The Beard

"Andy: Hold on, his daughter? But he’s definitely gay. Maggie: He can’t be gay if he’s got a daughter. Andy: Oscar Wilde was married with two kids. Maggie: Well he couldn’t have been gay."

- Extras

"Penny: "Will you just play along until my dad leaves?" Leonard: "Hold on. You actually want me to deceive your father with some sham, play-acting and kissing 'cause I'm GOOD with that!""

- The Big Bang Theory

A character who pretends to be another's Significant Other in order to perpetrate a deception.

This card is played when:
 * A character must appear married in order to get a job, adopt a child, or become a citizen.
 * A character is attending a high school reunion and wants to show up with a hot date.
 * A character is trying to appear straight or gay (when in fact they are the opposite).
 * A character wants to discourage unwanted romantic attention by pretending to be already taken.
 * A character wants to get overbearing parents, grandparents or other family members off their back about their love life.
 * A character wants to make his/her actual love interest jealous and get them to admit their feelings.

Most often seen in the Sitcom.

The term originated in the gay community, where a Beard is a woman who pretends to be a gay man's lover to make him appear heterosexual to others. The term is used because the woman, like a beard, makes the gay man look more masculine. Men can be beards for lesbians as well, and these are sometimes called Merkins, after the pubic wigs (have fun looking that one up on Google image search - NSFW). Either use of the term (but particularly with regards to gay men) is how you're most likely to hear it used in Real Life.

Gay men who marry The Beard do this generally as an elaborate refusal to come out of the closet. They "prove" it to themselves and others that they are not gay because they have a wife (that they never touch) so they most definitely are not leading a gay lifestyle.

Occasionally, someone's Beard will have to be someone they're in a Will They or Won't They? situation with. It usually ends up pushing them closer, but gets a Snap Back at the end.

Not to be confused with Growing the Beard, where a show significantly improves at some point, with the Playful Hacker of a technology startup, which consists (so they say) of The Beard and The Suit - the Beard handling the technology, the Suit handling both the business side, and ensuring that the Beard does not walk into traffic or excitedly explain his proprietary secrets to the first person who expresses an interest, or with Brian Wilson of the San Francisco Giants, whose nickname is The Beard.

Compare Citizenship Marriage and Undercover As Lovers.

Anime & Manga

 * Nakahara played The Beard for Satō in an episode of Welcome to The NHK to fool his mother into believing that Satō wasn't a Hikikomori.
 * In Love Hina this sort of thing happens a couple of times. Once when Keitaro plays boyfriend to Motoko in order to keep her from being forced back to run her family's dojo. The punch line is that when it is exposed, said elder sister decides to force them to get married...
 * This also a different take on the Will They or Won't They? instance where the Beard (or the person using the Beard) is a rival to the other part of the Will They or Won't They? couple.
 * Ginta and Arimi pretended to be each other's beards in Marmalade Boy to get Miki (Ginta's crush and best friend) and Yuu (Arimi's ex boyfriend) back, respectively. However, they ended up falling in love with each other and hooking up for real.
 * In the anime version of Marmalade Boy, Ryouko Momoi agreed to temporarily be Namura-sensei's beard in regards to Meiko Akizuki; he thought he wasn't worth all the trouble Meiko had already gone through, and wanted her to be free..
 * Implied to be why Prince Schneizel of Code Geass keeps appearing with Nina Einstein in public - as his aide and brother drop very big hints about his true sexuality. Of course, Nina herself is desperately in love with the prince's deceased little sister...
 * When matters of honor came to a head in Ranma ½, Akane and Ranma pretended to be married so Ukyo would give up her claim. It backfired spectacularly --Ukyou didn't let up, indeed, she raised the stakes, and the two "lovebirds" ended up increasingly flustered at each other-- and they never, ever, tried that again.
 * In the Rosario + Vampire manga, Tsukune is forced to play the beard for both Kurumu and Mizore at the same time, in order to convince their respective mothers that they have successfully seduced Tsukune. An interesting take on this trope is that the beard and the people using him are all part of the same Harem.
 * In Maria Holic Kiri decides to act as a lesbian beard to Kanako so that the jealous Schoolgirl Lesbians won't think that Kanako is involved the popular Ishima Ryuuken. Since Kanako really is a closet lesbian, this could have been a pretty original and interesting side plot... but unfortunately the matter got dropped for no adequately explained reason and nothing ever came of it.
 * In To Aru Majutsu no Index, Touma is forced by Mikoto to play The Beard for her to fend off a potential suitor (the grandson of the Tokiwadai Chairman) that she's not able to fend off her usual way.
 * The Day of Revolution: Megumi, a young transexual in transition, is having trouble adjusting in part because all of her former Nakama are doggedly pursuing her now that she's Jumped the Gender Barrier. So her best friend/therapist Makoto suggests Megumi use her younger brother Mikoto as a beard--knowing full well that Mikoto's interest in Megumi is genuine--because a) it's fun to tease her little brother and b) a little respectful, gentle male attention may just be the ticket for Megumi.
 * Light in Death Note pretended that Misa was his girlfriend in order to A) appear more normal and B) convince Misa to help him kill L. He also told his mother and sister that he had a girlfriend before he met Misa, as an excuse for being out of the house so often.
 * In the Sasameki Koto manga, Tomoe suggests that Sumika get a fake boyfriend to help her PR while she's campaigning for student council president, and they settle for Akemiya,
 * Mawaru Penguindrum eventually reveals that the relationship between is this, and is a mutual setup in order to . Also is this trope in the more traditional sense in that  is apparently gay or bisexual.

Comicbooks

 * In Batman, Bruce Wayne's girlfriends are little more than an endless string of beards -- not because he is gay, mind you (Joel Schumacher's films notwithstanding), but because he must deliberately stay emotionally distant and unavailable to avoid the risk of giving away his Secret Identity.
 * In The Muppet Show Comic Book, Fozzie's mother is coming to visit. As she's under the impression that he's not only successful and the partner of a noted detective (because he told her so), she's bringing a girl with her, clearly intending to play matchmaker. Not wanting to be fixed up with some loser, Fozzie gets Skeeter to pretend to be his girlfriend. Then he meets the girl bear...
 * There's a scene in the graphic novel Shortcomings where Ben, the main character, has to act as this for his gay friend Alice when they go meet her parents at church.
 * Watchmen's Silk Spectre is the beard for, though only mentioned in the comics.
 * Justine was, in part, this for Dr. Manhattan. At that point he'd drifted too far into Blue And Orange (a)sexuality.

Fan Fiction
""I'm not one of your girlfriends in Canada!""
 * The Tangled Web starts with Mara pretending to be Luke's girlfriend to keep away a Fan Girl with a highly influential father. Luke lasts about a day before it becomes real.
 * In Refiner's Fire, Harry asks Ginny to be his pretend girlfriend to keep away a crowd of... interested... schoolgirls. After a couple of weeks, he asks her out for real.
 * Princess: Marlene assumes Julien was using her for this when he comes out as a female-to-male Transsexualism, and is very, very angry.


 * In many fandoms, characters falling in love after one character forces the other to pretend to be their boyfriend/girlfriend because they accidentally told their family that they had one, is extremely common. No less hilarious, though.

Film

 * I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (2007) features this trope as its central concept.
 * As does the 2004 Australian film Strange Bedfellows, which some have argued is not a coincidence.
 * The movie Can't Buy Me Love seems to play this trope straight. The main character, an unpopular nerd, helps a popular girl. In return, she pretends to be his girlfriend, so he can become more popular. It works almost too well. However,
 * In My Best Friend's Wedding, Julia Roberts' character asks her (gay) male friend to pretend to be her boyfriend in order to make the titular other male friend jealous so he doesn't marry his fiancee.
 * Green Card features this as the central concept. The main characters marry each other, the man in order to receive a green card to stay in the US, the woman in order to move into a desirable NY flat that is for married couples only.
 * The Spanish film Inconcientes portrays a gay subculture where it's common for gays to marry lesbians for the sake of outward appearances. Sample line: "Would you like to dance with me? My wife would like to dance with your wife."
 * In Bend It Like Beckham, Tony plans to "propose" to Jesminder so that her parents will allow her to attend college and pursue her dreams of playing professional association football in America.
 * The Wedding Date is based entirely on a twist of this trope - the main character hires a male escort to take to her sister's wedding (where her ex-fiance is the best man). She ends up  Aren't romantic comedies great?
 * While we're on the subject of romantic comedies, in The Proposal Sandra Bullock forces her put upon assistant to pretend they are engaged so that she won't be deported to Canada. Canada.
 * While being sent to Canada doesn't seem like a punishment, being deported would mean that she would lose her job at the American company she worked for. Bullock's workaholic character only considered her deportation a minor inconvenience until her job was threatened.
 * Pretty Woman. Edward hires Vivian to pretend to be his girlfriend for social purposes.
 * The Wedding Banquet. A gay Taiwanese-American landowner marries one of his tenants so that she can get a green card and his parents will stop matchmaking for him. Hilarity Ensues.
 * In Easy A Olive makes up a relatively innocent and tame story of how she lost her virginity over the past weekend, but the rumor mill spreads it so far and blows it so wildly out of proportion that she gains a reputation as a slut almost overnight. When talking to Brandon, a friend dealing with torment and bullying due to his sexuality, she mentions how drastically a person's social status can change after a single juicy story and she agrees to pretend to sleep with him in order to convince the school he is straight. This is amazingly successful (For him, anyway) and soon many other unpopular boys are coming to her for help looking cool.
 * Just Go with It features Devlin--former college Libby to Jennifer Aniston--taking a gay male to Hawaii to act as this for her. However, she does not put up the act to mask her sexuality, rather just to improve her social status. The Reveal of Devlin's charade is foreshadowed when, during the coconut game, they drop the coconut and he.
 * Russian Dolls, the sequel to The Spanish Inn, has Xavier convincing his lesbian best friend Isabelle to masquerade as his girlfriend for his grandfather, as Xavier is worried his grandfather will die before he finds someone to be in a relationship with. Isabelle is incredibly grumpy through the whole thing (mostly because she has to wear a dress) and  as payback

Literature

 * Used in Georgette Heyer's Cotillion: Kitty persuades her cousin Freddy to pretend to be her fiancé in an Operation: Jealousy. Later, she pretends to be flirting with her other cousin, Dolph, in order to cover up Dolph's love affair with another woman.
 * Played less idyllically with Lord John and Bree from the later Outlander books. She's pregnant. He's gay, and a good many years her senior, as well as close friends with her dad. Considering the time period, it's not the unhappiest of matches-- they get on pretty well after a while-- but she doesn't seem to see him as much more than a human shield to cover up being vastly preggo. (Her way of persuading him to declare their engagement? Threaten to publicly out him. Which would mean public disgrace and death. Nobody said she wasn't a bitch.)
 * Rosa and Sammy in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay get married in 1941 for a double-purpose: Rosa is pregnant by another man, who had then run off (for an unrelated reason), and so needs a husband, and Sammy is secretly gay.
 * In the novel Thrones, Dominations, the "boyfriend" of a missing actress tells Lord Peter Wimsey that their relationship is only friendly; she dates him to scare off an unpleasantly lecherous colleague, and he dates her because it makes him appear straight.
 * At the start of the Dexter series of novels, he explicitly refers to Rita as a beard and a disguise used to make him appear more ordinary and normal. Of course, in his case, being gay would be a lot more socially acceptable than the real story.
 * Raoul and Buri's Relationship Upgrade in the Protector of the Small books comes after he got her to accompany him to a party in order to dissuade matchmaking mothers, and then One Thing Led to Another...
 * In The Wake Of The Lorelei Lee, the titular ship is taking a group of female convicts to Australia. Since they have a cool captain, the crew of the ''Lorelei Lee are allowed to get married to the prisoners, if the women agree. Pretty much everyone on board likes this idea, so they all pair off... except for Jacky, who is promised to another, and . The two of them act as the beard for each other.

Live-Action TV
"5th Doctor: Does he still have that rubbish beard?
 * In an early episode of Kate And Allie, the titular characters played The Beard... for each other! They pretended to be a lesbian couple to avoid having their rent increased (as two divorced mothers with kids, they were considered to be two separate families).
 * In a later episode, Kate was hired to portray the wife of a client to help him get promoted. She ended up falling for his co-worker.
 * One episode of Who's The Boss? had Tony Danza and the woman he was housekeeping for switching between pretending to be married for one person and trying to prove they weren't married for another.
 * In "Mrs. Al," recurring character Al is searching for a new apartment. The one good place he finds won't rent to singles, so Samantha agrees to pretend to be his wife. Of course, as the landlord had already met her, she invokes Wig, Dress, Accent to act as a Dumb Blonde wife named Candy.
 * Inverted trope in Veronica Mars in the episode "Donut Run," in which it is vital to Veronica and Duncan's ploy that the FBI believe they have broken up.
 * On NCIS, it is very frequent for agents to pose as couples for one reason or another.
 * Thirty Rock: In order to make his ex-wife jealous, Jack has Liz pretend to be his girlfriend. This, of course, in an early episode where there was UST.
 * In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy and Willow both play the beard for Xander in one scene in "Teacher's Pet" in order to protect his ego.
 * In Season 4's "Fear Itself" Buffy says "He wanted the candy, I was just the beard." with regards to her Father taking her trick or treating on Halloween.
 * Spaced used this - the two main characters wanted a flat, but had to pretend to be a couple to get it.
 * In Coupling, Patrick's constantly one-upping co-worker was showing up with his wife and Patrick had to keep up the facade that he was married to a real looker. He recruits Sally to be his beard, but when the co-worker's supermodel wife shows up, Patrick throws Sally over for Susan. A humiliated Sally gets Susan's boyfriend Steve to be her beard, until it's too much for all of them and Steve proposes to Susan in front of everyone - and Patrick couldn't be happier for them. *phew*
 * In the Monk episode "Mr. Monk Gets Married", Monk and Sharona pretend to be married in order to investigate a criminal at a marriage counseling retreat.
 * Occasional Wife (1966), a short lived Situation Comedy, was based on a "junior executive pretends to be married to get ahead in the company" variant of this trope.
 * Friends "The One in Massapequa" features Ross and Rachel pretending to be married to perpetuate a lie Ross's parents have told their friends. Naturally, this makes Ross and Rachel realize (yet again) their feelings for each other.
 * Jennifer Aniston had already played the trope in the movie Picture Perfect, in which her character seeks both a promotion and the affections of a man who is only attracted to women who are taken.
 * Jack on Three's Company pretended to be Janet's husband twice, once to please her parents and another time to placate Chrissy's father. He also pretended to be Terri's husband to help her get a promotion and ward off the advances of her lecherous boss.
 * The whole premise of the show is that Jack is wearing a fake shave so to speak.
 * Played with on Doctor Who when the Doctor discusses the latest appearance of the Master with himself.

10th Doctor: No, no beard this time. Well, a wife."

"Elaine: He went back to playing for the other team. Here's the thing. Being a woman, I only really have access to the, uh... equipment, what, thirty, forty-five minutes a week. And that's on a good week. How can I be expected to have the same expertise as people who own this equipment, and have access to it twenty-four hours a day, their entire lives? Jerry: You can't. That's why they lose very few players."
 * In Ugly Betty, Marc "dumps" Amanda as his beard, and she gets revenge by forcing him to use Betty as a new "girlfriend" to show off to his mother.
 * The sitcom Ned And Stacey had this as its primary plot. Though the couple, an advertising man who wants to get promoted and a woman who wants to live in a nice place, actually do marry to keep up the story.
 * Mike and Carol did this in an episode of Growing Pains; they both wanted to move out of their parents' house and pretended to be a married couple in order to rent a one-bedroom apartment, as it would be cheaper than a two-bedroom. Naturally, Hilarity Ensues.
 * In an episode of Seinfeld called The Beard, Elaine becomes the beard for a gay man that she ends up falling for.

