Fourth wall

The "fourth wall" is a term used to describe the creation of fictional universes in literature, movies, television, radio, comic books, and other forms of entertainment. It signifies the suspension of disbelief used by the audience to acknowledge that the characters in the story are real "living" beings in their own world, and not merely actors performing on a stage or studio set, or written words on the pages of a book.

A literary device called "breaking the fourth wall" is used when the plot of a story calls for some event to take place that shatters the barrier between the fictional world of the story, and the "real world" of the audience watching the story.

Examples of "breaking the fourth wall" include:

• In many animated cartoons, the cartoon characters will suddenly start talking directly to the audience, or encountering a break or tear in the film that the cartoon is being projected upon, or many other ways to remind the audience that they are watching an animated cartoon. Animation director Tex Avery was a pioneer of breaking the fourth wall, and his cartoons often stated, "In a cartoon, you can do anything!"

• In James M. Barrie's Peter Pan, Peter Pan encourages the good little children who believe in fairies -- in particular, the people reading the story right there and then -- to help make Tinker Bell better, after she drinks Peter's glass of poisoned milk.

• One of the first movies to tell a fictional story, The Great Train Robbery (1903), ends with a famous shot of a cowboy firing a gun directly at the audience. Legend says that during initial screenings of the film, this scene panicked many members of the studio audience.