I’m not sure if this fits either of the definitions we’re bandying about, but on an episode of “Mork and Mindy,” Mindy is jailed and her cellmate is Barbara Billingsley who played The Beaver’s mom, June Cleaver, on “Leave It To Beaver.”
Mork comes in and Mindy makes a comment about being afraid of her cellmate. Mork’s response is something along the lines of “Aww, c’mon Mindy! She looks like Mrs. Cleaver!”
In Monk they make a lot of jokes like that, framing it as the number of cases they have the budget for and about if he’ll get approved for more, where what they are talking about is the number of episodes contracted for a season and if it was going to be renewed.
(Edit)
Here is one I was thinking of. I’m thinking it is done more than in just one episode, though.
In the beginning of “Mr. Monk and the Big Reward,” Monk and Natalie ask to be put on a retainer for the SFPD - at the end of the episode, Stottlemeyer tells them that the Commissioner has decided to guarantee them sixteen homicides a year for the next two years. After that, they’ll just have to see what happens. To better explain the joke: each season of Monk has sixteen episodes (save for season 1, which has just twelve episodes), and that episode was near the end of that current season with the show up for being renewed.
And in the new movie ‘Mr. Monk’s Last Case’ when Monk and co. meets with the billionaire who he suspects of killing his stepdaughter’s fiancée, he says “ah, the great detective Monk. Why, it seemed like back in the day you were solving a murder every week”.
Spoilers!
I don’t think it’s s spoiler since, like Columbo, the Monk movie is more of a ‘howdunit’ than a ‘whodunit’; it was obvious who the killer was. But just in case I went back in and spoiler-blurred the key part.
Psych does some similar things. For example, Ralph Macchio from The Karate Kid was one of the characters in one episode. Shawn Spenser said, "“Well, don’t just stand there and wax on about it”. Wax on was a reference to The Karate Kid.
There was also a walk-and-talk scene between Shaun and Gus in which Gus talked about the idea of working at the White House but only in a minor role like an assistant. Dule Hill previously played a WH assistant in The West Wing, famous for its Sorkin walk-and-talk scenes.
There was a long thread about references to actors previous roles. In most cases, I don’t really consider that breaking the 4th wall.
Dang, I recently saw new instances of those but didn’t know where to find the thread. Now that I have a link to the thread I of course don’t remember the new examples. (The post I made bumping this thread would fit there–the movie costars Jennifer Garner, who was in 13 Going on 30.)
Well, it’s certainly “Leaning On The 4th Wall…”
(the TV Tropes entries are certainly addictive, I love “clever” writing, and little blurbs tossed in just to amuse the viewers).
eta: Ah, here’s the link from this thread:
The sitcom Action was shown Thursday nights at 9:00-9:30. It did not get great ratings. In the final show aired, the lead character dies in an ambulance on the way to the hospital with a heart attack. The EMTs say he died at 9:30 on Thursday – just like the show.
On one episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dawn got in trouble and Buffy said, “It must be Tuesday.” The show aired on Tuesdays.
The TV show “Elementary” (present-day Sherlock Holmes show with Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu) used to air on Thursdays from 2012 to 2019. In 2014, CBS got the rights to Thursday night football, routinely pre-empting the show, so they started making in episode jokes about the NFL and football interfering with their cases, had Phil Simms (the color commentator for Thursday night games) on as a guest star playing himself, etc.
I wonder if this counts. In the series Burn Notice, the protagonist Michael Westen would narrate to the audience, which is a literal fourth wall breaking trope that we are now so used to we barely question it. But one episode they had a character played by guest star actor Michael Weston. That was clearly a deliberate wink wink.
How about the Halloween episode of CASTLE where Nathan Fillion’s character dresses up as his character from FIREFLY?
Thank you! As a Firefly/Castle/Nathan fan, it was incredible to just turn on the TV one night, and chance upon that scene.
“Didn’t you wear that, like, five years ago?”
Oh, and I loved that the “Nikki Heat” books that Castle “wrote” on the show were actually written IRL. AND Nathan Fillon went on book tours to Barnes and Nobles promoting them, as Richard Castle.
On “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, which originally was on Tuesdays at 8:pm Eastern (7 Central, etc) once when Buffy’s sister Dawn got in trouble and needed rescuing Buffy said, “It must be Tuesday.”