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alt title(s): Hangs A Lampshade; Lampshade; Lampshaded; Lampshades; Lampshading; Lantern Hanging 
Sir Toby Belch: Is't possible? Fabian: If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction. — William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Act 3, Scene IV
" If I live to be 100, I will never understand why they keep so many damn weapons under the ring. It's like they want the wrestlers to use them on each other..." — Jim Ross, WWE RAW
" Ugh. TV Doctors." — Carol Hathaway, ER
is the writers' trick of dealing with any element of the story that threatens the audience's Willing Suspension Of Disbelief—whether a very implausible plot development, or a particularly egregious use of a trope—by calling attention to it... and then moving on.
The reason for this counter-intuitive strategy is two-fold. First, it assures the audience that the author is aware of the implausible plot development that just happened, and that he isn't trying to slip something past the audience. Second, it assures the audience that the world of the story is like Real Life: what's implausible for you or me is just as implausible for these characters, and just as likely to provoke an incredulous response.
A less charitable interpretation would be that writers for some reason find it humorous, clever, and original to point out how unclever and trite they're being. Another is that the creators are utilizing the tactic of self-deprecatingly pointing out their own flaws themselves, thus depriving critics and opponents of their ammunition. The Turkey City Lexicon refers to this flavor of Lampshade Hanging as a "Signal from Fred", and reminds the author that if your characters are complaining about how stupid the latest plot development is, maybe your subconscious is trying to tell you something.
On the other hand, Lampshade Hanging done well can make for an entertaining piece of Painting The Fourth Wall or momentary lack of Genre Blindness. It can also be used to take care of Fridge Logic, without having to actually do anything.
Lampshade Hanging doesn't just apply to implausible plots: it's also one of the many ways of Playing With A Trope. After all, for Genre Savvy viewers the realization that they've seen this particular plot device in five other movies can pull them out of the story faster than any Fridge Logic. Considering this wiki's focus, most of the references to Lampshade Hanging throughout the wiki will involve this specific use of the term.
This practice is also known as "hanging a clock on it", "hanging a lantern on it", or "spotlighting it". We went with this title because it's the one used in the Mutant Enemy bullpen.
Can also be combined with a Hand Wave, sometimes invoking an unreveal, to make explaining a plot inconsistency unnecessary. Can also be combined with an active attempt to avoid the trope, in which case the Lampshade Hanging turns into a Defied Trope.
Commonly seen in the self-aware shows that make up the Deconstructor Fleet. If large numbers of lampshades are hung, then the writers believe lampshades are Better Than A Bare Bulb.
Hypocrisy Nod is a specific type of this. Meta Guy is the fellow who does this all the time. Compare Post Modernism and Playing With A Trope. No Fourth Wall happens when characters not only discuss tropes, but the writers as well.
Do not confuse with Lampshade Wearing.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
Comic Books
- In an early, limited-edition Sonic The Hedgehog comic book (that has been collected in Sonic Beginnings), Princess Sally has blonde hair in the first issue, and in the next, she's a brunette. When she says she has something to tell him, Sonic asks, "You mean why you changed from a blonde to a brunette?"
- In a semi-recent issue of Ultimate Spider-Man: Ultimate Venom attacks an art museum, Spider-Man fights him off, and (as usual) the NYPD tries to arrest him for the trouble. Spider-Man angrily points out that they're being idiots for pointing their guns at him when he just saved who knows how many museum patrons from being eaten. A nearby woman chimes in, "Spider-Man saved my baby!" Spider-Man's response: "You know what? THANK YOU! No one ever says anything nice, I appreciate that."
- In Ex Machina, the main character of the series decided to release a biography of himself in graphic novel form. Brian K Vaughn, the writer of the series, appeared in the comic as one of the prospective writers for the biography, and in a conversation, said that he dislikes meta, as it takes him out of the story.
Film
- In the blaxploitation spoof I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, one of the small-time thugs has a shoot out with the main character, but ends up running out of ammo. However, the main character has plenty of ammo left. "Hold on a minute!! You just shot 12 times with a 6-shot revolver without reloading!!" The character smugly replies, "Whatcha gonna do about it?"
- In Snakes On A Plane, after Samuel L Jackson 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 sixtiessssoooh no, I've gone cross-eyed."
Austin: "Yes."
- In 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!"
- Oh, come on, you mention that but not 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.
- In the 2008 Iron Man film, 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 she'll be up all night worrying about him. In short, all of the comic book movie cliches. And then magnificently subverts them by straight-out announcing his secret identity at a press conference.
- His doing so was not only lampshaded but foreshadowed by Tony in his semi-sober speech as he displayed the Jericho weapons system at the very start of the film: "Is it better to be feared, or respected." As the dust and wind from the weapon's rather severe success billows toward and past him from behind, Tony finishes, "I say, is it too much to ask for both?"
- In 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."
- This is far from the only lampshade hanging in Galaxy Quest, of course, since it's about sci-fi actors living out a real version of their fictional adventures.
- Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Marshall Willenholly is being shot at by two female criminals.
Willenholly: Why are you shooting at me? I'm just a Federal Wildlife Marshall.
Chrissy: Two reasons. One: we're walking, talking, bad girl clichés.
Missy: And two: because you're a man.
- 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 third movie, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008), 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. Must have asked for too much money!
- Actually, rumor has it it's because the original actress objected to the idea of her character having a son the age of the actor they cast for the role. She thought it made her too old. So Yeah.
- On the less rumoury side, she claims they just never asked.
- 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 the film Titanic. 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 literally 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."
- Looney Tunes: Back In Action attempts to shrug off Product Placement by lampshading it. The heroes, lost in a desert, find a Wal-Mart, after which Daffy Duck proceeds to spout out half a dozen product names which he wants to buy, even remarking that he gets free drinks every time he says "Wal-Mart". One of the human characters remarks that "I think that at this point the viewers won't even notice anything abnormal in the scene".
- Daffy did something similar in Space Jam,another franchise machine — when he mentions that Looney Tunes are the exclusive property of Warner Bros. Inc.,he lifts up his tail and mockingly kisses his own WB-emblazoned arse,Bugs Bunny-style.
- 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 computerbrain.
- Played straight in 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 basic plot of the movie they're in is impossible.
- In addition, less than five minutes later in the movie, the impossible substance that makes the whole story possible is literally dubbed "Unobtainium".
- Top Secret: "It sounds like the plot of some bad movie!"
- Followed by both of the 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.
- In Boondock Saints, after a gun accidentally goes off, improbably missing everyone but killing the cat, the characters look aghast. One shouts "I cannot believe that just fucking happened!" (sorry, I don't remember which character said it. Help!)*Murphy said it*
- Also in Boondock Saints when Agent Smecker considers the (true) theory of "assassins rappeling through the ceiling and disposing of nine dangerous mobsters in several seconds". He says "You see such things in bad movies". 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.
- Scream. Just Scream.
- In the film version of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, Ford Prefect is played in an American accent by American actor Mos Def; his mentioning having come "not from Guildford after all" (albeit from the US, rather than a small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse) takes on a slightly surreal edge presumably unintended by Douglas Adams. Later, Arthur mentions wondering about Ford's atypical accent.
Literature
- Captain Underpants does this... often. Case in point, when George and Harold have a discussion about how cliche an axe cutting through the ropes instead of its target is, right before the axe headed for them does this. Their only response is saying absolutely nothing more about it.
- In the Thursday Next book The Well of Lost Plots, a holesmith in the Bookworld (whose job is to patch up Plot Holes) actually points this out as a new technique.
Llyster: I'm working on a system that hides holes by highlighting them to the reader, that just says, "Ho! I'm a hole, don't think about it!" but it's a little cutting-edge.
- Tanya Huff's Smoke And Shadows series (so far, Shadows, Mirrors, and Ashes) features tropes at roughly one-per-page frequency, almost all lampshaded; the protagonist, along with most of his allies, works in television. Making a Vampire Detective Series, no less. Those few tropes that aren't lampshaded tend to be pretty meta already, thus:
"There's six kinds of hell breaking loose and heading this way."
"You've been waiting your whole career to say that, haven't you?" Amy asked, snickering.
- Mark E. Roger's Samurai Cat books use this trope so extensively that characters end up commenting on the lampshading itself, with lines like "I'm not comfortable with us noticing symbolism in our own stories".
- In the Xanth novel Currant Events, an evil clone of Calliope, Muse of the Future mocks the real Calliope with insults about the stories she transcribes in her history tomes; insults that mirror real-life accusations critics have thrown at Piers Anthony (who seems to take a "Who cares if you don't like it" approach to criticisms.)
