Lampshade Hanging / Live-Action Films

Lampshades hung in live-action film.

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• Jason X has a few of these:
  • "Hey, guys, it's okay! He just wanted his machete back!"
  • The entire Camp Crystal Lake holodeck program.
• In Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, the cemetery groundskeeper looks straight into the camera and says, "Some people sure have a strange idea of entertainment."
• The Muppet Movie uses this trope multiple times, most notably in the song "Moving Right Along", during which Fozzie and Kermit are in a car. Every now and then, Fozzie presents the ridiculous moment they have just found themselves in, followed by an incredulous response from Kermit.
  Kermit: Turn left at the fork in the road.
  Fozzie: Left at the fork in the road. [passes a literal fork in the road] Kermit!
  Kermit: I don't believe it.
  [later]
  Fozzie: But sadly, we just left Rhode Island!
  Kermit: We did what?
  Fozzie: Nothing.
  • Ironically, the title of the song is "Moving Right Along", which is the reason this trope is used in the first place.
  • Also in the movie, there is a Running Gag where someone declares they need help and someone replies with "Have you tried Hare Krishna?" This joke is used so many times that even Kermit comments on it.
    Kermit: Good grief, it's a running gag.
• In the 2011 film The Muppets after the exposition of the characters' seemingly insurmountable obstacle, Amy Adams' character quips, "This is going to be an awfully short movie."
  • They also lampshade almost everything else in the movie (as is Muppet tradition), but the standout has to be the musical numbers, which earn commentary ranging from "I've made up my mind, and I just sang a song about it" to having a large number of extras collapsing in an exhausted heap when they can finally stop singing the opening song.
  • Another notable moment from this movie is when Gary wonders how they can possibly get all of the Muppets in time
    Kermit: Didn't you see our first movie? We drive.
• Bride of Chucky does this a little bit, particularly with the line "Let me put it this way. If this were a movie, it would take three or four sequels to do it justice." The movie ends with Chucky saying that he knows he'll come back to life eventually. Sure enough, he does. Then Seed of Chucky totally goes off the deep end with its movie-within-a-movie plot in which Tiffany meets her own voice actress (Jennifer Tilly, playing herself).
• A cliché is lampshaded in No Country for Old Men:
  [Chigurh is about to kill Carla Jean, and she knows it]
  Carla Jean: You don't have to do this.
  Chigurh: People always say the same thing.
  Carla Jean: What do they say?
  Chigurh: They say, "you don't have to do this".
• In Lockout, Snow forestalls objections to the stupidity of the plan by insulting it himself:
  "Don't get me wrong. It's a dream vacation. I mean, I load up. I go into space. I get inside the maximum-security nuthouse. Save the President's daughter, if she's not dead already. Get past all the psychos who've just woken up. I'm thrilled that you would think of me."
• Titanic (1997): Rose has an upper-class background and is engaged to a rich man, while Jack is just a vagabond.
  Rose: When the ship docks... I'm getting off with you.
  Jack: This is crazy.
  Rose: I know. It doesn't make any sense.
• The A-Team lampshades the improbable scene of the Team attempting to use a Recoil Boost to safely land a falling tank:
  Commander: Are they trying to shoot down that other drone?
  Sosa: No, they're trying to fly that tank.
• The Cabin in the Woods is one huge lampshade-hanging exercise.
• About the film Casablanca, from p. 372 of the screenwriting book Story by Robert McKee:
  Ferrari is the ultimate capitalist and crook who never does anything except for money. Yet at one point Ferrari helps Victor Lazlo find the precious letters of transit and wants nothing in return. That's out of character, illogical. Knowing this, the writers gave Ferrari the line: "Why I'm doing this, I don't know, because it can't possible profit me..." Rather than hiding the hole, the writers admitted it with the bold lie that Ferrari might be impulsively generous. The audience knows we often do things for reasons we can't explain. Complimented, it nods, thinking, "Even Ferrari doesn't get it. Fine. On with the film."
  • The implication is clearly that he's so charmed by Mrs. Lazlo that it inspires him to an act of impulsive gallantry.
  • There's also a very strong theme of "choosing a side" in the movie, at one point highlighted by Rick supporting the French nationals drowning out German singing with "La Marseillaise". It's possible Ferrari has chosen a side, just as Rick and Louis did, and was too embarrassed to admit he was doing something "for the right reasons".
