Egg MacGuffin: Difference between revisions

[[I Read That As|Has nothing to do with breakfast sandwiches.]] You're probably thinking of an Egg McMuffin, for some silly reason.

* ''[[Shugo Chara]]'': The Embryo, and heck, the Heart's Eggs themselves, are there within order towards creating Dreams.

* The egg that Skuld's angel Noble Scarlet hatches from in ''[[Ah! My Goddess]]''.

* Played with in the ''[[Kirby: Right Back at Ya!]]'' anime, where the giant steel bird Dynablade lays an egg that later disappears, with fragments of its shell around. The other characters suspect that Kirby has eaten the egg, and [[Mama Bear|Dynablade ain't happy...]]

* In ''[[Digimon]],'' digi-eggs are the beginning ''and'' end of a Digimon's life cycle, with a Digimon reverting to egg form after "[[Death Is Cheap|death]]." (There are exceptions to this, such as [[Digimon Tamers|season three]], which began the trend of new seasons being AU and thus had different rules, and {{spoiler|[[Digimon Savers|season five]], in which rebirth was automatic again... making it all the more horrible when the villainous Kurata creates a means of corrupting a Digimon's data so it can't ever be reborn.}} Once, Seraphimon, a ''god/king'' to the [[Digimon Frontier|season four]] version of the Digital World, had to be toted around by Bokomon, who had it strapped to his stomach and ''acted pregnant for well over ten episodes'' until Seraphimon hatched as Patamon. And then proceeds to refer to Bokomon as his "[[Pun|papa-mon]]". No reference or mention is made of the fact that Bokomon could, if he wanted to, become [[The Man Behind the Man]] ruling 1/3 of the digital world.

** In the anime, Ash and his friends found and looked after an egg for a while which eventually hatched into a Togepi (that became the [[Team Pet]] for a while). This Togepi saw Misty as its mother. Perhaps slightly spoofed in that Ash was the one who found the egg, and is pissed that the Togepi didn't therefore attach to him.

** Most of the cast members have received a Pokémon through this fashion. Ash received an egg with hatched into a Phanpy, May received one that hatched into an Eevee, Brock received one that hatched into a Happiny, and Dawn received one that hatched into a Cyndaquil. This happens in the games quite a lot as well.

* Subverted in ''[[Maison Ikkoku]]'', where Yotsuya gives an egg to Godai with no explanation before leaving on a trip. The entire episode revolves around the rest of the cast dealing with the fallout resulting, some helpful, others not so much. In the end, {{spoiler|it is revealed Yotsuya had just found the egg that morning.}}

* The entire plot of ''[[Seirei no Moribito]]'' occurs because Prince Chagum is carrying the egg of a water spirit within his body, at first leading many people to believe that he's [[Demonic Possession|possessed by a demon]]. The entire cast becomes very concerned both with making sure the egg hatches successfully (since there will be a horrific drought if it doesn't) and with making sure that Chagum isn't killed in the process, with much of the drama of the latter half of the series coming from the fact that the two goals may be mutually exclusive.

* The Behelits of the [[Berserk]]erverse take on the shape of an egg with human facial features strewn all over it. There are two egg-grades of Behelits: the normal brown-grade Behelits that give you [[Eldritch Abominations|average evil nutrition]], and then the red-grade Behelits that give you ''humongous'' [[Demon Lords and Archdevils|God-like evil nutrition]] (and hence, this grade is also known as, "The Egg of the Conqueror/King"). And don't forget, these are also [[Clingy MacGuffin]]s, as they always find their way back to their master when the time is right. So, [[Lame Pun|they ain't going rotten anytime soon.]]

== Films -- Animation ==

* Subverted in ''[[Shrek]],'' when Princess Fiona accidentally causes a mama bird to expire, leaving a nest of orphan eggs. Her solution? {{spoiler|Fry them for breakfast}}.

== Films -- Live-Action ==

* {{spoiler|Twinken}} the dream maker in ''[[Barney and Friends|Barney's Great Adventure]]''.

* In the Eddie Murphy film version of ''[[Doctor Dolittle]]'', the Maya character has an egg throughout the movie that she believes is a swan egg. At the end of the film, it hatches, and it turns out to be an alligator.

== Literature ==

* ''[[Inheritance Cycle]]'' starts with Eragon finding a dragon egg and looking after it.

* Technically speaking, the same thing happens in ''[[Temeraire|His Majesty's Dragon]]''. Laurence and Temeraire have another one to deal with two books later in ''The Black Powder War''.

* In [[Diana Wynne Jones]]' book ''[[Chrestomanci|The Pinhoe Egg]]'', the main character finds a {{spoiler|gryphon}} egg in an attic, and cares for it until it grows up.