- In the Night Watch novel by Sergei Lukyanenko (composed of three novella-length short stories), there is a really nice example of lampshading. In the second novella (titled "Among his own kind"), the main character, Anton Gorodietsky, an agent of the "Night Watch" of the title (a group of "Light Others" who keep an eye on Dark magicians and monsters, but without directly intervening against them) has been framed for the unlawful killings of a series of Dark magicians. At a certain point, he is running away, being hunted relentlessly by his enemies, when suddenly a car stops, the door opens so he can climb inside, and then drives away at speed. Anton thinks: "Things like this just don't happen! Heroes only get rescued by passing cars in cheap action movies."
- Avoided in the Chronicles of Amber novel Prince of Chaos. At one point Merlin muses, "In a badly plotted story they'd have paused outside the doorway, and I'd have overheard a conversation telling me everything I needed to know about anything." The other characters do not pause, and the snatch of conversation Merlin overhears as they pass by is not useful to him.
- In Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold, a judge investigating the murder "never thought it legitimate that life should make use of so many coincidences forbidden in literature."
- A Running Gag in Discworld novels is that million-to-one chances pan out nine times out of ten, and the characters are always aware of this. They'll even instruct those less aware that you have to say, loudly and clearly, that "It's a million-to-one chance, but it just might work!"
- This was taken to its ultimate point in Guards! Guards!. When they're trying to shoot the dragon in it's voonerables, the Night Watch observe that particular point. When Carrot reckons that Fred just aiming and shooting at the voonerables has odds significantly better than million-to-one (thus making it a doomed proposition), he and Nobby add absurdity upon absurdity (like standing on one leg or stuffing a handkerchief in his mouth) to Fred's circumstances in order to engineer million-to-one chances of hitting the dragon in the right spot.
- Part of what caused Colon, Nobby, and Carrot to start futzing the odds using the handkerchief, was Nobby asking, "But, what if by a one in a million chance, this shot in the voonerables doesn't work?" And since it was the first mention of the one in a million rule, it ensured that Colons arrow would miss the dragon's voonerables.
- Another way of reading it makes it even more painful - from memory, there's a reference to the god of Chance, who received "nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine votes against"... so they were just off from the coveted million-to-one.
- Note that "nine times out of ten" becomes important when someone tries for their tenth million-to-one chance.
- Most of Harry Turtledove's Alternate History novels feature at least one scene of a character musing on how their lives could have turned out differently had history gone the way it did in the real world. They quickly conclude that it's not worth thinking about and they should focus on the world they actually live in.
- Just about every good Alternate History does this and quite a few of the bad ones do as well. You know if you have a good author if when they do this it gives the reader a slight chill instead of looking like it breaks the Fourth Wall.
- I remember reading one althistory called something like If Lee Had Lost At Gettysburg which was entirely based on that conceit. A person in an alternate history where Lee had won at Gettysburg, leading to a Southern victory speculates about what events would've changed had Lee not won. Thus, it's essentially an althist-in-an-althist.
- That would be "If Lee had Won the Battle of Gettysburg" by Winston Churchill (yes, that Churchill) which appeared in If it had Happened Otherwise, a book of alternate history scenarios by actual historians (and Churchill) published in 1931. So yes, alternate history, even clever meta-textual alternate history, is Older Than Television.
- The Ciaphas Cain novel Duty Calls has a very subtle lampshadng of Just Between You And Me. The villain, a rogue Inquisitor named Ernst Stavros Killian, goes into a prolonged explanation of his plan to Cain toward the end of the book. Doesn't that name sound a little familiar?
- In The Traitor's Hand, as a squad of Imperial Guardsmen charge an enemy tank, the squad leader tries to motivate his men with, "Come on, men! Do you want to live forever?" Cain's thoughts? "The noncom in charge of the squad must have been on something... Nobody spoke like that outside of badly-written combat novels."
- The Lord Peter Wimsey series by Dorothy L. Sayers features Harriet Vane, Lord Peter's love interest and a mystery novelist. Harriet and Peter have a number of conversations about how a given situation would be different if it were in a novel, including one in which Lord Peter remarks that no one complains how unlikely coincidences are when they happen in real life, but that fiction has to be plausible.
- In his book Be My Enemy, Christopher Brookmyre hangs a lampshade on Lampshade Hanging. After a corporate-type lampshades management-speak, one character notes that: "...taking the piss out of something was often a cheap way of buying your indulgence in it: you make one joke about it and people are less aware of how seriously you're taking it the rest of the time."
- The Star Wars Expanded Universe Legacy Of The Force story arc frequently alludes to the inexplicable, off-screen changes many characters have gone through since the New Jedi Order novels. In the fifth book of the series, Sacrifice, Mara Jade finally wakes up to the fact that Jacen has turned evil. Throughout the rest of the book, she lampshades her uncharacteristic blindness by constantly asking herself why she failed to notice for so long.
- House Of Leaves (for proper context, Navidson is exploring his house while burning...why, the same book you're reading! for light and is trying to read the text before the fire catches up to his spot): "Perhaps his reading slows or the paper burns unevenly or he has bungled the lighting of the next page. Or maybe the words have been arranged in such a way as to make them practically impossible to read."
- In the children's book series Captain Underpants, the main characters Harold and George have commented on the unlikely plot events with, "It's like we're in a badly written children's book."
- In The Deptford Histories 3: Thomas, Woodget points out that the heroic organisation's plan to defeat Suruth Scarophion was ludicrously complicated and resulted in innumberable deaths. Thomas replies with "Well, they couldn't just give the fragments to the Scale, could they? Would've been downright suspicious."
- In the Agatha Christie book And Then There Were None, Dr. Armstrong admonishes Blore for thinking that it's normal for Lombard to have a revolver, because "it's only in books people carry guns around".
- In Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, the narrator states when his wife disappears that "I felt as if I had become part of a badly written novel, that someone was taking me to task for being utterly unreal. And perhaps it was true."
- At the hilariously embarrassing climax of the Alice Munro short story An Ounce of Cure, the main character is left musing on the ridiculousness of her situation: "What was it that brought me back into the world again? It was the terrible and fascinating reality of my disaster; it was the way things happened...the development of events...that fascinated me; I felt that I had had a glimpse of the shameless, marvellous, shattering absurdity with which the plots of life, though not of fiction, are improvised I could not take my eyes off it."
- One of the main purposes of Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians is to hang lampshades on various narrative conventions and genre cliches, along with parodying and/or subverting said conventions and cliches. (It also provides a well-deserved Take That to Death By Newberry.)
Live Action TV
- The line "Dawn's in trouble. It must be Tuesday," from the Buffy The Vampire Slayer episode "Once More with Feeling". (At the time, Buffy was broadcast on Tuesday nights.)
- In the Malcolm In The Middle episode "Malcolm Dates a Family," Malcolm engages in a bit of Lamp Shade Hanging when he realizes he's scheduled simultaneous dates: "This is like that episode of... well, everything."
- He even considered how Urkle handled the problem.
- In an episode from one of Mork And Mindy's later seasons, an exasperated Mindy exclaimed, "Oh, Mork, what Earth concept have you misunderstood this week?"
- Boy Meets World also engaged in quite a bit of this, particular with respect to the character played by William Daniels. Mr. Feeney served as the teacher of almost every class the protagonists took, from elementary school through college, being somehow qualified to teach elementary school, English, history, literature, writing, psychology, mathematics and quantum mechanics. Several times over the series, the Matthews brothers commented that Mr. Feeney had been their teacher an inordinate number of times. Mr. Feeney himself wryly comments that, in addition to being the principal and teaching five different subjects, he is also in charge of the Lost and Found, and other characters comment that Corey somehow brought his own professor with him to college. In the final episode of the fifth season (the last episode before college), a character from the first couple of seasons, Minkus, was briefly reintroduced. Corey asked him why they hadn't seen him for so long if they were in the same school, and he explained he'd been "in that half of the building" for the past couple of years - pointing to the studio audience. Corey grimaced and said, "oh no, we never go over there..."
- Said character also makes reference to an offscreen character who also mysteriously disappeared seasons earlier
- Said character was Jonathan Turner, who suffered life-threatening injuries in a motorcycle crash a season earlier. His fate was left unknown, though Shawn insisted he knew Mr. Turner would be okay.
- In the final episode Corey mentions to Feeney that Feeney hasn't spoken to any other students beside the main characters in seven years.
- In the most recent (6th) season of One Tree Hill; when Lucas agrees to getting his book turned into a movie, he goes around asking his friends and family who they want to play them. Most name famous celebrities, to which Lucas often points out they the film is based on teenagers/high school students lampshading the fact that all the cast members themselves were all twenty-somethings playing teenagers.
- Referred to as "Hanging a lantern on it" in Stargate SG-1, "200", as the characters discuss an unlikely escape in a film script. An example of a show lampshading the act of lampshading.
