Top Qs

Timeline

Chat

Perspective

List of metafictional works

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Remove ads

This is a partial list of works that use metafictional ideas. Metafiction is intentional allusion or reference to a work's fictional nature. It is commonly used for humorous or parodic effect, and has appeared in a wide range of mediums, including writing, film, theatre, and video gaming.

Novels, novellas and short stories

Pre-20th century works

Modern and contemporary works

Peter Ackroyd, English Music
Rabih Alameddine, I, the Divine
Felipe Alfau, Locos: A Comedy of Gestures
Martin Amis, Money, London Fields, Time's Arrow, The Information
Isaac Asimov, Murder at the ABA
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale, The Testaments
Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy: City of Glass (1985), Ghosts (1986) and The Locked Room (1986)
Nicholson Baker, The Mezzanine
John Barnes, One for the Morning Glory
Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot
John Barth, Chimera; Coming Soon!!!; The Floating Opera; The Sot-Weed Factor; Lost in the Funhouse
Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn
Samuel Beckett, Watt
Thomas Bernhard, Wittgenstein's Nephew
Laurent Binet, HHhH
Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives, 2666
Jorge Luis Borges, "The Garden of Forking Paths"; "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius"; "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote"
George Bowering, Burning Water
Steven Brust and collaborators, Five Hundred Years After
William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch
Michel Butor, Second Thoughts
A. S. Byatt, Possession: A Romance
James Branch Cabell, The Cream of the Jest
Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Tres tristes tigres
Italo Calvino, If on a winter's night a traveler
Peter Carey, Illywhacker
Jonathan Carroll, The Land of Laughs
J. M. Coetzee, Slow Man
Douglas Cooper, Amnesia, Delirium
Julio Cortázar, Hopscotch
Douglas Coupland, jPod
John Crowley, Little, Big, Novelty, Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land, The Solitudes
Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Lydia Davis, The End of the Story
Peter David, Young Justice, Sir Apropos of Nothing
Samuel R. Delany, The Einstein Intersection; Dhalgren
Philip K. Dick, VALIS; The Man in the High Castle
Joan Didion, Democracy; The Last Thing He Wanted
Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum; The Island of the Day Before; The Name of the Rose
Jennifer Egan, The Keep
Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park; Imperial Bedrooms; The Shards
Harlan Ellison, "The Deathbird"
Michael Ende, The Neverending Story
Steve Erickson, Arc d'X; The Sea Came in at Midnight
Steven Erikson, Dust of Dreams; Crack'd Pot Trail
Raymond Federman, Twofold Vibration; Smiles on Washington Square; Take It Or Leave It
Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair; Lost in a Good Book; The Well of Lost Plots; Something Rotten; The Big Over Easy; The Fourth Bear
Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated
Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier
John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman, The Magus
Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World
Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
John Gardner, October Light; Grendel
William H. Gass, The Tunnel
André Gide, The Counterfeiters
William Goldman, The Princess Bride
Alasdair Gray, Lanark
Robert Grudin, Book: A Novel
Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime
Steven Hall; The Raw Shark Texts
Larry Heinemann, Paco's Story
Robert A. Heinlein, The Number of the Beast; Glory Road
Douglas Hofstadter, dialogues in Gödel, Escher, Bach
Marek Huberath, Nest of Worlds (Gniazdo światów)
Rhys Hughes, Nowhere Near Milk Wood; The Postmodern Mariner; The Less Lonely Planet
B. S. Johnson, Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry
James Joyce, Ulysses; Finnegans Wake
Stephen King, The Dark Tower series; Misery; The Dark Half; Bag of Bones
Michael Muhammad Knight, Osama Van Halen
Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting; The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Stanisław Lem, A Perfect Vacuum; Imaginary Magnitude; Provocation, One Human Minute
Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
Joan Lindsay, Through Darkest Pondelayo
Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger
David Lodge, Therapy; Nice Work
Ki Longfellow, Houdini Heart
Dimitris Lyacos, With the People from the Bridge
Steve Lyons, Doctor Who'; Virgin New Adventures:Conundrum
Barry N. Malzberg, Galaxies; Herovit's World
Yann Martel, Life of Pi
Ian McEwan, Atonement
Shaun Micallef, Smithereens; Preincarnate; The President's Desk
David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
Spike Milligan, Puckoon
Walter Moers, The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear; Ensel und Kretel; The City of Dreaming Books
Michael Moorcock, The Second Ether sequence (Blood, Fabulous Harbours, and The War Amongst The Angels)
Ethan Mordden, The Buddies Cycle
Toni Morrison, Jazz
John Muckle, London Brakes
Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
Vladimir Nabokov, The Gift; Pale Fire; Look at the Harlequins!; Lolita
Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds
Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried, Going After Cacciato
Michael Ondaatje, Running in the Family
Juan Carlos Onetti, El Pozo
Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club; Diary; Haunted
Grace Paley, A Conversation with my Father
Kenneth Patchen, The Journal of Albion Moonlight
Milorad Pavić's novels
Nisio Isin, Monogatari Series; Zaregoto Series; Shin Honkaku Mahou Shoujo Risuka; etc
Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Club Dumas
Salvador Plascencia, The People of Paper
Terry Pratchett, several of the Discworld; The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
Robert Rankin's novels
Alain Robbe-Grillet, La Jalousie; La maison de rendez-vous
Philip Roth, Operation Shylock
Salman Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories; Midnight's Children; Shalimar the Clown
Douglas Rushkoff, Exit Strategy
José Saramago, Blindness; The Cave; The Double
Howard Schoenfeld, Built Up Logically
Idries Shah, The Book of the Book
Robert Sheckley, Options
Dan Sleigh, Islands
José Carlos Somoza, The Athenian Murders
Gilbert Sorrentino, Mulligan Stew
Muriel Spark, The Comforters
Peter Straub, In the Night Room
Jonathan Stroud, The Bartimaeus Trilogy
José Baroja, The curious case of the shadow that died as a memory
Janet Tashjian, The Gospel According to Larry; Vote for Larry
J. R. R. Tolkien, "Leaf by Niggle"
Roderick Townley, The Great Good Thing
Miguel de Unamuno, Niebla
Aritha Van Herk, Restlessness
Jeff VanderMeer, City of Saints and Madmen
Gore Vidal, Myra Breckinridge
Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions; Slaughterhouse-Five; Timequake
David Foster Wallace, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
H. G. Wells, Tono-Bungay
Colin Wilson, The Personality Surgeon
Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, The Illuminatus! Trilogy
Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry The Powerbook; Gut Symmetries
Gene Wolfe, The Fifth Head of Cerberus, "The Last Thrilling Wonder Story"
Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography
Ronald Wright, A Scientific Romance
Ursula K. Le Guin, Lavinia
Sing-Shong, Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint
Paul Ableman, ‘’The Twilight of the Vilp’’ (1969)

Children's books and young adult fiction

Crockett Johnson, Harold and the Purple Crayon
John Dougherty, the Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face series
Michael Ende, The Neverending Story
Cornelia Funke, Inkheart series
Mordicai Gerstein, A Book
Anders Jacobsson and Sören Olsson, Kobåj-Kurt (within the Bert Diaries)^[2]
Diana Wynne Jones, Fire and Hemlock
Arthur Ransome, Peter Duck, Missee Lee
Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler), A Series of Unfortunate Events (13 book series)
Mo Willems, We Are in a Book! (Elephant and Piggie series)
Jon Stone, The Monster at the End of This Book: Starring Lovable, Furry Old Grover
Emily Gravett, Wolves, Little Mouse's Big Book of Fears
Chris Wooding, Poison
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
Roald Dahl, The Witches

Remove ads

Animated short films

Chuck Jones, Duck Amuck (1953) and Rabbit Rampage (1955).
Don Hertzfeldt, Rejected (2000) and World of Tomorrow (2015 - 2020)

Stage plays

Pre-20th century plays

Francis Beaumont, The Knight of the Burning Pestle
Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy
William Shakespeare, Hamlet; A Midsummer Night's Dream; Pericles, Prince of Tyre
Manuel Tamayo y Baus, Un drama nuevo