"Sofia: Well, Niccolo, I can see how much you like my daughter. But if you think I'm stupid enough to be taken in by this charade, you've got another think coming."
 * Skins:
 * JJ was this for Emily when he was her date to the Love Ball in season 3. Naomi's Anguished Declaration of Love to Emily in season 4 also suggests that she's had a lot of beards, when she says she "screwed guys to make [her feelings for Emily] go away."
 * In the American remake, Tea admits that she lets her parents set her up with the sons of family friends to keep them in the dark about her lesbianism.
 * Wonderfully used in How I Met Your Mother when known womanizer Barney Stinson was revealed to hire an actress to play the part of his wife... not to cheat or otherwise hurt anyone, but to fulfill a promise to his mother to get married if she recovers from an illness. He even went to the extent of hiring a kid to play their son.
 * And of course, earlier on in the series, Lily pretended to be Barney's wife so his one-night stands would leave in the morning and never bother him again.
 * In The L Word, back during Dana's Transparent Closet phase, she and her male tennis doubles partner served as The Beard for each other... a highly ineffective ploy, considering her tendency to absent-mindedly ogle women, and his over the top Camp Gay personality. And in a later season, Jenny and the actress who's playing her in the movie she wrote are in a relationship, but at her agent's insistence, the actress takes a male date to her public appearances.
 * In Boston Legal, this is probably the best place to put the Denny and Alan marriage. Whilst there is no doubt they are not in a physical gay relationship, it is done to keep Denny's estate from being devoured by the government when he dies.
 * Only partly that; if anything Denny threw that in to sweeten the pot when first proposing to Alan.
 * It also gives Alan spousal privilege, meaning that anything Denny tells Alan can remain secret/private as Alan cannot then be forced to reveal it in court.
 * Lois and Clark go undercover as as honeymooners in a Metropolis hotel for a story.
 * Hilarious considering the two did get married later.
 * There's a Smallville episode where Lois and Clark pull this to catch a serial killer whose MO is killing fiances.
 * In The First Shop of Coffee Prince Han Kyul hires Eun Chan to pretend to be his gay lover, so his mother will stop setting him up on dates with women.
 * In Desperate Housewives, Susan's boyfriend Jackson comes back to ask her to marry him so that he won't be deported back to Canada. It doesn't work, since
 * An episode of Law and Order SVU had a woman accidentally find out that she was this for her boyfriend, a closeted NFL star. She was decidedly pissed about it.
 * Chuck and Sarah. A recent episode lampshaded it and the actual sexual tension between them by having Chuck and  discussing it after  . The episode was actually entitled "Chuck vs The Beard"
 * Tattletales was a 70s/early 80s gameshow featuring famous married couples. As well as on occasion Charles Nelson Reilly and Dick Sargent with "their gals" Marsha Wallace and Fannie Flagg. Host Burt Convy would just substatute the words "your gal" for "your wife" when reading the questions.
 * The Frasier episode "Out With Dad" has Martin pretend to be gay to avoid having to double date with Frasier's date's mother. When she then tries to set him up with her uncle, he grabs the nearest available beard to rebuff him - which just so happens to be Niles.
 * "The Two Mrs. Cranes" has Daphne pretending to be married to Niles (to his delirious surprise), as an excuse to avoid reconnecting with an old boyfriend. And Frasier being married to Roz (as Maris), but that was just out of spite by Martin.
 * On Degrassi, Ellie pretended to be Marco's girlfriend during high school to throw off suspicion, until they started developing a co-dependent relationship because of it.
 * That isn't the first, or last, time this is used. Toby was J.T.'s beard to push away Liberty's advances. Alex and Paige invoked Girl-On-Girl Is Hot to get into a party before they were dating (and before Paige knew she was bi). Jay started out as Manny's beard to annoy her parents. Anya was unknowingly Riley's beard, and then Fiona took the job when she figured Riley was gay.
 * There was a second-season episode of Boy Meets World called "The Beard." Shawn can't choose between two girls, so while he goes out with one of them, he recruits Cory to "sit on" the other, lest he should change his mind. Needless to say, the girls are none too happy about this stunt, and their schoolmates loudly proclaim them to be "scum."
 * Glee: Quinn points out this is what people are going to think she is after her boyfriend Finn joins Glee Club.
 * Actually played straight later when Kurt attempts to be more like his father (ie straight) and dates Brittany.
 * Sam dating Santana. Later, when she learns that Karofsky is as deep in the closet as her, she blackmails him into going to the prom with her as part of a scheme to get Kurt back and increase her standing with the rest of the club (specifically Brittany).
 * Ally McBeal: Ally and Elaine kiss to make a man persistently asking Ally out to think that she's a lesbian.
 * The Office: A story arc in Season 7 involves Angela dating a (state) senator whom Oscar believes to be gay. The implication is that the senator is using Angela as The Beard. Foolishly, Pam denies that this trope even exists.
 * In Episode 9 of Leonardo, Lisa's mother arrives, wanting to bring her back to her Arranged Marriage. Lisa claims to be married to Macchiavelli.


 * Used in The Big Bang Theory when Penny's dad came to visit. He hadn't met Leonard before but was apparently very approving of Penny dating someone with an advanced degree and a steady job (she's known for dating stupid delinquents) and was disappointed that they had broken up. To get him off her back she recruited Leonard to pose as though they got back together, which Leonard found to be hilarious (she was the one to break up the relationship) and took the opportunity to not only bond with her dad but also make out with her and generally do sugary couple-like things.
 * Sheldon had his own situation with Amy Farrah Fowler, who asked him to meet her mother (both are generally Asexual and dislike being treated as a couple). He took it as an implication that she considered them to be dating and the idea terrified him. When he finally discussed things with her she explained that her mother was overbearing and wanted her to have a love life, so Sheldon was to fulfill that role. Upon meeting her mother, they frequently talked about how much sex they have together.
 * In "The Transporter Malfunction", Raj goes on a blind date with a girl his parents found for him. Things seem to be going well, until she reveals that she is a lesbian and thinks that since Raj is also gay they should get married so they can get their strict Indian parents of their backs. Raj indignantly says that he is not gay, but considers actually getting married to her because he thinks he will never get married otherwise.
 * Godiva's: Two characters of Indian descent, Ramir and Rajni, are pressured into an Arranged Marriage. While they do like each other, Ramir can't stand the thought of being a married man, and Rajni is a lesbian. She lets Ramir know, and proposes a union of mutual beardship, where they would live together but sleep with other people. Ramir agrees, but has a change of heart and leaves her at the altar.
 * In the final episode of Cheers, Sam recruits Rebecca to act as this for his meeting with Diane. Diane, meanwhile, brings another man with her to the meeting. It all falls apart when Rebecca's estranged boyfriend comes back and proposes to her, followed by Diane's date's boyfriend arriving to reclaim him from Sam.
 * In one episode of ROY, Roy grabs a random girl and claims she's his cousin Sophie to disguise the fact that he went to see a kiddie film.
 * Amanda from Pan Am seemed to be the perfect match for Teddy...until . When Ted eventually finds out, she proposes that they get married anyway so that they can see the people they really want to see while still being married. Ted agonizes over it, but eventually calls it off  . However,
 * Noah's Arc:.

Music

 * "Can You Forgive Her?" by Pet Shop Boys is about a beard who finds out about the subject's sexuality and torments him about it. "She's made you some kind of laughing-stock/Because you dance to disco and you don't like rock/She made fun of you and even in bed/Said she was gonna go and get herself a real man instead"
 * They also did "Bet She's Not Your Girlfriend", which was reportedly inspired by a photo of George Michael with a beard, and written about the singer's experiences dating one.
 * Jens Lekman sings "Nina I can't be your boyfriend/So you can stay with your girlfriend" in "Postcard to Nina"; she wants to spare the feelings of her Catholic father.
 * "Gay Boyfriend" by Garfunkel and Oates is, as one might imagine, sung from the perspective of The Beard.

