Pillow Pregnancy: Difference between revisions

* In a Mentos ad, a man and his date skip out on a restaurant bill by pretending she just went into labor and rushing to their motorcycle. Turns out she just had a motorcycle helmet under her dress.

** A similar ad was featuring a couple driving at high speed during the streets. They get stopped by the police and, upon seeing the very-pregnant woman, they escort them to the hospital. When the couple run up the stairs, the soccer ball slips from underneath her dress. It was a car ad.

 

== Anime and Manga ==

== Film ==

 

* [[Angelina Jolie]] does it in the movie ''Taking Lives'', though she uses a more convincing prosthetic to convince Ethan Hawke that she's eight months pregnant with his child, so that he'll think she's unable to fight back when he attacks her. In the end, she shoots him dead, and then finally removes the prosthetic to show the audience that she had been faking her pregnancy for nine whole months, simply to bait him.

** This also creates an opportunity for a particularly disturbing [[Kick the Dog]] moment on the part of Ethan Hawke's character, who {{spoiler|stabs her "pregnant" belly with a pair of scissors, evidently willing to kill her even though he believed her pregnant with his own twins...}}

 

* Short story "Golden Girl" by [[Ellis Peters]]. While a pregnant woman is taking a sea voyage, the ship is damaged and starts to sink. After the woman puts on a life jacket, one of the ship's officers drops her into the sea so she can be rescued by nearby boats. Much to his surprise, she sinks straight to the bottom. It turns out that she had been smuggling 30 pounds of gold bars in the padding under her maternity smock.

** Also done in ''Olivia'', where Olivia Logan (no relation to Olivia Foxworth) does this so that she can pass off her sister's illegitimate child as her own.

* Sara has one in the [[Artefacts Of Power]] series by [[Maggie Furey]].

 

 

 

* On ''[[Friends]]'', Monica has decided to shoplift a blue sweater as her "something blue" and "something borrowed." She shoves it up her blouse and has a quick maternal moment.

** A similar stunt was pulled on ''Kate and Allie'' in [[The Eighties]], to hide Susan St. James' pregnancy by stuffing Jane Curtin to match in one episode. (They justified it by making it a flashback episode to when the title characters were pregnant with their daughters.)

* An episode of ''[[Kenan and Kel]]'' has them attempt to speak to someone in a hospital. To get in they use this trope to [[Zany Scheme|disguise Kel as a pregnant woman going into labor]]. This finally leads to the line:

* This occurs in an episode of ''[[Operation Repo]]'', in which a woman fakes being pregnant, even going so far as to fake going into labor, in order to keep her car from being repossessed. When her ruse was found out, the Repo team was not happy.

* In the "Harlem Globetrotters" episode of ''[[TV Funhouse]]'', the team accidentally travels back to the first Christmas, where they decide to play Mary, Joseph and some others in a game of basketball for who gets the inn as opposed to who sleeps in the barn. Naturally, the Globetrotters PWN the Bethlehem players — until Baby Jesus is born, after which he begins defeating the Globetrotters with his miracle powers. Meadowlark then gets one of his brilliant ideas, and takes a hint from Mary by pulling a Pillow Pregnancy with the basketball under his shirt, in order to sneak past and score the winning basket.

* In a deleted scene from ''[[Firefly]]'', River is screwing around with the rest of the crew's heads, and thus uses a pillow to pretend to be pregnant...so Book can [[Father, I Want to Marry My Brother|marry her to Simon]].

* Infamously, Terri on ''[[Glee]]'' fakes a pregnancy for months on her husband by doing this (and not allowing him anywhere near her).

* A sketch in ''The Secret Policeman's Ball'' (1979) starring Eleanor Bron and Peter Cook has this trope as the point of the joke.

* An episode of ''[[The Muppet Show]]'' had Miss Piggy singing "Waiting At The Church" while [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|apparently heavily pregnant]]. At the end, Kermit asks her if she's going to take that silly pillow from under her dress.

* The episode Better Than Life of Red Dwarf features Rimmer's wife pregnant in a VR simulation. In the outtakes, she blows a line and says "Sorry my pregnancy fell out"

* An early challenge on season 6 of [[Project Runway]] was to make a maternity outfit. However, instead of designing for real pregnant women, the designers designed for their regular models wearing a pillow. Some of them did ''not'' look convincingly pregnant.

* ''[[CSI: NY]]'' did this with a shoplifter, who got the items out of the store by putting them inside her clothes and making herself look pregnant. Stella wasn't fooled because her ankles weren't swollen *and* she was wearing high heels. When Stella makes the two items fall out, she says "Congratulations...twins!"

 

* In an episode of ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'', Katara dons this guise to pretend to be "Sapphire Fire" [Sokka's "wife" and Aang's "mother"].

* In a newer episode of Spongebob Squarepants, Mr. Krabs attempts this when {{spoiler|he steals money from an arcade with Gary.}} He pulls it off until Spongebob arrives.

 

== Real Life ==

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Pregnancy Tropes]]