Egg-Laying Male

"He's a semi-aquatic, egg-laying mammal of action..."

— Perry's theme song in Phineas and Ferb

It is a well known fact that females of many species lay eggs. In more humorous (or simply more creatively liberal) works, it is expected that any animal of that species will have the ability to lay eggs. This often occurs even if the animal in question has been established to be, or otherwise evidently is, a male. Some works will treat this as perfectly normal, while other, more self-aware ones may hang a lampshade on it, but it will generally not be dwelled too much upon.

This might sometimes be used as a simple way to get eggs involved in a plot, as their presence can lead to much humorous antics such as pranking or them being thrown. Other times it will be used as a relatively less disgusting version of a Bowel-Breaking Bricks gag.

A form of Animal Gender-Bender. Sister Trope to Lactating Male. Compare Mister Seahorse for when a biologically male character is revealed to somehow be pregnant, which can come in many forms, including mammalian. If a presumed-male animal is discovered to be female after laying an egg, that's Your Tomcat Is Pregnant. If a creature laying eggs is unrealistic even besides sex, it's Whale Egg.

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Examples:

Advertising

• In the Respect the Pouch game and webseries, the chicken/human hybrid Chuck the Clucker is able to lay eggs despite being male.
• Chicago-based Eagle Insurance had the infamous "Eagleman" commercial, where Eagleman lays an egg on top of a car.
• In an Aflac Dualvertisement with Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, the male Aflac duck lays a golden egg. Puss later asks where it came from, and the duck just shrugs.

Fan Works

• The JoJo's Bizarre Adventure doujin made by CLAMP (Yes, CLAMP), JoJo's Bizarre Married Life, involves Kakyoin laying a large egg in his sleep that hatches into his and Jotaro's son, Jota Kujo. This is never explained and quickly forgotten. If not for Jota being a main character for the rest of the doujin, this would pretty much be a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment.

Films — Animation

• Invoked on Chicken Run when Rocky gets thieving rats Nick and Fetcher to help by promising them all the eggs he'll lay... which, being a rooster, would be none. Eventually, they (or at least Nick) catch on.
  Nick: Right, just like the ones that rooster was gonna lay. Only roosters don't lay eggs, do they?
  Fetcher: Don't they?
  Nick: No, it's a lady thing, apparently. Ask your mum.
• In Kung Fu Panda 3, a male goose lays dozens of eggs in rapid succession when Kai yells at him, as a Bowel-Breaking Bricks gag.
• Open Season: Scared Silly: At one point, Deni and Serge (who are male ducks) get so startled they lay eggs. And so does Mr. Weenie the dog, somehow.
• Spies in Disguise actually makes this trope important to the plot. After the male Lance is transformed into a pigeon, he ends up laying an egg, much to his embarrassment. This leads to Walter having a "Eureka!" Moment; while Lance is male, he transformed into a biologically female pigeon, and knowing this allows Walter to make the final tweaks needed to make the antidote work.
• In Upin & Ipin: The Lone Gibbon Kris, after almost getting sucked into a portal through the basement wall with the main cast, Rembo the rooster lays an egg out of fear and flees the scene.

Jokes

• An old riddle/trick question involves asking "If a rooster lays an egg on a church roof, will it roll left or right?" The answer, of course, is "Roosters don't lay eggs."

Live-Action TV

• In an episode of Big Barn Farm, the drake sees a golf ball next to him and assumes it's an egg and he laid it. The other animals explain to him that male animals can't lay eggs.

Mythology & Religion

• In mythology and folklore, a male bird, usually a rooster, who lays an egg is the surrogate father for the monster known as the cockatrice, half-bird and half-serpent, who is an embodiment of unnatural evil.

Puppet Shows

• Sesame Street:
  • No one really lays an egg, but when Mr. Noodle pretends to be a duck, he pretends to lay an egg.
  • In an "Abby's Flying Fairy School" skit, when Gonnigan is turned into a chicken along with his classmates, he lays an egg.

