In 2012, the tour included Australia, New Zealand, and South America, resuming 27 January in Perth, and ending 1 April 2012 in São Paulo.

Waters, a pacifist, incorporated an increased emphasis on the show's anti-war message, and he requested fans to send him pictures of loved ones who have died as a result of wars.

Following a charity gig Waters performed with his former Pink Floyd bandmates on 10 July 2010,[16] he confirmed that David Gilmour would guest on "Comfortably Numb" at one show during the tour.

Gilmour appeared at the 12 May 2011 show at The O2, London playing lead guitar on "Comfortably Numb" and mandolin on "Outside the Wall", on which they were also joined by Nick Mason on tambourine.

On 24 August 2010, The Times Leader newspaper of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, reported that Waters and company were in town rehearsing for the tour at the Mohegan Sun Arena.

The pre-show audio was 20 minutes of several clips from television sitcoms and cartoons like Family Guy as well as comedy routines from George Carlin.

After the first leg of the North American tour, the sound collage was dropped and replaced with 20 minutes of music in the following order and has been the same for every show since, "Mother" by John Lennon, "Masters of War" by Bob Dylan, "A Change Is Gonna Come" by Sam Cooke, "Imagine" by John Lennon, "Strange Fruit" by Billie Holiday, and "People Get Ready" by The Impressions.

During the climax of the song, a scaled down Stuka Dive Bomber, suspended by a guide wire, flies into the wall and explodes.

During "The Happiest Days of Our Lives" and "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)" there is a giant inflated puppet schoolmaster, an icon from the original show.

The song has more of a political message than before, the words "Big Brother Is Watching You" are written on the wall, with the "Br" crossed off and replaced with an "M".

During the song "Don't Leave Me Now" the production features a giant wife puppet similar in design and execution as the Schoolmaster.

As "Nobody Home" begins, a section folds out of the wall revealing a small mock hotel room complete with a television, chair, lamp and unmade bed.

[2] Waters' trademarked inflatable pig is released, untethered, during "In the Flesh", and guided by remote control, floats around the venue.

After this montage, the leaked footage from the 12 July 2007 Baghdad airstrike is played, displaying captions of the American pilots speaking and pointing out Reuters employees Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen, whose cameras were mistaken for weapons; after the attack, a banner is projected onto the wall: "Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh, We Will Remember You."

"Waiting for the Worms" features more of Gerald Scarfe's original animation from the film adaptation and tour, except that the infamous sequence of marching hammers has now been replaced with a new computer-generated, cel-shaded version.

(At certain shows on the Australian leg, the band plays a complete acoustic version of "Waltzing Matilda" immediately after "Outside the Wall" as a rare encore.

Kevin Coffey of the Omaha World-Herald wrote: Roger Waters and a cast of supporting musicians ... perform[ed] from start to finish one of the most commercially successful, beloved and ambitious art-rock albums in history ... as the show begins, the famous and enormous white wall is erected on stage, brick by brick, until it obscures the band and becomes a screen upon which a dazzling array of videos and visuals are projected.

Its harsh, theatrical nature pulls the audience deep into its storyline and its visuals create the illusion of actually being inside a dynamic, frightening and engrossing movie.

[2] Steve Pick of Stltoday.com said: "Roger Waters did not put on just an ordinary concert Friday night at the Scottrade Center — he created a huge, technologically complex and metaphorically dense theatrical spectacle.

Waters accordingly turned the performance into a[n] epic, gaudy and extravagant piece of theatre – an onslaught of sights, sounds and socio-political themes.

"[25] Kevin Stevens of The Setonian stated: A hail of firework explosions, hundreds of large rectangular bricks, crashing planes, enormous puppets, 3D effects.

Roger Waters' tour of his seminal album, "The Wall", lavishes in this Broadway-esque pomp, but never compromises its music for theatrics.

[26] A.D. Amorosi of the Philadelphia City Paper wrote: "If epic paranoia over monster themes such as megalomania, mother fixation, loneliness, television, the warring industrial complex and the uselessness of fans and celebrity, accompanied by the sounds of unsettling bombast, is what you seek as entertainment, there's a bridge I can sell you.

"One of My Turns", "Don't Leave Me Now" and "Run Like Hell" are all transposed one key down[clarification needed] to accommodate Waters' vocal range.

A change was made in the setlist from the Berlin 16 June 2011 show onwards, when Waters added an acoustic coda to "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)" with brand new lyrics referring to the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes.