Lampshade Hanging/Web Comics

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The Order of the Stick meta lampshades Lampshade Hanging. Hey, it's Better Than a Bare Bulb.

Lampshades hung in Web Comics.

• Twice Blessed hangs a lampshade on Cade Masters's description sounding like a Mary Sue on the first page.
• George the Dragon hangs a lampshade on the mysterious absence of the main character's wings.
• Checkerboard Nightmare hanged a lamshade on hanging lampshades all the way back in 2002.
• 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.
  • He does it again in the "Space" theme. Actually, he lampshades lampshading -- and references us as well.
• 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.
  • And it's not even the first time the comic did so. "Will you stop pointing out the repetitiveness of the B-plots and hurry up?!?"
  • Here is another strip filled to the brim with lampshades, almost to the point of being an example of Trope Name.
• Ninja Burger: Max ninja tell Steve ninja something every ninja already know about shadow clone technique. Steve ninja is understandably confused.
• El Goonish Shive: "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm out of exposition."
  • "I thought you were out of exposition." "I am an ENDLESS BARREL of exposition!"
  • "What kind of company would assign that?" "A Shady one"
  • "It doesn't look all that -- wait, where'd you get that map?"
  • After Justin observes that a fire monster appears to be made of "solid fire that doesn't burn", the action cuts to a student asking her physics teacher why he is crying.
    • Also, "So... He wasn't fire...but water extinguished him...?" "The professor's crying again."
  • "Any writer who takes something no one was questioning and tries to explain it is a hack.
• "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:

Torg: Nothing Can Save Us Now! Zoe: What was that about? Torg: It's a classic cliché! In this type of situation, when someone says "Nothing can save us now," it's followed by someone showing up to save us. Zoe: You mean like "It can't get any worse"? K'z'k the Soul Collector: (suddenly appears) Hi kids!

• • Or this strip:

Riff: A dynamic character with an ability to survive certain death, and a questionable death scene leaving no corpse? Face it, we'll never see her again!

• T-rex of Dinosaur Comics 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?

• • And continued on:

Pee-Jee: Even so, there's a point where reality dictates-- Davan: How'd that woman at your job die again? (fact: she was eaten by a ceiling alligator) Pee-Jee: ... this ice cream could use sprinkles.

• • And again:

Pee-Jee: Goddamnit! Why does everything revolve around sex around here? Davan: ...bad writing... Pee-Jee: Huh? Davan: I'm sorry, I'm just reading John Grisham for the first time. This writing is awful.

• 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:

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.

• • Epic lampshade hanginge: first, the other warriors claim they have already taken the quest to find the wind orb -- which is taken as a joke, due to the life-in-a-game nature of the strip. However, 10 months later, the light warriors realize that they can't find the wind orb because the other warriors have already taken it. Partly ruined by discovering that 5 months later, Muffin the dragon had the orb all along - but still epic.
• Real Life Comics lampshades lampshading here.
• I Was Kidnapped by Lesbian Pirates from Outer Space: "It appears we're getting dangerously close to a plot hole. ...I mean black hole."
• Silent Hill: Promise lampshades Smoking Is Cool as its protagonist lights up.
• Ansem Retort gives us this beauty.

Aerith: I feel like I'm in a bad TV show, which is ironic since I am in a bad TV show.

• This and This one from an early It's Walky.
• "How did you even print those banners?" ^{[dead link]}
• Cuanta Vida:

BLU Spy: I seem to be spending a lot more time in closets since I got 'ere.

• Bob and George: "This ending sucks."
• The Last Days of Foxhound does this a lot concerning the rather... Tenous... Grasp of genetics and biology found in the Metal Gear-verse. Mantis or Naomi are usually the Only Sane Man in this regard, but of course all these biologically impossible events keep on happening anyway.
• Sirkowski, the creator of Miss Dynamite recently created and sold "22 Fan Service panels that always work!!" An homage to Wally Wood that features several Shout Outs to fanservice-related Tropes. Gems include Absolute Cleavage, Clothing Damage, Under Boob, Erotic Eating, Bare Your Midriff, and others.
• Fans, among many good examples: "By cartoon rules, we would be attacked as soon as I said 'That's a cartoonish way of thinking,' just to prove me wrong." The joke is that the attack which (of course) immediately follows is only a distraction from the main plotline, though it foreshadows a later plotline.
• In Gastrophobia: "Check it out, those guys are fortuitously discussing subject matter pertinent to our current task."
• In Sheldon: Arthur, a talking duck, says to the non-talking animals that, in a piece of fiction, "If one animal talks, they all gotta talk. You gotta keep it consistent."
• Dark Legacy Comics asks, "What do you think this is, some kind of badly written melodrama?!"
• Often done in Chrono Redux in part to make fun of the comic itself, but also to make fun of the game "Chrono Trigger" when these sorts of things happens in the game. These are usually brought up by Chrono in internal monologues because he's mute.
• In Gunnerkrigg Court, it's a frequent plot point that creatures who look evil turn out to be actually nice. So when Blue summons a Gol-shogeg:

Antimony: You - you're trying to summon it? But it's very dangerous! Student 1: Ah, don't worry! Student 2: It prob'ly looks mean but turns out ta be a nice guy! Student 3: Yeah, dat always hap- [CRASH]

• Spacetrawler: The narrative regularly juggles three or four subplots, often timing the transitions between subplots just in time for gratuitous cliffhangers. There's also a Framing Device that Nogg is telling the entire story to Mr. Zorilla--and Mr. Zorilla eventually gets just as ticked about these shifts as the readers do. On this page, just as a major mystery about spacetrawler construction is about to be cleared up...

Mr. Zorilla: You're going to change to another storyline aren't you. Nogg: Meanwhile, back in Kppfing. Mr. Zorilla: I hate you. [On the next page, Mr. Zorilla has forced Nogg out of the car.] Nogg: Okay okay! I'll continue telling you about how spacetrawlers are made. Mr. Zorilla: Alright. You can get back in.

• Homestuck is utterly rife with visual and verbal callbacks. Late in Act 5, Doc Scratch calls attention to the fact that these keep happening, and names the phenomenon "circumstantial simultaneity" (as opposed to mere temporal simultaneity). Then, in Act 6, Dirk Strider lampshades it again:

TT: I feel like you've said something like that before. TT: Different statements, but in that exact syntax. [...] TT: That actually sounds familiar too. TT: Are you sure you haven't said something like that before?

• In Girl Genius the Jägergenerals comment that crashing airships explode only "in dose cheap novels". A few strips later, General Khrizhan blows one up with a huge machine gun.

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I just thought I'd point out that this link takes you back to Lampshade Hanging.