Quotes / Lampshade Hanging

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Anime and Manga

Inumuta: A Three-Star Goku Uniform unravelled by pulling out a single thread! How can that be?!
Nonon: Isn't it your job to explain how these things work?
Inumuta: Impossible. I cannot analyze anything without data.

— Kill la Kill

Panty: Can this get any more fucking predictable?
Stocking: Nope. She's a queen, she's a bee. She's a Queen Bee. We fucking get it!

— Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt

Fan Works

"Someone must be doing this on purpose..."

— Jane, King of Dreams, a Thor fanfic (Chapter 4)

Film — Animated

"You should know that this is the strangest thing I've ever done!"

— Flynn, Tangled

Kuzco: No, it can't be. How did you get back here before us?
Yzma: ...How did we, Kronk?
Kronk: Well, you got me. [pulls down a map showing where they fell off a cliff chasing Kuzco and Pacha] By all accounts, it doesn't make sense.
Yzma: [shrugs] Oh, well, back to business.

— The Emperor's New Groove

Film — Live-Action

"If you've got a weak spot in a movie or what could be perceived as a weak spot, then you should attack it, then no one (in the audience) can be at fault when thinking of it themselves"

— Matthew Vaughn, Kick-Ass, DVD and Blu-Ray commentary.

"Guy named Otto Octavius winds up with eight limbs. What are the odds?"

— J. Jonah Jameson, Spider-Man 2

"Why is there always someone who brings eggs and tomatoes to a speech?!"

— The Penguin, Batman Returns

Literature

Of all the strange things that might have come riding out of the night, the last one Asha Greyjoy would ever have expected was a Braavosi banker. It was all too absurd. She had to laugh.

— A Song of Ice and Fire

"If, reader, you are slow now to believe what I shall tell, that is no cause for wonder for I who saw it hardly can accept it."

— Dante, The Divine Comedy (1324)

Live-Action TV

"Everything in this school happens to this band, their friends and their stupid colored jeans."

— Bruce the Moose, Degrassi: The Next Generation

"I want to be remembered when I'm dead. I want books written about me. I want songs sung about me. And then, hundreds of years from now, I want episodes of my life to be played out weekly at half past nine by some great heroic actor of the age."

— Edmund Blackadder, Esq., Blackadder

"Ugh. TV Doctors."

— Carol Hathaway, ER

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.

— Stargate SG-1, "Point of No Return"

"Hey, screenwriters, having your characters call out the clichés in your own script doesn't absolve you from having those clichés in the first place."

— Ellen Fox, The Rotten Tomatoes Show, presumably on Seven Psychopaths

"This is like that episode of... well, everything."

— Malcolm, Malcolm in the Middle

"Yeah, Ted can really drone on about a bitch."

— Lily Aldrin, How I Met Your Mother

"Abed, stop being meta! Why do you always have to take whatever happens to us and shove it up its own ass?"

— Jeff getting recursive, Community

"I remember when this show was about a community college."

— Abed showing a perfect example of the above quote, Community

Eleanor: I have all of your sperm.
Charles: But you don't even care about it, Eleanor! Remember?! [adopting a silly high-pitched voice] "Oh hey, Charles! I'll never have a baby with you, because I don't love you, and a child's not going to fix that!"
Jake: [taken aback] Oof. When he started doing the silly voice I thought it was going to be more fun, but... wasn't.

— Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Una: Have you noticed that their references are weirdly specific?
Spock: Indeed.

— Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, "Those Old Scientists"

Professional Wrestling

"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

Theatre

"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, it's the perfect opera!"

The Phantom of the Opera, "Prima Donna"

Video Games

"What were you expecting? A confession?"

— Vieri di'Pazzi, Assassin's Creed

"Do you ever feel like we always end up talking about the same things over and over?"

— Mii, Tomodachi Life

Professor Farnsworth: [on selling Planet Express to Mom] It's not like this is The End of the World as We Know It.
[Fry turns on the TV]
Morbo: This is the end of the world as we know it. With the recent purchase of Planet Express, Mom now owns 50% of Earth, making her its supreme ruler.
Bender: Has anyone ever noticed how Fry always turns on the TV at just the right moment?