- In the original Movie, O'Neill's name only had one 'l' in it. After the change was noticed, the TV-O'Neill would occasionally make a point of the spelling of his name, as if he's been annoyed by having it misspelled before, hanging a lampshade on the mistake and providing a Ret Con by implying that the single-L version from the movie was just a mistake.
- He also makes repeated references to a Colonel O'Neil (one L) at the SGC who has "No sense of humour at all", lampshading the personality retool he underwent at the same time.
- The show also occasionally reminds us that the Goa'uld purposely behave like totally cliched villans. Partly its to keep their slaves and warriors living in constant fear. And partly it's because most of them lack the ingenuity and creativity to try anything new and different, which proves to be their Achilles Heel.
- A clear example of lampshade hanging occurs in "Fail Safe" when Colonel O'Neill attempts to disarm their very own USAF-designed nuclear weapon, only to discover that the red wire he's told to cut has been replaced with a yellow wire identical to every other wire in the panel. His response? "...this is a very poorly designed bomb, and I think we should say something to somebody about it when we get back."
- In season 6 episode Disclosure, during a review of the Stargate operation, one senator Kinsey remarks: "Face it General, under your command the Stargate program has lurched from one crisis to the next. Never averting disaster by anything more than the skin of its teeth."
- In the Cop Show spoof Sledge Hammer, during a prolonged hostage situation in a mansion, the chief declares "Where the hell is he getting all this ammo!" about a hostage taker who has destroyed almost every vase in the room without reloading his revolver.
- Doctor Who, "Age of Steel": Mickey and Jake are looking for the transmitter controls, and Mickey asks what it looks like. Jake responds sarcastically that it'll have a sign with "Transmitter Controls" with big red letters on it. After a cut away and a couple of scenes, it cuts back to them, standing next to a metal box with "Transmitter Controls" written on it in big red letters.
- In the earlier Doctor Who episode "Pyramids of Mars", The Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith hide from evil mummies in a priest hole (A hidden chamber). The Doctor rightly points out this is an anachronism, as the house is Victorian while priest holes are a relic of Elizabethan architecture. As he's doing this while attempting to hide, he is quickly shushed by his companion. Then again, Victorian architecture does often borrow from past eras, so it's not entirely far-fetched. (This actually gets mentioned in the story.)
- In "The Unicorn and the Wasp", the Agatha Christie episode, Donna notices immediately, saying "There's a murder, a mystery, and Agatha Christie. That's like meeting Charles Dickens, with ghosts, at Christmas!", which had happened in the episode "The Unquiet Dead". The Doctor, hilariously, looks guilty and goes "Well..."
- Many times in the new series, various companions comment on the inordinate amount of running that goes on whilst adventuring with the Doctor.
- throughout all seasons they play with the line "doctor who!?" when wondering just WHO this doctor is
- In the Firefly episode "Objects in Space", the character Wash expresses his disbelief that someone could be psychic: "That sounds like something out of Science Fiction." When his wife, Zoë, responds with, "We live in a spaceship, dear," he says, "So?"
- In the Red Dwarf episode Quarantine, Lister, Cat, and Kryten are running from a deranged hologram who is shooting at them with "hex vision". Lister runs past the camera, surrounded by wild shots and explosions, and shouts, "Why don't we ever meet anyone nice?" Cat runs past behind him and says, "Why don't we ever meet anyone who can shoot straight?"
- The episode "Jack-Tor" of 30 Rock has a scene where Liz starts to decry using Product Placement, but is promptly interrupted by the other characters talking about how much they love Snapple (one of the sponsors of 30 Rock at the time).
- One episode of Star Trek Deep Space Nine had Worf and O'Brien reminisce about the "good ol' days" together on board the Enterprise. While talking about rescuing Captain Picard from the Borg, Worf noted that he felt they were like the old warriors of song, able to do anything, to which O'Brien interjects "Except keep the holodecks running", a sly remark to Star Trek The Next Generation's overuse of killer holodeck malfunctions.
- On that note, an episode of Star Trek Voyager features the Doctor daydreaming up various scenarios where he, naturally, gets to save the day. One such fantasy has Harry Kim panicking and declaring that "This is impossible! The warp containment field is failing!" - an old chestnut of a problem, long established as being up there with (and probably predating) the holodeck going crazy again.
- In the Star Trek Deep Space Nine episode "Trials and Tribble-ations", members of DS9 go back in time and encounter the events of the original series episode "The Trouble With Tribbles". When they are in the space station bar, Worf is asked why he looks different than the Klingons of that era. He merely growls that he doesn't want to talk about it. This is a Lampshade Hanging on the fact that the makeup for Klingons was changed to make them look less human in the later shows (And that the makeup had to be rebuilt after it was destroyed following their first appearance).
- The "Ship in a Bottle" episode of Star Trek The Next Generation has a holodeck character running amuck. Picard, Data, and Barclay are trapped until they can free the holodeck character (Prof Moriarty) from the holodeck. They work out a way to do so by sending him into an even more elaborate simulation. Picard closes the episode by stating that even though they are back to their own reality, their whole existence might really only be "an elaborate simulation, sitting in a box on someone's table". This also indirectly breaks the fourth wall.
- When Barclay couldn't help himself and says, "Computer, end program!" This Troper couldn't help himself, either. I turned off the TV and couldn't stop laughing.
- An episode of Star Trek: Voyager, which featured the ship traveling back in time to the mid-1990s and encountering another time traveler from an additional 300 years in the future, had Captain Janeway remark: "Time travel. Ever since my first day in the job as a Starfleet Captain, I swore I'd never let myself get caught in one of these god-forsaken paradoxes. The future is the past, the past is the future. It all gives me a headache."
- Star Trek's "Heisenberg Compensators," which make the transporters work in spite of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, represent a particular type of lampshading specific to Techno Babble: if a particular piece of Applied Phlebotinum is (according to current scientific theory) impossible because of a particular scientific principle, that principle is lampshaded by simply claiming the Phlebotinum's designers have found a way around the problem, without saying how. "I've invented a machine that does X!" "Isn't X impossible because of Y?" "Before I invented the machine that does X, I invented a machine that negates Y!" "Really? Wow!"
- Someone asked Star Trek scientific advisor Michael Okuda how the Heisenberg compensators worked. He replied, "They work very well, thank you."
- This is also rather obvious, since if we KNEW how to get around the various things that make science fiction subject matters impossible, we'd just do that right now and it wouldn't be, you know, fiction.
- Supernatural mocked several of its flaws/deliberate stylistic choices in "Hollywood Babylon". This exchange occurred between two producers:
Tara: Salt. Doesn't that sound silly? I mean why would a ghost be afraid of salt?
McG: Marty, what do you think?
Marty: I'm not married to salt. Are we still sticking with condiments?
McG: Mmm, it just sounds different, not better. What else would a ghost be scared of?
Marty: Maybe shotguns.
McG: That makes even less sense than salt.
- Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip overused this trope at times. The worst example was in "The Harriet Dinner," which was a two-part episode that was nothing but cliches. Jordan and Danny, characters who'd been potential love interests, actually got locked on a roof together, and Danny said it seemed like something out of a bad sitcom. Sorkin's acknowledging it did not change the fact that it did, in fact, seem like a bad sitcom, and was by far the worst episodes of the series.
- In the "Spanish Inquisition" sketch from Monty Python's Flying Circus:
- Hell, a good third of Monty Python's humor is probably based on lampshading various tropes.
- Look no further than the Argument Clinic Sketch
 , which ends on several recursive lampshades.
- The CSI episode of 2008-05-08, "Two And A Half Deaths," was one long series of lampshades being hung.
- Which is no surprise, considering that the writers of Two And A Half Men were doing the episode. The Two And A Half Men episode that week was also full of lampshade hangings, a result of the CSI guys doing that episode.
- The Middle Man and Side Kick Dubbie hang lampshades every chance they get.
- In the News Radio episode Stocks Jimmy James gives Beth a stock ticker and then says, "It's just like television, except without all those people doing stupid things to a fake laugh track."
- In the episode Kids Jimmy James is given a 555 phone number by a potential date, only to read the number after she's gone and proclaim, "Wait a minute, 555...that's one of those fake TV numbers!"
- Corner Gas: In the episode "Hurry Hard", Wanda and Hank are seen watching a curling match. Hank says, "If Emma makes this throw, her team wins the tournament." Wanda responds, "I know that, I've been sitting here watching the whole match." Lacey, seated behind them, says, "Yes, but Hank's description will help me, and other people who haven't been here the whole time, understand what's going on." Hank nods, and says, "So, to recap: If Emma makes this throw, her team wins the tournament."
- In another episode, when talking about a mocking radio program called "Dog River Dave" Brent is surprised someone would ever want to watch/listen to a show about him. Another character remarks "You could have some cool star cameos!", and then suddenly, coming in through the door: "Hi! I'm Olympic Gold Medal Winner Cindy Klassen!"
- Scrubs points out the constant Will They Or Wont They between Elliot and J.D, as evidenced by the quote on that trope's front page.
- The show seems to be doing a lot of lampshade hanging in season 8, from things like J.D. and Turk's bromance to J.D's often useless (but entertaining) fantasies.
- Also, in episode 7x10:
Dr. Cox: What in the hell are you talking about?
JD: Oh, I'm just doing this thing where I use a slice of wisdom from someone else's life to solve a problem in my own life.
Jordan: Seems coincidental.
JD: And yet I do it almost every week.
- At one point in season seven, Carla tells Elliot to pay attention, because she "doesn't want to tell her the same exact thing in two weeks". Two episodes later, Carla tell Elliot the same lesson and brings up that she told her this before, while Elliot claims to have never been told.
- At times in Lost's early seasons, characters commented on certain plot points to respond to fan comments, such as Sayid's statement in "The Moth" that no one should have survived the plane crash. In "Dave," Hurley's Imaginary Friend nags him that the island is a hallucination, listing all the unlikely and impossible things that have happened to Hurley since he left a mental institution. Director Jack Bender refers to this dialogue in the DVD commentary as "hanging a lantern on it."
- Leave it to Deadpan Snarker Sawyer to be the one to finally point out what everyone in real life has noticed - Richard Alpert's eyeliner.
- Hurley and Miles' conversation about time travel in "Whatever Happened, Happened" basically spoon-fed confused viewers time travel theory.
- The 100th episode of Monk might as well be called Mr. Monk Gives An Ode to Lampshades, and is a great illustration of how brilliant lampshade hanging can be.
- Blue Heelers does this twice. In Piece of Cakem when worrying about an inspection team, Tom Croydon says he wants Mount Thomas to look like the crime capital of Australia. Which as it turns out a Carl Williams or Alphonse Gangitano shows up every couple of weeks. And in another episode when police sergeant Ian Goss goes missing during a French filmmaaker filming a docuementary Tom says how a police member going missing is not a subject for television. Oh yes?
- In Dad's Army, one episode focused on Frazer and his acquisition of a large quantity of gold. One character gives his opinion that Frazer is unstable and unpredictable, to which Sergeant Wilson replies that he's actually quite predictable- "whatever we do, he predicts that it will end in horrible tragedy."
- In House a lampshade was hung on the Walk And Talk technique, when House tells a documentary crew "Walks look good on camera. They give the illusion of the story moving forward."
- In another episode, he walks out his office with Wilson, talks to him, and they end up...right back at his office. When Wilson points it out, House says "I like to walk." Note that this is a man missing a piece of his leg who regularly pops painkillers.
- In yet another episode, the same thing happens, save with Wilson in the lead; when House asks him why he did that, Wilson replies on the order of, 'Because it hurts you.'
- House also did the "It must be Tuesday" variation in season 3 with Chase's weekly reminders to Cameron that he's in love with her.
- Several episodes have lampshaded the fact that the team routinely throws out a differential diagnosis of lupus, but only once (and not until season four) was it ever the correct diagnosis. In the Season 4 opener, House recruits the janitor to replace his missing team, who suggests a number of mechanical failures in his cleaning eqiuipment which House intereprets medically, then simply blurts out "It could be lupus." Also, during the House/Tritter arc, we learn that House has cut out the middle of a lupus reference book to stash his Vicodin because "It's never lupus."
- In the season-three opener, House barges into Cuddy's office demanding permission to run yet another rather ill-advised diagnostic procedure, to which Cuddy replies, "Twenty-four times a year you come into my office, saying you need to. . . remove a man's pancreas because his. . . brain is on fire!" Naturally, the patient o' the week turns out to have a malfunctioning hypothalamus which is incapable of correctly regulating body temperature, or as House tells Cuddy, "Yes, his brain's on fire."
- From the Jonathan Creek episode "Gorgon's Wood" (and not the only time they've hung a lampshade on the Creek Moment):
Carla: Aren't you going to make some oddball comment, with no obvious relevence to anything?
Jonathan: Certainly not. But you might want to consider Englebert Humperdink, and the pop group Jethro Tull.
- In the last season of Mad About You, Jamie points out the fact that Paul appears to have no friends (outside the regular cast) by referencing Selby, Paul's best friend from season 1 who was later replaced by the similar Cousin Ira:
Jamie: Whatever happened to that guy Selby we used to know?
- In the pilot of Torchwood, Gwen points out the Fridge Logic in the invisible lift. Jack responds by, basically, telling her "It's just a show, she should really just relax."
Gwen: There's a hole in the floor. Don't people fall in?
Jack: That's so Welsh... I show you something amazing, and you find fault.
- Mystery Science Theater 3000's opening theme song:
Lyric: If you're wondering how they eat and breathe and other science facts
Lyric: just repeat to yourself, "it's just a show, I should really just relax!"
- Okay, everybody... Chant it together... the MST 3 K Mantra! TWANG!
- One of the greatest examples of lampshading came in the tenth season, during which Joel (who had been Put On A Bus mid season-five) visited the Satillite of Love in order to do some repairs. Mike becomes jealous of Joel, who he consiters to be a better man, to which Tom Servo replies: "Don't compare yourself, man, it ain't healthy." When Mike replaced Joel in season five, it started a massive Flame War over whether Mike was a better host than Joel.
- The titular hero in the show Kamen Rider Hibiki receives his first major Super Mode near the midpoint of the series. The in-universe reasoning behind needing the power-up is that monsters get stronger during the summer months, and Hibiki wants to be able to save time by blowing them up in one hit. Replace "Hibiki" with "the producers" and you have one of the out-of-universe reasons this is done in every season of Kamen Rider (the other reason being toy sales).
- In related lampshading, the third episode of Power Rangers RPM has a character, Dillon, who is being recruited by the team. When their mentor, Dr. K, mentioned the "covert" functions of the suit, he quips, "Yeah. Because nothing says covert like red, yellow and blue spandex." Dr. K gets very angry when somebody calls it spandex.
- The NCIS fifth season finale uses a lampshade hanging very similar to the Buffy example; when Director Vance complains that Gibbs has run off after a clue that nobody knows anything about and nobody can explain it to him, Tony replies, "Sounds like a Wednesday."
- Boston Legal. All the time, on everything, as a consequence of Denny (and other characters, but mostly Denny) being ridiculously Genre Savvy and having No Fourth Wall. In the last-but-one episode, when they finally decide that Alan and Denny will get married, Denny describes it as "Like jumping a shark."
- Sesame Street In the 1989 special, Big Bird in Japan, Big Bird is discussing his being abandoned by his tour group in Tokyo with his new friend, to which she responds aghast: "But that's horrible! What kind of a tour would leave without a bird and his dog?" To which Big Bird responds thoughtfully: "I dunno, probably the kind of tour that would take a bird and a dog in the first place."
- In a third season episode of The Mighty Boosh, "Party," Howard Moon claims to be only ten years older than Vince Noir; then both characters perform an Aside Glance, subtly acknowledging that:
- According to previous canon, Howard and Vince are the same age.
- In real life Julian Barratt (Howard) is five years older than Noel Fielding (Vince).
- Later in the same episode, Tony Harrison (who is also played by Noel Fielding) asks Howard his age, notes "Wow, you're older than me!" and smiles at the camera.
Professional Wrestling
- On WWE Monday Night RAW, announcer Jim Ross lampshades the practice of putting weapons underneath the ring for the wrestlers to use, resulting in the page quote.
- One of the practices that led to World Championship Wrestling falling apart was its tendency to suspend wrestlers and then continue to pay them ridiculous salaries while they were at home and not working in the slightest. Near the end, in addition to many other Lampshade Hangings the writers threw in a quip about it - the commissoner yelled at two misbehaving competitors that he was going to send them to jail, because, "I'm not going to send you home! If I do, someone at the office might pay you!"
- In ROH, Samoa Joe would sometimes hang a lampshade onto the... questionability of doing certain diving moves from the top rope, by actually walking out of the way and letting his opponent hit the mat with no ill effect to him. In 2008, Kevin Steen hung his own lampshade this way on Nigel Mc Guinness' infamous rebounding-off-the-ropes lariat.
- ECW sometimes did this, by way of showing what would happen if someone used what seemed to be the obvious counter to a finisher- only to have it turn out much worse than if they just took it. (example: Someone avoided a Van Damminator by swinging the chair. RVD ducked, swept the guy's leg, making him fall with the chair over his face and chest- which RVD then did Rolling Thunder onto. Styles: "If you wondered? Now you know."
