Leaning On The Fourth Wall / Live-Action TV

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• Doctor Who

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• The Christmas Episode from the second season of 3rd Rock from the Sun has the Solomon family realizing that it's been nearly a year since they first arrived on Earth. Tommy reminds Dick that they landed on January 9, with Harry chiming in "at 8:30 Central", the airdate and time the series originally premiered.
• 30 Rock:
  • Season 4 opens with Jack looking directly at the camera and welcoming everyone to Season 4. He is actually talking to the TGS staff, and "Season 4" is the name of the restaurant they're at.
  • In the Season 6 episode "Grandmentor", when Hazel fails to ensure that Tracy gets his requisite 14 hours of sleep, leading him to go crazy and say things like "We're on a Show Within a Show! My real name is Tracy Morgan!"
  • In a Season 7 episode, Josh sidetracks Liz when she's racing against the clock. She's frustrated that he's picked this moment to finally "have a thing", referencing the fact that he's been Out of Focus on the show for a while.

A

• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
  Maria Hill: What does SHIELD stand for, Agent Ward?
  Ward: Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division.
  Hill: And what does that tell you?
  Ward: That someone really wanted our initials to spell "SHIELD".
• Angel
  • In the first season, one episode begins with a woman being hunted by a gang of vampires. The vampires suddenly turn around, and one of them says, "You." The camera then shows us the person who has surprised them, starting with the feet and panning upward: black boots, a long black trenchcoat, a sword... and then we get to the face, which is that of a young black man (Charles Gunn) we've never seen before. He smiles and says, "You were expecting somebody else?"
  • In the second episode of the fifth season, Lorne says this about Angel and Spike's mutual love for Buffy:
    Lorne: The vampire slayer that both men loved, both men lost. Oh, I could sell that to a studio in a heartbeat. I'm seeing [Johnny] Depp and [Orlando] Bloom. Then again, I see them a lot. (He notices Wesley giving him a strange look.) Sorry, I need to get out more—I've been spending so much time running Wolfram & Hart's entertainment division.
• Michael Bluth from Arrested Development gives a speech at a dinner party about why the Bluths are such an unlikeable family, and about how they might not deserve to be saved from their fate. This was in one of the show's last episodes before cancellation, and the speech was also clearly about the fate of the show itself.
  • Earlier in the same episode, Michael has a conversation with his father about where to get some financial support from. At the time there had been talk about continuing the show on another channel.
    George: Well, I don’t think the Home Builders Organization is going to be supporting us.
    Michael: Yeah, the HBO's not going to want us. What do we do now?
    George: Well, I think it's Showtime. I think we have to have a show during dinner.
  • Lampshaded when Michael talks about how the family can't afford to act proud any more and they'll beg for help if that's what it takes.
    Narrator: Please tell your friends about this show.
  • When the series ended there was a similar moment when Maeby was pitching her TV series (based on her family life, making it essentially Arrested Development) to none other than Ron Howard, the show's producer and narrator. He replies, "I don't see it as a TV show. Maybe a movie..."
  • In season 4, Lindsey is shocked that Tobias doesn't realize he comes across as gay, stating that "It's sort of a Running Gag...in our family."
  • Played with in one episode, when Tobias comments, "If this were a Lifetime Moment Of Truth movie, this would be our act break." The pre-commercial sound cue plays... and then the Narrator says, "But it wasn't," and the episode continues.
  • One episode plays on Jeffrey Tambor playing both George and his twin brother Oscar. Oscar invites his brother to sit next to him, and George says it will look better if they sit opposite.
• Arrow
  • In the pilot episode a newsreader (reporting that a movie will be made of Oliver Queen's miraculous survival) says: "The son of a very wealthy billionaire will soon become a legendary story." Seeing as the story lasted eight seasons and spawned the Legends, he was right!
  • Similar to the Buffy example, Detective Lance, thanks to his distrust of Laurel, is skeptical when she tries to warn him of an impending bioweapon attack.
    Detective Lance: The city's in danger, it must be May.
  • In the episode when Vixen makes her live-action debut, Oliver explains to the others that he'd met her in an "animated" adventure. Bonus points for Steven Amell barely being able to keep a straight face while uttering the line.
  • In a Season 5 episode, Felicity is asked how often people come back from the dead. She answers that it seems like every Wednesday. Likewise when asking Felicity to be his secretary, Oliver calls her his Girl Wednesday instead of Girl Friday.
• Emma Peel is watching an old black-and-white episode of The Avengers (1960s) when the screen goes all fuzzy and then her partner Steed appears on the television screen in color to tell her that "Mrs. Peel, we're needed."

B

• Battlestar Galactica: When Roslin finally tells Adama she loves him, his response is "'Bout time."
  • The Arc Words "All of this has happened before and will happen again" seem awfully appropriate for a remake.
  • Then there is the First Cylon War, fought several decades earlier against an older model of Cylon.
• In an episode of Beauty and the Beast, in one of the ending balcony scenes, Vincent notes that maybe someone out there is watching and smiling. ...Someone?
• Becker: Done a couple of times in the series finale. (Unusually, the series was canceled against the producers' wishes but with sufficient advance notice to provide the series with a proper ending.) In one scene, Dr. Becker looks at the test results for a patient named Mr. Nielsen, and says, "I don't know what the problem is. These numbers aren't that bad!" Another patient talks about having problems with his kidneys, and Becker tells him, "You were doing okay until they developed the stones," which could also be taken as an allusion to The Stones, the series that replaced Becker on CBS's schedule (and lasted only three episodes).
• In the episode "Dual and Duality" of Blackadder the Third, Edmund contemplates his legacy:
  Edmund: Yes, I'm afraid my ambitions stretch a little further than professional idiocy in West London. I want books written about me. I want songs sung about me. And then, hundreds of years from now, I want episodes from my life to be played out weekly at half past nine by some great heroic actor of the age.
  Baldrick: (smiling) Yeah, and I could be played by some tiny tit in a beard.
  • A less extreme example, from earlier in the same series:
    Dr. Johnson: Sir, I hope you are not using the first English dictionary to look up rude words!
    Blackadder: I wouldn't be too hopeful. [Looks into camera] That's what all the other ones will be used for.
• In Black Books, the three main characters are thinking about going to the cinema and look up what's showing. They find a film with a plot synopsis that sounds exactly like that of the show itself but decide against seeing it because it sounds awful.
• Boston Legal has a habit of doing this more and more as the series goes on, with frequent references to the lead actors' previous roles as well as the show's own tropes and real-world issues, such as schedule changes.
  • During a particularly complicated schedule change for the series, several of the characters appeared for a meeting during the cold open. When nobody else showed up for the meeting, the conversation went something like this:
    "Are we early? I thought we were on Tuesdays at 9."
    "Actually, we rescheduled. Now we're Wednesdays at 10."
    "So are we going to be Wednesdays at 10 every week?"
    "No, we're actually going to be Wednesday at 10 for a week, then take a week off, then we'll be Wednesdays at 9."
  • In the second episode of season 3, two new lawyers join the firm. When Danny meets them, there is this exchange:
    Jeffrey Coho: We’re the new guys.
    Denny Crane: Oh, please. If there were new guys, they would’ve shown up at the season premiere.
    Claire Simms: He’s smoking, for God’s sake.
    Denny Crane: It’s a personal gift from Bill Clinton. If you only knew where this cigar has been.
    Claire Simms: Okay, he’s officially the grossest person I’ve ever met.
    Jeffrey Coho: See that sign that says, “Crane, Poole & Schmidt”?
    Denny Crane: [pointing to himself with his cigar] Welcome to Boston Legal.
    Claire Simms: Jeffrey. The gross man is fondling me.
    Denny Crane: It’s the official firm greeting.
    [Claire Simms clears her throat]
    Denny Crane: Cue the music.
  • In another episode, one of the lawyers is so ecstatic at being re-hired by the firm that he bursts into song. The song? The Boston Legal theme song. His performance is used in place of the usual opening credits sequence, with scenes of his gleeful singing inter-cut with the usual cast headshots.
  • Stars William Shatner and James Spader often have dialog that alludes to their previous film and television roles. For example, Shatner's character reacts with anxiety when he hears about salmon parasites known as "cling-ons," and Spader remarks to Shatner — while both are dressed as flamingos — that he looks "pretty in pink."
  • At one point William Shatner's character says: "I'm Denny Crane! I once owned my own spaceship!"
  • In another episode Denny briefly ponders a communicator-shaped cellphone.
• Brooklyn Nine-Nine: In season 7, Amy announces that she's pregnant. The rest of the cast admit that they've known for a while due to the obvious Hide Your Pregnancy tactics she's been using. This is a joke on how the show has used those tactics to hide the actress's two real-life pregnancies.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • In season 5, Tara talks about The Hunchback of Notre Dame: "But he's not really good. He has no moral compass. The only reason he does good things is to win the love of this woman who could never love him back. That's how you know it can't end well..." Gosh, who else could that be referring to?
  • During "Once More with Feeling", Buffy famously alludes to her namesake show's timeslot with the following remark:
    Buffy: Dawn's in trouble. Must be Tuesday.
  • Also from the musical episode, while Anya and Xander are talking over each other trying to explain the weirdness of their random duet that morning:
    Anya: It's like we were being watched. Like there was a wall missing from our apartment like there were only three walls and not a fourth wall.
  • In the episode "Get It Done", Buffy mentions the Hellmouth's tendency of "blowing in May". This alludes to the fact that apocalypses usually occur during season finales, which air during this month.
  • Buffy saves Willow & Xander in the opening of the first episode of season 2. She then asks them "Missed me?" while looking straight at the camera.
  • In the comics, Xander refers to "every month, every Wednesday".
  • "Normal Again" has numerous examples of this, as Buffy is hallucinating she's in a mental institution and her reality is actually a fiction.
  • Another example from the comics season 8: when the talking dog is trying to recruit him and tells him that he's been chosen for the plan, Angel says he is "definitely twitchy about CHOSEN". The dog replies with "Yes, that goofy little cheerleader spun you right round." Apparently, the dog decided to take the word "Chosen" as a reference to Buffy, the Chosen One, but for the readers, Angel's statement and the dog's answer is leaning against the fourth wall, as "Chosen" is also the title of the series finale.
  • The cover for After These Messages We'll Be Right Back has Xander, Willow and Dawn crowding round to watch TV...of Buffy, with the story based on the proposed Animated Adaptation.
  • There is Lampshade Hanging on the fact that something bad always happens on Buffy's birthday.
• In the Burn Notice episode "Sins of Omission", Michael starts the episode relating what had happened since he'd been blown up straight to the camera. It turns out that he was talking to Carla.

C

• Charmed (1998):
  • In an episode dealing with Lady Godiva.
    Piper: Woman. Keep your clothes on, this is a family show. Really.
  • In "House Call", the 101st episode, this conversation happens:
    Witch Doctor: You ever vanquish a demon in this house, by any chance?
    Phoebe: [laughing] Oh, only about a hundred.
• In El Chavo del ocho, a show that's known for extreme Dawson Casting, one episode has the neighborhood boys fainting after receiving a kiss from the cute new girl Patty. When Chilindrina asks Quico why he fainted, he gives the camera a good stare while responding "I don't know, sometimes I react like I'm not this young."
• Late in the 11th and last season of Cheers, some of the gang go to an old drive-in theater and see a Godzilla movie. Cliff notices that the lead actress in this edition of the Godzilla series has been recast. Woody muses, "I don't understand, why would an actress leave right in the middle of a successful series?" This references Shelley Long's well-publicized departure from the show after 5 seasons.
• The Season 5 premiere of Chicago Fire has Gabbie taking a friend visiting from out of town to Molly's, and the friend says she's never been to a firefighter bar. Gabbie replies that they get cops, doctors, lawyers... well, not so many lawyers anymore. Chicago Justice had been canceled at the end of the previous season.
• The title character of Chuck thanks Casey for saving his life "at least once a week".
• The Colbert Report: When Stephen Colbert accidentally dropped acid, the ensuing existential crisis could be taken two ways — either the character worrying about his insecurities and whether he's lying to himself, or the character briefly realizing that he ''is'' just a character. This was mostly to clue in new viewers to the Alter-Ego Acting thing since the show had just gone global.
  "Where does this Stephen end and that Stephen begin?"
• Done quite a bit on Community. Abed, partially thanks to being the group's resident Genre Savvy Meta Guy, is a bit obsessed with media and constantly interprets the events around him as if they were the plot of a sitcom. At the beginning of the second season, Jeff criticizes Abed for all the self-referential meta-humor, saying that it's "so last season."
  • Abed comes really close to breaking the Wall in the second-to-last episode of Season 5, where he seemingly tries to evade/misdirect the cameraman, nearly outright states that he's in a TV show, and almost looks directly into the camera, among a couple of other things. May have also been Noticing the Fourth Wall and Visible Fourth Wall. He breaks it in the following episode, albeit in an unrelated way, and briefly.
• Cougar Town:
  Jules: [about having 'Fakesgiving' in spring] What if we're not around next fall? What if a new group comes in and replaces us? Everybody's going to be like, "What happened to the Cul-de-Sac Crew? I miss them. And who are these new people? They're not so good.
  • Just about the full first act of the first TBS episode after being Un-Canceled.
• Covert Affairs: In "Suffragette City", while Annie is in a coma, Dream!Auggie tells her that the dream's shadowy Big Bad, whom she needs to find, codenamed Blackbird, is in room 309. This is episode 3x09.
  • Also, in the diner scene, when Annie looks at the receipt the date is 9/11, which rather implies disaster, a theme throughout the episode. The real date she was there when Jai died was the fourth of July. In fact, this episode ran on 9/11...
• Crazy Ex-Girlfriend:
  • Rebecca's law firm is bought out by a new partner who quickly establishes that he is now in charge. The employees sing a song, "Who's the New Guy," where they worry about introducing a new character ("I mean, he's such a character") this far into the season ("it's almost fall"), and wonder if it's a stunt to boost their ratings (on legalscores.com).
  • "He's the New Guy", the subsequent reprise, followed suit but kept stretching the fourth-wall-friendly explanations further and further until Rebecca finally had to resort to telling the camera "Whatever, just don't think about it" to play off her comment about singing a reprise.
  • Valencia says that Greg has grown so much as a person he's basically a whole new actor, and clarifies that she means actor "in the legal and political sense." Greg was indeed recast with a different actor between seasons.
  • A Running Gag in Season 4 (the final season) is characters saying they'll be around for the rest of the series...of holidays, that is. Said series of holidays ends with Valentine's Day for some arbitrary reason. The series finale does indeed take place on Valentine's Day.
  • The entire show is made up of fantasy musical numbers, which all take place in Rebecca's head. Rebecca explains to Paula that she's imagining musical numbers when it looks like she's zoning out, and when she imagines it so does the show. "And by 'the show' I mean the very popular B.P.D.-workbook acronym Simply Having Omniscient Wishes."
• Cristela has this exchange about sitting courtside at a basketball game:
  Cristela: The only time stuff like that happens to people like us is on TV.
  Felix: [resignedly] Yeah, but people like us will never be on TV.
• CSI:
  • "I Like To Watch". One of the camera guys following the group around says something about "Beautiful people solving crimes" having potential as a series.
  • Also in that episode, which is about a film crew following around the CSI team, one of the interviewers asks Grissom's opinion of the show. His response is, "There are too many forensic shows on TV."
• The end of the 100th episode of CSI: Miami where they say "They all think it's easy to get to one hundred".
• ''CSI: NY:
  • It's subtle in their 100th episode, where the action starts out on the 100th floor of a highrise and as the victim descends through the stairwell, the floor numbers are shown counting down until he is killed on the 95th. They continue counting down in other scenes, including a cab whose medallion number is 9291.
  • There's another episode where Det. Flack makes a reporter turn his video camera off saying, "There's enough crime shows already, I think."

