But We Used a Condom!

Ross: We, we used a condom!
Rachel: I know, I know. But you know, condoms only work, like… 97% of the time.
Ross: Wha—what? WHAT? Well, they should put that on the box!
Rachel: They do!
Ross: No, they don't! [storms off to his bedroom; pause; returns with a box of condoms in hand] WELL, THEY SHOULD PUT IT IN HUGE BLOCK LETTERS!

— Friends

A standard feature of many modern, socially conscious works, this trope is when a couple tries to have sex without resulting in a pregnancy, but it happens anyway. It's the number-one cause of a Surprise Pregnancy, and it also serves as An Aesop that nothing is foolproof. It usually also relates to the Law of Inverse Fertility, which states that on TV, the less you want a child, the more likely you are to get one. Expect to see statistics of the reliability of condoms, ranging anywhere between 80 and 99%.

However, this trope has long been misused and become a Broken Aesop, overstating the failure rate of birth control, condoms in particular. Usually, it's just an overenthusiastic application of the trope, not realizing the unfortunate implications of it, but sometimes there's an agenda behind it, particularly with the Sex Is Evil crowd promoting abstinence-only education (highly popular and influential in the world's biggest exporter of media).

Here's how it works on TV:

• They might cite studies showing that 10% of condoms produced are defective. What they misunderstand (or don't tell you), though, is that number is valid at the factory stage; they catch the defective ones and don't ship them, meaning that by the time you're buying condoms in the store, you're looking at about 1 in 14,000 defective. Some works will make a point of a particularly dodgy-looking brand of condom, just because the resident Butt-Monkey doesn't know better.
• They might throw around a statistic of condom failure rates, citing a "perfect" use failure rate of 2-3% and a "typical" use failure rate as high as 15-20%. This is generally misunderstood for a variety of reasons. First, this failure rate is not for a single sexual encounter, but for repeated use over the course of a whole year. Second, some people freak out over the term "perfect use" - because nobody's perfect, right? However, in this context, "perfect" just means correctly and consistently — e.g. you know not to reuse condoms, you don't use oil-based lube with a latex condom, you don't use it if it's expired, and you don't use more than one at once. Most importantly, to be effective, condoms must be worn every time, for the entire time. The "typical use" stat includes couples who put one on partway through the act or even neglected to put one on at all. Of course, it's possible the couple never had proper sex ed (or are just plain stupid) and didn't know how to use a condom "perfectly" anyway, making it a bit more understandable how it would have failed.
• They might forget that people with uteruses can use contraception, too, and that many of those methods can be used in conjunction with a condom to even further lower the likelihood of a pregnancy — even physical methods inserted into the cervix like contraceptive film or an interuterine device. That can bring the likelihood down to near-zero — not nearly enough for the trope to work.
• ...and of course, heavy overuse of the Law of Inverse Fertility, failing to take into account that even with no birth control at all, and with a perfectly fertile couple, the likelihood of a sexual encounter resulting in pregnancy is lesser than not resulting in it.

The bottom line: not everybody is careful in using this trope; when overused, it feels like the characters Can't Get Away with Nuthin' and just aren't allowed to have a little fun. And the Pop-Cultural Osmosis from it leads to a greater misuse of contraception from the general public than is warranted, which unfortunately plays right into the hands of the abstinence-only crowd — after all, the only 100% guaranteed method not to get pregnant (well, outside of the Mystical Pregnancy) is not to have sex at all.

See also Pregnancy Scare, Can't Get Away with Nuthin', and But I Can't Be Pregnant!.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Domestic Girlfriend: Natsuo visits Rui in New York and they have sex using condoms that later turn out to have been defective after she ends up getting pregnant.
• Nana: Hachi and her boyfriend used a condom. Hachi's other boyfriend didn't...
• In Midnight Secretary, both Kyouhei and Kaya are very careful in not getting Kaya pregnant. When Kaya thinks she is pregnant because she was missing her periods, she thinks this. First time, she isn't. Second time, however, they forgot the condom.