Close Professional Wrestling
Radio
- Spike Milligan must have been peddling lampshades when he wrote the latter episodes of The Goon Show.
Theater
- Shakespeare uses this in Twelfth Night:
Fabian: If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.
- So this is Older Than Steam.
- Most of the Sweet Polly Olivers tend to lampshade the fact that in those times that a boy is playing a female character that is disguising herself as a boy.
- Hamlet's "Speak the speech I pray you" monologue can be seen as a combination of putting a shade on the common Theater techinques of the era, and a Take That against the overuse of it.
- In Spamalot, the Broadway adaptation of Monty Python And The Holy Grail, Sir Galahad and The Lady of The Lake sing "The Song That Goes Like This." Every phrase lampshades tropes of show tunes, love songs in particular.
- Furthermore, Sir Robin, when discussing the glamour and beauty of Broadway, dashes King Arthur's dreams of being in a Broadway musical by explaining "You won't succeed on Broadway if you don't have any Jews!" This, being England in the middle of the Crusades, is not likely — what Jew will come out to a heavily armed Christian? The Lady of the Lake resolves this quandary for Arthur by telling him, "You're in a Broadway musical!" as the lights around the stage sparkle. Finally, addressing one of many anachronisms, when Sir Lancelot and Herbert are wed, Lancelot pinches his beloved's cheek and says to him, "Just think, Herbert, in a thousand years' time this will still be controversial.
- Don't forget the great sorceror Tim. Stage direction calls for the strings holding him up to be visible from the back of the theater. King Arthur loudly states his amazement that Tim is flying without any method of support whatsoever.
- The Phantom Of The Opera: "You'd never get away / With all this in a play / But if it's loudly sung / And in a foreign tongue / It's just the sort of story / Audiences adore / In fact, a perfect opera!"
- If this trope didn't exist, the musical Urinetown would be about two seconds long.
- The play (and later film) Arsenic And Old Lace has a classic moment when one character, who is allegedly an intelligent and erudite theater critic, starts talking about how a character in a play who is supposed to be intelligent does something really stupid. You see, in that play, the allegedly smart guy was in a house with a bunch of murderers, and he doesn't try to leave. He doesn't even have the sense to be scared! Instead, he sits down in a chair and stops paying attention, while one of the murderers sneaks up behind him and ties him up with the curtain cord! Meanwhile, the theater critic, who also happens to be in a house full of murderers and not at all concerned about this, sits down in a chair, and one of the murderers sneaks up behind him and ties him up with, you guessed it, the curtain cord!
- The first act finale of Gilbert And Sullivan's Iolanthe has the chorus point out the use of "a Greek remark, a Latin word, and one that's French."
- Ventriloquist Jeff Dunham and his entourage of puppets often joke about the fact that Jeff is the one who's delivering all the dialogue. Especially in this one moment where Peanut and José Jalapeño start talking to each other in Spanish:
Jeff: What are you doing?
Peanut: I'm speaking to José in his native tongue!
Jeff: Well, don't do that!
Peanut: Why not?
Jeff: Well, it makes me feel... left out.
Peanut: (awkward pause) Huh?
Jeff: Well, I don't speak Spanish!
Peanut: (stares at Jeff)
Peanut: Picture if you will...
Video Games
- Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind featured both beds and a day-night time system but people do not go to bed or lock shops at night. This is lampshaded when you eventually get the dialogue response "People never seem to go to sleep, I wonder what drives them"
- This Zelda spoof on Newgrounds centers around Link undergoing a Chain of Deals in order to deliver the mystical Lampshade of No Real Significance to a local temple. (Would it be fair to call this recursive lampshading?)
- Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy: at one point, when faced with a Locked Door, Kyle Katarn, who has been in this kind of game before, snidely comments to the player character, "They always lock the doors. You'd think they'd've learned by now." and later, "The console for opening the door is probably hidden in some room twelve floors up... how does that make sense?"
- At one point in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Raiden asks Solid Snake why he never seems to run out of ammunition. In answer, Snake simply touches his bandanna and says "Infinite ammo." In the game, the bandanna is a secret item which does indeed grant infinite ammunition. While Snake is most likely referring to his mind, the joke is not lost on the player. (It also implicitly said that the "good" ending of Metal Gear Solid was canonical, which was later confirmed in 4.) The Metal Gear Solid series is famous for repeatedly breaking the fourth wall.
- In the Lupino showdown stage of Max Payne, the title character finds out that Jack Lupino believes himself to be the herald of the end of the world, and this sets him to musing on clichés, both concerning the end of the world and his own persona as "a brooding underdog avenger alone against an empire of evil, out to right a grave injustice." He ends with a musing on how "nothing is a cliché when it's happening to you."
- Later on in the game, as he heads into an abandoned military bunker, Max muses on how he has taken on the role of the "Mythic Detective," with everything that taking on that role entails: "to unravel all the mysteries; following a path of clues to that Final Revelation, even if it would take me down to the cold, cavernous depths of a grave."
- There's also the hallucinatory dream sequence where Max's wife leaves him notes telling him that he's in a graphic novel (which, for the uninitiated, is how the cutscenes in the game are presented) and in a video game.
- In the second game, Max shoots his way through several mooks and exits the garage under a police station, only to have his friend Vlad pull up. He notes that it's one unlikely coincidence. It's not a coincidence.
- The televisions in Max Payne 2 feature a Blaxploitation parody of the original Max Payne called "Dick Justice", where many of the flaws of the first game are lampshaded, such as "having a constipated grimace" and speaking in metaphor.
- In the A Bards Tale games, the character is featured repeatedly speaking to the narrator in debate of what he says, or simply because he feels it not necessary, commenting at various points on subjects like the lack of reason in wolves carring valuable items.
- In the final chapter of Drakengard, after you are convinced they have no more weird left to shovel in your face, the Final Boss mission's description says "Reality breaks down, and the fantasy begins." And then it gets even weirder.
- Before the final boss fight of Final Fantasy VI, all of the main characters deliver a small speech about how love and friendship etc. have changed their lives, to which the villain replies, "This is pathetic! You sound like chapters from a self-help booklet!"
- Osmud Saddler, right before mutating into this giant spider-thing:
Saddler:Oh, I think you know. The "American prevailing" is a cliche that only happens in your Hollywood movies.
- Zork Grand Inquisitor lampshaded the Hyperspace Arsenal. When the player puts a large vacuum on a vending machine, Dalboz comments "Just where were you keeping that?"
- In Gabriel Knight 3, the Hyperspace Arsenal is lampshaded when a jacket Gabriel has squeezed into his jeans forms a suspicious-looking bulge.
- In Doom III, the rationale for the player being able to acquire a chainsaw is a series of background logs detailing a shipment of chainsaws that were accidentally sent to Mars. The characters writing the logs draw attention to the fact that no one would ever use a chainsaw on the planet.
- In Unreal Tournament 3, the "flag" of CTF is replaced by the "FLaG" - Field-Lattice Generator. They look exactly the same, and one character says something to the effect of "it looks like a flag, it sounds like a flag, and it waves like a flag. It's a flag."
- A good example of this is in Prince Of Persia: Sands of Time. Being predominately a platform-based game, it pokes fun at the idea that the answers to platform puzzles are rarely in the game itself, which is radically different from RPGs and point-and-click adventure games. During this scene the princess, you are traveling with is trying to read the books in the library while you are hopelessly trying to jump around the walls and move mirrors to direct light. Your character gets so annoyed with her that he asks, "Why don't you just look up the answer to this puzzle?" and she replies "This isn't that kind of game."
- From the previews, the new Prince is actively Genre Savvy. He's noted that he tends to move "toward" the monsters, and when his cohort points out that it "seems quiet", he advises her not to say that.
- During one of the missions in Freespace 2, a pilot mutters about how useless their technology had been during the Great War, thirty years before, lampshading the fact that, while in Freespace 2, capital ships will fire all sorts of very large and deadly cannons and lasers, in Freespace 1, during which the Great War takes place, capital ships were for the most part fairly unimpressive moving targets.
- In the first case of Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, Apollo lets out a very loud "OBJECTION!", and promptly gets scolded by the judge and his mentor Kristoph—"Excess yelling can damage the judge's ears...and our case."
- You also have Apollo bemoaning how odd all of his clients are and Phoenix making a comment about 'presenting' when you try to show him things. Interestingly, characters questioning the trappings of their world is actually a major plot point, as the absurdly unfair justice system which Phoenix previously accepted is now recognized by the characters as in need of change, and that change begins to occur in the final case, with the reintroducion of juries, though admittedly for one case on a test basis.
- The Simpsons Game has you collecting these for One Hundred Percent Completion.