* In the [[Dr. Seuss]] book (and ''[[Bob Clampett]]'' cartoon adaptation) ''Horton Hatches the Egg'', an elephant takes on the task of hatching the egg of a irresponsible bird. [[Lamarck Was Right|The offspring ends up being a bird with the head of an elephant.]]

* In ''[[Harry Potter/Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone|Harry Potter and the Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone]]'', Hagrid gets ahold of a dragon egg, which hatches into Norwegian Ridgeback which Hagrid dubs Norbert. Little Norbert, with his vicious, fire-breathing ways, quickly becomes a liability (especially as keeping dragons is illegal), and he is dispatched to Romania, much to Hagrid's distress.

* In the ''[[Leviathan (novel)|Leviathan]]'' trilogy, there is a veeeeeeery mysterious Egg MacGuffin in the first book. {{spoiler|In Behemoth, the sequel, the egg hatches, and a [[Small Annoying Creature]] is introduced in the form of Bovril. Bovril latches onto Alek and they become [[A Boy and His X|A Boy and His Rapidly Learning Skunk Thing.]]}}

* In ''[[Dragaera|Taltos]]'', young Vlad takes care of the jhereg egg that he'd obtained from its mother in ''Jhereg''. When Loiosh hatches, he calls Vlad "Mama", although he switches to "Boss" once he's grown some.

* ''[[Septimus Heap]]'': The rock that Jenna finds in ''Magyk'' turns out to be one.

== Live-Action TV ==

* In the ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]'' episode "Parturition" Neelix and Paris find a nest of repto-humanoids, one of which hatches, leading them to care for it until the mother returns.

* In the ''[[Shake It Up]]'' episode "Heat it Up", Tinka (the comedic relief) enters an egg into a science fair that she genetically engineered. It hatches and proceeds to attack her.

* In ''[[Merlin (TV series)|Merlin]]'', Merlin and company go looking for a dragon egg in "Aithusa".

* In Hawaiian mythology, [[Playing with Fire|Pele]] carries an egg from her original home in Tahiti to the Hawaiian archipelago. The egg hatches out her fully-formed sister [[Naive Everygirl|Hi'iaka]].

== Radio ==

* In one of Vivian Stanshall's ''Sir Henry at Rawlinson End'' radio sessions (but not the LP or film versions) one of the stone balls on a gateway turns out to be a diplodocus egg and hatches—much to the annoyance of Sir Henry, who thinks ''he'' should be the only dinosaur at Rawlinson End.

== Video Games ==

* The whole plot of ''[[Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg]]'' revolves around hatching an egg by feeding it fruit. And then there's the eponymous Giant Egg, {{spoiler|which ''does'' get hatched by [[Big Bad|Dark Raven]]}}.

* The plot of ''[[SaGa Frontier 2]]'' revolves around a magical egg that causes grief for a family of adventurers and influences the history of the world.

* In ''[[Super Smash Bros.]] Melee'' there was a mission where you had to keep an egg from breaking.

* The seven Yoshi eggs in ''[[Super Mario World (video game)|Super Mario World]]''.

* Two of them in ''[[Bastion]]''; they're minor, and don't really have much to do with the plot on their own, but they're largely unimportant aside from spawning a couple of pets at your home base (which are themselves largely cosmetic) and your companions will have remarks to make about them.

* In ''[[Shining Force III]]'' there is a hidden character that requires you to go through a lot of work to get, probably falls under [[Guide Damn It]] territory. You first have buy some chicken food and lure a chicken to follow you. Later in the game you have to find a couple boiling an egg, buy the egg for 1000 gold, find the chicken your lured sitting in your HQ and then place the egg under the chicken and it'll instantly hatch. The creature will run off and then right near the end of the game you'll find the character "Penn" who turns out to be a [[Joke Character]] as he starts at level 1, unpromoted, when all your other characters are promoted at level ~15.

== Western Animation ==

* One episode of ''[[Earthworm Jim (animation)|Earthworm Jim]]'' has Psycrow using a magic orb which turns out, after Jim ends up sitting on it, to be an egg that promptly hatches. The entity inside the egg makes all sorts of vague promises about how it will help usher in a wonderful new age for the universe, [[Running Gag|at which point a cow lands on its head for no reason]].

* The Dofus in ''[[Wakfu]]''. These dragon eggs are extremely valuable due to the incredible amount of Wakfu contained in them.

* In the ''[[The Backyardigans]]'' episode "Tale of the Mighty Knights", Tyrone and Uniqua are tasked with guarding the king's egg, which promptly rolls away.