D

• Daredevil (2015):
  • Matt's line "I think we've had enough Punisher for one evening" while he, Foggy and Karen are watching the news on Frank Castle's arrest towards the end of "Penny and Dime" is kinda funny if you've been binge-watching the first four episodes of season 2. So is Foggy's remark of "I think I've had enough excitement for one evening" when he's darting off a few moments later to give Matt and Karen a moment.
  • In "Guilty as Sin", during Stick's exposition schtick on the Hand-Chaste War, Matt, clearly having a hard time believing all the elements of the story, questions how the Hand could have discovered immortality and why are they so devoted to seeking it. Stick, naturally, cuts close to Matt's Catholic background, by pointing out how his whole belief system hinges on one guy pulling that off. Which becomes doubly hilarious when you consider that Season 2 came out on March 18, a Friday, and the subsequent week that most people are likely to binge the entire season was "Holy Week"^note the culmination of the Lenten observation in the Catholic Church, which commemorates the death and resurrection of Jesus..
  • In "The Man in the Box", Claire Temple pointing out Matt's serious Messiah complex ("Hey, uh, Saint Matthew? Enough with the hair shirt already") is amusing again because of the timing of the release of season 2 and Holy Week 2016.
• Dear White People: When Reggie, Joelle, Lionel, and company return from watching a bad movie, they begin ranting about the different ways people of color are typecast and stereotyped in movies while looking directly at the camera. It still sounds natural in context.
• Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency: The series is filmed in Canada, which is fairly obvious due to the abundance of Canadian character actors in supporting roles. In season two, Amanda and the Rowdy Three are stuck in the magical land of Wendimoor. Amanda has to remind one of the Rowdy Three that Wendimoor is not on Mars. He then decides, "We're in Canada!" Amanda snaps, "We're not in Canada!" He then points to a random extra and asserts, "This guy's Canadian!"
• Doom Patrol (2019): The source material's relative obscurity compared to the general scope of the DCU is acknowledged in the episode "Fame Patrol", where the heroes participate in a parade and Larry Trainor remarks that there's only a small group of people who care about them.

E

• The Elementary episode "Flight Risk" leans on the fourth wall, when Alistair (pretending to be Sherlock's father) asks Watson "how's the sex?" This is evidently taking a stab at the criticism the show received before airing, that having a female Watson was for the sole purpose of being a love interest to Sherlock.

F

• Farscape has the episode Picture If You Will end with Chiana explaining the details of the plot to Rygel.
  Rygel: But why — I mean how did Zhaan... ugh! Best not ponder questions like these that only make your head hurt.
  Chiana: Forget about it. Sit back and enjoy the happy ending.
• Firefly
  • In "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 pilot, Mal plays a very cruel joke on Simon by convincing him (and the audience) that Kaylee has just died of a gunshot wound ^note  Simon had previously endangered Kaylee's life by delaying treatment of her wound until Mal got him safely away from the Alliance, and Mal threatened to throw him out of the airlock if Kaylee didn't survive. When Simon picks up on it, the following exchange has Mal essentially standing in for Joss Whedon, allowing Whedon to poke fun at his infamous love of screwing with his audience's emotions.
    Simon: That man is psychotic!
    [cut to another room on the ship, where Mal's whole crew is laughing hysterically]
    Wash: You are psychotic!
    Mal (laughing): No, you should have seen his face! Oh...I'm a bad man.
• The Flash (2014): Felicity, crossing over from Arrow, notes that everyone seems to be in a worse mood than normal with a meta-comment on the different tones between the two shows:
  Felicity: I thought Central City was supposed to be the fun one.
  • Joe West has this to say about a metahuman who can make anything explode:
    Joe: Human bomb, huh? Must be Tuesday in Central City.
• Frasier
  • In a final season episode, children's entertainer Nanette Guzman asks the eponymous doctor, "Do you have any idea what it's like to play the same character for twenty years?" When the episode was filmed, Kelsey Grammer had played Frasier Crane for 20 seasons across two shows.
  • The 100th episode has Frasier record the 1000th episode of his radio show, with Seattle organizing a Frasier Crane Day in his honor. Frasier Crane Day really happened.

G

• Game of Thrones:
  • The show has Ramsay Snow remark, "If you think this has a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention."
  • Bran does it as well in the Season 6 teaser:
    Bran: They have no idea what's going to happen.
  • Subtly and played for laughs — when Bronn and Tyrion realize Podrick's sexual prowess and interrogate him on the subject, the scene abruptly changes, like a mini-cliffhanger.
  • In the last episode of Season 8 Tyrion's conversation with Jon when he tells him how it was easy to root for Daenerys when she was doing horrible things to bad people, and then being shocked that she would be capable of doing something reprehensible while taking actions that she's consistently done previously, reflects a lot of the real-world criticism that Dany's Face–Heel Turn received, and likely anticipated by the showrunners.
    Tyrion: Everywhere she goes, evil men die and we cheer her for it.
  • In the same conversationhen Jon says, "This doesn't feel right," and Tyrion says, "Ask me again in ten years", it also suggests the producers anticipating the divide and discussions that a series finale for a controversial show inevitably brings.
• This happens fairly often in Glee, when the glee club members (or Sue) point out popular criticism or plot holes, like why rules that were established for glee competitions don't ever seem to apply to competing clubs, and references to names for couplings supported by fans.
• The Great British Bake Off: In Series 5's pastry week, Kate mentions that she can almost hear the fast-paced music played on the Bake Off when there's only a short time left. Of course, said music is playing right at that moment.
• Grey's Anatomy
  • Shonda Rhimes definitely knows what she's doing with this line from the season 8 finale: "I don't know how this keeps happening! We keep dying we're in a plane crash, Mer, like right now!"
  • Also from the season 5 premiere, when Cristina calls Meredith out for always wangsting to her about her Derek drama, even while actual important, real-life events are happening around her.