- Anachronox has its TAC Os, small boxes with radar dishes, that you collect and get various powerups. TACO is explained in-game as being a Totally Arbitrary Collectible Object.
- In Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, one mission begins with Sam Fisher saying "Don't tell me... Three alarms and the mission is over." to which his superior, Lambert, replies "Of course not. This is no video game, Fisher." This is taking a jab at the previous games in which missions would frequently end after 3 alarms.
- In Crysis: Warhead, a Marine remarks about the alarming number of VTOLs (Sci-fi helicopter things) that get shot down over the course of both games.
- In Secret Of Evermore, you run into a raving lunatic who shouts about how everyone is under the control of "button pushing overlords". You (the player, not the character) then get the option of punishing him by turning him into a chicken, goat, or gigantic basket.
- There's one at the first settlement most players will come across in Fallout 3, Megaton. Above the gate is a guy with a hunting rifle named Stockholm. The player can only reach him using console cheats, and one of the things he says to the player is asking "How the hell did you get up here..."
- In Gears Of War, whenever you find a door too thick for your Powered Armor-clad steroids-overdosed hero to kick down, you have to call a stealthed bot called Jack to cut it. Then you get a tough encounter while the bot is at his business. Every. Single. Time. At one of these points, it gets to the exchange.
Marcus: I'll call JACK.
Baird: Well, you know what THAT means...
Marcus: (Sigh) Yeah...
Then Baird gets into a defensive position... and you probably should as well.
- Good old J.R. calls it with the page quote, word for word, in the Smackdown vs Raw series.
- What about First Encounter Assault Recon ? One of the lines in the intro is "You got to be f**king kidding me. This is why nobody takes us seriously. Military clones?"
- Also on the Red Shirt Army treatment of the SFOD-D. F.E.A.R.'s credits include the line "No Delta Force Operatives were harmed in the making of this game.")
- And learning that Fettel has a tracking device embedded in his head, Jankowski remarks "Seems awfully convenient."
- Project Origin also does this, when Snake Fist introduces his ridiculous codename. Stokes' response is a blunt "....you've got the be fucking kidding me." Made all the more amusing by the fact that the characters would recognize the Snake Fist codename; apparently, its a popular series of action movies in the setting.
- Snake Fist was originally one of the entries in a competition Monolith ran when licensing problems were stopping them from using F.E.A.R. (someone at the Monolith offices even made a drawing of a snake with it's mouth wide open and a fist coming out of it). Guess it was a bit of a favourite for the devs.
- Stokes is way too Genre Savvy. Toward the end of the game, on the way to the confrontation with Alma, she remarks that "I hope she doesn't do one of those horror movie things, and throws your biggest fears against you. That would suck."
- Colonel Vanek lampshades Becket's One Man Army status: "You sure did kill a lot of my guys. You're a goddamn killing machine!"
- In what seems to be a prime example of a Message from Fred, the protagonist of the notorious Limbo Of The Lost often complains about annoying NPC's, how boring walking through endless tunnels is, etc.
- In Army Of Two, Salem and Rios lampshade the ridiculous requirement of two people being needed to open every door in the Veteran Map Pack downloadable content. Rios asks if Salem can ever remember a time he opened a door by himself, to which he responds how he can hardly open his doors at home by himself now.
- In Persona 4, part of the extended intro of the game (before you get to your first dungeon) has the protagonist walking home from school with Chie Satonaka and Yukiko Amagi. Chie asks the protagonist, "So, you're in town because your parents are out of the country for a year?" After he agrees, she goes on to say, "Wow. I thought it was something much more serious, like your parents dying mysteriously," after which she looks straight at the camera.
- In Legend Of Kay the player encounters an archaeologist deep down in the dungeons, who comments on how improbable it is that the machines are still working, and on the mystery what these periodically-retracting-spikes-and-moving-platforms machines might originally have been constructed for.
- Brutallus in World Of Warcraft, if hit with arcane charges by a player on a daily quest: "What is this pathetic magic? How about you come back with twenty-four of your best friends and try again, <race>!" (To put this in perspective: Brutallus is a raid boss intended to challenge a group of twenty-five.)
- In Uncharted Drakes Fortune, immediately after we discover that Sullivan survived being shot point-blank by Roman due to the use of a perfectly placed Pocket Protector Nathan exclaims: "I thought this kinda thing only happened in the movies!"
- As far as expansions go, Warhammer 40000: Dawn Of War: Soulstorm has been called many things; "Good" not being among them. However, if you play enough of the Space Marine campaign in Dawn of War 2 you will find that even the Blood Ravens agree, saying "The Kaurava campaign did not go so well". They go so far as to calling it "A blight on our history". At the end of the narrative, the scout sergeant Cyrus claims "Kaurava was a huge mistake. I will not speak of it again." This troper couldn't agree more.
- Several characters in My World, My Way does this a lot when they give tutorials to players without knowing why they say what they said (there's a fourth wall for those characters).
- The trope itself was lampshaded in the first season of the episodic Samand Max series. A particular puzzle requires you to improvize your way through an episode of a popular television sitcom called "Midtown Cowboys". (As the theme song informs the audience, "They're probably hiding a cow!") Part of the solution to the puzzle is to take a nearby lampshade and stick it on the cow's head.
- This is used during a bonus sequence in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. The stage is in space and none of the characters wear air masks:
Falco: Fox looks like he's got his hands full.
Krystal: Yes, he's putting up quite a fight, though.
Peppy: You know, he reminds me of his father every day.
Slippy: Hey, this is no time for chitchat guys! Shouldn't we be worried about Fox? He's out there with no air! How's he supposed to breathe?!
- You call me 'oniichan' but we're in love. That kind of thing normally only happens in erotic games.
- In Tales Of Hearts, Kunzite, a Ridiculously Human Robot, is nonetheless perfectly capable of being hit with all the Standard Status Ailments such as poison, curse, and petrification. If one of those occurs while The Lancer is in the party, that lancer will question it during the Victory Pose: "How exactly does a machine get poisoned, anyway?" "I am constructed to be very similar to a human being." etc.
- Ratchet And Clank example: "Where is he keeping all of these guns? I mean, come on!"
- In Pokemon Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness, Wakin from Team Snagem says when attempting to take your Snag Machine something along the lines of "We know you're a great battler. Well, we're not going to have any of that." He then proceeds to put you to sleep with his Gloom.
Web Comics
- In Irregular Webcomic, David Morgan-Mar describes this trope and does it himself to the unfunniness of the comic, thus applying Lampshade Hanging to Lampshade Hanging itself.
- The Order Of The Stick lampshades Tabletop Games tropes endlessly. Strip #546 refers to Lampshade Hanging by name (as seen in this page's image) and thus lampshades Lampshade Hanging.
- Max ninja tell Steve ninja something every ninja already know about shadow clone technique. Steve ninja understandably confused.
- Now if you'll excuse me, I'm out of exposition.
- 'Merciless' is the best word to describe the manner in which Exterminatus Now applies this trope, usually while subverting or justifying the trope being lampshaded. See Team Pet and The Smurfette Principle.
- Pretty much any comic by S. Sakurai (Muertitos, Gorgeous Princess Creamy Beamy, Intragalactic) will be so crawling with lampshade hangings that choosing specific examples would be pretty hard.
- Turns up plenty in Sluggy Freelance. Just take a look at this strip:
Zoe: What was that about?
Torg: It's a classic cliche! In this type of situation, when someone says "Nothing can save us now," it's followed by someone showing up to save us.
K'z'k the Soul Collector (suddenly appears): Hi kids!
- T-rex explains in this comic
- Something Positive hangs a lampshade on one of its longest-running elements in this strip:
Pee-Jee: How'd he get into your ice cream? That makes no sense.
Davan: He's a 30+ year old pudding cat who can travel through drains but this is where your ability to believe is gonna be taxed?
- In Abe&Kroenen, Abe lampshades two of the comics' most common gags (characters pulling a stealth Batman-esque appearance and Kroenen's thick German accent) at the same time. To be fair, he was pretty pissed off at the time.
Abe: Are you people in a club or something?
- Eight Bit Theater does this on a regular basis, and even hung a lampshade on itself in May 2009 courtesy of Black Mage:
That's it, I've had enough. This whole goddamn adventure has been nothing but pointless build ups toward pay offs that never happen.
Web Original
- In the lonelygirl15 video "Truth Or Dare", the "random girl" asks, "Do you guys film everything?"
- Then there's Bree in "New Girl": "You know, you'd think that maybe, just, just, just maybe, the Order would crack down on webcams. Idiots."
- This exchange from the KateModern mid-season 2 episode "Who Killed Kate?":
Alice: Yeah, it's a bit far-fetched, isn't it?