Comic Books

• Invoked with Rose Walker in The Sandman (1989). While in England, she has a one-night stand with her family's new solicitor. She mentions a few issues later that she's pregnant, and when her friend asks if she didn't use a condom, Rose says they did; actually, they used several, but she didn't use any spermicide and one of them broke.
• In Tank Vixens Sonya says she was conceived as the result of a broken condom, as an example of how the Jinx trait can be hereditary. Though the ensuing lawsuit paid for her college education.

Fan Works

• In the Total Drama story, Legacy (Total Drama), Lindsay had an unexpected pregnancy with a longtime boyfriend despite presumably using some form of contraception on a regular basis.
• Ghosts of Evangelion: When Asuka is told she is pregnant she argues that it's impossible because she is on control birth. Her doctor reminds her that nothing is hundred percent effective.
• It's a spoiler to list it here, but in the Eva fanfic The Second Try, Asuka gets pregnant with Shinji's child despite being on the pill. Granted, the pills were past their expiration date (what else could she use in a post Third-Impact world?). Shinji, however, privately suspects that Asuka forgot to be consistent in taking them. Of course, the character also notes that there are rare cases where the contraceptives don't work, and lampshades it with a weary "we've beaten worse odds before".
• In MGLN Crisis: Amy mentioned that she was on birth control when she got pregnant. She suspects that Lindy might have swapped it out with sugar pills since Midchildan birth control is explicitly magical and has 100% effectiveness.
• Subverted in Dragon Ball Z Abridged. Bulma and Vegeta had sex at the end of episode 34, and Vegeta doesn't even know what a condom is. Turns out he thought "protection" meant keeping his armor on.
  Vegeta: The fuck's a condom?
• In Unexpected Surprise, Chat Noir and Ladybug have used a condom... from his mother's room, which means it was probably well past the expiration date.
• In A Prize for Three Empires, Carol Danvers can't believe it when she is said she is pregnant. She had been on the pill, her lover had used protection, and he has been dead for longer than she had been pregnant.
  Wanda took her to the doctor and they found out she was three months pregnant.
  Pregnant.
  She'd been on the Pill when she was with Michael. He'd used protection.
• Exaggerated in Path Of Needles. Kakashi's wife Manako was on the pill, had been fitted with a diaphragm, and the two were using condoms when they got pregnant with their twins.
• In No Time to Breathe Magnolia becomes pregnant from a one-night-stand with Charlie despite using Muggle methods plus a contraception potion and spell.
• Love Can Surprise You At Any Time In Your Life: Leela notes that Lars did use a condom on the only night they had sex. The fact this was the only time she got pregnant despite her former boyfriends having been far less savvy (Sean having reused condoms and Fry thinking her contraceptive pills were candy) has her wonder if she was "meant" to be pregnant from Lars specifically.

Films — Live-Action

• In Fools Rush In, the two protagonists get married as a result of this trope.
• Nine Months had a variation where birth control failed, mentioning it being only 98% effective. Followed by Hugh Grant's character remarking that this would mean that they are 2% entirely ineffective.
• Justified in Killers—Spencer protests that she was on The Pill but Jen explains that the antibiotic she took at the time canceled out The Pill.
• Look Who's Talking Too: Mollie and James conceive their daughter and Mikey's half-sister, Julie, despite the fact that Mollie wore her diaphragm. This being Look Who's Talking, we actually get to see one lucky sperm find a gap juuust big enough to squeeze through.
• The Icelandic movie 101 Reykjavík features a scene, where protagonist Hlynur writes that sentence on a mirror at his pregnant girlfriend's parents' house. He is obviously not excited about the pregnancy (the parents had invited him over out of friendliness unbeknownst that their daughter is pregnant). He and the girl split very soon and it turns out that he might not have been the father. She also aborts and ends up with his best friend.
• Parenthood has one of the mothers attempting to invoke this by poking holes in her diaphragm. She gets caught.
• Cabin Fever: Inverted. In the midst of a deadly disease outbreak, one of the main characters flees into the forest alone, abandoning his girlfriend, leaving her and his best friend as the last two healthy people left in the cabin. Within minutes, the aforementioned sexpot girlfriend is locked in an unbridled sexual fling with the friend. Mid-coitus, he makes a point of expressing his unease that they aren't using a condom and the woman dismissively claims that it's okay because she's healthy. Meanwhile, as the man embraces her, his hands bring out telltale rashes on her back, revealing that she is indeed infected with the disease. Sure enough, we later discover she passed it on to her bareback lover.
• In Grease Rizzo and Kenickie are having sex in his car, and the condom breaks. Kenickie says it's because he bought it when he was in 7th grade (they are now seniors in high school). They continue to have sex. Shortly afterwards, they break up, and Rizzo suspects she's pregnant. It turns out to be a false alarm, likely a result of the stress related to the breakup.
• Love, Rosie: Rosie and Greg used one while having sex, but it slipped off inside her, and thus she got pregnant (along with having to fish the thing out again).
• Deliberately subverted in She Shoots Straight. The Action Girl protagonist ends up pregnant mid-film... because her husband, desperate for an heir, pokes holes in condoms he's using and made her pregnant without her consent!
• Love (2015): Marcus impregnates Omi as a result of the condom he used breaking when they have sex.
• Look Both Ways (2022): After Natalie reveals that Gabe knocked her up, both of them note that they used protection.

Jokes

• There's a joke that goes like this: Your birth certificate is a letter of apology from a condom factory.
• There's another story about the couple that complained that their doctor gave them defective condoms. They blew up the balloons before they had sex but somehow conceived anyway.
• Another joke begins when a man and his mistress are about to have sex. The woman sternly instructs her lover to put on his condom because she doesn't want to get pregnant. Just as they're about to begin, the woman's cell phone rings. It's her best friend: her lover's wife. The wife tells her friend that she really needs to talk about a personal problem. The friend tells the wife that she's busy at the moment and asks her to call back later. The man and the mistress have sex. After they're done and the man leaves her apartment, the mistress calls the wife up and asks her what she wanted to talk about. The wife tells the mistress that she's upset because her husband is cheating on her. She knows this because she found the condom in the husband's pocket and she knows he never uses them with her because she's on the pill. Then the wife tells her best friend, "But I got my revenge on my husband's whore, I poked a hole in the condom!"
• Some nuns in a convent are talking one day. The first nun says "I was in Father O'Malley's room today, and I found a pornographic magazine!" The other nuns are shocked and ask her what she did with it. "I tore it up and threw it in the trash!" The second nun says "Oh, that's nothing, I was in Father O'Malley's room the other day and I found condoms!" The other nuns ask her what she did with them. "I poked holes in them!" The third nun faints.
• There is also a joke about the abbess gathering all the nuns:
  Abbess: Nuns, I have terrible news. Our monastery was visited by a man!
  Everyone: Gasp
  Single voice: Giggle
  Abbess: In our garden, we discovered... a condom!
  Everyone: Gasp
  Single voice: Giggle
  Abbess: In the condom, we discovered... a hole!
  Everyone: Giggle
  Single voice: Gasp
• A young Native American lad came home from school one day in tears. When his father asked what was wrong, the young lad lashed out against his father for giving him such a horrible name. His father explained that it was the tradition of their tribe to name one's children after the circumstances in which they were conceived. "For example, your sister was conceived during an autumn sunrise, so we named her Autumn Sunrise. Your brother was conceived during a raging thunderstorm, so we named him Raging Thunderstorm. "Ah," said the young lad, "So that's how it's done." His father replied, "Yes, Broken Rubber, that's how it's done."

Literature

• The Cider House Rules: Wally and Candy used a condom that later turned out to be sabotaged.
• The Andromeda Nebula by I. Efremow, one of the protagonists was conceived on board of a spaceship, because the hormonal contraceptive has lost its effectiveness due to long storage (a typical spaceship's journey took 5-20 years at that time).
• Honor Harrington: A high-tech variant of the concept is what causes the conception of Raoul Alexander-Harrington. Female members of the Royal Manticoran Navy have contraceptive implants since health and safety laws preclude pregnant women serving in orbital and space-based positions. They're supposed to be replaced regularly but Honor's wasn't due to a paperwork error caused when she was presumed dead for a period.
• In the New Jedi Order, these are Mara Jade's first thoughts upon discovering her pregnancy. In her case, it was because she'd been among those infected with deadly coomb spores, and the only one to survive more than a few weeks from the initial infection, due to her use of the Force to fight the disease. She had also felt the spores attacking her womb at one point, leading to her believing she was now barren. Her son's conception nearly two years later proved her wrong.
• The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett: The trope is subverted; Reg Shoe investigates the murder of a man who made condoms and while talking with one of the employees, the employee says, "The Watch gets free ones, Mr Sonky was happy to have less coppers." (paraphrase). What happens to Sam Vimes towards the end of this very book makes this subplot even more amusing in retrospect.
• The Stand does this with Frannie. A "But I used the pill" variant. Possibly an act of God kind of thing, given the nature of the book.
• Almost Alice has Pamela reveal to her friends that she might be pregnant, due to her period being two weeks late. Funnily enough, it's Elizabeth who spouts the "But you said you were using condoms!" lines. Turns out that Pamela, being very busy with practices for their high school performance, had appeased her feeling-left-out boyfriend by sleeping with him without any protection, but says that it was 'still five days before the middle of her period'. She ends up having a Convenient Miscarriage a few weeks later, before she could really decide what to do.
• Played with in the first Starship Troupers novel by Christopher Stasheff. The main character is escaping a Shotgun Wedding and notes that the would-be-bride must not only have deliberately not taken a guaranteed birth-control pill (or taken the I Changed My Mind Pill) but must have been taking something that counteracted his pill as well.
• In the Adrian Mole books, Mr Lucas, Adrian's mother's lover, reveals that Rosie Mole is his child, and Mrs Mole protests that she was wearing a diaphragm (in between trying to deny the whole thing).
  Mr Mole: Adulteress!
  Mrs Mole: I'm not an adulteress!
  Mr Mole: If the cap fits, wear it.
  Mrs Mole: But I did wear it!
• Humans in The Color of Distance are expected to have gotten contraceptive shots as children; these shots can be reversed later to make them fertile when they're ready. Unfortunately, Juna's shot was reversed by a well-meaning alien healer, and Bruce's father filed a religious exemption, fearing the shot would permanently damage his son's fertility—after all as long as any women he slept with were sterile it wouldn't matter, would it?
• As a means of poking fun at Moral Guardians, there's a Demotivational Poster mockup of the Virgin Mary captioned with "Abstinence: 99.999999% effective".
• 1632: Julie used her diaphragm... but since she'd run out of the spermicidal jelly you're supposed to put on them, she wound up pregnant anyway.
• In The Suicide Shop, it is mentioned that Mishima and Lucrèce Tuvache's third child Alan was conceived because they tested a condom with a hole in it that was meant for customers who intended to commit suicide by contracting a venereal disease.
• Implied to happen often enough in Brave New World, despite contraceptives being readily available, and fertile women drilled on how to take them until it's as automatic as breathing, to justify the existence of Abortion Centres. (That said, in a world where sex is a regular task but parenthood is obscenity, the abortion centres are basically luxury spas.) More specifically, this happened to Linda. Unfortunately, by the time she realized she was pregnant, she was trapped in the Savage Reservation and unable to get back to society, forcing her to carry to term and give birth to John, humiliating her enough that she spent most of her time drunk and, years later, more or less overdosed on soma once Bernard helped her and John get back to 'civilized' society.
• Kris Longknife:
  • In Furious and Defender, Kris reestablishes contact with a Lost Colony of humans on the other side of the galaxy, which includes her long-lost great-grandmother (who had been a rear admiral fighting in the Iteeche War at the time). It turns out Great-Grandma was pregnant when she was lost (and therefore Kris has an additional batch of cousins after the intervening decades), despite contraceptive implants being standard gear for military women in The 'Verse. Grandma comments to her then-husband Ray Longknife, "The implants are 99% effective, but you were 100% effective."
  • Kris herself later has a Surprise Pregnancy in Unrelenting because her own implant (along with those of about 70 other women in her command) was sabotaged by a supply NCO who disagreed with Kris's decision to relax fraternization regulations.
• Queen of Zazzau: Princess Amina starts a love affair with her bodyguard's brother Suleyman and tries to use the rhythm method to avoid pregnancy, but becomes pregnant anyway within a couple of years (shortly before agreeing to marry him). Then he's murdered by Nupe soldiers, and the shock causes her to miscarry.
• In Timeline-191 when Flora Blackford reveals that she's pregnant, her husband's approximate reaction is to say, "Well, so much for prophylactics," and then he says, "This is wonderful!"
• Alanna the Lioness went on Fantasy Contraception starting at twelve - wearing a charm around her neck that prevents pregnancy. After getting married she took it off for long enough to have three children, then resumed wearing it again. In the foreword of Tortall: A Spy's Guide Alanna, in her late forties by then and with menopause approaching, mentions having killed a mage who burned her body - as her husband George noticed afterwards - and a few months later realizes that in the fight that mage had damaged her anti-pregnancy charm. She takes to wearing it as an earring purely because George finds that a little annoying and they both prepare to raise a fourth child. George had 'jested' about wanting another and Alanna knows that often his jokes cover truth, and she's surprised but doesn't mind herself, since the midwife swears that this time it's not twins.