— Futurama

Magnus McGilded: Well, it seems the stories are true.
Ryunosuke Naruhodu: Oh? What stories?
Magnus McGilded: About the six enormous fireworks they do be lettin' off when there's a verdict of not guilty. I'm sure youse must have seen them now. Spectacular, wouldn't ye say?

— The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures

"I suppose you've been wondering, 'Hey, seeing as Pinky can fly, why didn't she just fly me across that missing bridge?' I have my reasons. Subject closed."

— Pinky, de Blob 2

Webcomics

"Who on earth would put any manner of key inside a can and seal it? What sense does that possibly stand to make? I'm reasonably sure this is the only time anyone's ever run into something like this."

— Muschio Malto, Dive Quest

"Oh no you don't. You can't get away with something that absurd merely by pointing out how ridiculous it is."

— Paris, Irregular Webcomic!

"Incidentally, lampshading basically just means pointing out something people are going to find odd anyway and saying 'yeah, that's weird, you wanna fight about it?' It's a risky style of writing that often results in fisticuffs."

— Dan Shive, El Goonish Shive, The Rant here

Web Original

Iconic horror franchises always run the risk of devolving into unintentional self-satire. A lot of filmmakers figure they can just combat this head-on by acknowledging the fact openly (or as they say in the biz, "putting a lampshade on it"). But the fact that a lot of people think that Killer Axe Man 17 is getting kind of stupid doesn't actually change if the film's writers point out that they know it's stupid. This acknowledgment just makes everything stupider.

— Cracked, "The 6 Baffling Mistakes Every Horror Franchise Must Make"

"Self-awareness covers a multitude of sins."

— Steven D. Greydanus, reviewing Adaptation.

"Hip Writing Fact #1: If we say we're doing something painful and stupid, it's immediately no longer painful and stupid!"

— Peter Soulless, The Nostalgia Critic's review of The Cat in the Hat

Lampshading – addressing a flaw, recurring trope or Plot Hole by having a character point it out. There’s a nice example of lampshading in the book of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Just after Violet Beauregarde has been maimed by Wonka’s chewing gum, and the Oompa Loompas have sung about what a terrible thing chewing gum is, one of the parents asks Wonka: if it’s so bad, why are you making it? Wonka gives a short evasive answer, then the story moves briskly on.

— Andy Riley, How To Talk Comedy Writer

"I'll say it again. When the characters themselves are complaining about the plot, you know something's wrong."

— David R. Henry's Review of X-Men Unlimited #4

"Captain's Log, Day 32. I question the ability for this ship to flawlessly steer itself without the need of a wheel. But nevertheless, we grow ever closer to reaching the promised land as I realize that—" [camera cuts to reveal Captain Bones' journal is filled with a bunch of scribbles] "—my handwriting is completely incomprehensible." [closes book] "This is bullsh*t!"

— Captain Bones, an odd voyage

"It also does the thing where it goes, 'Oh, look! A sewer level! How original, roll eyes!' and then proceeds to un-ironically have a sewer level that goes on way too fucking long. [starts smacking game with a rolled-up newspaper] IF YA KNOW IT'S BAD, WHY ARE YA DOING IT?"

— Yahtzee, Zero Punctuation, reviewing My Friend Pedro

Western Animation

Skinner: Sir, we have a problem with Lisa Simpson.
Chalmers: Seymour, I superintend 15 schools in the district, yet every time I come here it's to see you about one of the Simpson kids.

— The Simpsons

Lana: Where did you get a grenade?!
Archer: Hanging from the lampshade!
Lana: Wait, what?!

— Archer, "Skorpio"

[Lana and Cyril both escape death and sort their relationship]
Cyril: Thank God! Lana, we made it!
Archer: Hooray for metaphors!

— Archer, "Skytanic"

"This is, by a wide margin, the least likely thing that has ever happened."

— Leela, Futurama

Ron: Why is everybody in the future so ripped?
Wade: Fighting an evil dictator will do that to you.

— Kim Possible, "A Sitch in Time"

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