"Good God, this is beyond fourth wall jokes. This is like if the fourth wall had a mouse hole, and the mouse hole had four walls, and they had a termite hole, and the termite hole had four walls. That's the fourth wall we'll be looking through. You know... the twelfth wall."
— The Nostalgia Critic reviews To Boldly Flee
There you go.
...oh, you wanted more? But that was metafiction right there! Oh, but you want me to explain it to you? Fine. Alright, pull up your chairs close to your computers, or place your mobile device on a flat surface, and settle down. I'll tell you the tale of Meta Fiction.
Once upon a time, a man named Report Siht wrote a story. Except he didn't want it to be like other stories. He wanted to comment on other stories with his story. His story included stuff about stories. Thus it was Meta Fiction. He published it and everyone was happy. Except for the people who wrote the stories he was commenting about, of course, but don't worry, rocks fell and killed them. The End.
...wait, you still want more? Okay, fine, be like that.
Meta Fiction ("meta" meaning "beyond", often used to mean "self-referential") is when a story (or movie or television show) comments upon another piece of fiction or upon its own fictionalism. Yes, that's a word. For example, in Hamlet, the titular prince has the play The Murder of Gonzago or The Mousetrap put on to Catch the Conscience of Claudius. Of course, at the time Hamlet was written, The Mousetrap was fictional and later on, Agatha Christie actually wrote a play called The Mousetrap, defictionalizing it. Yes, that's a word, too.
For a more recent example, not that examples are ever recent, there's the 2002 film Adaptation.. Directed by Spike Jonze and written by Charlie Kaufman, it stars Nicolas Cage as... Charlie Kaufman and his (fictional) twin brother Donald Kaufman. Charlie tries to adapt the real book The Orchid Thief by real author Susan Orlean (played by Meryl Streep), which Charlie Kaufman actually tried to do before getting writer's block and writing Adaptation. Interestingly enough, within the movie Adaptation, the fictional Charlie Kaufman writes Adaptation and gets Gérard Depardieu to play him, making this an example of metametafiction.
There are various forms of metafiction, all of which can be found here and here.
By the way, we're not actually having a conversation. You're actually reading this on a computer screen. Metafictioned! note
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Bakuman。: It's a manga about making manga. It just doesn't go for the fourth wall, but everything else is there.
- Medaka Box:
- Akune is a direct reference to a traditional manga hero, and how the male part of the audience tends to turn that character into a pointless destroyer in fanfiction, whereas the female part turns the same concept into a bishonen on a white stallion, but then having that character mature beyond them, learn from their viewpoints, and move onwards. It is explicitly stated, but still a bit of a Genius Bonus.
- Kumagawa is a fan of Shonen Jump, the same magazine Medaka Box is serialized in, and has a habit of Lampshade Hanging and imagining how everyone's lives are somewhat predestined.
- Ajimu drags the story kicking and screaming into metafiction because she sees Medaka's life like a manga with Medaka as the protagonist and herself as the seemingly unstoppable villain. In order to try to beat her she even shifts the genre of the story so that the story has more use of Zenkichi as protagonist in order to defeat her.
Films — Animation
- Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: The entire film is an example more literally than most examples as a lot of the drama of the film that Miles faces is built around the actual concept of continuity and the journey of story-telling as a whole being represented by the variations of the multiverse he encounters along his way and where the biggest source of conflict between himself, Miguel, and the Spot all stem from in one way or another.
Films — Live-Action
- Deadpool & Wolverine: Given Deadpool's infamous reputation for breaking the fourth wall, the film is very upfront about some of its story being an allegory for real life events concerning Fox and Disney. Deadpool's recruitment by the TVA and invitation to join the Sacred Timeline before his timeline is wiped from existence is a thinly veiled nudge-and-wink to the fact that Disney has bought out Fox's film division and will be rebooting the X-Men films, but Deadpool is "special", which is why he's been given a chance to escape this fate. Additionally, the notion of universes slowly falling apart after the death of their “anchor being” (who, in Deadpool’s universe, was apparently Wolverine) seems to be a nod to the X-Men movies struggling to progress without the franchise’s flagship character, and Deadpool encounters several characters from dead and cancelled movies who desire a satisfying ending to their arcs.
- Inland Empire: A movie about making a movie, where at some point the actress becomes her character and enters the world of her movie, and at varying points also the world of a different movie, a radio show, and a TV show. Frequently breaks the fourth wall and creates great confusion about what is and isn't real.
- Scream: They're slasher movies that are about slasher movies, in which the characters, heroes and villains alike, have all grown up watching them on home video, and know all the tricks, tropes, and clichés.
Literature
- Cloud Atlas: Consists of six different stories, each set in a different time period with radically different style and genre. Each story exists as a story within the next book, usually dismissed as fiction - yet there are recurring details and motifs that suggest that all narratives are part of the same coherent story and universe.
- If on a winter's night a traveler: Each chapter is an excerpt from a previous book, and you, the reader, are on a quest to find the rest of the book and figure out how they all fit together.