H

• In the "Birthday Girl Down" episode of Henry Danger, Henry is at the party announcing the suspects who could have knocked Debbie off her roof the year before by changing the ball speed, he stated that he would reveal who the actual culprit was after a short break. Cue the commercial.
  • Flashback's appearance and name led to his role in this episode, to provide the flashback to the party.
• In the first season of Heroes, Hiro and Ando make a lot of jokes about Star Trek. All of them seem to be leaning pretty heavily on the Fourth Wall when Mr. Sulu shows up as Hiro's father. Not to mention Spock being Sylar and President Whorfbama.
• After Executive Meddling forced Homicide: Life on the Street to include more sex and more focus on the detectives' personal lives in Season 3, the season premiere has Bolander, Lewis, and Munch talking about how Executive Meddling forces these things to be included in shows.
• On the subject of Dr. House... Cuddy: "You come in with a case like this 24 times a year!" On another episode, a businessman wonders about the cost-effectiveness of four doctors who only treat one patient per week.
  • House on his penchant for Eureka Moments that occur at highly convenient times:
    "I'll go talk to Wilson about something completely unrelated and see what happens."
  • Similar moment to this when House is suddenly distracted by a eureka moment and Wilson says "You're about to get up and leave without saying anything, aren't you?"
  • In the finale episode of Season 2, House initially thinks that he might be hallucinating (he is) because he begins noticing the scene breaks.
  • "Three Stories" is framed by House telling a series of diagnostic tales to a seminar full of med students. One story starts to get heavy, with a patient going into cardiac arrest and the doctors scrambling to save him... Cut to House, calmly standing in front of the students.
    House: What say we take five? Get some coffee. Go pee. (House walks out into the hallway. Cut to commercial.)
• In Season 1 of How I Met Your Mother, Barney is telling Ted that the Universe doesn't care about Ted's love life. Marshall interjects jokingly, "Unless Ted's love life is the glue binding the entire Universe together!" Everyone laughs, of course. If only they knew...
  • Ted's daughter complains in the season 2 premiere that it feels like he's been talking for a whole year.
  • In season six, Lily comments that "Ted can really drone on about a bitch." She probably should've warned her (presumably) godson and goddaughter about that...
  • "The Stinson Missile Crisis" is practically nothing but this, as far as the Framing Device is concerned.
  • In Season 8, when Marshall gets the group to the apartment to play "Who Wants To Be A Godparent?", he turns to the camera and says, "Right after a word from our sponsors." Robin, Barney, and Ted look at each other and then Ted asks, "Why is he talking to the wall?" Cue commercial.

I

• iCarly:

• Spencer's awareness of being involved in a B-plot in every episode. Having no actual subplot in "iPity the Nevel", he appears doing random antics out of sheer boredom, wandering into the webshow taking swigs from a bottle and appearing mildly drunk. He also asks if they want his advice or need his help with anything.

• Interview with the Vampire (2022): In "Is My Very Nature That of a Devil", Daniel Molloy provides the perfect summary for the show when he tells Louis de Pointe du Lac that the latter's revision of his romance with Lestat de Lioncourt sounds "like you were locked in some fucked up gothic romance."
• iZombie is a show that features a zombie as its Hero Protagonist. One episode has her and Clive visit the set of a Show Within a Show about a Zombie Apocalypse, leading to a Who Writes This Crap?! joke:
  Zombie Extra: Someone should really make a show with a zombie as the main character.
  Clive: That sounds dumb.

K

• Kamen Rider:
  • Kamen Rider Build: At the end of the series, Sento Kiryu decides to share the story of his adventures with the world, and has written them down in script form — 49 episodes' worth of scripts, in fact. He pulls out a pocket recorder and starts narrating, only to start squabbling with Ryuga Banjou over the details^note for example, Sento calls himself "a brilliant and handsome physicist" and Banjou points out how egotistical that is, which happened in almost every single Previously on… segment in the show's run.
  • In one episode of Kamen Rider Hibiki, the titular hero is seen telling some customers at the restaurant where he works about this movie that "just came out the other day". He describes it as a period piece about "this group of really cool warriors", or something along those lines. The day before the episode aired, The Movie, Kamen Rider Hibiki & The Seven Fighting Demons, which takes place in Japan's Warring States era, premiered in theaters.
• Knots Landing:
  • In "A Little Assistance", Eric says, "Living in this cul-de-sac is like living in the middle of a soap opera."
  • In "Pressure Points", after finding out about Paige, Greg says to Laura, "Spare me the details. I already have this weird sensation that all your friends have soap opera lives, except us."
  • In "Half-Truths", after her sister-in-law Abby is charged with the murder of Peter Hollister, Karen says that it is the sort of thing that "happens on television. It's a soap opera. Doesn't happen to real people like me."
  • In "Dial M for Modem", Mack says to Karen, "The way you are, everybody you know has to be related until life with you is like living in a soap opera."
  • In "Mixed Messages", Greg says, "These elevators really get a workout," an in-joke referring to the large number of scenes set in the elevators at the Sumner Group from Season Ten to Season Twelve.
  • In the 300th episode "The Last One Out", Gary and Valene briefly discuss some of the down parts of their up-and-down relationship, especially the obstacles which seem to have kept them away from the altar all year long:
    Valene: Every time we wait, something goes wrong, we don't get together. Every time we put it off, we have some kind of delay. Something happens and we don't get married. It's like a comedy.
    Gary: I think it's more like a soap opera.

L

• Legends of Tomorrow does this increasingly as it goes along. Characters will refer to the objects they're searching for as "MacGuffins", will refer to meetups with other Arrowverse heroes as "crossovers", and will refer to taking time off to enjoy themselves as doing "a fun montage".
  • When Rip is explaining the schematics of prison and asks if everyone understood, Snart says "This isn't my first prison break." Wentworth Miller was the lead role on said show.
  • When the Legends try to convince the public that the documentary about them was all faked, Mona says, "The special effects were kinda questionable."
• In Korean drama Lie to Me, one of the characters asks if there is a pregnancy involved, and the other responds that they watch too many dramas.
• There's a dialogue like this at the end of Season 2 in Lois & Clark:
  Perry White: It's like we're supporting characters in some TV show that's only about them.
  Jimmy Olsen: Yeah! It's like all we do is advance their plots.
  Perry: To tell you the truth, I'm sick of it.
• Luke Cage (2016): Before heading out on a mission, Misty and Luke argue about who is whose sidekick. Luke asserts, "This is my show!"