Live-Action TV

• When All My Children's An Li tries to pull The Baby Trap on her husband Brian (their Citizenship Marriage is ending because she's gotten her green card), both he and their mutual friend Terrence are suspicious, with Brian outright quoting this trope. And indeed, she's lying.
• The British soap Eastenders between Martin and Sonya. Result: Rebecca.
• Friends
  • In one episode, Ross gets Rachel pregnant and they provide the page quotes at the top. They were both drinking the night of conception, and Monica later claims they used a "five-year-old" condom, making it definitely not a case of "perfect use."
  • Ross tells Joey about this issue, and he tries to do some quick math about how many girls he's slept with, given 97% effectiveness each time... panic attack! And then he pulls a huge roll of condoms out of his pocket to check.
• General Hospital
  • The soap opera ran a 2006 storyline based on this trope—in this case, the characters really did use condoms, manufactured by a company owned by the featured Quartermaine family. Unfortunately, the condoms were defective, leading to several unexpected pregnancies.
  • In an effort to have a child that would save her life, Claudia Zacchara poked holes through condoms so that Sonny would believe they worked while she knew they didn't. The result? She is now pregnant.
• The trope name is quoted verbatim by CASUAL+Y character Jude Kocarnik on getting pregnant by on-off love interest Matt Hawley. Unusually, she proceeds to have an abortion and declare she'll go on the pill.
• Step by Step. "The only surefire way is abstinence... and we can never seem to manage that."
• Degrassi: The Next Generation:
  • Liberty mentions them using a "king-size" condom that slipped off and led to a pregnancy storyline, suggesting that JT is of average/normal size, and that those who tease him are exaggerating or heard the details incorrectly and believe him to be small. JT himself seems to believe it as well, resulting in a lot of Compensating for Something.
  • Snake and Spike were "taking precautions" while they dated and Spike still ended up pregnant (her second unplanned pregnancy to boot). In this one, there was no explanation beyond "well, birth control isn't 100% effective."
  • In the Degrassi High TV movie School's Out... leading to the famous "fucking Tessa" line. Earlier in the movie, Tessa has an abortion because the condoms didn't work.
• Frasier: Roz had one of the funnier reactions to finding herself in this predicament:
  Roz: The best birth control in the world's only effective 99 times out of 100... I can't beat those odds!
• Scrubs
  • Subverted when JD's new girlfriend gets pregnant without any actual penetration, which they avoided because they didn't have any condoms.
  • Overplayed for laughs in another situation with Elliot wanting to roleplay that they were trying to get a baby. Unfortunately for her, her boyfriend isn't into the idea at all and uses three condoms Played for Laughs. In reality, using multiple condoms actually reduces the safety!
  • Taken to the logical extreme with Dr. Cox. He managed to get Jordan pregnant with their second child even though he'd had a vasectomy. Twice. (Done once, then undone, then done again). This resulted in some Cool and Unusual Punishment for the doctor that had performed them.
• An episode of Earth 2 featured a young couple believing they were expecting despite using some technological birth control method.
• Lost: Aaron is conceived despite Claire being on the pill, leading the father to accuse her of getting pregnant on purpose even though he was the one that convinced her to keep the baby in the first place.
• Do condoms in One Tree Hill have any use AT ALL? (Hint: Every female character except the infertile one would say no.)
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had a futuristic equivalent, where Kasidy Yates' conception was blamed on Sisko "forgetting to get his injection", though technically they both forgot despite the doctor reminding Sisko about it. It leads to some Fridge Logic that there wouldn't be a more sure-fire reliable method of birth control in the 24th Century...
• Married... with Children:
  • This trope led to the births of both Bud and Kelly. No surprise in Kelly's case, as Al's lack of intelligence and hygiene led to him using the same condom several times.
  • In one episode, It's credited with letting Al and Peg buy their house from the resulting lawsuit.
• On Maude, in the episode "Maude's Dilemma", it was revealed that Maude had gotten pregnant by Walter despite being 47 and on birth control. She made the decision to have an abortion, primarily due to her age. The plot thread was revolutionary for not taking a negative view of abortion, given it took place two months before the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion nationwide in the Roe v. Wade decision.
• On Boy Meets World, Topanga was Mistaken for Pregnant in one episode because she was gaining weight (a case of Real Life Writes the Plot because the actress became a case of Hollywood Pudgy that the writers turned into a pregnancy scare for laughs). Cory confirmed to Shawn that they used a condom, and she was on the pill, and other measures were also taken. After a moment's thought he says, "I'm not even sure we HAD sex!"
• Hilariously used in a season 3 episode of Queer as Folk (US), in which Hunter, a teenage former prostitute, has sex with a former police officer to get his DNA and prove that he killed another prostitute.
  Michael: You fucked a murderer?!
  Hunter: What's the big deal? I used a condom!
  Brian: Well, I see your safe sex lecture paid off.
• The statistic is quoted by Gene Hunt in Life On Mars when Sam Tyler snaps that 5% of the people in jail are innocent and he retorts that that's a better success rate than most rubber johnnies.
• According to Everybody Hates Chris, this was how Chris was conceived in an episode due to Julius buying a condom from his friend Risky, who apparently has a history of selling defective items.
• Lois got pregnant while she and Hal were using a condom in Malcolm in the Middle. They've also had a kid while she was on the pill and two while "giving abstinence a shot".
• In The Secret Life of the American Teenager, Adrian switching Birth Control pills and Ben's condom breaking lead to the conception of their daughter Mercy.
• Hannah from Girls has an STD scare. "But what about the stuff that gets up around the sides of condoms? What about that stuff?"
• My Name Is Earl
  • Dodge's birth is the result of failed birth control. Joy keeps changing her story throughout the series: one episode she says it's because of a broken condom, another she says it's because she hadn't quite gotten the hang of using her diaphragm properly, yet another says it's because she didn't use any protection at all. She was a bit hazy about the details because she was drunk when it happened, and also because she's afraid of the father. She thinks the father of her child is Li'l Chubby because he was wearing a skeleton costume at a Halloween party, as was the man she slept with that night... who turns out to be Earl.
  • In another episode, Earl (then about 12-14 years old) had a crush on his babysitter and then found out she had a boyfriend. While the babysitter and the boyfriend had sex on the couch, Earl reached into the boyfriend's discarded pants to steal money... and then found a condom and poked several holes in it. The babysitter became pregnant, had a Shotgun Wedding to her boyfriend, and gave birth right at the wedding reception. Surprisingly, they were still together some 20-odd years later, and Earl helped their Manchild son grow up. Or rather, Randy did.
  • An unusual version occurred on "Faked My Own Death," where Dirk uses ersatz prophylactics in the form of shower caps provided by the motel. It works about as well as any moderately-intelligent person would expect.
    Natalie: Hey Dirk. Still getting your mail. It's from the clinic: Somebody got themselves an STD.
    Dirk: I can deal with that.
    Natalie: Turn the page.
    Dirk: Aww crap... Damn shower caps.
• A rare justified use on Peep Show, where Sophie gets pregnant after having sex with Mark. Turns out, that particular condom had been in Mark's wallet so long it'd actually expired.
• Catastrophe: Subverted. According to Sharon, they had sex around twenty-five times, while only using a condom maybe twice. Sharon chides Rob for thinking this wouldn't happen.
• Supernatural. In "The Slice Girls", Dean insists that he used a condom when it's revealed that his one-night stand is a monster with a now rapidly aging child. "Accidents happen!" However as he was deliberately selected for a Conceive and Kill, the condoms were likely sabotaged.
• In the Brazilian soap opera ''Um Anjo Caiu do Céu", an angel named Rafael has sex with three girls, and all of them became pregnant as a result. When he complains that he used condoms, his superiors berate him for forgetting angel sperm is too powerful for them.
• Being Human (UK): In series three Nina discovers she's pregnant after she and George had sex while in their werewolf forms. When George finds out he mentions that she's on birth control and Nina bitterly replies that apparently the pill doesn't work on werewolves.
• A French Village: Kurt expresses surprise when Lucienne gets pregnant because he says they'd been so careful about things.
• Justified in an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit where a Smug Snake lawyer intentionally pokes holes in condoms so that they'll "break" in order to impregnate as many women as possible. Unfortunately, while slimy, it's not illegal at that point in time^note by today's laws, it could be considered a form of rape in some jurisdictions, but those laws were years away at the time the episode is set so there's nothing the detectives can do about it.
• A "Scenes We'd Like To See" joke on Mock the Week references the dodgy-looking brand of condoms.
  Athena Kugblenu: (visibly pregnant) Poundland condoms. You Get What You Pay For, yeah?
• The Pact: Jack protested that he and Tamsin used protection after she tells him she's pregnant. She just replies that this doesn't always work.

Theater

• If/Then: When Liz tells Josh that she's pregnant, he's shocked because they were very safe. She replies that using New York Transit condoms may not have been as safe.
• Next to Normal features a flashback scene where Diana and Dan discuss her unplanned pregnancy. Dan (who's implied to have just proposed) suggests that it's a sign they're meant to be together. Diana sardonically replies that it could just be a sign to buy better condoms.

Video Games

• There is a mod for The Sims 4 called Wicked Whims which adds explicit sex to the game (rather than the base game's PG-13 version). It also tries to create a fairly realistic pregnancy system and actually handles this trope fairly well: All types of birth control have a very small chance of failing, but since this mod also simulates the menstrual cycle with a Sims pregnancy chance going up and down across the duration this doesn't actually mean a Sims is guaranteed to get pregnant if something does go wrong.

Visual Novels

• In Being A ΔΙΚ, Burgmeister & Royce bicycle Arieth discovers that she is pregnant at the end of Episode 8, despite being on birth control. This is, however, explained in Episode 9: Arieth had been mooching birth control pills off of her "boyfriend" Dawe, who had been using them for muscle growth; however, his supplier, Quinn, had been selling him fake sugar pills due to her financial problems.

Web Animation

• Etra chan saw it!: This story has Akane deliberately poking a hole in Akamatsu's condom so she could get pregnant with his baby in an attempt to get his family's fortune, though she doesn't know that he was actually engaged to Yuri.