• A Double-Lampshade Hanging happens in a single scene of the fourth wall-less biopic 24-Hour Party People: Factory Records owner Tony Wilson is caught red-handed by his wife while he is receiving fellatio from a prostitute. His wife then retaliates by immediately seducing Howard Devoto, the lead singer of the band The Buzzcocks. Tony catches the pair having sex in a toilet stall. The real Howard Devoto, portraying a janitor cleaning the bathroom sink, then turns to the camera and says "I definitely don't remember this happening." There is then a disclaimer read by the actor (Steve Coogan) playing Tony Wilson, stating that this incident indeed never actually happened.
• In The Perfect Score the thieves planning to steal the SAT enter the door code to open the door to the room where they expect the SAT has been filed. One character says: "Ladies and gentlemen, I give you..." "...a complete waste of time." The room turns out to be completely empty. One of the characters says "Wait, why would anyone lock the door to this?"
• In the Blaxploitation Parody I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, one of the small-time thugs has a shoot out with a protagonist, but ends up running out of ammo. However, the protagonist has plenty of ammo left. "Hold on a minute! You just shot 12 times with a 6-shot revolver without reloading!" The protagonist smugly replies, "What'cha gonna do about it?"
• In Snakes on a Plane, after Neville explains to his superiors that the bad guy has filled the plane with deadly snakes, the superior comments, "What kind of insane plan is that?"
• Perhaps the most delicious use of this is in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me:
  Austin: So, Basil, if I travel back to 1969 and I was frozen in 1967, presumably I could go back and look at my frozen self. But, if I'm still frozen in 1967, how could I have been unthawed in the nineties and traveled back to the— oh no, I've gone cross-eyed.
  Basil: I suggest you don't worry about those things and just enjoy yourself. [to camera] That goes for you all, too.
  Austin: Yes.
  • Or when Austin is supposedly driving around England:
    Austin: You know what's remarkable? Is how much England looks in no way like Southern California.
• The Forbidden Kingdom:
  • Jason Tripitakas' last name is a lampshade hanging of his role as well as the story's roots in Journey to the West (Tripitaka is a title of the monk Xuanzang, and as in the novel it's the other leads (Jet Li and Jackie Chan) that really make this story). For laughs, his being one of the only non-Chinese in the whole cast is lampshaded by Jet Li.
    Jet Li: He's the Seeker? He's not even Chinese!
  • The best explanation for ancient Chinese people speaking English ever. Initially, when Jason gets dumped in China, everyone speaks Chinese. Then Jason mentions that he can't understand, and Jackie Chan states, in Chinese-accented English, "That's because you're not listening!" Thereafter, everyone speaks English.
• The Marvel Cinematic Universe, due to being a World of Snark:
  • In Iron Man, once Tony has come to accept that he's become a superhero, he proceeds to go on a little spiel describing in detail all of the trials he'll have to go through now, particularly identity crises and having to let the woman he loves in on it so that she'll be up all night worrying about him. In short, all of the comic book movie clichés. And then magnificently subverts them by straight-out announcing his secret identity at a press conference.
    • Also, the set-up SHIELD had created (that Iron Man was Stark's bodyguard) is exactly what happened in the comic book for decades, so they're even lampshading some comic book weirdness which wouldn't fly today.
    • In Iron Man 2, the presence of a new actor playing Rhodey is lampshaded by him saying (to Tony's surprise at seeing him): "I'm here, it's me, get over it."
  • Captain America: The First Avenger handles the odd costume crisis — previously lampshaded in Captain America (1990) — by having the Captain's initial job be a performer and not an actual soldier/officer. The extremity of the suit is used to show how people don't take him seriously (and by the end, he shares that the suit and shield have grown on him).
  • In The Avengers (2012), Black Widow is helping Hawkeye recover from Loki's mind control and make sense of all the crazy stuff happening. He tries to ask her how many agents he killed while under Loki's control. In a moment of unusual honesty from her, she tells him:
    Natasha: Don't. Don't do that to yourself, Clint. This is Loki. This is monsters and magic and nothing we were ever trained for.
  • Avengers: Age of Ultron has a scene where Hawkeye gives a pep talk to a terrified Scarlet Witch:
    Hawkeye: Okay, the city is flying, we're fighting an army of robots and... I have a bow and arrow; none of this makes sense.
  • In Captain America: Civil War, Captain America uses his shield to perform another stunt, cutting Spider-Man's web before returning improbably to Cap's hand. Spider-Man calls down: "That thing does not obey the laws of physics at all!"
  • Ant-Man and the Wasp has Scott make several of these:
    Hope: [talking about playing hide-and-seek] That's where I hid every time we played.
    Scott: I don't think you get the gist of the game.
    
    Scott: [referring to the trio's really bad disguises] These aren't disguises. We look like ourselves at a baseball game!
    
    Scott: Do you guys just put the word "quantum" in front of everything?
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
    • The story borrows themes and ideas from King Lear, Paradise Lost, and Moby-Dick. Guess what books are on Khan's shelf?
    • There's a lingering shot of the (2-D) chessboard when Chekhov and Terrell first enter Khan's cargo container refuge, foreshadowing the way that Kirk defeats Khan at Spock's suggestion — "His pattern indicates 2-dimensional thinking".
    • It also borrows from A Tale of Two Cities. Guess which book Spock gives to Kirk as a birthday present?
    • The age of the actors, a fact that the previous movie tried to gloss over, became a major plot point for this movie as Kirk hits 50 and has a mid-life crisis.
  • Star Trek (2009):
    • Discussing what to do about Nero brings about a lengthy explanation that Nero's actions, beginning with his attack on the USS Kelvin decades ago have altered the timeline and created an alternate reality, thereby justifying why the film is so radically different from the canon. Spock even says so himself: "Whatever our lives might have been if the time continuum was disrupted — our destinies have changed." He might as well have just looked right at the camera while saying it.
  • Star Trek Beyond: Kirk comments on how, after three years in space on the Enterprise, things have begun to feel strangely episodic.
• Galaxy Quest:
  • When an improbably destructive obstacle impedes two of the heroes' headlong rush to save themselves:
    Gwen DeMarco: What is this thing? I mean, it serves no useful purpose for there to be a bunch of chompy, crushy things in the middle of a hallway. No, I mean we shouldn't have to do this, it makes no logical sense, why is it here?
    Jason Nesmith: 'Cause it's on the television show.
    Gwen: Well, forget it! I'm not doing it! This episode was badly written!
  • This is far from the only lampshade hanging in the film, since it's about sci-fi actors living out a real version of their fictional adventures.
• Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back: Marshal Willenholly is being shot at by two female criminals.
  Willenholly: Why are you shooting at me? I'm just a Federal Wildlife Marshal.
  Chrissy: Two reasons. One: we're walking, talking, bad girl clichés.
  Missy: And two: because you're a man.
  • Also: "I mean, a movie about two stoners who spout catch phrases? Who'd want to see that?" All three actors then look at the camera, and Silent Bob smiles.
• The Mummy Trilogy:
  • In The Mummy (1999), when the Dramatic Wind blows through for about the eleventeenth time, Brendan Fraser's character remarks: "That happens a lot around here."
  • In The Mummy Returns:
    Jonathan: Tell me more about this gold pyramid.
    Ardeth Bey: It is written that since ancient times, no man who has laid eyes upon it has ever returned to tell the tale.
    Jonathan: Where is all this stuff written?
  • In the third movie, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, an audience member asks Evelyn if the fictional character in the book she wrote is based on herself. She responds, "Honestly, I can say she's a completely different person." And that's when you realize that the character of Evelyn is being played by a different actress than in the first two Mummy movies.
• In Thumbtanic, a character blatantly violates the maxim of "show, don't tell" by narrating the sinking of the Thumbtanic, similar to a description of how it is portrayed in Titanic (1997). After several seconds of this, he says "Oh, if we were ever to film this it would cost so — much — money!"
• In the deliberately (and lovingly) trope-ridden action-fest Shoot 'Em Up, Paul Giamatti's villain Hertz points out exactly what the audience has been thinking, as Clive Owen's gun-toting action hero Mr. Smith takes down hundreds of bad guys without suffering a single wound himself, saying, "Do we really suck, or is this guy really that good?"
  "Violence is one of the most fun things to watch."
• In I, Robot, Spooner, who has an intense fear of heights, comments on the "messed up" building design that forces the characters to walk out over an incredible drop, across very thin walkways, without safety rails, in order to access the only service terminal to a giant computer-brain.
• The Core: After discovering that the Earth is doomed, the protagonist is summoned to a meeting at the Pentagon to explain the problem to the military. When asked what can be done about it, he dives into a passionate, in-depth explanation of why the plot of the movie they're in is impossible (in short: there's no way they could possibly get to the core in the first place). The answer he gets is "Yes, but... what if we could?" In addition, less than five minutes later in the movie, the impossible substance that makes the whole story possible is dubbed "Unobtainium". (Writer Revolt might be involved, especially because Executive Meddling tried to make the movie even dumber — one of the writers has said while discussing the experience of writing The Core that "This, by the way, is why screenwriting pays so well. They don't pay me to write. I'd write for free. They pay me not to punch people in the neck.").
  • The "Unobtainium" bit was also done by James Cameron in Avatar for similar purposes.
• Top Secret!: One scene has Nick sum up the convoluted story of the movie ("I'm not the first guy who fell in love with a woman that he met at a restaurant who turned out to be the daughter of a kidnapped scientist, only to lose her to her childhood lover who she last saw on a deserted island, who then turned out fifteen years later to be the leader of the French underground."), to which Hilary replies "I know, it all sounds like some bad movie!" This is followed by both characters turning to stare directly at the camera.
• 2006's Love and Other Disasters has several segments where characters discuss what they and their lives would be like if they were actually in a movie.
• In Waiting..., Mitch hangs one enormous lampshade on the entire movie during the party at the end.
• In the sequel to George of the Jungle, they just say outright that George is being played by a different actor. George himself tells the narrator: "Me new George. Studio too cheap to pay Brendan Fraser". (Actually, it was because Fraser was doing Looney Tunes: Back in Action... yeah). And amends with the character's Catchphrase ("New George just lucky, I guess").
• The Boondock Saints
  • After a gun accidentally goes off, improbably missing everyone but killing the cat, the characters look aghast. Murphy shouts: "I cannot believe that just fucking happened!"
  • Agent Smecker considers the (true) theory of "assassins rappelling through the ceiling and disposing of nine dangerous mobsters in several seconds". He says "You see such things in bad television". Moments later, in flashback this trope is parodied when brothers seem surprised that all went so quickly and Murphy says that it was very different from shootouts portrayed in the movies.
• In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), Ford Prefect is played in an American accent by American actor Mos Def; his mentioning having come "not from Guildford after all" takes on a slightly surreal edge presumably unintended by original author Douglas Adams. Later, Arthur mentions wondering about Ford's atypical accent.
• This is all over Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
  • The scene where the cartoonist has a heart attack and dies. Come to think of it, this could be used to describe the film...
  • The bit with coconuts...
  • The ending, where the knights are taken away by police for their vicious murder of a historian in the middle of the movie.
    • Of course, we know they must be innocent; the knight who killed the historian had a real horse — the only one in the movie!
• There's a scene in Fantastic Four (2005) where Sue Storm comments on the fact that, from a scientific point of view, she should be unable to turn invisible and still see, since the cones in her eyes would also be invisible and utterly incapable of reflecting light. In this case, it seems less of a fourth wall breakage, and more an attempt to take the wind out of the sails of any internet nerds likely to bring it up on a blog.
• In Back to the Future Part III, Doc insists that true love at first sight is a ridiculous concept with no scientific basis and can't possibly ever happen in real life. Then he meets Clara.
• Die Hard 2:
  John Mclane: Oh, man, I can't fucking believe this. Another basement, another elevator. How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?!
  Holly McClane: [after the terrorist attack] Why does this keep happening to us?
• In Memphis Belle, two military reporters jadedly review the makeup of the titular plane's crew, commenting on how predictable a selection of men they are: "There's always a religious type." "There's always one from Cleveland." This is likely a lampshading of the stereotypical ensemble casts featured in old WWII films.
• King Kong (1976) lampshaded its own lame special effects: "What do you think knocked those trees down? Some guy in an ape suit?"
• In Battle for Terra, General Hammer's terraforming device will take seven days to turn the planet Terra into a habitable one for human life, an obvious reference to Genesis. General Hammer reiterates, "Seven days, Jim," then follows it up with, "Very biblical, don't you think?"
• In the beginning of Lucky Number Slevin, Goodkat is explaining the mechanics of a Kansas City Shuffle to a man in a train station. The explanation itself turns out to be part of a Kansas City Shuffle, when Goodkat gets the man to look right, then goes left, getting out of his wheelchair, and snaps the man's neck. This is also a reference to the fact that the entire plot of the film is, in fact, a Kansas City Shuffle.