- Nursery Crime: A detective story set in a world where nursery story characters are real, the laws of fiction affect reality, and people discuss which plot devices to use in their day to day lives. The blurring of fiction and reality and the way fictional characters are stuck in modes of operation and inevitabilities determined by their original story are plot points.
- Pale Fire: The book is nominally literary commentary by the academic Charles Kinbote on Jonathan Shade's poem "Pale Fire", but as the book goes on the commentary has increasingly nothing to do with the text (or obvious readings of the text) of the poem and more and more about Kinbote and his deranged obsession with Shade. Disagreements about about what is and isn't real within the world of the story.
- Academy of Mr. Kleks: The fairy tale denizens know perfectly well they're made up - The Little Match Girl and her creator, casually hanging around the story explain to Adaś he needn't feel sad for her, because she's not real. There is a fairy tale enchanted princess whose story hasn't been finished and she worries about that. The fairy tales visit and help each other freely, and that includes Mr. Kleks who sends his students for visits and, at one point, invites all the fairy tales to tell them the story of Lunarians.
- The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas: Brás Cubas frequently talks to the reader about the process of writing his posthumous memoirs, imagining what they feel or expect. In Chapter LXXII, after expressing some regret in writing the novel, Cubas thinks of suppressing the previous chapter and imagines a scenario seventy years in the future of an old bibliophile finding the book in a slum, being overjoyed at seeing it's a unique edition, and looking for any lack of purpose in it, which is a fertile ground for criticism in any book. The imagined bibliophile then considers writing about the novel in his own short memoirs if he finds perfection in the sentence showing a lack of purpose, although he settles for simply possessing a unique edition.
- The new Sorrows of young W. by Ulrich Plenzdorf is an East German novel told from the posthumous perspective of a 17 year old, who died in a self-caused freak accident. Early on in his tale, he comes across a print of The Sorrows of Young Werther, which he quotes from and applies to his life situation to an increasing degree and to the bewilderment of everyone witnessing it.
- Thursday Next: Set in a world where literature is Serious Business, the books are about a policewoman who can travel in and out of books, via a Great Library where fictional characters live, to ensure plots go the way they should. Also hangs a lampshade about just about everything.
Live-Action TV
- The Anthology Series Inside No. 9 sometimes falls into this.
- For example, "Deadline" starts with a live performance of a new episode, before 'technical difficulties' mean the episode has to be cancelled. They put on a previous episode ("A Quiet Night In") instead, but it soon becomes apparent that not all is as it seems. A ghostly figure appears in the background of the opening of the episode. The episode then cuts to the announcer saying that there are still technical difficulties, but there are strange whispers in the background. She then suddenly screams, and the announcement cuts off. The rest of the episode then follows security camera feed of co-writers and lead-actors Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith hanging out on the set, displeased that the live episode failed. This is interspersed with old (often real) footage of strange happenings at the set. Soon, it becomes apparent that the horror has entered the set. The episode then ends with a real interview Pemberton and Shearsmith did to promote the episode where they say that the two of them, most certainly, do not believe in ghosts.
- The final episode, "Plodding On", is another example. It has Pemberton, Shearsmith and several of the past guest stars of the show playing themselves. It's about Pemberton and Shearsmith trying to decide what to do now the show is over. A key plot point is also a hoax the two perpetuated in the marketing for the previous season.
- The Singing Detective dips into it at times, with the main character, Philip Marlow, being a writer, and the Film Noir segments starring the titular Hardboiled Detective, also named Philip Marlow, who is very transparently a Wish Fulfilment Author Avatar, being his fever-dreams based on his books. As the story progresses, Marlow gradually starts to lose his ability to separate reality and fantasy, resulting in the characters of the Film Noir segments beginning to become increasingly aware of their statues as fictional characters and their own roles in the narrative of Marlow's story, complete with them commenting on it. This culminates in the two recurring Bit-Part Bad Guys realizing that they aren't important characters at all, in fact they discover that they cannot even remember their own names, because Marlow hasn't even bothered to give them any, and they are both pretty angry to learn that they nothing but "padding" for the story.
Tabletop Games
- Delta Green's Impossible Landscapes campaign plays around with this as the presence of the villain of the story, The King in Yellow, starts to assert influence, not just over the narrative, but the meta-narrative too. It starts out with Mind Screws and Surreal Horror, before it gradually begins to deconstruct the tropes of Tabletop RPGs as the King wrests increasing control over the events of the story, starting to very overtly Railroad the story and even enforces several Genre Shifts along the way, and acknowledges the Agents (and by extension their Players) as really being actors in a play that is already written. The source book also openly encourages the Handler to Break the Fourth Wall in various ways during the latter parts of the campaign, so as to give the players the impression that The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You.