Modern theater works

Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot; Endgame
Jackie Sibblies Drury, Fairview; We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884–1915
Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt, The Mighty Boosh (1998 stage show)
Federico García Lorca, Play Without a Title / Untitled Play (1935)
Joseph Heller, We Bombed in New Haven
Arthur L. Kopit, End of the World with Symposium to Follow
Ira Levin, Deathtrap
Daniel MacIvor, Never Swim Alone and This Is a Play
Steve Martin, Picasso at the Lapin Agile
Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author
Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
Peter Weiss, Marat/Sade (The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat As Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade)
Thornton Wilder, The Skin of Our Teeth
Doug Wright, I Am My Own Wife

Musicals

Passing Strange
Pippin

Films

Keith Allen and Peter Richardson's Comic Strip film Detectives on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown
Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo, Deconstructing Harry and Midnight in Paris
Robert Altman's The Player
Troy Duffy's The Boondock Saints
Michael Bacall and Jonah Hill's 22 Jump Street
Steve Bendelack's The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse
Ingmar Bergman's Persona, The Magician, Prison, and The Passion of Anna
Colin Trevorrow's Jurassic World
Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles and Spaceballs
Dean Parisot's Galaxy Quest
John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness
Wes Craven's Scream film series and Wes Craven's New Nightmare
Wyllis Cooper's Quiet, Please scripts
Francis Ford Coppola's Twixt
David Cronenberg's Videodrome, Naked Lunch, and eXistenZ
Tom DiCillo's Living in Oblivion
Federico Fellini's 8½
David Fincher's Fight Club
Marc Forster's Stranger Than Fiction
Bob Fosse's All That Jazz
Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer's Epic Movie
Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, Weekend, Alphaville and King Lear
Peter Greenaway's The Baby of Mâcon
Kirt Gunn's Lovely By Surprise
Michael Haneke's Funny Games
Jim Henson's Muppets franchise (The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper, The Muppets Take Manhattan, The Muppet Christmas Carol, Muppet Treasure Island, Muppets from Space, The Muppets, and Muppets Most Wanted)
Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation and Being John Malkovich
Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York and Anomalisa
Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr.
David Lynch's Inland Empire
John McTiernan's Last Action Hero
Coleman Miller's Uso Justo
John Cameron Mitchell's Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Mike Myers and Michael McCullers's Austin Powers
Andrew Niccol's The Truman Show
Tim Miller's Deadpool, David Leitch's Deadpool 2 and Shawn Levy's Deadpool & Wolverine
Christopher Nolan's Inception
Trey Parker's South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
Roman Polanski's What?
Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman's American Splendor
Kevin Smith's Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and Jay and Silent Bob Reboot
Tom Tykwer's Run Lola Run
Lana Wachowski's The Matrix Resurrections
David Wain and Michael Showalter's They Came Together
Shawn Wayans, Marlon Wayans, Buddy Johnson, Phil Beauman, Jason Friedberg, Aaron Seltzer, and Wes Craven's Scary Movie
Quentin Dupieux's Rubber
Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard's The Cabin in the Woods
James Franco's Interior. Leather Bar.
Michael Winterbottom's A Cock and Bull Story, a film adaptation of Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy
Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's Hot Fuzz
Jaco Van Dormael's Mr. Nobody
Lars von Trier's Epidemic
Gaspar Noe's Lux Aeterna
Saw Teong Hin's You Mean the World to Me
Neill Blomkamp's District 9
Sony Pictures Animation's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain
Shawn Levy's Free Guy
Robert Rodriguez's Shorts
Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert's Everything Everywhere All At Once
Greta Gerwig's Barbie
Martin McDonagh's Seven Psychopaths
Walt Disney Animation Studios's The Emperor's New Groove
Warner Bros. Animation's The Lego Movie
Richard Kelly's Southland Tales
Tom Green's Freddy Got Fingered
Ari Aster's Beau Is Afraid
Jonas Mekas's As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty
Damon Packard's Fatal Pulse
Leos Carax's Holy Motors and Annette
Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg and The Green Fog
Mike Cheslik's Hundreds of Beavers
Matt Johnson's The Dirties
Don Hertzfeldt's It's Such A Beautiful Day

