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Whale Egg: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:Rattlesnake eggs.jpg|thumbnail|This prank probably doesn't work as well if the intended victim you knows that rattlesnakes give live birth.<ref>They are ovoviviparous, meaning they have eggs, but they hatch inside the mom.</ref><ref>Even more important, but less relevant to the article, newborn rattlesnakes don't have rattles.</ref>]]
{{quote|"Look, daddy, a [[Trope Namer|whale egg]]!"|'''Ralph Wiggum''', ''[[The Simpsons]]''}}
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In fiction, it's often simplified into laying eggs like a chicken, [[You Fail Biology Forever|even if the biology of the creature in question should indicate otherwise]]. This is very useful in bypassing the complications of an [[Interspecies Romance]] and the [[Squick]] of a live birth, which is also why it's a common implementation of [[G-Rated Sex]].
Popular [[Mons]] trope, pretty much every Mons series uses it. Especially the ones that originate in [[Video Game
{{examples}}
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== Comics ==
* Skrulls are an odd reptile/mammal cross who lay eggs, but also nurse their young. [[Fantastic Four|Johnny Storm,]] who was briefly married to a Skrull named Lyja (long story), was greatly disconcerted when she... well, laid an egg. It turns out it wasn't his, though. Which was... [[Fetus Terrible|good news and bad news at the same time]], kinda.
== Film ==
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== Folklore ==
* The Easter Bunny, according to some. They're not all chocolate, you know.
** The bunny [[Baleful Polymorph|originated as a egg-laying animal]]; being able to lay eggs once a year was a form of consolation (the day was only later [[
* In [[Classical Mythology|Greek mythology]], Leda, the ''human'' Queen of Sparta, lays an egg (or rather two). The father, Zeus, was a swan during conception. ...Yeah.
** The real kicker? Leda, according to most versions of the myth, had also had sex with her human husband Tyndareus on the same day, and had conceived. The children so conceived ''also'' hatched out of eggs, in the most bizarre way possible: Pollux (Zeus' son) and Castor (Tyndareus') hatched out of one egg, while Helen (yes, ''[[The Iliad|that]]'' [[The Trojan War|Helen]], and daughter of Zeus) and Clytemnestra (yes, ''[[The Oresteia|that]]'' Clytemnestra, and daughter of Tyndareus, according to most myths) hatched out of the other.
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== [[Literature]] ==
* The humanoid Red Martians in [[Edgar Rice Burroughs]] ''[[John Carter of Mars]]'' novels lay eggs that are then hatched in incubators. They are somehow cross-fertile with human.
* Happens as a (disturbing) twist at the end of ''[[Goosebumps]]'' book ''Egg Monsters From Mars
* Subverted in [[Tamora Pierce]]'s short story ''Nawat''. The titular character's wife does ''not'' lay eggs, despite her fears.
* At least two of the races (namely, the [[Winged Humanoid|chiropteran]] Aeries and the [[Rubber Forehead Aliens|near]]-[[Ambiguously Human|human]] [[Humans by Any Other Name|Walkers]]) in Laurie J. Marks's ''[[Children Of Triad]]'' trilogy seem to be monotremes.
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* When kobold ''[[Pumuckl]]'' and his "owner" (for the lack of a better word) were in the zoo, Pumuckl found an ostrich's egg and thought it was an elephant's egg.
* [[Mister Seahorse]] himself, [[Mork and Mindy|Mork from Ork]]. It's a ''huge'' egg.
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'':
** A sylph is an [[Always Female]] elemental fey who looks like a beautiful elf woman with dragonfly wings. To bear a daughter, she has to seek a mortal suitor, usually elf, human, or Halfling. Despite this, the child, described as a "baby girl with wing buds", hatches from an egg that the sylph keeps in a special nest, guarded by an air elemental.
** The game also gives this trait to pretty much any beast that has bird-like wings or other bird features, no matter how much it resembles a mammal otherwise. Griffons, hippogriffs, owlbears, and pegasi all hatch from eggs; 5th Edition retcons it with pegasi, where they give birth to live young. It's mentioned in the description for avorials, or winged elves, that there's an in-universe [[Urban Legend]] that this is true for them, but it is not.
== Video Games ==
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** Pokémon coming from eggs is ''[[Cracked.com]]'''s #27 [http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_388_27-science-lessons-as-taught-by-famous-video-games/ Science Lesson As Taught by Famous Video Games].
* The Facebook game ''Fish World'' lets you gain new creatures for your virtual aquarium by buying "Fish Eggs". The, err, "Fish" include everything from crabs to turtles to squid to, yes, Whale Eggs.
** Collecting chicken-style eggs that will hatch out into all sorts of
* The plot of ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening]]'' is to break the ostentatious egg of the Wind Fish, which is essentially a gigantic, telepathic whale with disproportionate wings! (Also to fight evil Kirby clones, but that's irrelevant at the moment.)
* Ever wonder how [[Super Mario Bros.|Bowser]] got his kids in the first place? Now we know why, considering if [[Overlord, Jr.|Bowser Jr's]] theory of how he was born was true...
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* In ''[[Minecraft]]'', in creative mode, any and all of the mobs can be spawned with eggs, even pigmen and ghasts.
==
* In ''[[El Goonish Shive]]'' the [[Little Green Men|Uryuom]] and [[Half-Human Hybrid|Seyunolu]] (at least, first-generation) come from eggs looking like crusty meteorites. In their case, the "egg" appears to be one stage of a [[Bizarre Alien Reproduction|symbiotic organism compiling DNA samples of the parents]]… all, some or none of whom may be Uryuoms (producing an Uryuom, Greater Chimera and Lesser Chimera respectively), but since an egg forms before samples are introduced, it looks the same.
== Western Animation ==
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* Technically every species that doesn't reproduce asexually do come from fertilized eggs. It's just in the case of most mammals that the infant is incubated in the mother's womb instead of in a shell. (Yes, plants come from eggs too! We just call them seeds.)
* Here's some weirdness for ya. A good portion of mammalian DNA is non-sequencing, or "junk" DNA. That doesn't mean it doesn't do anything, though. For example, some of that is very important in allowing a fertilized egg to attach itself to the uterus. Some of that comes from [[wikipedia:Endogenous retrovirus|Endogenous Retroviruses]] which basically means that an ancestor was infected with a virus that incorporated itself into their genetic code and passed it on to all future generations. Putting all that together has lead scientists to theorize that it was a viral infection that allowed modern fetuses to bypass the mother's immune system and necessitate live births as opposed to eggs, splitting reptiles and mammals.
* [https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Rattlesnake The rattlesnake] is [[Inverted Trope|the opposite]], it is a reptile that gives birth to live young.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Pregnancy Tropes]]
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