M

• During the last season of Mad About You, Paul and Jamie are sitting quietly together, when Paul says, "It's the last season," and Jamie looks at him quizzically. Turns out he's talking about the M*A*S*H marathon he's been watching.
• Mad Men: In the Season 5 episode "Lady Lazarus", SCDP makes a commercial that in the preliminary phase has a Beatles soundtrack; upon review, they comment that while the track is perfect, licensing Beatles songs is very expensive, and they should probably go with one that sounds almost like it. At the end of the episode, Don complains to Megan about how he doesn't know what's going on in pop culture anymore, and she hands him a copy of the Beatles' Revolver. The episode ends with Don listening to "Tomorrow Never Knows"—the real version, and it reportedly cost AMC a quarter of a million dollars to do that.
• Monk:
  • In "Mr. Monk and the TV Star", Monk suspects the star of a TV crime show of murder. During the investigation, he meets an obsessed fan, Marci Maven (played by Sarah Silverman), who continually comments that the suspect's show had recently changed its theme song and that nobody liked the new one. Of course, her comments are aimed at Monk itself, since it had recently changed its award-winning theme song to one by Randy Newman that many fans disliked ("It's a Jungle Out There"). At the end of the episode, Marci comments to Monk that he should have his own TV show, and makes him promise that if he ever gets one he'll never change the theme song. The episode then goes to the credits while the original theme song plays it out.
  • When Marci reappears in "Mr. Monk and His Biggest Fan", it is revealed that she also has all of his cases named, with the names of the episodes in which they occurred.
• Mr. Robot is a show about hackers. In one scene, two of them gripe about Hollywood Hacking, causing one to say, "I bet you right now some writer's working hard on a TV show that'll mess up this generation's idea of hacker culture."

N

• NCIS:
  • "Stop looking up my skirt!" It all but reaches through the fourth wall and smacks certain male viewers for what they're thinking at the moment.
  • In the season 4 episode "Driven", where Tony goes to visit Jeanne at her work, she's talking to another doctor about how oncology results take around a day, but Dr. House gets them in ten minutes.
  • The episode "Jet Lag" of season 7 ends with Ziva looking at a picture Tony took, commenting, "I think it would look better in black and white." Cue the standard ending black and white shot of said picture.
• In the third episode of The Neighbors, titled "This Just Got Real" when (alien) Jackie is going to have dinner with Debbie and her friends from New Jersey, she prepares by watching The Real Housewives of New Jersey. A few times during the episode, after making a quip or insult to one of the other ladies, she turns to the camera and comments on why she said what she said. Often, the camera angle will then shift to show her talking to the wall.
• Nicky, Ricky, Dicky, and Dawn: In "New Kid on the Block", the quads were discussing whether their lives would make a good TV show and were arguing about what the title would be. Of course, Nicky chose "Nicky, Ricky, Dicky, and Dawn".
• The short-lived series Nowhere Man, which is about a man who is "erased" by a Government Conspiracy and then sees a TV show about a man who was "erased" by a Government Conspiracy, which was made by the actual Government Conspiracy just so no one would believe him if he tried to tell anyone the truth. And in the last episode, he discovers that all of his memories and his entire life are a simulation.

O

• A minor subplot on the HBO series Oz had the prisoners demand the prison TV be given access to cable so they could watch HBO.

P

• In an episode of Parker Lewis Can't Lose, an early FOX hit, Parker encounters a student who has been in detention so long that he's lost track of the "outside world". The exchange went something like...
  "Dude...what do you see out there?"
  "Well, Batman is out, heavily-armored turtles are in, and..." (looks around, lowers voice) "...there's a fourth network."
  "No way, dude!!"
• In the Press Gang episode "The Big Finish", Tiddler says to an arguing Lynda and Spike, "We've all been following this dopey love story since page one." Page One was the title of the first episode.
• An episode of The Pretender has Jarod, the titular pretender, feign insanity and get locked in an asylum. One of his analysts asks him his last name and he responds with "I don't know..." [devilish grin—which on Michael T. Weiss looks SERIOUSLY evil] "It changes every week."
• Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon's DVD special act when Mio became the Big Bad. She turns and smiles at the camera that's like she's asking to the viewer "Surprised I came back?"
• Poking fun at how The Professionals carry on, in "Blackout" a country policeman has to pedal off on his bicycle to get hold of a witness for CI5, and gripes that: "They probably expect me to jump in my high-powered motor and go screaming around corners, tires screeching like on television!"
• Psych
  • In a season four episode, Shawn boasts that he "solve[s] a case every week... and usually one right around Christmas."
  • In "Heeeeeere's Lassie", Shawn says, "I think this is just a case of your imagination getting the best of you. Happens to Gus and I once every seven days."

R

• Radio Enfer: In the first episode of Season 2, when Jean-Lou appears in the radio crew's room, he proudly exclaims that "Radio Enfer is back!" Of course, he's referring to the fact that the radio station is back after the summer vacation, but he could also be referring to the fact that the series was coming back for a second season.
• This seems to be the cornerstone of Raising Hope's comedy.
  • In the third season episode "Throw MawMaw From the House, Part 2" begins with MawMaw (played by Cloris Leachman) talking to the camera, giving a recap of the previous episode. Two nursing home staff are in the background and we see from their point of view that she is actually talking to the wall. One staff comments about how crazy she is and the other agrees, saying that "Yesterday she claimed she won an Oscar and slept with Warren Beatty", both of which actually happened to Cloris Leachman.
  • In the episode "Modern Wedding", Burt expresses his frustration regarding Hope's supposedly-executed biological mother that "we're kinda done with the whole Lucy-coming-back-from-the-dead-thing. It's like, every year we think she's gone and then she comes back in some crazy way, messes up our lives again. It's gettin' old."
  • In one episode, Jimmy laments that it seems like every week he finds out about some horrible thing his parents did to him or mistake they made when he was a kid.
  • At the conclusion of the second-season Christmas episode, Shelley remarks, regarding "The Chances of Natesville" movie-within-the-show that makes fun of the Chance family:
    Shelley: I wouldn't worry about that movie, Jimmy. A poor family raising a serial killer's baby? Not many people are gonna wanna watch that. Least, not in my demographic.
• Revolution: In an episode with the gang Storming the Castle, Miles described their seemingly impossible mission, then, in context talking about how often they ended up in these situations, said "well, just another Monday, right?" The show aired on Mondays at the time.
• Roseanne liked to indulge in this trope:
  • In the Season Three premiere, Roseanne comes into the kitchen and remarks that it's such a beautiful day, she feels like singing. Over the summer of that year, Barr had infamously performed the National Anthem extremely badly at a baseball game, earning much criticism.
  • In one episode, Dan comments that his and Roseanne's lives feel like different problems every week... and that they relive those same problems over the summer.
  • In an episode where The Connors are about to appear in a commercial for the food court at a mall and Jackie walks into the room to discover them eating:
    Jackie: You're supposed to be eating in the commercial today. If you ruin your appetites now you're never gonna be able to eat on camera!
    Dan: (smirking to Roseanne) Is that so?
  • The biggest examples, though, come from when Sarah Chalke replaced Lecy Goranson as Becky.
    • At the end of her first episode, the family watches Bewitched and discusses the fact that Dick Sergeant replaced Dick York. Becky comments that she likes the second Darrin better.
    • When Goranson returned to the series, characters repeatedly asked her "Where the hell have you been?" every time she came on screen, with Roseanne commenting that "it feels like you've been gone for three years!"
    • One episode showed an adult D.J. (played by John Goodman) being taken to a psychiatrist, as he won't stop repeating the phrase "They say she's the same, but she isn't the same..." The end of the episode jokingly plays clips of both Goranson and Chalke playing Becky, which apparently drove D.J. crazy.
    • When Chalke returned to play Becky for the episode where the family travels to Disney World, Roseanne asks her "Aren't you glad you're here this week?"
    • Chalke plays a mom taking her children trick-or-treating in an episode during Goranson's return to the role. She talks about how nice the Conners seem, and how she wishes she could be part of their family.

