seen was in Jay and Silent Bob Strike back. That was a really hilarious moment.

While there are times when I like it to happen there are times when it is annoying like in the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon.