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Well, that's unexpected...
When a giant cake (actually a cake shell) has a person (usually a bachelor party stripper) hidden inside, so he or she can jump out of it for dramatic effect.
Girls have been jumping out of cakes since Evelyn Nesbit did it for millionaire playboy Stanford White in The Gay Nineties, but the practice of enclosing a living creature inside a cake or pie shell goes back to medieval days. It's the origin of the nursery rhyme "Sing a song of sixpence", where live blackbirds are put in a pie shell for a king's feast.
Mostly Played for Laughs, especially if the cake is at an unexpected (and inappropriate) place (like a child's birthday party) or the stripper inside is replaced with someone else (a cop, an Abhorrent Admirer who crashed the party to get her object of desire, an angry fiancee or wife who suspects that her husband will have too good of a time at his buddy's bachelor party, a Dirty Old Woman who used to be an adult entertainer when she was young and is still entertaining in her autumn years, a cross-dressing Camp Gay man who decided to come out of the cake — and the closet — all in one night, or a heterosexual man who was dressed in drag and put in the cake as a cruel joke).
Sometimes played for drama (or really dark comedy) if the man of the hour is Too Dumb to Live and thinks the novelty cake is a real one (and cuts it, either injuring or killing the girl inside), if a Mafia hitman is inside the cake and shoots everyone at the party (though it can be softened up to being funny if the hitman is dressed in outrageous and obvious drag), or if the stripper dies of suffocation inside the cake and no one realizes this until it's too late.
Examples:
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Advertising
- There was a phone commercial on how an old guy ended up delivering a girl-in-cake to a kid's birthday party. The point of the commercial was that it could have been prevented if his bosses could reach him, but he has no phone.
Anime and Manga
Comic Books
- In "Dalton City", a Lucky Luke story, a saloon dancer is concealed inside a giant cake, but the homemade pastry is so tough that, by the time she manages to get out of it, the party, the fight and pretty much the story are over.
- Tough enough to withstand gunfire, actually. Averell Dalton is that bad of a cook.
- The book cover shows Luke himself burst out of a cake, surprising the Dalton. It's also in the opening of one Animated Adaptation.
- In the Batman comic, one mob boss was killed by The Tallyman this way.
- In Secret Six, the rest of the Six hire a stripper dressed as Scandal Savage's dead girlfriend Knockout to hide in a cake and give her a lapdance on her birthday to cheer her up, but Scandal is too drunk to really realize what's going on (plus Knockout seems to possess the stripper for a moment to tell her to be happy). However, later Scandal meets Liana (the stripper) in a supermarket and they start dating.
- One wordless MAD strip had a gang boss hearing the noise of someone within his cake and machine-gunning it, visualizing a gunman hiding within a la Some Like It Hot. The second panel shows him blushing as they carry the stripper off in a stretcher.
- A Don Martin comic had a lab-coated scientist who built an automatic cake machine. Its robot arms pick up the various ingredients (milk, eggs, flour)— then grab the scientist. After the finished cake emerges from the machine, the confused scientist jumps out (or is bounced out) in stripper wear.
- One of the final issues of Excalibur has a supervillain hiding inside of the cake at a bachelor party (after replacing the stripper inside and leaving her bound and gagged in a closet) so he can assassinate the unsuspecting partygoers.
- Scrooge McDuck once went to visit one of his hotels when the manager mentioned a convention. Unfortunately, it was a Convention of Crime organized by the Beagle Boys and other criminals. They ordered a cake and Scrooge was told someone would come out of it. Scrooge ordered whoever was in the cake to show up and he found Madam Mim. When she asked about the outlaws she was supposed to present herself to, Scrooge told her they were all arrested. Since she had already been paid, she left without caring. Scrooge and the hotel manager then got cop costumes and jumped out of the cake, scaring the bad guys.
- A classic Wonder Woman story has the princess going home for "Diana's Day" at the winter equinox, with crazy pranks, dressing up, a big feast and lots of gift-giving. Some of the Amazon maidens dress in deer costumes while others, playing huntresses, capture and (of course) tie them up. At the grand finale the captured doe-girls are put in a huge pie shell and "baked" along with another girl who plays a roasted "dancing chicken".
Film
Literature
- In Night Watch, "Homicidal" Lord Winder has his guards stab the giant cake at a party to check for assassins inside (several times at different levels, in case it's a dwarf or someone kneeling down). He does get assassinated later at that same party, but it has nothing to do with cake.
- In The Magic of Oz Dorothy and the Wizard get some monkeys to agree to be shrunk and put into a pie, to jump out and perform at Ozma's birthday party.
Live Action TV
Music
- Bob Martin sees one at the American Legion party in "Third War Rag":
Birthday cake about ten feet tall,
Girl jumped out all naked and all,
Ran around pledging allegiance to the flag.
Newspaper Comics
Stand Up Comedy
- Jim Gaffigan mentions this trope in his Beyond the Pale special, and how nobody ever does it with pie. "'I'm here!' 'Go take a shower.'"
Tabletop Games
- In Deadwood, the film "Jesse James: Man of Action" has scene 14: Best Friend's Wedding, with a role requiring you to leap out of a cake. (Every other role involves getting shot, since this is a bad Western.) An earlier scene, 8: Birthday Party, requires an actor leaping into a cake. (Again, supporting roles get shot.)
Video Games
- In New Super Mario Bros Wii, the Koopalings hide in a cake to kidnap Peach.
- In The Sims you can buy a giant cake to have a dancer come out and dance. Of course you have to keep children out of the room. The dancer can be of either gender (and you can hire both with two cakes) Rarely a gag dancer, like a person in a monkey suit, will come out instead.
- You can surprise guards in Hitman: Absolution by pulling this off.
Webcomics
Web Animation
- In Red vs. Blue, apparently Donut did this for Sarge's birthday while wearing his 'Officer Hotpants' uniform.
Simmons: Oh my God, that cake is huge! It's big enough to fit a person in it. Grif: Why does the cake smell like baby oil? Oh God, where's Donut?!
Western Animation
Real Life
- Reportedly, Czar Peter the Great of Russia amused his friends by hiding a naked woman in a cake at a party. Hardly out of character for that hard-partying monarch.
- Ivan the Terrible never did. Make of that what you will.
- Old joke. The woman gets in the cake before it is baked....
- Inverted in this tasteless joke: "What's the difference between a normal bachelor party and a bachelor party for a bulimic? At a bulimic's bachelor party, the cake jumps out of the girl."
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