• Rear Window: More than one character points out how stupid Thorwald would have to be to leave his blinds open all the time he was covering up his wife's murder.
• In Agent Red, a Dolph Lundgren film, a character asks his character, "Never heard of the Agent Red?" to which he replies "It sounds like a bad action movie." and then there's a Beat and a brief Aside Glance.
• In Captain America (1990), the impracticality of Cap's outfit is lampshaded by the man himself saying that Dr. Vaselli — the same woman who created the super soldier process, the shield, and yes, even the fire-proof costume — "didn't know much about camouflage," to which another character replies "but she sure did love the red, white, and blue!"
• In X-Men, during the scene in which Wolverine becomes acquainted with the X-Men team and their adversaries, he repeatedly draws attention to their goofy code names. Later in the film, Cyclops heads off fanboy criticism by remarking on the film's deviation from classic X-Men outfits: "Well, what would you prefer? Yellow spandex?" (In X-Men: First Class, the uniforms are yellow, and the reaction is "Do we actually have to wear these?") Magneto takes the opportunity to subtly lampshade Wolverine's Spotlight-Stealing Squad nature in each movie of the trilogy:
  "Once again, you think it's all about you."
• Barbarella: "What's that screaming? [pensively] Dramatic situations often start with screaming." This lamp needed a shade, because what she finds is some mooks tormenting Pygar the angel: they've got nothing to scream about, and Pygar is too angelically dignified to scream. So it looks like nobody screamed, it really was just a dramatic device.
• In The Expendables, in the epilogue, Barney comments to someone how they miraculously came back from the dead, then Gunnar suddenly appears and replies that he's grateful that his friend still let him live instead of going all the way to Shoot the Dog.
• Fatal Instinct:
  • The phrase "Flashback, Cape Cod 3 years earlier" is written on a fogged-up mirror.
  • For purposes of secrecy Lana Ravine and her mechanic lover speak in Yiddish to each other, with subtitles for the audience. A man tells them he understands what they're saying, not because he can speak Yiddish but because he read the subtitles.
• In The Monster Squad, after the obligatory put your hands in the center moment including a dog (while the characters are in a treehouse), the eldest member asks, "How does a dog get up here anyway?"
• In Alien, when the motion detector is introduced and explained as detecting "micro-changes in air density" (even through walls and ceilings!), one of the engineers on the ship remarks: "Bullshit". Later on, Ripley says something to the effect of "micro-changes in air pressure, my ass" after the detector fails to pick-up a door opening.
  • By the way, another word for an instrument that detects "micro-changes in air density" is "microphone."
• In Troll (1986), the woman who helps the protagonist defeat the title creature has a magical mushroom as a pet and actually puts a lampshade on it every time someone visits her. It's like someone went back in time to put that in just to make it fit the name of this trope!
• In Halloween (1978), when Michael has hijacked a car, there is the question of whether he can drive - he's been institutionalized since he was a little boy
  Wynn: Sam, Haddonfield is a hundred and fifty miles from here. How could he get there, he can't drive?
  Loomis: He was doing all right last night. Maybe somebody around here gave him lessons.
• Nuns on the Run hangs one about the silliness of the plot.
  Sister Superior: My Lord, thou hast always moved in mysterious ways thy wonders to perform, but this latest wonder takes some beating even from you.
• Eliminators (1986):
  "We got robots, we got cavemen, we got kung fu. What is this anyway, some kinda damn comic book?"
• In The Abyss, after the alien base rises out of the sea and everyone gets out of the sub that raised up with it, Lindsey calls attention to the fact that they didn't go through decompression and should be dead before completely forgetting it. The novelization takes a moment to point out that these are aliens who use water as a tool. They can fix all that stuff.
• In Muppet Treasure Island, Rizzo notes "He died? But this is supposed to be a kid's movie!"
• In Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Jack Sparrow lampshades one of his own insane-but-effective stunts.
  Lord Cutler Beckett: [Jack is about to light a cannon that's pointed at the mast] You're mad.
  Jack: Thank goodness for that, 'cause if I wasn't, this would probably never work. [fires the cannon, which catapults him onto his ship, landing safely on his feet behind his crew] And that was without even a single drop of rum.