Theatre
- Inside No. 9 Stage/Fright: Ostensibly, the play is simply several sketches (one based on an episode of the original show), introduced by Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, the writers and lead actors. Sure, there's twists and a plot of a haunting that connects the sketches together, but other than that it's fairly straight forward. Then it gets to the ending. The cast walk onto stage, the lights begin to turn on and the exits open. Eagle-eyed audience members might notice something off... the man standing next to Steve Pemberton is not Reece Shearsmith. Then a photo of Pemberton and 'Shearsmith' with the celebrity guest star is show on the screen, which makes it clear that Shearsmith is being played by a double. Soon after that, Pemberton explains that Shearsmith actually 'died' during rehearsals, and the man we saw was just his stand-in Toby. Pemberton mentions that Toby was so good and his own grief was so strong that he actually saw Toby as Shearsmith (referencing the fact that, of course, it was the real Shearsmith playing him for most of the play). The curtain then closes. However, this is not the end. We can still hear the actors talking and, suddenly, a light falls and kills Pemberton. The lights dim, the exits close and the play is back on. It ends with Shearsmith and Pemberton talking in heaven about the play and finishing off with a performance of "If Your Going to Cry", which was supposed to finish off "Bernie Clifton's Dressing Room" but ended up changed because Pemberton felt a song about a man dancing with the memory/ghost of his comedy partner would be too close to home.
Video Games
- All of Daniel Mullins' longer games are about video games and their creators.
- Pony Island is a metafictional game about a game (the titular Pony Island) created by the Devil himself. Lucifer just so happens to be a god-awful programmer who suffers from severe creative ADD, so the player has to go into the code and fix his mistakes to make the game actually function.
- The Hex is about six jaded video game characters who all happen to be simultaneously staying at an inn. As the story unfolds, you find out that their lives were ruined thanks to things like franchise buy-outs, dissatisfaction with their own in-game lives, or even stuff like Game Mods messing with their minds. The final game segment takes us into a fictionalized game about the life of the famous developer Lionel Snill (the In-Universe creator of many of the guests at the inn) and his journey to success. The video game characters are (with a few exceptions) aware that they are fictional characters created and controlled by humans, a fact which many of them are resigned to. Until they're not.
- Inscryption is an In-Universe work of fiction, and the player isn't playing it, but is watching gameplay footage recorded by a content creator named "The Lucky Carder", who found the game after following a mysterious set of coordinates leading to its location. And just like The Hex, the characters in the game are aware of the fact that they are fictional video game characters.
- The Magic Circle is about a highly acclaimed text adventure game being remade as a 3D RPG years after its initial publishing. Unfortunately, the constant arguments and tension between the in-universe developers have sent the game to Development Hell, leaving much of the work square on the shoulders of an Artificial Intelligence called the Old Pro.
- The Stanley Parable: The game is a deconstruction of how players will intentionally attempt to subvert given directions in order to find any possible hidden endings or Easter Eggs.
- The conceit of UFO 50 is that it's a ROM dump of a game collection by some obscure company from the '80s; everything past the intro takes this in-universe perspective. By solving a series of puzzles hidden within the games, you can gradually unlock the hidden Miasma Tower, a game about the development of UFO 50 and what working at the company was like at the time.
Visual Novels
- Koihime†Musou:
- According to Chousen, the world of Koihime Musou exists because someone wrote the story of Koihime Musou by looking at the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and wondering what it would be like if Sousou and her generals were all lovers and Sonken and Shuuyu were actually enemies. The bit about the gender-flipping goes unstated, but the implication is there.
- Indeed, this happens for every story anyone's ever thought up. Entire universes spring into existence from the True History (real life) whenever someone creates a story—and stories based on that stories create more alternative histories that branch out from the first alternative history.
- Save the Date (Paper Dino): Many of the game's mechanics revolve around you essentially cheating the game. Jumping around save states and playing the game many times over are essential to making progress.
- Umineko: When They Cry: The story is essentially about how mystery stories are created, and the VN operates on several levels of "meta" realities. For starters, there's the board (aka, the events of each episode), then there's the "Meta World" that Beatrice, the Witches, and Meta-Battler exist on, and then even past that there's the top level reality that Ange lives in.
Web Animation
- Supermarioglitchy4's Super Mario 64 Bloopers:
- In "Losing Your N64," Mario and Luigi play Super Mario 64 on a Nintendo 64, even though they're already Super Mario 64 characters.
- In "Time Travel Tells," Mario goes back in time and accidentally prevents Super Mario 64 from being made. The guy who had the idea for the game was already in the game.
- In "Bloopception," Mario makes his own Super Mario 64 blooper. He records his gameplay, edits the video, and uploads it to YouTube, even though he's already a character in a Super Mario 64 blooper.
Webcomics
- qxlkbh: The comic regularly comments on itself in a fourth-wall-breaking manner, and the authors are themselves prominent characters.
- Surviving Romance: The webcomic explores the free will of the characters within an established story and how that changes when the circumstances that surround them change. With the reveal that the protagonist "Chaerin" is actually the author of the original romance novel "I’ll Love You Every Day" and the villain of the webcomic is the original protagonist gaining sentience, the webcomic also interrogates the relationship between the author, the author's intentions and the characters in the story.
Web Original
- The Japanese Creepypasta "Cow Head" has been described as a meta-ghost story since it is about a ghost story so frightening it kills anyone who reads it. No details about the story are given, although it presumably involves a cow head.