S

• Scrubs is fond of this:
  • "I wish there was a show on NBC that was about the lives of interns at a hospital. Yeah, and it should be a comedy, too."
  • One episode plays with this in the beginning. Three times it seems that JD is addressing the audience directly, but it turns out he's addressing someone in the room standing behind the camera. Except for the third and last time, when someone wonders whom he's talking to.
  • At the end of the same episode, we get this:
    JD: Come on, I know it's tempting to just mail it in, but there's still a lot of people who rely on us week to week. I think we owe it to them to be as inspired as we were our first few years. Now, I know we never do great come medical awards season, except for Dr. Shalhoub, he wins everything, but I still think we're as good as anybody else out there.
    Turk: The Nielsens beg to differ.
    [cut to shot of unhappy looking couple]
    JD: Oh, they're just upset because their insurance won't cover a private room.
  • Again in one episode where Turk and JD are driving away in a car, and the following conversation can be heard as a voiceover.
    J.D.: Hey, don't you hate it in films and stuff where people will drive away in a car and even though the car's moving away you can still hear the characters talking?
    Turk: Yeah, I hate that.
  • Another episode has J.D. imagine that his life is a sitcom, which turns out to be a more clichéd one with a Laugh Track. Yet another episode features a Clip Show in which J.D. remarks that his memories are coming back to him like on a TV show.
  • Yet another episode combines this with Take That! when J.D. discusses Grey's Anatomy. "It's like they saw our lives and put it on TV."
  • On the episode "My ABCs" where Sesame Street characters appear in the fantasy segments, Oscar the Grouch is appointed as the new chief of medicine and tells J.D. that he'll be watching him, and that "I never blink." Of course, seeing as he's a Muppet with immovable eyes...
• Seinfeld:
  • Season 4's storyline about Jerry and George essentially trying to pitch the show they're already in to the network they're already on is a famous example of this and is full of insider references to the Real Life production of the series, such as Kramer's inspiration wanting to play himself and the network's skepticism regarding what would become a Bottle Episode Trope Codifier, "The Chinese Restaurant" (in the show, Jerry and George pitch an episode inspired by the actual episode).
    Jerry: So, on the show, there's a character named George Costanza?
    George: Yeah. There's something wrong with that? I'm a character. People are always saying to me, "You know, you're a quite a character."
    Jerry: And who else is on the show?
    George: Elaine could be a character. Kramer...
    Jerry: Now he's a character. ...So everybody I know is a character on the show.
    George: Right.
    Jerry: And it's about nothing?
    George: Absolutely nothing.
  • In "The Bizarro Jerry," Elaine on why she's ditched the gang to hang out with a more mentally stable crowd:
    Elaine: I can't spend the rest of my life coming into this stinking apartment every ten minutes to pore over the excruciating minutia of every single daily event.
  • In "The Comeback," George thinks of a comeback after the fact and is determined to recreate the situation that inspired it so that he can use it. His friends aren't too impressed with his line and each of them suggests an alternative, finally prompting him to lash out in frustration:
    George: All right, all right, you see?! This is why I hate writing with a large group! Everybody has their own little opinions and it all gets homogenized and you lose the whole magic! I'm goin' with "jerk store"! "Jerk store" is the line! Jerk store!
  • "The Muffin Tops" sees Kramer starting his own New York City bus tour to capitalize on Elaine's use of anecdotes from his life in a ghostwritten autobiography, in an extended reference to the Real Life situation of Kramer's inspiration Kenny Kramer doing the same thing to capitalize on the fame he gained from Seinfeld. The story includes this line:
    Kramer: Wow, I've broken through, huh? I'm part of popular culture now!
  • "The Butter Shave" has Jerry complaining that rival comedian Kenny Bania is successful due solely to performing immediately after him, calling him a "time-slot hit." The slot after Seinfeld was coveted at the time for this exact reason, and was even held by Friends early in its run.
  • While less direct than most of the show's examples, "The Merv Griffin Show" has Kramer rescuing the set of the aforementioned talk show from a city dumpster and relocating it to his living room, leading to him pretending to host the show every time his friends visit. He's finally reduced to talking to Newman and complains, "We've officially bottomed out. ... We need a new format. We should shut down and retool." The episode is, of course, part of the show's final season.
  • At the beginning of "The Reverse Peephole," Kramer is explaining the titular concept to a skeptical Jerry just as Elaine is heading off for a date:
    Kramer: Our policy is, we're comfortable with our bodies. You know, somebody wants to help themselves to an eyeful, we say "Enjoy the show!"
    Elaine: I'm sorry I can't stay for the second act!
  • "The Finale" picks up the Show Within a Show thread again with George and Jerry's shelved pilot getting attention from a new president of NBC who sees it as a potential "water-cooler show," leading George to question whether offices really use water-coolers anymore and suggest that workers might be more apt to discuss television at the coffee machines. Later, after the main characters become the subjects of a high-profile court case, a newscaster comments that the upcoming trial is "what most of you have probably been discussing in your homes, and around the water coolers in your offices."
• A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017):
  • Count Olaf isn't sure how much time has passed in the series, saying that it's either a year, a week, or a season.
  • Upon the Baudelaires fleeing to Lucky Smells by themselves (which did not happen in the books the show is adapted from), Mr. Poe exclaims that the entire thing has gone off-book.
  • Right before The Marvelous Marriage, Count Olaf tells the reporters interviewing him, "Well as an actor, I think live theatre is a much more powerful medium than, say, streaming television."
  • Stephano makes very clear his preference for long-form entertainment that can be consumed from the comfort of your own home.
  • When Stephano calls one of his minions about the change in plans, he snaps that he knows long-form television is better and that they should do as he says.
  • When on the drive to Prufrock Preparatory School, Mr. Poe says that it's the end of the season, so the Baudelaires have a lot of catching up to do.
  • At the start of The Austere Academy, the Baudelaires comment on how it feels like they'd been sitting on the bench outside the vice principal's office for a very long time and that Sunny was starting to look more like a toddler than a baby, referencing the gap between the first and second seasons.
  • At one point, the subject of having your own television show is broached. Count Olaf mentions that he tried that for nine years.
• Shtisel: In the Season 1 finale, Shulem gives a speech about how his mother cares not just about her family, but about fictional characters on TV.
• Employed a few times by Sledge Hammer!. One notable one occurs in the first season finale when the chief tells a terrorist making a live television broadcast, "Your show's been canceled!" Sledge asks, "You talkin' to me?" (As noted, this was expected to be the last episode.)
• Smallville:
  • The band Remy Zero plays the show's theme song, "Save Me". In the Season 1 finale, Remy Zero appears as themselves and plays "Save Me" for the high school dance. Clark and his friends comment, "These guys are awesome."
  • In an episode that has vampires in it, Clark tells Professor Milton Fine, who is played by James Marsters (who also played the vampire Spike on Buffy the Vampire Slayer) about the vampires, to which Fine replies "Clark, there's no such thing as vampires". The name of the chief vampire in the episode is Buffy Saunders.
  • In the episode with Clark and Lois' engagement party, Oliver Queen makes the toast: "They've finally realised what the rest of us have known for a very long time."
  • At the end of the two-part pilot, Jonathan asks Clark if he'll be okay. Clark asks him to get back to him in about five years. The line makes no sense (a high-school-aged teenager would be thinking in four-year increments if anything) except as a reference to the amount of time needed to complete the 100-episode minimum necessary for effective second-run syndication. This is confirmed in the DVD commentary, in which the producers joke that it would have been too obvious to have Clark say "Ask me again in a hundred episodes."
• The Sopranos: At one point when Dr. Melfi (temporarily) refuses to accept Tony as her patient anymore, he's trying out other psychiatrists, and one of them, realizing what Tony is, tells him, "I've seen Analyze This." Tony indignantly replies, "That was a comedy!" The Sopranos and Analyze This both debuted in 1999^note The pilot to The Sopranos was filmed in 1997, however., and it was noted at the time that they were a dramatic and comedic treatment, respectively, of the same premise—a mobster seeking psychiatric help for panic attacks.
• Stargate:
  • Stargate SG-1 has done this countless times.
    • "Point of No Return" played it straight forward.
      Martin: A top-secret government program involving instantaneous travel to other solar systems by means of a device known as a Stargate!
