"If I live to be a hundred I will never understand why they keep so many damn weapons under the ring. It's almost like they want the competitors to use them on each other."
— Good ol' Jim Ross on life's big mysteries.
Lampshades hung in professional wrestling.
- On WWE RAW, announcer Jim Ross lampshades the practice of putting weapons underneath the ring for the wrestlers to use, resulting in the page quote.
- A cheap way for face wrestlers to get over is by referencing the city they're performing in. (We're going to do this tonight, in front of all these Detroit/Austin/New York/Milwaukee/Chicago/Los Angeles/Philadelphia fans!) Mick Foley, a wrestler who has spent most of his career as a face, has joked about "cheap pops" and turned this into a bit of a joke catchphrase for himself. "I'm going to win that title, and I'm going to do it (pause) RIGHT HERE! in (where ever they are.)
- The Rock once did the heel version lampshade. As a face, he would come out and say "Finally The Rock has come back to (name of city.)" Then after a Face–Heel Turn, The Rock gave us this Funny Moment: "And then Vince McMahon did The Rock a favor. He said, 'Rock, you can go wherever you wanna go, you can do whatever you wanna do!' So The Rock said he wanted to go live Monday night on RAW. More importantly than that, The Rock said he wanted to come right here to Toronto, Canada. (crowd cheered) And then The Rock said... Ugh, are you kidding The Rock? What, is this the first time you've ever heard someone mention your city, is that it? 'Ooh yay! Hooray! He said Toronto! Woo! Yay! That's where WE live! We live in Toronto, yay!'... Shut up!"
- 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 commissioner 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!"
- WCW's problem with lampshade hangings shows there can be a fine line between hanging a lampshade and exposing the business even more so than it was at a time when kayfabe was relatively more alive and well.
- By that point, Vince Russo had already had wrestlers discussing their scripts on-camera. Kayfabe in WCW was long dead.
- 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 a similar lampshade
this way on Nigel McGuinness' infamous rebounding-off-the-ropes lariat (perhaps best known nowadays for being adopted by Dean Ambrose during his WWE run). - 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. Announcer Joey Styles: "If you wondered? Now you know.")
- Jerry Lynn eventually went one better by just hurling the chair back at RVD.
- And later during the WWF Invasion, Rock just ducked, dropped the chair, and caught RVD after the spin with a DDT on said chair.
- At ECW Ultra Clash 93, Terry Funk and Stan Hansen faced Kevin Sullivan and "The Madman from the Sudan" Abdullah the Butcher in a "Bunkhouse Match." The match went to a DQ when "Hot Stuff" Eddie Gilbert, who had left the company the night before and announced his "retirement", interfered and attacked Funk. Joey Styles explained that in Eastern Championship Wrestling you can use weapons but cannot have outside interference. Eventually, ECW got rid of the "no outside interference" rule.
- Kofi Kingston debuted on WWE as the supposedly first Jamaican-born wrestler in the company's history. His character underwent an overhaul out of nowhere, now being billed from his real life homeland of Ghana and dropping his accent completely. How did WWE reconcile this? They had Triple H (who seems to live beyond the fourth wall) ask him, "Hey, what happened to your accent, man? Didn't you used to be Jamaican?"
- Well there was also the fact that they started talking about him being from Africa after Trips said that, and given Kofi's expression and the look Shawn Michaels gave him during the same spot, it looked like one big screw-up. He started to explain "respecting the Jamaican heritage of my extended family" or some such in a backstage interview the next week, only to get interrupted. A case of accent slippage mixed with Throw It In!?
- Later on as a member of The New Day he faced off against The Usos in a rap battle the Uso's asked, in an exaggerated accent, "Hey mon, ain't you Kofi Kingston? Didn't you used to be Jamaican? Nah, you was ja-fakin'."
- Kofi himself lampshaded this in a skit where The New Day "time-traveled", including a stop in 2009 where Kofi had his accent back.
- WWE lampshaded the fact that Mick Foley had multiple ring personas on at least two occasions:
- At the 1998 Royal Rumble, Foley entered the main event three times—first as Cactus Jack, then as Mankind, and finally as Dude Love. (At that time, he wasn't working under his real name.)
- For the 2005 Taboo Tuesday PPV, fans voted online as to whether Foley would face Carlito as Cactus Jack, Mankind, or Dude Love. Mankind won the vote and the match.
- The Rock also lampshaded the tendency of fans booing a heel but still chanting their catchphrase; after cutting a heel promo on Indianapolis, he was about to do his "If ya smell...", only for the incensed crowd to join in as usual, prompting him to stop and chastise them.The Rock: Whoa, whoa, whoa, you come out here, you boo The Rock for ten minutes, then all of a sudden at the end, "OH YAY, IF YOU SMELL, YAY YAY YAY YAY!", no! No! Nononono! Have some self-respect for chrissakes!
- Heidi Lovelace's match with Crazy Mary Dobson at AIW Girls Night Out 5, which was only a little over a year into Heidi's career and only a few months into Mary's, included some mistakes, which one of the commentators covered for by saying, "I haven't seen the smoothest match I've ever seen, but I have seen a lot of cool shit."note
- Crossed with Medium Awareness, by the crowd, of all possible people, after the match between The Future Is Now (Jigsaw/Helios/Jimmy "Equinox" Olsen) and The UnStable (Colin Delaney/STIGMA/Vin Gerard) at CHIKARA Through Savage Progress Cuts the Jungle Line, September 19, 2010. TFIN had won by DQ after Gerard hit Equinox with a low blow. Gerard did it again and beat him down until Helios made the save, with Gerard and STIGMA heading to the back. As Colin and Equinox were down on the mat, the crowd chanted "Awkward silence! Awkward silence!"
- At CHIKARA Hour of Power 10, September 10, 2017: During the Merlok-Cabana Man Dan match, Dan grabbed his sandals and weakly hit Merlok with them. Commentator Mike Quackenbush noted that referee Bryce Remsburg would be within his discretion to disqualify Dan for using a foreign object. Scott Holiday said that the use of objects should only be a DQ if they are effective, which these weren't.