Sophie: Well, no more than life-extending blood drinking rituals and secret world-controlling societies!
- This happens a lot in Homestar Runner. For example, Strong Bad has referred to Homestar as a no-armed whitey with a speech impediment, and seems to be the only character aware that everyone (except him) is walking around with no pants on.
Homestar: What awe you talking about, Stwong Bad? I weaw wong pants.
Strong Bad: Umm, no. From what I can tell, you wear no pants, and have blue soles glued to the bottoms of your feet.
- Jonathan Pruitt, near the end of Six In The Morning.
Jonathan: Wait, that makes him a supervillain.
Travis: ... Actually, that's true. Which is pretty cool - I hadn't thought of that. I guess that makes us superheroes.
- Every episode of Ask That Guy With The Glasses begins with a greeting in a different language, eventually leading to "Oh, hello-in-a-language-you've-never-heard-of-and-won't-bother-to-look-up, didn't hear you come in."
- This is a relatively common occurrence in Survival Of The Fittest, both in and out of character, this exchange shows an example of (IC) lampshading.
Melina Frost (leader of a group called the 'Poison Angels): “Go on then… show him why we’re called the Poison Angles [sic].”
Jeff Marontate (a character facing the group): Poison Angles, huh? Oh, I'll give you a whole new set of angles in a minute, my darling.
- Whateley as well is fond of these
"he spread his arms wide WOMP-CRACK!, “and I really couldn’t let you rush in and pull a Deus Ex, how lame would that be?” Sara glared as the boy leant against a tree, standing on a branch ten feet in the air, “This isn’t some stupid story. Someone could be killed out there!”
- Hat Trick as well, though one is a subversion...Genre Savvy for the win.
- Common in the web fiction serial Dimension Heroes.
- "Oh, again with the alleyways! I'm getting sick of them!"
Western Animation
- Samurai Jack, "Jack versus Aku":
Aku: (appears before Jack)
Jack: "Aku!"
Aku: (droll) "Yes, it is I, Samurai Jack. How incredibly observant you are."
Jack: (draws sword and runs at Aku, screaming)
Aku: "Put that thing away, Samurai. We all know what's gonna happen."
Jack: (comes to a stop and watches Aku warily, sword still drawn)
Aku: "You'll swing your sword, I'll fly away and probably say something like "I'll be back, Samurai!" And then I'll flutter off over the horizon and we won't see each other for about a week and then we'll do the same thing all over again.
Jack: (looks guilty, then gets mad) "Your word play will not trick me, villain!" (lunges at him)
Aku: (turns into a bird and flutters off into the sky) "I'll be back again, Samurai, you'll see!"
Jack: (rubs chin in thought)
Aku: (reappears before Jack) "See what I mean?"
- Winx Club, "Homesick": Pixie Digit always thinks logically, so it's illogical for her to want to return to the pixie village (with the others), when it is part of a Big Bad plan designed to find the village. Tecna (her bonded fairy) addresses this, but the show never explains it.
- Fosters Home For Imaginary Friends, "Foster's Goes To Europe": The show addresses why Mac should be going to Europe with his imaginary friends instead of his family. Coco gives the explanation, which makes it unintelligible.
- Jimmy Neutron, "The Junkman Cometh": The show treats the fact that you can't breathe in space this way. See The Un Reveal.
- Several episodes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles revolved around adding a new mutant to the cast (such as the Frogs), and the main characters, who were notorious for breaking the Fourth Wall, would comment on the seemingly unending stream of mutated characters they seemed to run into.
- One episode had one of the Turtles hang a lampshade on the fact that the episode's plot had meandered for about 20 minutes without bringing it any closer to a resolution, by telling the rest of the team "We'd better do something soon, or we'll have to show our first two-part episode!"
- Another episode had the turtles mention Shredder stealing energy for the Technodrome, to which Michelangelo would say "Duh, they do that every episode".
- And yet another episode near the final seasons (after countless episodes where the Turtles have shut down the Technodrome) had the Turtles sigh and say "we know, we know" step-by-step how they'll sneak inside and shut down the Technodrome, the same way they've had so many times before at this point.
- Another example has Shredder mention they kidnap April O'Neil... "We've done it so many times before."
- This troper is reminded of one of the best examples of Breaking The Fourth Wall in the entire series. In an episode, Michaelangelo watches many buildings falling to their ruin to which he reacts with the comment "The animators must have spent the entire season's budget on this single episode!" or something along those lines.
- Quite popular in The Grim Adventures Of Billy And Mandy, usually accompanied by "this raises a lot of questions that we don't need to talk about,", and "It's best not to think about it."
- A list of all of the Lampshade Hangings that The Simpsons has done — particularly in later seasons — could probably be a website in and of itself. The Simpsons Archive has a long list of "meta-references."
- Futurama almost takes pride in doing this:
- In the Futurama episode "The Deep South", Zoidberg's house burns to the ground... underwater. Zoidberg wails "How could this have happened?" and Hermes notes, "That's a very good question." Implicitly claiming responsibility, Bender picks his still-lit cigar out of the ruins and puffs on it — eliciting a cry of, "That just raises further questions!"
- Amy harps on Fry and Bender for being lazy, making a point of Fry's beer belly. She turns her attention to Bender, pointing out that his "belly" is bloated and his door won't close. She pauses, then adds, "...and that doesn't even make sense."
- The Professor offers a long, elaborate, technically dubious, and absurd explanation for the appearance of "robot ghosts" in a castle, to which Hermes responds: "Of course! It was SO obvious!"
- "Yes, that sequence of words I said made perfect sense."
- After Bender is lost in space and hurled back to Earth by a god-like entity, he lands, unharmed, directly in front of Fry and Leela, who have been looking for him in the Himalayas. After Bender stands up, Leela announces that it is "by a wide margin the least likely thing that has EVER happened". (In the DVD commentary, the crew makes explicit reference to this being a lampshade hanging. "...And that's how we wrote our way out of THAT.")
- In fact, there's a Lampshade Hanging in the very first episode: when both of Bender's arms fall off and he somehow puts them both back on, Fry simply comments, "I don't know how you did that."
- After Bender is kidnapped and asks Fry and Leela for help, Leela is indecisive, saying she wishes they had two or three minutes to think about what to do. Cue commercial break.
- Happens several times in South Park:
- In the episode "Butt Out" the boys smoke, and Stan says that they should just confess, otherwise the towns folk would grab pitchforks and torches and riot. Stan then goes on to say that they are following a very specific storyline formula.
- In both episodes "Pandemic" and "Pandemic 2" Craig gets mad at the boys for dragging him into a bad situation. Craig says that normal kids don't get arrested by the government, sent to Peru to take out the goverment and then accidentally wind up in the land of the giants.
- In the South Park episode Cartmanland, Cartman says, "You mean Kenny? He dies all the time!"
- Also happens when Kenny berates Stan for crying over Kyle's imminent death, saying he dies all the time and no-one cares. He is then promptly killed, and Stan doesn't seem to give a damn.
- Of course, in the first Christmas episode, Kenny is alive at the end of the episode - the cast stands around silent and wonder aloud that something seems amiss. "THE END" appears and Kenny jumps for joy.
- Kenny is afraid of going into a wood shop class, despite the fact that "very few students are severly injured in shop class"
- In a certain Looney Tunes short, Bugs Bunny, while falling towards water after being blasted into the sky by a non-fatal explosion, says "I hope that's Soft Water down there".
- Rocky And Bullwinkle:
Rocky: (recognizing Boris' voice) That voice. Where have I heard that voice before?
Bullwinkle: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
- After Marty McFly keeps running into various ancestors of Biff Tannen (traveling not only through time, but space as well!) in Back To The Future The Animated Series, he exclaims: "Is there a Tannen in every century?".
- The Animaniacs character Slappy Squirrel kept doing that, as part of her "retired toon actor" personality.
- In Ratatouille, Remy the Rat finds out that he can control Linguini's actions by pulling on his hair like a puppeteer. When Remy experiments with this unlikely technique, Linguini notes with amusement, "That's strangely involuntary."
- Venture Bros frequently points out the fact that henchmen #21 and #24 never die. For example; in the episode "Lepidopterists", #21 and #24 point out to Henchman #1 that they would never die, unlike the other henchmen. Also, in the same episode, Dr. Girlfriend asked Monarch why he keeps using 21 and 24, he replied "I know it sounds crazy, but they both have that rare blend of 'expendable' and 'invulnerable' that makes for a perfect henchman."
- Megas XLR loves doing this through the use of signs, particularly with buildings about to be destroyed. Several include "Conveniently Empty Building," "This Building is Scheduled for Demolition Anyway," and "Explosions and Shrapnel Factory".
