Someone to Remember Him By

"''"When every private widow well may keep By children's eyes her husband's shape in mind.""

- William Shakespeare, "Sonnet 9"

Just before the Big Damn Heroes scene, or just after the hero's done his Heroic Sacrifice, the girl he left behind discovers that she's pregnant. He's gone, but not forgotten. Subtrope of New Child Left Behind.

Bonus points are awarded if this is the result of them having sex exactly once. Double Bonus if it was the girl's first time, too, or if the reaction to her pregnancy later on is "Well thanks for leaving me with a child to raise by myself."

It's generally considered very romantic, even in historical settings where a single mother can be expected to have a hard time of it (especially during wartime; even if he didn't die in the war itself—or at all—she can say he did), on top of all her other problems. Unsurprisingly, it is assumed in these circumstances that Babies Make Everything Better.

The intersection of Her Heart Will Go On with Babies Ever After. May involve a Birth-Death Juxtaposition, or result in Dead Guy, Junior. This trope seems to be a recurring theme in horror films, sort of an extension of the puritanical belief that sex equals death. When the aforementioned "Someone" starts questioning the "Him", see Tell Me About My Father.

Usually an Ending Trope, so there will inevitably be spoilers in the examples section. Sometimes a Beginning Trope, to introduce Turn Out Like His Father—and sometimes both, as Changing of the Guard occurs.

If the trope is gender-flipped, the baby will be found somewhere around the female's corpse.

Anime and Manga

 * Dragon Ball: Goku one-ups the other examples by not only leaving behind a kid after his (second) Heroic Sacrifice, but leaving behind a kid that's completely identical to him.
 * After dies in Naruto,, hinted to be having a relationship with, is revealed as very, very pregnant.
 * Happens at the end of Narutaru. There's a bit of Art Major Biology in there, since the father concieved the kid while dying of radiation sickness from having a tac-nuke dropped on him.
 * Emperor Hotohori in Fushigi Yuugi can fall under this trope. Though he was officially married and the pregnancy wasn't necessarily discovered after his death, the whole point of having the child was to leave behind an heir in case he died in the battle
 * And the child looks remarkably like him as well!
 * Possibly inverted in the backstory of AIR when
 * discovers she is pregnant by at the very end of Eternal Sabbath, after.
 * Kinda what happens to Hayate after Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's. Following the Heroic Sacrifice-slash-Suicide by Cop of, she creates . The thing is, she ostensibly refers to the latter being "born" from her Linker Core (magical heart of sorts) after it merged with the former's Linker Core, in order to live the life the former wished for. In other words, we have here an example of technological lesbian procreation for the sake of this trope. Yes, it's weird like that.
 * Happens in the little-known anime movie Like The Clouds, Like the Wind. It's an especially sad example since the male member of the couple kills himself soon after having sex with his wife for the first time.
 * from Mobile Suit Victory Gundam,
 * Happens a couple of times in Pet Shop of Horrors:
 * One memorable episode was about the vengeful girlfriend of a criminal Leon killed in the line of duty. D manages to break the cycle of revenge by appealing to her that she did not want her unborn child's mother to be a murderer.
 * A second, much darker version occurs in Pet Shop Of Horrors: Tokyo. A woman's dead boyfriend is temporarily brought back to spend O-bon with her on the one-year anniversary of his death. At the end, he prepares to return to the land of the dead, but she is unwilling to let him go. She is found a week later in her apartment with the rotting corpse of her boyfriend... and now pregnant.
 * Gender-flipped in Nicoichi, when the main protagonist adopted the son of his single mother girlfriend, who had passed away after being involved in a traffic accident. This act became the trigger for the plot of the series.

Comic Books

 * The Wash one-shot "Float Out" of the Serenity comic features a memorial of sorts for Wash that takes place after his death in the film. The last page reveals a very pregnant Zoe.
 * Crossing over with Real Life, in Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical comic Persepolis, she tells the story of one of her relatives who was in jail about to be executed by the government. His wife bribed a guard so they could have one last night together, the result being...
 * That's even the point - she wants his baby to remember him by, even though she knows (and he warns her) how terrible life is for an unwed mother.
 * In Elf Quest,.
 * In American Vampire, Abi does this with Book before putting him out of his misery.
 * The Transformers: Sector 7 comic has William Simmons sacrifice his life while fighting a traitor in order to let his wife (who has just found out she's pregnant) escape before his grandfather Joseph Simmons dropped a liquid nitrogen bomb on the location in order to keep Megatron NBE-1 on ice. Even then, she only survives because of Jetfire, whose life William spared during World War Two. Jetfire also tells Joseph that she's carrying William's child. Joseph tells her to abandon this life and keep her child away from it. She opens a deli and has a son named Seymour, the same guy we see in the movies.
 * This puts a whole new spin on Seymour not wanting his mother to know about his research. It's not that she's unauthorized to know. It's that she knows this life got her husband killed and doesn't want to lose her son.
 * This contradicts with the Ghosts of Yesterday novel, which states that Seymour's father is named Walter, and he is alive and well in the late 60s. In the comic, William dies in 1954.
 * Ultimate Captain Marvel slept with his girlfriend just before his fateful mission. The child ended up being raised practically from birth by the US Government, trying to create a new Cap. What they got was the Ultimate Red Skull.
 * Mainstream Cap also got Sharon Carter pregnant before he his death (He got better.).

Fan Works

 * The whole reason  in a Code Geass continuation, In the End.
 * Toward the end of A Sad Story, girlfriend Maria tells him that he's going to be a father, and thus can't die yet.
 * In The Simpsons badfic Lisa Is Pregnant, Bart dies while trying to keep Lisa from freezing to death by having sex with her. This results in her getting pregnant, and Marge opposes Lisa getting an abortion because the last living part of her child is inside Lisa, causing Lisa to change her mind and have the baby out of respect for Bart.
 * The Titanic fandom uses this trope all the time, on the assumption that Jack could've gotten Rose pregnant when they made love in that Model T.
 * Firefly fans will invoke this sometimes to try and assuage themselves over . It's given a bit of canonical basis due to.
 * It's now canon.
 * YES!!!!!!!!!
 * In the Axis Powers Hetalia AU 1983 Doomsday Stories, it's revealed that Sopron is this for Austria, considering that.

Film

 * During the credits of the 2010 Live Action Adaptation of Space Battleship Yamato . This is during the ending credits no less.
 * A variation occurs in Carlito's Way. Carlito finds out Gail is pregnant before he dies, but the effect is still the same.
 * A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child. Incidentally, the pregnancy (which allows Kruger to attack through the unborn child's dreams) is indirectly responsible for Dan's death.
 * Austin Powers, the supposed reason why Scott was created. It would later turn out to be not totally true.
 * Candyman Farewell to The Flesh. Paul dies, but not before leaving Annie a parting gift.
 * The Candyman himself, whose death (after impregnating the daughter of a wealthy landowner) qualifies as Nightmare Fuel.
 * The Terminator; Kyle Reese dies after impregnating Sarah Connor, enabling her to give birth to John Connor.
 * Cold Mountain;.
 * Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, although it doesn't quite follow the usual pattern...since
 * Planet Terror ("I told you, I never miss.")
 * Premonition: Apparently this is supposed to make the film's ending uplifting rather than horribly depressing.
 * [[Inside. As depressing as it is, it only begins this way and gets much, much worse.
 * In Taking Lives, after taking out the serial killer, lead detective Anjelina Jolie and star witness Ethan Hawke decide to resolve the sexual tension that been burning between them for the whole friggin' movie. Of course, the next morning, Jolie discovers that the real killer is the guy she'd just been sweating all night long. The killer goes on the run, leaving Det. Jolie in the family way from their one night stand. Of course,
 * Revelation sees our hero and heroine searching for an ancient box containing the nails that held Jesus on the cross, while trying to evade an evil cabal. Upon finding the box, the cute but bookish heroine notices it has a male/female symbol on the front and has a sudden urge to "love thine neighbor", of course the guy, whom she's known for all of 12 hours, has no problem in putting off their escape from the baddies for a couple minutes while he takes care of business. The goons show up literally as he finishes and he soon dies while escaping, after losing the box. It turns out  Meanwhile,  Yeah, it's messed up.
 * Rumpelstiltskin. Partially subverted in that
 * The ending of An American Werewolf in London is set up so that, his relationship with Alex ensures the possibility of a bouncing baby sequel. Although not explicitly stated, the character played by Julie Delpy in the An American Werewolf in Paris was, in fact, intended to be David's daughter.
 * In Starman, the alien knocks up the heroine before returning to his home planet for good. As his human form is identical to that of the heroine's dead husband, the baby is both someone to remember the alien by and someone to remember the dead husband by.
 * The Painted Veil. In the book, it isn't his. In the movie it's unclear.
 * In Demonic Toys, a cop tells her boyfriend (also a cop) about her pregnancy right before a drug bust. You can pretty much guess what happened right afterwards.
 * Black Christmas. Somewhat subverted in that
 * The Fly: Veronica is impregnated by Brundle before the end of the movie. Their son is the protagonist of the sequel.
 * Rawhead Rex: A heavily pregnant woman is inexplicably spared by the monster. Her husband? Not so much.
 * The 2009 remake of Children of the Corn, the movie ends with a proclamation that the cult's "age of sacrifice" has been lowered from 19 to 18. Enforcer Malachai is clearly one of the people who is now too old to live and resigns himself to his fate, leaving behind a very upset wife with a bulging belly.
 * Also Implied: The movie features an occult ceremony deemed "The time of fertilization" by the Creepy Child high priest leading it. The ceremony includes a very vocal sex scene between two non-speaking unnamed extras. It is strongly implied that the woman gets pregnant from this. Her ceremonial sperm donor mightn't have a name, but he is addressed in the credits as "The oldest boy". So if other members of the clan were past the age of sacrifice, obviously the oldest boy must be, too.
 * In the 2009 Star Trek film this is used as a beginning trope.
 * Although, not completely true to form. Baby Jim Kirk was born moments before dad died, and Dad got to name him, instead of being conceived without soon-to-heroic-sacrifice dad knowing as is typical with this trope.
 * Subverted in My Life in which Michael Keaton's character
 * Forms the plot of the 2009 tearjerker The Greatest. In this case, parents of a dead teen take in his pregnant girlfriend.
 * Happens in the epilogue of Dario Argento's The Card Player.
 * Pearl Harbor leaves Our Heroine and Our Hero together with the Dead Hypotenuse's baby.
 * In the third Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth film, the protagonist's father died in WW2, before her birth. Her (apparently psychic) dreams of his death are used by Captain Elliot Spencer as a means of convincing her to help him stop his evil alter-ego, Pinhead.
 * A Mighty Heart
 * Braveheart
 * In the 2009 film Grace, the father-to-be dies in a car accident.
 * At the end of Gloomy Sunday, Ilona is shown to be heavily pregnant. It isn't revealed if Laszlo or Andres is the father, however
 * This is the surprise twist at the end of Crush: Kate is revealed to be pregnant with Jed's baby. It is the only reason the movie avoids an unbelievably Downer Ending.
 * People Will Talk, this is the basis for the plot with the added complication that they never married. When the doctor tells her about her pregnancy, she is so distraught about having to break her father's heart and admit to premarital sex that she attempts suicide. The doctor tells her that there was a mix-up with the tests and she wasn't pregnant, then proposes so that when she does have the baby, there will be nothing shameful (except the fact that she will give birth about seven months after the wedding, which no one seems to notice.)

Literature

 * The Shadow in the North by Philip Pullman. Though this does address the "unwed mother in 1870s England" issue by making the custody of Sally's child a plot point in the next book.
 * in Reaper's Gale after has a particularly random bridge dropped on him.
 * The High Lord by Trudi Canavan
 * In "Gone With the Wind", after Scarlett's first husband dies she has his son. Subverted in that Scarlett is actually annoyed at how people keep saying how lucky she is to have something to remember her husband by.
 * In A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Katie is pregnant when her husband dies. Annie Laurie Nolan is born five months and three days later.
 * In the Backstory to Edgar Rice Burroughs's Gods of Mars, Deijah Thoris was consoled for losing John Carter with his son, Cathoris. It was when Cathoris vanished as well that she did something foolish.
 * Cold Mountain: . Apparently this is based off of the real conception of the author's great-great aunt, but still.
 * This book contains multiple examples of this trope. Again, its use is somewhat justified—it takes place during the American Civil War, prior to which many couples were married—and then, of course, many of the guys didn't come back...
 * Similar to the midpoint of The Thorn Birds, where Meggie becomes pregnant by  and specifically says that this baby will be a part of him that she can keep. The child becomes one of the two major protagonists of the second half of the novel, and is a prime example of the "Turn Out Like His Father" trope.
 * After Claire leaves Jamie in the 1700s, their daughter Brianna fills this role at the end of the second book in the Outlander series.
 * At the beginning of Private Wars, Tara Chace learns she is pregnant by her lover Tom Wallace, who died at the end of A Gentleman's Game.
 * In The Rapture of Canaan,
 * A side plot in Jill Paton Walsh's A Presumption of Death concerns a young RAF aviator who has disappeared, leaving a pregnant fiancee in great want. Harriet determines that he died the day after the two of them consummated their relationship, . Lord Peter is able to convince the military to declare the young man dead, which frees up his estate.
 * In the Ngaio Marsh book Vintage Murder, an English theatre impresario is killed during a theatrical tour of New Zealand. His wife, the leading lady, is suspected of having committed the murder along with the leading man, with whom she is supposedly having an affair. It turns out that The killer is.
 * At the end of Mockingjay, has this from . (Katniss also finds it something of a consolation.)
 * In Michelle Magorian's A Little Love Song/Not a Swan, Hilda, who is a nurse during World War I, falls in love with an injured soldier. They have sex just before he has to go back to war, and then he dies in battle. Even more heart wrenching in that when Hilda's brothers find out she's pregnant, they put her in a mental institution and force her to give up the baby for adoption as soon as he's born.
 * Subverted in Robin McKinley's Beauty. Grace's father suggests that she and Robbie marry quickly and "get started on a baby" before he departs for his voyage, but both Robbie and Grace refuse, preferring to wait until he returns.
 * In Robert Buettner's Orphanage the besieged Ganymede Expeditionary force have finally located the enemy base. Because it's on the other side of Ganymede and they are about to be overrun, their only hope is for their mothership to bombard the site the next time it overflies the target. The ship's captain Metzger confesses that their computers are out and that it'll be another orbit before they can take the shot, which will too late. The expeditionary force's CO then tells Metzger that Mrs Metzger, currently on the surface, is pregnant. Evacuating the rest of the crew, Metzger manually pilots the ship to crash into the enemy base, saving the expeditionary force and his unborn child.
 * A Thread of Grace: Claudia and her fiance play this trope very straight at first. They get married, have sex (her first time), and he dies in an attempt to save the local townspeople. They even marry knowing that he's likely going to be dead by the end of the week.
 * Inverted in Douglas Coupland's Girlfriend In A Coma, as Karen, the titular girlfriend gives birth while in a coma, giving her boyfriend someone to remember her by.
 * Played with in The Enchanted Forest Chronicles, in that Cimorene's pregnancy was revealed well before there was any hint that anything would happen to Mendanbar, and that he's not actually dead, simply Sealed In A Can. The baby turns out to be a really good thing, though, since only a member of the royal family (which is currently quite depleted) can wield the sword and release him.
 * Anthony Trollope's Barchester Chronicles opens with Eleanor's husband having died between books, leaving Eleanor completely devestated. Until their baby was born. "And thus the widow's deep grief was softened, and a sweet balm was poured into the wound which she had thought nothing but death could heal."
 * Malorie Blackman's Noughts and Crosses - a pretty big plot point towards the end, with a bit of a twist.
 * In The Witcher cycle, it appears at least some elves believe in it. Justified in that their numbers are limited, so those about to die make an attempt to remedy this. Possibly averted given low elven fertility, which could mean they see it as a variety of another trope, Last Dance.
 * Time Scout: Carl's got a baby on the way.
 * In Beyond the Summerland, the first book of L.B. Graham's The Binding of the Blade series, is murdered right after the end of his and 's honeymoon; in the epilogue, when they are bringing his dead body home to his parents, we find out that  is pregnant with his baby.

Live Action TV

 * Subverted in an episode of ER, in which a woman claims she is pregnant with her deceased husband's child. In fact
 * Happened to Karen after  in One Tree Hill. She has a daughter she names Lily.
 * Parodied in Kids in The Hall, with a sketch where recurring character Flying Pig is killed by flying into power lines. Then, we see some pregnant chick lifted off her feet. That's right, she's having Flying Pig's baby!
 * Inverted in an episode of Private Practice. An older women (about sixty) and a young man (thirty) are married. The woman is nine months pregnant after being artificially inseminated, ready to have her baby. The baby has complications, Addison fixes it, but the mother dies after giving birth due to complications associated with her age. The woman very nearly says this trope's name.
 * Played straight in season 3 of Eureka, though this is also a case of Real Life Writes the Plot, as the woman who plays was really pregnant.
 * Baby William becomes this for a short time on The X-Files. Luckily,
 * Played straight in 'Skins with but then averted with
 * Gender flipped at the end of MacGyver, when
 * Also gender flipped in Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Reunion". K'ehleyr, whom Worf had sex with in second-season episode "The Emissary", introduced him to their son, Alexander, then was murdered.
 * Played straight at the end of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine with
 * Subverted at the end of Mirai Sentai Timeranger, where Honami Moriyama gives birth to the child of Domon/TimeYellow. Why is it a subversion?
 * In the Farscape episode "Taking the Stone", one of the young hedonists, Das, leaves behind a pregnant girlfriend after committing ritual suicide. It isn't considered a tragedy (at least, by the hedonists), since their society demanded it, and the alternative was becoming an outcast and slowly dying of radiation poisoning. The girlfriend isn't affected at first, though, despite being heavily pregnant, later tries to get drunk.
 * Invoked in-universe in FlashForward: Demetri Noh, having seen nothing in his flashforward, fears he's doomed to die. Janis, his lesbian coworker, laments that she won't conceive a child in time to have the sonogram/pregnancy she sees in her flashforward. Demetri proposes sleeping together so that he can have a kid before he dies, and she will get her baby.
 * Played with in an episode of Chicago Hope. A woman suffers a miscarriage and her husband dies of a heart attack on the same day. She convinces the doctors to artificially inseminate her with her husband's sperm before they too die off and she successfully becomes pregnant.
 * The Shadow Line has
 * Genderflipped in Angel, where Darla dies giving birth to Connor.

Music

 * The end result of the story of The Hazards of Love, The Decemberists 2009 concept album.
 * Actually a subversion, as the lyrics of the last song imply that A better Decemberists example of this trope would be "Yankee Bayonett," a surprisingly cheerful love song between a pregnant woman and her dead soldier lover.
 * Gender-flipped in the music video for Travis Tritt's 1994 song "Tell Me I Was Dreaming". The song is the second of a trilogy (with 1991's "Anymore" and 1998's "If I Lost You") where Tritt plays a Vietnam veteran in the music videos of the trilogy. In this video, his wife, who is heavily pregnant, falls off a boat dock and hits her head on the way down. Their child is born, but she dies. The baby is even named after his wife, Annie.

Theatre

 * In Carousel, Billy dies before his daughter Louise is born. He does get brought down to earth so he can visit her before meeting his judgment.
 * Elizabeth Proctor in The Crucible, although her husband knew she was pregnant (as it saved her from being executed for witchcraft like him).

Video Games

 * Mass Effect 1 has a sidequest where Shepard has to resolve a debate between a woman, Rebekah, and her brother-in-law, Michael. Rebekah's husband, Jacob, died recently and she's pregnant with his baby. It turns out Jacob had a rare heart defect that could shorten the baby's lifespan. Michael wants the embryo to get routine genetic therapy to eliminate the possibility of the baby developing the same condition, but Rebekah refuses because it has a tiny chance of killing the baby.
 * After the Time Skip in the sequel, the two can be seen again in the Citadel, discussing other ways to improve the health of the new toddler, also named Jacob.
 * Played with in the ending of Overlord: Raising Hell. After you complete the Bonus Level of Hell only to get stuck down there, the final cutscene shows Gnarl reminiscing on the sinister exploits of the Villain Protagonist, and discovering that the Overlord's mistress is bearing the Overlord's child. "Evil always finds a way..."
 * One of the more absurd examples occurs in FireEmblem 10. discovers she's pregnant . Additional materials reveal that the child even becomes a Dead Guy, Junior.
 * Possibly justified because
 * The problem with that argument though
 * However, do note that
 * The second campaign of Age of Empires III ends with the hero's Native American girlfriend giving birth to his son. Since the campaigns follow a family over six generations it was practically the only way that one of the hero characters could make a Heroic Sacrifice.
 * Occurs in Ever 17.
 * Noh is implied to be pregnant in her ending for Sengoku Basara 2, despite the fact that historically she never bore Oda Nobunaga any children.
 * The ending of Muv Luv Unlimited.
 * In the "Severed" DLC for Dead Space 2
 * In Sampaguita (the 3rd game of the Yarudora series), this happens in
 * In Batman: Arkham City it is revealed.
 * Also, she can be heard briefly singing to during the credits at the end.
 * However, the "Harley Quinn's Revenge" DLC heavily hints that.
 * Knights of the Old Republic: The canonical version is that LSM!Revan trucked off to the great unknown to fight the True Sith, never returning, and leaving Bastila knocked up (with the likely prospect of exile, among other consequences). Their descendant Satele Shan is a major NPC in Star Wars: The Old Republic.
 * After completing the bonus dungeon in Dragon Quest VIII,
 * Metal Gear Solid: While it has been known that very early on in the series, it's revealed near the end of the series that
 * Metal Gear Solid: While it has been known that very early on in the series, it's revealed near the end of the series that