Theater
"Cyrano: Ay! Husband!—dupe-husband!... Husband a la mode!"
 * Played with at the end of the musical Anything Goes. Reno Sweeney dresses up as a Chinese woman and pretends to have had Lord Evelyn Oakleigh's lovechild, so that he can break his engagement with Miss Hope Harcourt (who is in love with Reno's best friend, Billy Crocker). Reno and Evelyn do eventually get married (in a double wedding with Billy and Hope), which possibly subverts this trope.
 * But Reno was in love with Lord Oakleigh before she agreed to play the abandoned lover. It was the reason she agreed to do it in the first place.
 * Cyrano De Bergerac: Viscount de Valvert is willing to marry Roxane so Count De Guiche will bully her to be his mistress. Lampshaded by Cyrano at Act II Scene VI:


 * In The Taming of the Shrew, Tranio, a servant disguised as his master Lucentio, publicly courts and becomes engaged to Bianca Minola to get her other suitors out of the way. Meanwhile, the real Lucentio, disguised as Bianca's tutor, is privately winning her heart and arranging an elopement.

Videogames

 * In Tales of Monkey Island, Guybrush and Morgan LeFlay have to do this in order to convince Coronado De Cava that Guybrush is not trying to steal his lover, the Voodoo Lady, away from him. De Cava is a little...unhinged...from being stuck in a giant manatee for a long time.
 * Junichi in Da Capo acts as Mako's beard to help her get rid of an unwanted female admirer. While the motive is genuine, the very first day of acting she's already feeling awkward and begins to treat it more and more as though they were really going out.
 * In Umineko no Naku Koro ni  is this to   However

Webcomics

 * In Sfeer Theory, Luca is married and has a son. Considering the time period, it's rather expected. Also an Arranged Marriage.
 * Fred and Daphne from Penny and Aggie, for one another, at least initially.
 * Shanna from Fans pretends to be a closeted lesbian in high school, and starts calling her boyfriends "beards." Her friends aren't fooled, and sometimes don't realize she's even trying to be a lesbian. Later, when she's no longer pretending to be closeted, she's still pretending to be a mundane, but she has started watching classic science fiction late at night. Katherine agrees to be Shanna's "beard," this time giving her an excuse to be with the fans she won't really admit she likes.
 * Rumisiel is Ash's beard on Misfile, to Ash's eternal annoyance. While it makes Ash's life easier because she doesn't have to deal with guys hitting on him because he is currently transformed into a girl, Rumi's presence has strained Ash's relationship with one of his best friends, netted her Rumi's angelic ex-girlfriend as a psycho-stalker, and forced her to be Rumi's beard for his brother, who isn't alowed to find out the real reason they are together.
 * Leslie Rudd has Kittie in Friendly Hostility might have started out this way, but it is a valid ship in its own right per Word of God, and Leslie/Kittie/Deringer can be read as a canon ship by the end of the series if the reader wants it to be.
 * Denmark uses this trope here.
 * In Welcome to Room 305.

Web Originals

 * At Super-Hero School Whateley Academy in the Whateley Universe, Bladedancer (once male, now female against his will) has a girlfriend, but accepts a date with Chain Lightning so no one will realize that Bladedancer likes other girls. Only problem? Chain Lightning really likes her, and she finds that she likes him.
 * A bizarre version of this trope appears in the Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series full length episode of Zorc and Pals, when Zork (the giant, male, world-destroying god evil) pretends Bakura (who is arguably male)is his wife so that his mother will stop pestering him to get married. Hilarity ensues.
 * Lipstick Lesbian Julia Gordon from Decades of Darkness has a husband who's gay himself. They even have a child together (it's set in the 19th century).