      O'Neill: Sounds like a good idea for a TV show… if you're into that sort of thing.
    • "200" almost in its entirety, and to a lesser extent, "Wormhole X-Treme". In the instance below, the characters are actually talking about a movie spin-off of a Show Within a Show based on the "real" Stargate Command. (Ironically, O'Neill's "surprise" appearance really made it into the commercial for that episode.)
      Martin: I'm talking about a twist; something nobody's expecting!
      O'Neill: [walks in] You mean something like this?
      Vala: I don't think anybody will see that coming.
      Daniel: Nope, there'll be spoilers.
      Carter: Are you kidding? It'll be in the commercial.
    • In "200", the stargate breaks down and Mitchell says "How can something work perfectly fine for 10 years and suddenly it doesn't work anymore?" That's a definite reference to the show's recent cancellation. In a later episode, Sam tells a one-shot character "the Stargate Program just doesn't get the support it used to from the people in charge" when he expresses disappointment in their facilities. Again, a reference to the show's impending cancellation.
    • In addition, the episode "Secrets". Daniel Jackson admitted that he had not succeeded in his original mission, but promises to continue, though he fears that it may take many seasons.
    • In the episode, "Fallen", a native on a planet SG-1 is investigating recognizes Teal'c as a Jaffa, and O'Niell gives a clever retort.
      Native: He is Jaffa!
      O'Neill: No, but he plays one on TV.
    • During the episode "Full Alert":
      Kinsey: You want to take down the Trust. I can help you.
      O'Neill: I'm sorry, I must have missed an episode. I thought you guys were working together.
    • In "The Ties That Bind", with the Goa'uld and Replicators dealt with, the Pentagon wants to reduce the SGC's funding in favor of the more profitable Atlantis Expedition. The chairman at the hearing also points out how suspiciously convenient it is that a new threat has popped up out of nowhere just as the SGC's importance is starting to wane.
  • Stargate Atlantis:
    • Rodney declares TV dramas as mostly "fictional representations of ridiculously attractive people in absurd situations." An absurd situation promptly occurs, so the attractive people playing the characters react to it.
    • There's also an episode where John, wandering through a forest as usual, says "It's almost as if someone in their warm, cosy room typing at their computer sent us here for their own amusement."
• Star Trek: The Next Generation:
  • In the finale "All Good Things...", Q talks about "putting an end to your little trek through the stars".
  • Near the end of "Ship in a Bottle", Picard, just short of smirking, muses about their reality, with a line that leans in even more than it did originally thanks to the advent of smartphones:
    Picard: "All this might just be an elaborate simulation running in a little device sitting on someone's table."
    Everyone leaves except Lt. Barclay, who looks contemplative
    Barclay: "Computer... End Program?"
    Credits Roll
  • In "Contagion", Deanna remarked about how the ship's constant malfunctioning could be seen as humorous from an outside perspective, were someone watching.
    Deanna: "In another time and place, this could be funny..."
  • The final line of the fourth season finale "Redemption: Part I" comes from Sela, who, due to Timey-Wimey Ball, is the daughter of the late Tasha Yar. Both are played by Denise Crosby. Since she's addressing characters roughly positioned in the same place as the camera, one gets the feeling she's addressing the audience more than the characters.
    Sela: We should not discount Jean-Luc Picard yet. After all, he is human. And humans have a way of showing up when you least expect them.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
  • "Far Beyond the Stars" has Captain Benjamin Sisko hallucinating/having a vision that he's Benny Russell, a science fiction writer from the 1950s who actually writes about Deep Space Nine itself. At the end of the episode, when the whole thing was revealed to have been a dream (vision, whatever), he wonders if life aboard the station is the illusion.
  • At one point, the producers considered putting a scene at the end of the series finale that would have had Benny Russell walking into Paramount Studios with a Star Trek script in his hands.
  • In "Little Green Men", Quark turns out to be the Roswell alien. One of the minor military officers sworn to secrecy would have been identified as Lt. Roddenberry.
  • "In The Pale Moonlight" is framed as a video recording in Captain Sisko's personal log, with the events of the preceding two weeks presented as flashbacks. All of the log-entry scenes are shown from the station computer's point of view, with Sisko facing the camera. Technically, he's only talking to the computer (which is never shown), but the feeling that he's addressing the audience directly is almost irresistible.
  • In "Rules of Engagement", various characters are testifying at an extradition hearing. The testimonies are given directly to the camera.
  • In "Body Parts", an accident forced Dr. Bashir to transplant Keiko O'Brien's baby into Major Kira. On a few occasions during her surrogate pregnancy, Major Kira blamed Dr. Bashir that it's his fault that she ended up pregnant. In real life, Nana Visitor (Kira) was pregnant with Alexander Siddig's (Bashir) baby.
• Star Trek: Voyager:
  • The two-part episode "Future's End" 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."
  • In season 4, B'Elanna Torres started wearing an engineering jacket and was never shown from the chest down due to the actress' real-life pregnancy. In the two-part episode "The Killing Game", where the crew was implanted with mind control devices by aliens and forced to take part in holodeck adventures, B'Elanna Torres's holodeck character was a pregnant woman. After the mind control devices were disabled (but with the holodeck effects still active), the crew commented that the 'simulated' pregnancy seemed so real that it even kicks.
• Star Trek: Picard:
  • While staring at Narek, Soji's Trill friend tells her, "I didn't know Romulans could be so hot," to which Soji replies, "Me neither." It is indeed unexpected for longtime Trek fans (especially those of the female variety) to see a Romulan male character be depicted as attractive in-universe, and two episodes later, another hot Romulan man is introduced, and Elnor is arguably even prettier than Narek.
  • Picard left Starfleet out of disgust over how they abandoned the Romulans to obliteration, saying that "I was standing up for the Federation for what it represents! For what it should STILL represent!", seems to mirror the feelings of fans that thought the Star Trek franchise had strayed too far from Gene Roddenberry's vision or disliked the Darker and Edgier direction that Star Trek and the sci-fi genre as a whole have taken in recent years.
• Supernatural:
  • This is approaching the point of being a running gag during the last few seasons of Supernatural. First, the Winchesters discover that they have been written about in a popular book series (complete with fan-girls and fanboys), then they meet the author of said books, who apologizes for the poor writing in certain panned episodes. In a later episode, they even go to a fan convention all about the Supernatural series. And this is saying nothing of Dean's "they do know we're brothers, right?" reaction when he finds out about Wincest...
  • Also in Supernatural, Castiel is named after an angel who in lore helps people who travel a lot and is an angel of Thursday. The Winchester boys travel a lot, and guess what day the show aired at the time?
  • There is also Crowley's remark to Castiel in a Season 6 episode: "Castiel. Haven't seen you all season." The fact that it was a bald-faced lie aside, it was an odd way to phrase the greeting, unless it was a passing bit of fourth-wall leaning.
  • Early in Season 4, Dean surfs the fans online of the books and discovers Wincest (shipped by some actual fans of the show) and complaints of fans, both of which annoy him.
    Dean: Simpatico says the demon plot of Supernatural is trite, clichéd, and overall craptastic. Yeah well, screw you, Simpatico. We lived it.
  • Crowley does this again with Castiel when he mentions that Cas is the angel of Thursday and today isn't his day. During that season, Supernatural switched to Friday nights.
  • "It's about time we had a nice black and white case," was spoken at the start of the episode that was shown in black and white.
  • In "There Will Be Blood," the Alpha says, "See you next season," as Sam and Dean are leaving.
  • In the Season 2 episode "Hollywood Babylon," Sam remarks that the (strangely overcast) weather in L.A. is "practically Canadian." Supernatural is, of course, shot in Vancouver, Canada.
  • In Season 10, Dean and Sam run across a high school musical based on books about their lives. Dean reacts badly to this and chews her out on using different music choice. And coincidentally ...
    Dean: There is no singing in Supernatural!
    Tech Girl: Well, this is Marie's interpretation...
    Dean: [laughs sarcastically] Well, if there was singing, y'know, and that's a big if, if there was singing, it would be classic rock. Not this Andrew Floyd Webber crap!
  • There's an entire episode based around Sam and Dean going to another universe and having to act in a TV show called "Supernatural".
• In Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Danny Tripp and Jordan McDeere discussing the Show Within a Show's low ratings while Jordan is in the hospital for complications with her pregnancy. Danny mentions that a crisis in pregnancy is a surefire ratings boost. At the time, the real show was teetering on the brink of cancellation after falling ratings.