Video Games

• AFK Arena: Both Subverted and Exploited. His fortune duck that lays golden eggs is male. Rowan knows this. His customers do not. The eggs are fake.
• In Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time, N. Brio transforms into a presumably male pterosaur... and proceeds to lay an egg.
• Cuphead: The boss Wally Warbles, despite being a male bird, spits out eggs as a main weapon.
• Dungeons of Dredmor: Male protagonists that are werediggles can still lay eggs.
• Heroes of the Storm: Murky is a male frog-like thing called a murloc. His main mechanic is the ability to place eggs on the battlefield that he will then respawn at if he dies, circumventing both the usual respawn timer and lowering the XP enemies earn from killing him. The game does acknowledge and mock both the fact that he somehow lays eggs and that he can spawn from his own eggs, but then again this is a game that's famous for its intro tutorial telling the game to 'not think too hard about it when asked why everyone was fighting, so it's not that out of keeping with the overall tone.
• The Evil Chicken of RuneScape is typically referred to as male, but lays eggs. However, in Dominion Tower battles, the Evil Chicken is referred to as female. Even Jagex isn't sure.
• A puzzle in Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse: The City That Dares Not Sleep involves getting a chicken to lay an egg. The chicken is male. Lampshade hung in that he points this out, but agrees to lay an egg for Sam anyway. He also lays an egg in Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space: What's New, Beelzebub?, to which Sam adds, "Don't ask me how."
  • Max Imp is supposed to 'skitter inside the sinus cavities of humans to lay his terrible eggs'.
• Super Mario Bros.: Despite being consistently referred to with male pronouns throughout the series, Yoshi is frequently depicted laying eggs as early as his first appearance, often using them as projectiles (especially in the Yoshi's Island sub-series). Some games even depict Yoshi's eggs hatching into 1-Ups or power-ups.
• While Yoshi's case generally isn't lampshaded in his own series, in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U (and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, where the conversation is re-used), Viridi can't help but wonder what the deal is and discusses it with Pit, who wonders why Viridi can't figure it out considering she's the Goddess of Nature. (Her response: "There's nothing natural about this guy!") Palutena concludes that all living things have both male and female elements, and Yoshi is no different. Snake and Otacon have a similar discussion in one of the codecs from Brawl and Ultimate, where Snake immediately assumes Yoshi is female from his egg-laying ability, only for Otacon to confirm that, according to Yoshi, he is male.
• Team Fortress 2 has the Chicken Kiev, a cosmetic item for the Heavy Weapons Guy class. When he dons this cosmetic, Heavy's head gets replaced by that of a robin. While in this form, he gains a few different voice lines, including many where he threatens his enemies with "laying eggs in [their] mouths".

Toys

• The Furby Boom can lay eggs regardless of what personality they're currently in, meaning that the male Rockin' and Jolly personalities can lay eggs. Averted in the ads, where whenever a Furby Boom is shown laying an egg, it's always in the female Hyper personality.

Web Animation

• In the Cartoon Network web series B. Happy, the main character is the Bluebird of Happiness, who is sent down to Earth in order to deliberate whether or not certain troubled individuals deserve happiness. In order to do this, he must lay the rather large "Egg of Justice". B. Happy does not particularly enjoy this aspect of his job.
• Pretty much exaggerated in Brawl of the Objects as Big Orange Chicken, despite being confirmed to be male, is shown not only laying a ton of eggs, but those eggs even hatch into chicks in the finale!
• In the third installment of Super-Hero-Bowl!, titled Super-Showdown Bowl!, Godzilla, upon being shrunk by Oscar, poops an egg. Before getting crushed by a Giant Foot of Stomping.

Western Animation

• Implied as well in Angry Birds Toons, or at least it's shown that the Bad Piggies believe this trope to be true. In Season 2 Episode 8, "The Miracle of Life", the pigs kidnaps Red and Chuck, two male birds, because they wanted the birds to lay an egg so they can eat it. While the bird duo doesn't lay an egg, they trick the pigs into thinking they did so by trying to reach an egg ornament up on the top shelf and then presenting said ornament to them.
• In Adventure Time, the Ice King's penguin minion Gunter is usually referred to as a male. In the episode "The Chamber of Frozen Blades", Gunter lays an egg, which later on hatches into a floating pink kitten. Finn points out that this must mean Gunter is female, prompting the Ice King to casually check his genitalia before shrugging it off. An explanation of this could be that the Ice King has many penguin minions, and it is sometimes implied he just simply refers to the nearest one as "Gunter". Another explanation is that at least one "Gunter" is later on revealed to be an Eldritch Abomination known as Orgalorg, which of course does not have to adhere to logical biology.
• In Ben 10: Alien Force this happens to Ben when Big Chill takes over to reproduct. Ben, of course, doesn't remember anything about giving birth to fourteen babies and clearly gets uncomfortable when Gwen, Kevin and Julie tells him.
• Big Mouth: The Gratitoad is heavily implied to be male (at least biologically), but lays eggs.
• Camp Lazlo: Subverted. The episode "Ed's Benedict" has Edward think he's laid an egg after he finds one in his bunk. The end of the episode reveals it's just a bird egg that Dave and Ping Pong put in his bunk to get back at him.
• Chowder: In "The Deadly Maze", Chowder and Mung's former apprentice Gumbo are trapped inside the titular maze, menaced by Jeffrey, a bird-headed humanoid creature. After Gumbo is caught in one of his own traps, Jeffrey lays an egg. . . which hatches into a creepy-looking CGI pig/goat/baby.
• Cow and Chicken:
  • Played with in a sequence where Super-Cow is blasting Red Guy with milk. Equally annoyed by the villain's antics, Chicken decides to join in by pelting him with feathers ripped from Chicken's own body. Of course the bird eventually runs out of feathers, to which Red Guy mocks Chicken for being unable to produce anything like milk with which to keep up the barrage. Cue two eggs smashing right into Red Guy's face followed by a cut to a very satisfied looking Chicken.
  • One episode has Red Guy tricking Chicken into thinking he's laid an egg. This leads to Chicken thinking he's a girl.
  Cow: Oh! Chicken! You have laid a egg!
  Chicken: Huh? [He notices the egg between his legs] AAAAAAH! But- I-I-I couldn't ever laid no egg! I'm a boy!
  Cow: Unless...
  Chicken: Unless...? Ahh! I'm a girl!
• Subverted in The Casagrandes episode "Bad Cluck". Sergio, the family's parrot, appears to have laid an egg, but it turns out to be the doing of Alberto the ghost chicken, who then makes eggs come out of Carlos's pants and everyone else's mouths.
• Courage the Cowardly Dog:
  • It is hilariously demonstrated in the episode The Duck Brothers where one of the alien duck brother triplets constantly lays eggs much to the intense chagrin of his other brother who asserts that shouldn't be possible due to being males and constantly demands he cut it out. At the end of the episode, all three brothers lay eggs much to the dissenting brother's displeasure.
    Duck Brother #1: I told you to stop doing that! Besides, we don't lay eggs! We're duck brothers!
    Duck Brother #2: Stop telling me what to do!
  • In "The Uncommon Cold", in order to cure Muriel's cold, Courage has to imitate a chicken and he, somehow, laid an egg, despite being a male dog.
• Fanboy and Chum Chum: In the episode "Chicken Pox", Kyle turns into a chicken due to his titular ailment and has to lay an egg to get back to normal. Justified, since it's all the result of rather strange wizardry.
• In Family Guy's Fairy Tale Episode, "Grimm Job", Stewie plays the role of the golden goose from "Jack and the Beanstalk", though that may be a case of Cross-Cast Role.
• The Fairly OddParents!:
  • In the episode "Talkin' Trash", a magical mishap causes Timmy's Dad to gain the lower half of an ostrich. While in this form, he displays a lot of ostrich-like behavior and at one point lays a "man egg".
  • The male fairy Cosmo spends a large chunk of the episode "Odd Pirates" shapeshifted into an ostrich. He lays a lot of eggs in this form, often when startled, but also as a weapon at one point. At the very end, while in his usual goldfish form/disguise, he inexplicably lays one final egg. Possibly Justified in that Cosmo is a magical being and can do a lot of strange stuff (and male fairies are canonically able to get pregnant).
• Futurama: The episode "The Bird-Bot of Ice-Catraz" has the cast dealing with an extreme explosion of the penguin population on Pluto due to a spillage of dark matter making them extra fertile. So fertile, that not only have the females been laying six eggs every fifteen minutes that hatch in less than twelve hours, but even the male penguins have started laying eggs.
• The Garfield Show:
  • In "Virtualodeon", there is a character in a children's show named Rob the Giant Chicken, a man disguised as a chicken who claims that he'll lay an egg unless the audience sings with him.
  • In "Planet of Poultry", aliens turn all the characters save for Garfield into chickens. At the end of episode when Garfield gets everyone back to normal, he tells the audience that Jon still lays eggs as a human, which is weird because male chickens don't lay eggs.
• In He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2002), Buzzoff and Stratos are searching for the spidery villain, Webstor, whom they know has eaten ambrosia that gives the consumer power, although it is not known what the side effects are. Eventually, they find spider eggs and are puzzled as to how the definitely male Webstor was able to lay them and decide the thought is too repellent to ponder too much and focus on simply finding him instead.
• Looney Tunes:
  • In "Golden Yeggs", a gold egg is laid at Porky's farm, and he asks who did it. The one who did it is a goose with a male voice, but since he doesn't want to end up dead like in the story of the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg, he pins it on Daffy Duck instead. Mobster Rocky reads about Daffy's alleged accomplishment in the newspaper and declares "We're going into the egg business!" After beating up Porky, Rocky and his henchmen kidnap Daffy and order him to lay a gold egg. Daffy tries to stall for time to plot an escape, although Rocky is smarter at each turn and blocks his escape attempts. In the end, after a time limit expires on when he expected to have laid the egg, Daffy is shot at ... and the shock somehow makes him actually lay a gold egg. At the cartoon’s end, Daffy tries to leave but is stopped at gunpoint. Rocky escorts the duck to a warehouse where hundreds if not thousands of empty egg cartons are waiting; “Fill ‘em up!” Rocky snaps at Daffy ... to which Daffy faints dead away. Never in the cartoon is it questioned whether male birds should be expected to lay eggs, let alone gold ones, though it is at least Lampshaded by Daffy looking between his own legs in confusion upon being accused of laying the first egg.
  • In the 2004 cartoon "Cock-a-Doodle-Duel", Foghorn Leghorn has competition from a genetically-engineered rooster whose attractiveness encourages all the hens to lay eggs. At one point Foghorn has a Stupid Sexy Flanders moment and lays an egg himself, which he immediately hides, saying "Nobody, I say, nobody must hear of this!"
  • Foghorn Leghorn was the victim of a cruel practical joke by the Barnyard Dawg, by being led to believe he actually laid an egg in "Mother Was a Rooster". (The Dawg had stolen an ostrich egg from a local wildlife hatchery and placed it underneath Foggy's belly as he slept.) Dawg gets as much amusement from Foggy declaring he's a mother as he does by viciously (and darkly) insulting the ostrich chick.
• Mickey Mouse (2013): Donald lays eggs multiple times.
  • In "Down the Hatch", Donald lays an egg that's much bigger than him, containing Mickey and Goofy at the end.
  • In "New Shoes", when Goofy winds up in Donald's body, he says that one of the advantages of being a duck is that he can make his own breakfast, which he demonstrates by laying an egg.