• Ian Malcolm's line in The Lost World: Jurassic Park: "'Oooh, ahhh!' That's how it always starts. Then later there's the running, and the screaming."
• In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie asks Willie Wonka, "Do you remember the first candy you ever ate?", prompting a Flashback to Willie's childhood. When the scene returns to the present, the factory visitors are staring at a blank-faced Wonka, who then snaps out of it, shrugs and says "Sorry, I was having a flashback."
• In Gremlins 2: The New Batch, the writers respond to critics of the 3 Mogwai Rules set in the first film by having a Clamp Corp control room worker obnoxiously point out, "It's always midnight somewhere!", right before a gremlin bursts through his monitor panel and kills him.
• Harry Potter:
  • From Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince:
    McGonagall: Why is it that when something happens it is always you three?
    Ron: Believe me Professor, I've been asking myself the same question for six years.
    • From the same film:
      "He's covered in blood again. Why is he always covered in blood?"
    • And:
      Dumbledore: I suppose you are wondering why I called you here?
      Harry: Honestly, Professor, after all these years I just go with it.
  • From Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II:
    Harry: We have to go there, now.
    Hermione: What? We can't do that! We've got to plan! We've got to figure it out!
    Harry: Hermione, when have any of our plans ever actually worked? We plan, we get there, all hell breaks loose!
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: Henry Jones (Indy's father) directly calls out how the film treats his profession with "You call this archaeology?"
• In the low-budget B-Movie Street Angels, right after the main character explains his plan (which is also a brief summary of the film's plot), the woman he's talking to comments "That sounds like the plot of a low-budget B-movie."
• Paris When It Sizzles is a movie about a screenwriter and his typist, where the writer is drawing inspiration directly from their own lives and situation. Because of his cynicism, and the typist's smarts, the lampshades are thicker than the sexual tension.
• Star Wars:
  • In an early scene in Revenge of the Sith, when Anakin and Obi-Wan are passing around the Idiot Ball, we get the following exchange:
    Obi-Wan: Wait a minute! How did this happen? We're smarter than this!
    Anakin: Apparently not.
  • Lampshades aplenty in The Force Awakens.
    Officer: We're not sure how to describe a weapon of this scale.
    Major Ematt: It's another Death Star.
    Poe Dameron: I wish that were the case, Major. This was the Death Star. And this is Starkiller Base.
    Han Solo: So, it's big.
    [Later, in that same scene...]
    Han: Okay. How do we blow it up? There's always a way to do that.
    Leia: Han's right.
    Statura: In order for that amount of power to be contained... that base has to have some kind of thermal oscillator...
• On Her Majesty's Secret Service features George Lazenby in his only outing as James Bond, following Sean Connery in the series. During the opening sequence he fails to get the girl, prompting the line:
  "This never happened to the other fellow!"
• Fright Night (1985):
  Vincent: If we can destroy the vampire who changed her before sunrise, she'll be okay.
  Brewster: Will that work?
  Vincent: Everything's gone like in the movies so far!
• The Princess Bride benefits strongly by having the narrator and his grandson be parts of the movie. As one reviewer put it, the kid's reaction to some of the more fantastic elements helps recalibrate the audience by allowing his grandfather to (essentially) invoke the MST3K Mantra.
  • The movie actually downplays the framing story compared to the book, as well as leaving out the multiple places where the author interrupts his narration of the "famous Florinese novel" his grandfather read to him and talks directly to the audience about story mechanics.
  • The movie also lampshades Vizzini's catchphrase, "Inconceivable!"
    Inigo: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
• In Annie (2014), when Guy goes to see Hannigan, she has a bunch of couples lined up down the street to audition for the roles of Annie's (who is African American in this version of the story instead of a redhead) "real mom and dad". As Guy walks past them, he spots a couple who are white.
  Guy: That's an... interesting choice.
• A meta version: in Inception, Cobb claims to be a man named Mr. Charles, whose sole purpose is to remind the subject he's in a dream by pointing out all the inconsistencies within the dream, like the off-kilter gravity. In other words, he's lampshading his own dream.
• From the cheesy sci-fi movie R.O.T.O.R.: "What do you think this is, some low-budget sci-fi flick?"
• In the 1974 Australian biker movie Stone, the central gang "the Gravediggers" ride Japanese motorcycles, a highly unlikely occurrence. Actor/writer/director Sandy Harbutt made a product placement deal with a Kawasaki dealership for the use of the vehicles, and the anomalous situation is lampshaded in the movie when a rival gang member kicks one of the Gravediggers' machines, exclaiming "Jap crap!"
