: How do I prevent a structure-breaking character from being seen as a fourth-wall-breaking joke? I am unofficially "fixing up" a video game through modding. The game's Big Reveal is that the game

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If you want the Big Reveal to be taken seriously, just present it as such. Make it serious. A 4th wall break cannot happen unless you specifically want it. Sure, some of your players will smirk and think "oh, so this is what your aiming at".

But it will be clear that it's not played for jokes, or meta-gaming, if -as you said- the plot is coherent. Being coherent implies showing real struggle and real character development in face of this major reveal. How can it be humor, if the main character is shown to be devastated by the realization?

Major, flashing red spoiler alert from Supergiant's game, Transistor:

Every character in the game is an AI or a form of digitally-conserved mind. This is heavily implied in all the game and in the mechanics as well, as you can "save" dead people and interact with them as "functions" (aka skills) of your sword.

Yet there isn't a thing remotely resembling meta-narrative in the game. Everything is played face-value.

So your idea is perfectly viable as it is. The fact that your villain, the programmer, programmed your game-in-the-game, doesn't means that you are automatically going meta; nor the programmer has to be someone actually existing in our reality.

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I don't know games, but comic books play with 4th wall breaking a lot -- it's part of what makes Deadpool & She-Hulk so powerful. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/She-Hulk#Breaking_the_fourth_wall
Since in the Marvel universe, the readers-reading-the-comics-in-our-hands is one of many specific universes (most adventures, the "baseline" inside a Marvel comic, is Universe 616), which is similar perhaps to your "layers" of reality in games.

A lot of it depends on what your reveals have been all along.

One of my favorite techniques of establishing "reality" in fiction is realistic snippets of other media -- in Stephen King's Carrie, the original novel has snippets of news articles. Perhaps a snippet of a Wikipedia entry explaining the day the big simulation was revealed? And a Buzzfeed Listicle about top tweets about the SimulationThingie? One tv network denying it, one with a scientist showing how it's so clearly logical...?

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My best advice is to play Danganronpa 2. (Spoiler alert) It's a game within a game, and it pretty much covers what you're trying to go for, if I read your post correctly. The characters make references to the 4th wall throughout the story as comedic relief ("Stop acting like we're in a video game or something!")... and then, at the end, everyone learns that they're actually in a video game. Not the game the player is playing, of course, but a game within the game.

I believe your question boils down to "How can I reveal the villain as the programmer of the game without making it confusing?" Unfortunately, I can't write the scene for you, nor can I give you any specific advice since I don't know much about your game. Knowing how to write a scene like that requires detailed knowledge of the game thus far. What I can tell you, though, is that simply saying that the villain is the programmer can work fine. Make the villain prove that he is the programmer by exercising some of his powers. Then it becomes clear to both the other characters and to the real-life player that the 4th wall jokes were really foreshadowing the big reveal (as was the case in Danganronpa 2).

I honestly wouldn't worry about the real-life player getting confused. As long as your villain character is an actual character within your game and not a real-life person inserted into the game, it will be clear to real-life players that the villain programmed the game within the game. He is still a video game character to us, the real people in the real world.

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One of the reasons both protagonists and antagonists in print and media have sidekicks is to minimize narrative information dumps in favor of dialogue. Or occasionally, like Smeagol in Lord of the Rings, the maniac has an alterego and talks to himself. A minion, an underling, an apostle. Consider the case from the Bible: Jesus, in some circles otherwise known as God, goes to the Temple to argue with the Pharisees. He could simply state 10 ways to do things this way or that way, but the Pharisees are used as a tool to give a powerful message via dialogue, rather than speaking up to the stars which would have the effect of a lamentation.

Normally in literature one hesitates if not avoids the use of a tool for a single purpose--it looks contrived--but in a "short story" such as a video game intro, I think a second character could be added for nefarious conversations.

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