fourth wall breaking
Addressing viewers directly
Fourth wall breaking is when a fictional character acknowledges the audience or the artificiality of the work itself.
The term comes from theater, where three walls form the set and an invisible fourth wall separates performers from viewers.
Breaking it means addressing the audience directly, commenting on the plot, or otherwise stepping outside the fiction: The character looked at the camera and said, "Can you believe this guy?"
- metafictionLiterature aware of itself
- self-awareConscious of own existence
- audienceGathered viewers collectively
- narratorOne who tells events
- asideBrief theatrical digression
Deadpool · wink · wink at the camera · camera · direct address · Ferris Bueller · soliloquy · theater · stage · curtain · lampshading · trope · character · fiction · reality · comedic · lean into it · postmodern
- immersive theaterimmersive theater, interactive theater, audience participation, immersive show, sensory experience
- political theatrepolitical theatre, agitprop, political satire, political drama, political allegory
- fanfictionfanfiction, fan fiction, fic, fanfic, slash
- German TheaterGoethe, Bertolt Brecht, Faust, The Threepenny Opera, epic theater
fourth wall breakingimmersion
State of being submerged
suspension of disbelief · verisimilitude · naturalism · realism
fourth, break, breaking, breaks, broken, breaker, breakers, walled, walling