• Phineas and Ferb:
  • Perry's theme song calls him a "semi-aquatic, egg-laying mammal of action". Subverted in that he's never shown laying an egg, so it's likely that it's referring to how his species are monotremes rather than him personally.
  • The episode "Perry Lays an Egg" deals with Phineas and Ferb incubating a bird egg under the belief that it's an egg Perry laid, which notably does not cause them to deviate from their assumption that Perry is male.
• In "Foney Fables", a segment with the Goose that lays the Golden Eggs features the male goose instead laying masses of aluminum eggs, which he then donates to the war effort.
• A Robot Chicken sketch based on Sesame Street features Big Bird (a male bird) laying an egg, horrifying some children he talks to as a result.
• Squidbillies: In "Butt Trouble", Early and Rusty (who are male squids) lay eggs after they drink too much mercury.
• Space Chickens In Space: Chuck has a habit of laying eggs whenever he's scared (which is often).
• The Simpsons:
  • Discussed in the episode "The Milhouse of Sand and Fog", in which the Simpsons try to deliberately infect the neighborhood kids with Maggie's chicken pox. Ralph thinks he turned into a chicken and laid an egg (either because he soiled himself or just because he's a Cloudcuckoolander), apparently not realizing that unless he also turned female and aged up, that wouldn't be possible.
  • At the end of "Married to the Blob" , Milhouse (who's being visualized as a bird by a hallucinating Homer and Kumiko's father) lays an egg.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: Potty the Parrot is a possible example. It is unclear what gender Potty is as Patchy the Pirate says "his" when referring to Potty in "Friend or Foe", but Potty also lays eggs in "Christmas Who?" and "The Sponge Who Could Fly", and is even referred to with female pronouns in two books. However, Vincent Waller said in 2017 when asked about Potty's gender that "It is only a puppet, with no telltale signs of gender."
• Teen Titans Go!
  • In "Super Robin", Robin fuses himself with a robin bird to get super powers, which doesn't work, but it could somehow make him lay an egg. He cooks it.
  • In "Pyramid Scheme", Beast Boy does this while going into labor with the other Titans around him like he's a mother delivering a baby, making him learn An Aesop about "hard labor." He does it again in "Chickens in the Cradle" when he lays another egg, though this time his parenting style is Parental Neglect, letting the other Titans raise his son until he finds out the hard way his son's fallen in with some bad eggs, going Papa Wolf on them.
• The Tick: In one episode the kid Evil Genius Charles captures the Tick and turns him into a small, two-headed bird that can only speak "middle-school level French". The Tick lays an egg in this form before he's saved and turned back, and he remarks that it's still possible to "feel like a man" after having done so. His egg ends up getting broken to his initial horror, then he tastes its insides and discovers it's chocolate flavored.
• The Tom and Jerry cartoon "Flirty Birdy" has Tom Cat pose as a female eagle in order to wrangle Jerry Mouse away from a muscular male eagle. Jerry escapes the clutches of both, and sends Tom off on a honeymoon with his new husband, the eagle. The cartoon concludes with Tom sitting on a nestful of eggs. Tom almost pitches an egg at his "mate," but reconsiders, being unwilling to sacrifice one of his offspring for a petty spite. It is unclear which of them laid the eggs, but realistically, neither should have.
• Professor Bird Brain from T.U.F.F. Puppy has laid eggs for comedic effect in several episodes, despite being a male blue-bottomed booby bird. Keswick the extraterrestrial scientist was claimed to have laid eggs as well, though it could be his alien biology.
• An episode of Wissper has Allana and Lenny looking after an egg laid by Pablo when the penguins accidentally knock the egg and it rolls down the ice.
• Xiaolin Chronicles: In episode 19, "Chase Lays an Egg", Jack accidentally spills a bottle of some kind of strange orchid rum over Chase's food, which causes him to lay an egg in his reptile form.

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