Breaking the Fourth Wall

The Eds did quite a bit of fourth-wall breaking.

"But Kevin wasn't in this episode, Eddy!"

"This show needs subtitles."

And, of course, the episode where Ed manages to LITERALLY break the fourth wall, cracking the background and revealing TV static.
 
One of my favourite fourth wall gags actually predates TV:

In many theatrical cartoons, there is some kind of "audience gag" that is supposed to be an illusion of some kind to fool a theatre audience. Examples include:

  • Little Red Walking Hood (WB/1937)---Red and the Wolf's fight is interrupted by two people arriving to the theatre late.
  • Daffy Duck and Egghead (WB/1938)---A man in the audience gets up 3 times in a row as Egghead hunts for Daffy. On the third time, he is gunned dead by Egghead.
  • A Date to Skate (Fleischer/1938)---When Popeye leaves home without his spinach, he asks "Is there any spinach in the house?" and an audience member tosses a can of the stuff at him.
  • Thugs with Dirty Mugs (WB/1939)---A man who already sat through the latter half of the cartoon tries to get out of the theatre to call the cops, but is forced to sit down. Later, he informs the police chief of the robbers' whereabouts.
  • Who Killed Who? (MGM/1943)---A cop comes into the house and says "Nobody move!" As he says this, an audience member gets up for some reason, and the cop clubs him on the head.
  • Hair-Raising Hare (WB/1945)---Bugs asks, "Is there a doctor in the house?" An audience member replies, "I'm a Doctor!" Bugs then responds with his catchphrase.
This kind of theatrical fourth-wall gag could come in handy for the much-rumoured Family Guy movie, am I right?
 
Sonic X episode #10- Fierce Fight Sonic Baseball Team (Japanese/Original)
Chuck: If you catch it outside of the field it's actually out.
Sonic: Why are you so worried about that!? This is an anime!

Sonic X episode #10- Unfair Ball (English Dub)
Chuck: You caught it Sonic, but if it's outside the fence it doesn't count.
Sonic: Who says we gotta play by the rules anyway? Cut me some slack!
 
Many shows, live action and animated, have done it, and quite frankly, it gets annoying a lot. "WE" are not supposed to exist, "WE" are supposed to watch them and pretend they exist, not the other way around. When they do it to us, it does not become funny, it becomes annoying.

Live action examples:
"The Golden Girls"
"Malcolm in the Middle"
"Wizards of Waverly Place"
"Sesame Street" (and movies)
"The Muppet Show" (and movies)

Animated examples:
"Garfield and Friends"
"Family Guy" (a lot)
"American Dad" (a lot)
"The Simpsons"
"Spongebob Squarepants"
"Rocky & Bullwinkle"
"The Flintstones"
"Tiny Toon Adventures" (I think)
"Ed, Edd and Eddy" ("Kevin was not even in this episode, Eddy")

I was watching "the Grim Adventures of Bill and Mandy" today, and Mandy replied to something with this comment, "what a waste of an episode"; in the same episode, if I remember correctly, a machine strangled a caveman who is supposed to be Fred Flintstone, and took out his brain, he then grumbled at the camera, come on. I know it is fiction, but it is supposed to be reality, and we are supposed to be unidentifiable.

I cannot think of so many more, but you can find a lot if you search on-line. If you visit the IMDB, you can go to the search section at the bottom left, and then go to the word search section, and make sure you put in "breaking-the-fourth-wall" as written, it will not work any other way.

Anyway, I hope this helps. I will let you know if anything else comes to me.

Looneytunes/Disneytoons
 
The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy is no stranger to breaking the forth wall. In the episode where Billy finds Fred Flintstone (who Billy refers to as Jake Steel) frozen in his front yard, Mandy says it was a waste of an episode. There's also one time where something happened and a hole ripped through the screen revealing the ending credits. I don't know if that last one counts as breaking the forth wall but it turns out to be on the TV that Grim, Billy and Mandy are watching so. .. I don't know.



How is that breaking the forth wall? That's more of a poke towards the audience.



Lol, I love that line! It's little moments like that which makes me laugh the most with Spongebob.



Yup, Tino breaks the forth wall all the time. I think he's even been caught doing it by another Weekender.
 
Actually, the other main characters also had their chance on doing that.

Another example is The Grim Adventures Of Billy & Mandy starting with the third season (if I'm correct) the fourth wall breaking jokes start to happen, including Mandy's "Who writes this show, monkeys?" line.
 
Gintama... almost constantly. XD Well, really it's every three or four episodes. Not counting the omake on this 'cause there just ISN'T a 4th wall in those. XD

Freakazoid had a good time breaking it, as did Animaniacs, and The Tick periodicaly iirc.
 
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