What Does This Mean?
To deliberately draw attention, inside a work of fiction, to one of its own improbable, clichéd or incongruous elements, so the story acknowledges the oddity instead of hiding it. Often written "lampshading" or "hanging a lampshade" on something.
REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE
""The show lampshades the plot hole when a character asks, out loud, why nobody just called the police.""
LORE & ORIGIN
Wiktionary records the verb as a figurative use of the noun lampshade, from the image of hanging a lampshade on something so that it becomes more conspicuous, and cites uses from 2011, 2013 and 2019 in reviews and writing guides. The word is closely tied to TV Tropes, whose site logo is captioned with a reference to lampshading. This entry covers the verb as fandom and criticism slang; it is distinct from the trope names Brick Joke and Rule of Cool, with which it is often discussed.
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