- Not to mention Coop's megaweapon button, which always reads something along the lines of: "Super Destructor Mode" or "Being Hit With A Giant Taser? Press Here". In one case the lampshade hanging is enormous: the same thing happens, and then a bit later during the same fight, Coop presses the button again, it reads: "Exactly the same button Coop just used like five minutes ago", but for an entirely different effect.
- Drawn Together is literally full of these types of jokes, frequently insulting the show itself for comedic effect. An example is in the episode "Little Orphan Hero", where Spanky, Princess Clara, Foxy, Toot, and Ling Ling try to help a suicidal quadriplegic end his miserable life. When said man reveals himself to be an undercover cop intending to arrest them for attempting to 'murder' him and that the entire area is surrounder by similar quadriplegic cops (importantly for the joke, all with horrible pun names, like Bob, who's waiting in the water) intending to arrest them, Spanky sighs and says, "This is so stupid, it's like some retarded 3rd grader wrote this."
- Buzz Lightyear of Star Command does this on occasion.
Buzz: Of course, I should have known... the butler always did it.
- In Gargoyles, David Xanatos needed some way to lure the magical Coyote to him. To do this, he puts Goliath, Angela, Elisa and Bronx in a Death Trap to make the being intervene to save them. Xanatos and his robot lovingly describe the trap to the heroes and Xanatos cannot resist noting "It's my first stab at clichéd villainy; how am I doing?"
- Does that qualify as a Xanatos Gambit?
- In another episode he and Demona created a new Gargoyle, by putting the remains of three back together, who where destroyed in stone form. When the Gargoyle mixup began to live again, Xanatos shouted with great joy: "It's alive! IT'S ALIVE!" Followed by: "I always wanted to say that."
- Phineas & Ferb has a running gag based around this:
Random Person X: Aren't you a little young to be [Y]?
Phineas: Yes. Yes I am.
- Also, in one episode, Candace exclaims, "My life is like a bad sitcom!"
- Ed Edd And Eddy did this a few times, with Edd making a remark about Ed's "badly drawn fingers", and later with Eddy shouting, "Who writes his material?"
- In fact, the main characters spent an entire episode realizing and exploiting the various cartoon laws that govern their world. For example, Eddy removes Jimmy's outline; Jimmy turns into a puddle of color and flows down a drain.
- Avatar The Last Airbender:
Katara: I need to borrow Appa.
Katara: Yes, it is.
Aang: Oh...
- In the series finale, Toph hangs her own lampshade on this by wanting to go with Zuko for 'her character development field trip'. And after trying to do so, but having Zuko out-angst her parent-wise, she mutters "Worst. Field trip. Ever."
- Additionally, virtually the entire episode 'The Ember Island Players' qualifies under this trope.
- The episode goes one step further, lampshading the lampshade. When Katara asks if it's really wise to go see a play about themselves, Sokka responds, "Come on, a day at the theater? This is the kind of wacky, time-wasting nonsense I've been missing!"
- In one episode, the main characters get invited to a party for the Earth King's bear, and are surprised that it is just a bear and not a bear crossed with another animal.
- Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series had a scene where after two of the six main characters have been captured by the Villain of the Week and a third has been sucked through the TV into an alternate dimension, one of the remaining characters says, “If we keep losing teammates, this show's gonna be called ''The Mighty Duck.” (Or words to that effect.) Nosedive also tends to cross the line into No Fourth Wall territory, as he’s been shown to hear flashback music and have enough Genre Savviness to recognize a really friggin’ obvious trap.
- Spongebob Squarepants had Spongebob annoying Squidward in Squidward's house. Randomly, Patrick just appears in the room. When Squidward asks why Patrick's there, he simple goes "I'm funny." Rule Of Funny, much?
- Patricks hangs yet another lampshade when he and Spongebob are sitting by a campfire:
Spongebob: At least it's warm by the fire.
Patrick: Hey, if we're underwater, how can there be a- (Fire promptly goes out) I'm cold.
- Dave The Barbarian features this frequently. An example:
The Narrator: Suddenly, Ned's zipper is hit by a meteor, bitten by radioactive bugs, bombarded with unknown nuclear energies and struck with the power of the Norse Gods!
Ned: Wow. That almost never happens.
- Kim Possible constantly lampshades itself during most of its run. For example:
- The will-they-or-won't-they relationship between Kim and Ron is lampshaded by commenting on a similar couple in the show before the fake Grand Finale.
Kim: They couldn't get together! It wouldn't end the series!
- Team Impossible questioned about Ron's lack of Bad Ass Mystical Monkey Power:
Dash: I thought you were supposed to be some master of monkey kung-fu. Ron: You know, it’s funny. It comes and goes.
- Joss Possible both commented about Ron's heroness and Shego's lack of evilness:
Joss: I mean, I know Dr. Drakken is your arch foe, but it seems to me Shego's the really dangerous one. I mean, if she put her mind to do it, she could be the toughest villain out there, don't you think?
Joss: Ron here is afraid of practically everything, but does he let his fears keep him from sidekickin'? Let's face it, Kim. You can do anything. So facing all those dangers and villains, well, it's just like you say. No big. A fella filled with that much fear always chargin' into action with you? Seems to me that's a true hero.
- In an episode of Darkwing Duck titled Twin Beaks, alien plants are creating clone duplicates of everyone, exactly as in Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, only sillier).
Gosalyn: That plot doesn't sounds so cliche when it's happening to you!
- Danny Phantom has done this at least twice, once hanging the lampshade at how things were getting predictable "...we learn some [moral]... or some nonsense and then we go home.." and more brilliantly Dark Danny pointing out how obvious the hero thing was. Also in the same one where Clockwork points out Dark Danny (in disguise as his younger, non-evil self) and says something like "See? He's back to his proper time and apparently not evil." David Carradine, you rock.
- Duck Tales did this all the time, even in the first 5 episodes, all of which formed one story arc. For example, Scrooge jumps into a pile of coins and start swimming through it like usual, and his nephews try to do the same but just land on top of the pile, then wonder how he does it.
- While not lampshading per say, Scrooge tells his nephews to "Give him four" in the very first episode, pointing out that cartoon characters often only have four fingers on their hands, even when given thumbs.
- The Fairly Odd Parents occasionally uses this trope. In one particular episode, Cosmo and Wanda (while in goldfish form, inside their bowl) are preparing for a romantic dinner, and Cosmo attempts to light the candles on the dinner table by rubbing two magic wands together. Timmy walks into the room and asks the couple, "What's new?" just as Cosmo succeeds in lighting the candle. Wanda glances at the flame skeptically, then answers, "Um, the laws of physics?"
- In an episode of Superman: The Animated Series three members of The Legion of Super Heroes follow Brainiac back a thousand years in time to stop him killing a teenaged Clark. Saturn Girl says Clark will need a disguise, to which Clark says “like a pair of glasses would fool anyone”. Chameleon Boy a few moments later shapeshifts into Superman to illustrate what they were saying Clark was going to become, to which Clark says “Red underpants? Now I know you are crazy!”
- In the adult animated series Mission Hill 's first episode, Andy comments about a new animated series for adults he hears about. "Oh God, not another animated series."
- Happened a couple of times in Static Shock, as both main characters are fairly Genre Savvy.
- In Batman The Brave And The Bold, as Batman's telling Robin about the villain of the week's plans, they pass a building prominently labeled "Exposition Hall".
Music
- The Swedish song "Värsta schlagern" ("Such a Schlager"), sung by Markoolio and Linda Bengtzing, lampshades a lot of the tropes and clichés appearing in the Eurovision Song Contest. The song itself is written and orchestrated like a typical "schlager", only the lyrics lampshade. Examples include a bridge going (my translation from the Swedish): "What they reward with twelve points, is a sumptuous chorus", part of the chorus going: "There are stars and they're burning, there's the world and it's disappearing, and the title should hit you like a punch in the stomach, it's such a schlager" and one memorable part going: "If you don't want to ruin your chances of winning, you can steal something from ABBA and see the risk disappear."
- "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen contains the line, "It goes like this: the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift", referring to the sequence of chords played during that line.
- The Cat Empire song "One Four Five" contains a chorus which simply reapeats the phrase "One, four, five." over and over. When each word is sung, the music itself plays that chord progression associated with the song AKA a I-IV-V chord progression.
- Britney Spears' "Womanizer" has a conspicuous shot of a Nokia cell phone near the start. One of the appointments just visible in the frame is about a Product Placement meeting.
- Da Vinci's Notebook's "Title of the Song" is all about this.
Tabletop Games
- Shows up fairly often in the joke Unglued and Unhinged sets from Magic The Gathering. For example, Ow's flavor text is "Have you ever noticed how some flavor text has no relevance whatsoever to the card it's on?"
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