Remove ads

Television shows

Remove ads

Comic strips, comic books, graphic novels, and manga

Aka Akasaka, Kaguya-sama: Love Is War
Berke Breathed, Bloom County, Outland and Opus
Rich Burlew, The Order of the Stick
John Byrne's run on The Sensational She-Hulk and Dan Slott's run on She-Hulk
Mike Carey, The Unwritten, featuring characters coming from, and journeying into, fictional worlds
Paul Cornell, IDW 2013 Doctor Who Special: The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who
Jim Davis, Garfield
Andrew Hussie, Homestuck
Nisio Isin and Akira Akatsuki, Medaka Box
Tatsuya Ishida, Sinfest
Jeff Lemire and Dean Ormston, Black Hammer
Alan Moore, Promethea, Supreme and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, Watchmen
Grant Morrison, Animal Man, Doom Patrol, Flex Mentallo, The Filth, Batman R.I.P., Final Crisis and The Invisibles
Atsushi Ōkubo, Fire Force
Stephan Pastis, Pearls Before Swine
Ryukishi07, Higurashi When They Cry and Umineko When They Cry
Claudio Sanchez, Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV, Vol. 1, first half of the fourth chapter of The Amory Wars presents a metafictional aspect to the story
Dave Sim, chapters "Minds" and "Guys" from his graphic novel Cerebus
Dan Slott, Spider-Verse
Kristofer Straub, Checkerboard Nightmare
Garry Trudeau, Doonesbury
Adam Warren, Empowered
Mason Williams, 1/0

Remove ads

Interactive media and video games

Ackk Studios, YIIK: A Postmodern RPG
Against Gravity, Rec Room
Blooming Buds Studio, Calendula
Toby Fox, Undertale; Deltarune^[3]
Shigesato Itoi, EarthBound; Mother 3
Daniel Mullins, Pony Island,^[3] The Hex, Inscryption
Mystman12, Baldi's Basics Classic Remastered
Hideo Kojima, Metal Gear Solid
Silicon Knights, Eternal Darkness
Future Cat LLC, OneShot
Josh Millard, Ennuigi
Question, The Magic Circle^[3]
Ryukishi07, Higurashi When They Cry and Umineko When They Cry
Vio Shimokura, YOU and ME and HER: A Love Story
Team Salvato, Doki Doki Literature Club!
THQ, Saints Row: The Third, Saints Row 4
Keiichiro Toyama, Silent Hill
Davey Wreden, The Stanley Parable; The Beginner's Guide^[3]
Ivan "Mad" Zanotti, IMSCARED
Masato Hiruta, Shuusaku, Kisaku
SCA-JI, Wonderful Everyday
Goichi Suda, Flower, Sun, and Rain; No More Heroes
Ice-Pick Lodge, Pathologic
AIHASTO, MiSide
Kazutaka Kodaka, Spike Chunsoft, Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony
Ubisoft Montreal, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag
Hello Games, No Man's Sky
Squanch Games, High On Life

Remove ads

Web videos

Don't Hug Me I'm Scared
Petscop
The Show About the Show by Caveh Zahedi
Skies Forever Blue by Toby Fox and Itoki Hana
Angry Video Game Nerd and Nostalgia Critic

Multiple authors

The Marvel Comics characters She-Hulk, Howard the Duck, Deadpool, Uatu the Watcher, Purple Man, Spider-Ham and Gwen Poole are all aware they are in a comic book.
The DC Comics characters Ambush Bug and The Joker are aware that they are in a comic book.
Penny Arcade frequently features metafiction, particularly their fantasy setting Epic Legends of the Hierarchs: The Elemenstor Saga, which has a detailed wiki devoted to it.
The Ongoing Adventures of Rocket Llama is fiction with a metafictional history.
Triangle and Robert is heavily metafictional.

Remove ads

Artists' books

Space Opera: The Artist's Book by Michael J. Weller

References

Loading content...

Loading related searches...

Wikiwand - on

Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.

Remove ads