• In Strictly Ballroom, Liz says, "I want Ken Railings to walk in here right now and say, 'Pam Shortt's broken both her legs and I wanna dance with you.'" This is immediately followed by a flashback of Pam Shortt having a car accident before Ken Railings walks in and says to Liz, "Pam Shortt's broken both her legs and I wanna dance with you." This is then lampshaded by one of the children who whispers, "That was unexpected."
• At the end of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Perry shows up in a hospital after having been apparently shot dead, and Harry narrates about his survival.
  "Yeah, boo, hiss, I know. Look, I hate it too. In movies where the studio gets all paranoid about a Downer Ending, so the guy shows up, he's magically alive on crutches, I hate that. I mean, shit, why not bring them all back? [All the other people who died in the movie wander into the room, followed by Abraham Lincoln and Elvis Presley. A nurse gets rid of them.] But the point is, in this case, this time, it really happened. Perry, like, lived. Yeah, it's a dumb movie thing, but what do you want me to do, lie about it?"
• A 99.9% probability that this is unintentional (meta-)lampshading, but in The Room (2003), Claudette says exactly what the viewer is probably thinking when Denny walks into Johnny and Lisa's house right after they catch Michelle and Mike there "do[ing] their... homework":
  Claudette: How many people come in and out of this apartment every day? This is worse than Grand Central Station!
  • Immediately after that, the camera moves so a lampshade is placed very centrally and prominently in the frame. This could also be an indication of the 0.1% probability that Tommy Wiseau is a genius who knows exactly what he's doing, all the time, and that The Room is truly the Citizen Kane of our day.
• In Shin Godzilla, they bring up the Square-Cube Law, which is commonly used in discussions explaining why animals such as Godzilla could not possibly exist in the real world. Beforehand, no Godzilla film had even touched this. Of course, the film doesn't bother explaining how Godzilla is breaking the laws of physics without breaking a sweat^note or any bones for that matter, but it's still good for a small chuckle.
• Hellraiser: Hellworld has an incredibly clumsy one. A Shameless Fanservice Girl walks down some stairs topless as two male characters look on, and they debate whether it was a gratuitous shot or Acceptable Breaks from Reality. They actually refer to it as a shot, as if it were in a movie or something, thus Leaning on the Fourth Wall.
• In Looper, Joe talks to Old Joe about his time travel and Old Joe interrupts him, saying: "I don't want to talk about time travel shit. Because if we talk about it, then we're gonna be here all day, drawing diagrams with straws.". It's the way to avoid the Bootstrap paradox.
• Swelter: When the old Caper Crew hears that the man who got away with their $10 million dollar score now has amnesia, their reactions are very similar to the audience's: "Really? Amnesia?" in obvious disbelief.
• Bumblebee: Agent Burns points out how incredibly Obviously Evil a group calling themselves the Decepticons is and how dumb it would be to work with them.
• In Batman: The Movie, a Polaris missile launched from the Penguin's submarine nearly hits the Batcopter, sending Batman and Robin into an uncontrollable spin. They land on a pile of foam rubber in front of a "Foam Rubber Wholesaler's Convention."
  Robin: Some luck, landing right on top of a pile of foam rubber!
  Batman: Yes, Robin! I'd say the odds against it would make even the most reckless gambler cringe!
• Weird: The Al Yankovic Story hangs one on the story beats of musical biopics:
  Bermuda: Hey, you’re an artist. Being an abusive jerk is all part of the process.
  Jim: Yeah, name me one creative genius that doesn’t have a checkered past involving drugs, alcohol, and a murderous rampage through the heart of the jungle.
• In Rocky, lampshading was used to cover up mistakes by the prop department: the shorts in the poster had the colours reversed, and the robe that Rocky wears is much too baggy. As the budget did not allow for correcting these mistakes, Stallone worked them into the script, and had Rocky point them out to get ahead of the audience.
• Dad's Army (1971): When Captain Mainwaring tells his men that they are now to be known as the Home Guard, he remarks that Jerry will never catch them with their trousers down. This line pokes fun at the fact that Arthur Lowe had a clause in his contract that he was never to appear on camera without his trousers on, and why he was absent from the longjohns march scene directly before his comment.

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