Web Comics

 * A decidedly skewed version occurs at the end of It's Walky: After Walky's heroic sacrifice, Joe mentions that they may be able to resurrect him using Imported Alien Phlebotinum, but only if they can find a complete genetic sample. Cut to Walky's deeply religious (and canonically virginal) girlfriend Joyce looking extremely embarrassed.
 * In the Backstory of Order of the Stick, for the black dragon and his mother.
 * Fans! has a two-in-one: the time-travelling Joseph Oberf was born after both his father (Rikk) and his genetic mother (Rumy) were killed, since he was implanted as a fetus in his birth mother (Ally).
 * Suspecting he might die if he goes off to war, Candi invokes this trope by trying to get herself pregnant with Donte's child in the Ciem Webcomic Series. In the books, she attempts the same ploy twice. The world needs an Emeraldon. And if the last one dies without having children, she fears the worst for everyone's future. Both times she attempts it, the attempt fails. When he accidentally knocks her up some time later, it nearly leads to disaster.
 * It was hinted in El Goonish Shive from the moment the "fairy" Immortal calling herself Pandora used "Raven" as a part of her assumed name, that not only Raven is her son, but she didn't "reset" into the next life for too long mainly because she still didn't make peace with the idea of her time with Blaike becoming a distant memory akin to "reading a memoir". Later, she explicitly confirmed this. Adrian wasn't newborn, but still about 10 when his father was killed, which is why she had to stay around and care for him, which contributed to her excessive protectiveness, and the whole mess of mistakes and attempts to fix them.

Web Original

 * An interesting variation that circumvents the pregnancy occurs in Red vs. Blue. In it, there are several A.I. programs that are eventually revealed to Later, it is revealed that  Long story short,  Shortly before his death, however, Caboose is entrusted with Epsilon, one of the A.I.s that were, which he decides to befriend, raise, and basically use as a Replacement Goldfish for . Interestingly, the Reds and Tucker

Western Animation
"Girl: I have your baby in me, Giraffe!"
 * An episode of Clone High uses this trope at the end of a film Abe Lincoln made.


 * In both versions of He-Man, this is the origin of the Sorceress's daughter (who is revealed to be Teela).

Real Life

 * Very much Truth in Television for any event that leaves a high enough body count. There will almost certainly be some pregnant spouses left behind.
 * The documentary Dear Zachary tells the story of how Dr. Andrew Bagby was slain by his sociopathic pregnant ex-girlfriend Shirley Jane Turner. However,
 * Happens often in wartime, as many women will attest. A soldier has that "I'm deploying in the morning...tonight could be the last time we see each other..." moment with his sweetheart before heading overseas. Many women find out that they're pregnant...at about the same time they get the news of their beloved being killed in action.
 * Subverted with Marilyn Monroe and her first husband. She wanted to get pregnant in case this happened when he went overseas to fight World War II, but he convinced her this was a terrible idea- she'd have a hard enough time getting by during the war, and that if something did happen to him her life would become a complete mess. All of which are, in fact, Real Life consequences of having a baby in such a situation.
 * Brian Wood, a game developer at Relic Entertainment, was killed after his car was hit by an intoxicated driver. His final act was to swerve so that he absorbed most of the impact, saving the life of his wife and unborn child in the process.
 * Singer Roza Rymbaeva was seven months pregnant with her second child when her husband suddenly died of a heart attack.
 * Broadway actress and singer La Chanze was eight months pregnant when her husband was killed in the 9/11 attacks.
 * Speaking of 9/11, People Magazine recently did an article on children born after their fathers had perished in the attacks.
 * Ethel Kennedy had her 11th child six months after RFK's assassination.
 * Buddy Holly's wife was pregnant with their first child in 1959, when an airplane carrying Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper crashed in Iowa and killed everyone onboard. In a sad subversion of the trope, she miscarried soon after his death.
 * The sinking of the Titanic left a few pregnant spouses and girlfriends in its wake (no pun intended).