T

• Ted Lasso: In Season 2 during Sam & Ediwn Akufo's scene in the museum, Sam says: "You aren't at all what I expected - you don't even have a security detail." to which Akufo - a billionaire - coyly responds: "...That's because I bought out the entire museum & filled it with actors."
• Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: At one point, Catherine Weaver (actually, a T-1001 taking her place) offers to sing for her daughter Savannah, to which Savannah replies that she can't sing. Catherine is played by Shirley Manson, the vocalist of the Alternative Rock band Garbage. Guess what the band's detractors often say about Manson?

V

• Veronica Mars:
  • In the Cold Open of one episode, Veronica describes her relationship with another character: "We used to be friends... a long time ago." Cue theme music, which includes the chorus, "A long time ago, we used to be friends."
  • There is also an exchange between Veronica (played by Kristen Bell—25 at the time) and Duncan (Teddy Dunn, also 25) about Logan sleeping with an older woman... who was 25.
• Victorious:
  • In Tori Tortures Teacher during lunch Andre asks why none of them "ever sits on that side of the table", which would feature them facing away from the camera.
  • In Terror in Cupcake Street the main cast and Sikowitz discuss why they are the only ones chosen. They later realize the fact their classmates "never talk and just react" as a nod to the extras.
  • In Who Did it to Trina Andrè hints at the plot's "Rashomon"-Style. "Aw, no! Now we have to hear another story about what happened from a unique point of view?!"

W

• In WandaVision episode 5, when Wanda's brother Pietro shows up, but as the Evan Peters version, Darcy Lewis yelps out "She recast Pietro?!"
• In Weeds, Nancy once told her son Shane that he could grow up to a be a "doctor, lawyer or business executive", a clear reference to the theme song.
• The Will & Grace episode "No Sex 'N' The City" lampoons the show and sitcoms as a whole.
  • During the series finale this exchange occurs between the breakout characters Jack McFarland and Karen Walker:
    Karen: Y'know, sometimes it seems like our sole purpose in life is just to serve Will and Grace.
    Jack: Right. It's like all people see when they look at us are the supporting players on the Will & Grace show.
• At the very end of the Grand Finale of the drama Wizards of Waverly Place, Chancellor Tootie Tootie says, "And that's our show, everybody! Thanks for watching!" Almost as if it and the game show itself are directed towards us, the viewers.
• In the Workaholics episode "The Fabulous Murphy Sisters" Karl is apparently a videographer going to direct Adam in his demo tape for the guys' new sport - Karl is played by one of the show's co-creators, who also frequently directs the episodes, making Karl's use of film jargon "Talent on set" and surprisingly helpful direction less so.

Y

• The sitcom Yes, Dear has one episode where someone faces the couch away from the audience and they keep saying it doesn't feel right. When asked why, they say simply, "I dunno," then keep turning and look back at the direction of the audience, while wondering.
• You Me Her: Nina and Carmen, while stoned during Season 4, at one point conclude both are the supporting characters for someone else's drama. Specifically, besties of Izzy and Emma. Which, of course, is indeed precisely what the characters are.

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