Web Comics

• In the Bobbinsverse, Shelley and Tim conceive through carelessness; Shelley gets to find out when the fact is noticed by her sister, who as the Queen of Hell, presumably has supernatural senses. (She subsequently decides to keep the baby because her clock is ticking.)
• Ctrl+Alt+Del: Used straight. Of course, we all know how that turned out.
• In Doc Rat, Daniella got pregnant shortly after she and Ben got married. Even though she was on the Pill.
• In Kevin & Kell Lindesfarne and Fenton are surprised to find out they're expecting (with Turvy) since they've been using protection. Then they remembered something: Lindesfarne's a hedgehog. A puncture was bound to happen sooner or later. The look on Lindesfarne's face when she realizes that makes the scene.
  • Averted with Leona and Carl in regard to the conception of their first child Savanna. While Lindesfarne said in her Fourth-Wall Mail Slot that it was unexpected, there's no evidence that they were trying not to. Being in lockdown immediately after their honeymoon, they pretty much treated it as an extended honeymoon.
• The Law of Purple: Lette's mother was in her mid-forties and using two kinds of birth control when she became pregnant with Lette. This is why Lette is about the same age as her nephew.
• PvP: Jade's pregnancy scare.
• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal uses it here, particularly in the bonus.
• In Shortpacked!, Amber finds out she's pregnant with Mike's child. And is confused since she's been taking her birth control pills faithfully. Turns out Robin thought they were mints and had been sneaking them and replacing them with actual mints. Best not to think too much on the logic of that scenario.
• Something*Positive:
  • It seems everybody owes their life to a broken condom. There's at least Davan and them, Rory...
  • It's all thanks to the Condom Kitty
• 9 to 9, Wolf's parents claim they were product-testing a new birth control pill when he was conceived.

Web Original

• While Survival of the Fittest has its fair share of pregnant characters, only one actually invokes this trope. Elsie Darroch was shocked to discover she was pregnant after having had sex with her boyfriend Matt Vreeland because they had used a condom, both of them unaware that it had broken. When she brought it up to Matt, he had the cliché response of denying it, calling her a whore, and breaking up with her. She's also a rare "pregnant" character in that she's the only one so far that's been abducted early in the pregnancy before they've started "showing".
• The Max Gilardi cartoon Jerry seems to hint at this; the main character used a condom during a one-night stand with a Latino woman, and some time later, she returns to his house with their infant son.

Web Video

• Smosh: Invoked in Mimes Are The WORST!, which has one of the segments have the Mime and his girlfriend look at a pregnancy test (which says PREGGERS). The girlfriend then angrily asks him what was supposed to be a mime condom, who the Mime who could only respond with a cheeky grin.

Western Animation

• Family Guy once mentioned that Chris was the result of an unplanned pregnancy due to a condom breaking. The lawsuit against the manufacturer gave them money to buy a house. Then again, this is Family Guy. Just to top it off, the broken condom is in Chris's baby book.
  "Meg, did anyone tell you that if you take antibiotics it means the pill doesn't work? Cause nobody told me!"
• Parodied in Human Resources (2022). Maury gets pregnant after having sex with Connie, despite both of them cheering "No baby, no baby, no baby" during climax (which is how Hormone Monsters prevent getting pregnant). Maury wonders if perhaps he didn't mean it enough when he said it.
• In King of the Hill, Cotton got Didi pregnant and said he had used four layers of protection and his men still got through. This is why you should only use one condom.
• Played for laughs in a SpongeBob sketch in Robot Chicken, where he gets Sandy pregnant offscreen.
  SpongeBob: But HOW can you be pregnant!? You said you had a sponge in your- Oh, you meant me.
• F is for Family: Season 2 ends with a shot of Smokey poking holes in random condoms before he refills the dispensers just for laughs, which directly results in Sue getting pregnant since she and Frank had been using that condom brand while he was working for Smokey. In seasons 3 and 4, there are several scenes showing a large increase in pregnancies in Smokey's neighborhood as well.
  Smokey: *answering the phone* Champagne Chariot is not responsible for broken condoms, anyone getting f***ed with a bowling alley rubber deserves to get pregnant!

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