Western Animation

 * An episode of Rocko's Modern Life, "Kiss Me, I'm Foreign", had Filburt pretend to be Rocko's fiancée to keep the latter from being deported erroneously.
 * An episode of The Venture Brothers has Doctor Zin's wife claim that she is actually his beard.
 * Also done in an episode of Drawn Together, where Spanky acts out a gay mariage with Xandir (who actually is) in hopes of getting free health insurance.
 * And an episode where Xandir acts as Toots lover for her fat camp reunion.
 * Done in Futurama in "A Flight to Remember", where Fry has to be The Beard for both Leela and Amy at the same time. Which he accomplishes by drawing on his time watching Threes Company.
 * In this case, Leela used Fry to keep Zapp Brannigan away from her, and Amy used him to deflect her parents' attempts to hook her up with any guy they could find as long as it resulted in grandkids. But then Leela started actually getting jealous when she saw Fry and Amy "together"...
 * Naturally, The Simpsons did this. Homer and Selma had to fake marriage in order for Selma to be allowed to adopt a child. Apu and Marge did the same for Apu to get out of an arranged marriage.
 * And there's also the time Troy married Selma to resurrect his career in light of rumors of his fish-related "sexual abnormality".
 * And with Marge's other sister, Patty, her onetime relationship with Skinner might've been a retconned form of this, since Patty was eventually revealed to be a lesbian.
 * Considering the fact that the throw-away-line "There goes the last lingering thread of my heterosexuality" became accidental canon, it's entirely possible that Patty just "discovered" being gay, or was bisexual and now leans entirely towards women. Not an unrealistic situation.
 * In one episode of Lilo and Stitch: The Series, Pleakley tries to get out of an arranged marrage by pretending he's engaged to Nani (ew). Made all the more difficult by the episode featuring a Living Lie Detector experiment.
 * Cleveland's boss from The Cleveland Show in one episode had a wife or at least was pretending to be and everyone thinks or knows that the boss is gay, later he asks for his beard and the "wife" shows up holding a Santa beard.
 * On King of the Hill, Dale's dad, Bug, tried to pull off the gay version of this trope when he was still in the closet. After Dale's wedding, Bug was flirting with an attractive Filipino caterer when Dale came into the room. He quickly grabbed, in his own words, "the nearest thing in a dress"--which happened to be the bride, Nancy. Twenty years of estrangement followed.
 * The "Fake-out Make-out" from Danny Phantom.
 * American Dad had an episode centering on this. The Smiths' gay neighbor Terry promises his partner Greg that he'll come out to his domineering father...but gets cold feet at the last minute and instead claims that Stan's wife Francine is his girlfriend, and that Stan and Greg are "the homos from across the street". Terry's dad seems to buy it, despite the obvious signs and Stan not doing a single thing to act gay.

Real Life

 * English actor Charles Laughton married Elsa Lanchester (of The Bride of Frankenstein fame) yet continued to see men. One day, Lanchester came home to find Laughton on the sofa in flagrante delicto with a rent boy. She told him that she didn't mind, but went completely mute for three months in shock. She later told a friend that she'd had no idea Laughton was gay, but added, "Remember, he was a great actor!" They never divorced.
 * Because he married her so soon after first being accused of child molestation, Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley's unsuccessful marriage was widely rumored to be this.
 * Liza Minelli is often (snarkily) said to be this for her last husband, David Gest.
 * A few years ago, Ian Wishart claimed that the then-Prime Minister of New Zealand, Helen Clark, was a lesbian with a gay husband. Controversy ensued.
 * According to the celebrity gossip blogs and their commenters, any woman who dates a handsome young Hollywood celebrity is a beard, because every last one of them is gay. Even when these men are serial monogamists who eventually marry, they're still gay, and the women they date are sniffily referred to as "the professional beard" and given the side-eye from there on in. Not surprisingly, Hollywood doesn't seem to have a large population of sexually active women (straight or lesbian) or conventionally unnattractive gay men, as the wishfully thinking gays and slash RPF fangirls that populate these boards don't have any use for them,
 * Based on this, there's a persistent rumor that Taylor Swift is either gay or is the beard for all her boyfriends, because most of them have been suspected to be gay at some point, despite the fact half of the people she is supposedly the beard for have never actually dated her.
 * In China, because of the immense pressure to get married and have kids, somewhere around 80% of the gay population marries straight people. This has resulted in an interesting phenomenon where various places will host "fake-marriage markets" where gay and lesbian people can meet and look for someone who is willing to play the beard for them (and vice versa).
 * Played for laughs -- English comedian Barry Cryer was classified "honorary gay" by his close friend Kenny Everett. Kenny insisted that his wife of 40 years and four kids were just a smokescreen.