History Main / EggMcGuffin

Sometimes, an episode of a series may involve a character discovering an egg of some sort which later hatches. Occasionally, the protagonists may save the egg from a terrible fate: either from being smashed or from [[EatenTheMacGuffin being something or someone's lunch]]. The egg eventually hatches and the character gains a PetBabyWildAnimal.

Usually the baby is a SmallAnnoyingCreature (though it may actually be a gargantuan creature with the mind of a small annoying one) [[{{ObliviousAdoption}} that thinks the first person (usually the discoverer) it sees is its "mama".]] Usually the baby may be far too much for the character to handle and they have to somehow find its real parents. A common variant has the egg hatching into something evil.

The trope can get even more unusual when the resulting offspring ends up taking on the characteristics of the hatcher, rather than who actually contributed to the genetics.

If the plot revolves around [[DisappearedDad the unknown origin]] or result of [[PregnancyTropes a different kind of egg]], it may be WhosYourDaddy.

A frequent cartoon scenario has a TalkingAnimal, or more often a SpeechImpairedAnimal, is trying to keep an egg warm without being interrupted or losing the egg in a offbeat chase scene. When the egg hatches, this often results in the (usually male) babysitter being referred to as Mommy.

Compare EggSitting, where the egg is just a stand-in for a baby.

[[GrammarNazi The misspelling of]] {{MacGuffin}} [[DontExplainTheJoke is intentional.]] It's a [[JustForPun Play]] [[IncrediblyLamePun on words]] for the ''Egg [=McMuffin=]'', a breakfast sandwich sold by [[BrandX a certain major chain of fast food restaurants]] [[TheTropeWithoutATitle that will not be named here]].
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!!Examples:

[[AC:{{Anime}} and {{Manga}}]]
* The egg that Skuld's angel Noble Scarlet hatches from in ''AhMyGoddess''.
* In the Diamond is Unbreakable story arc of ''[=~JoJo's Bizarre Adventure~=]'', Koichi's stand Echoes actually takes the form of an egg when he first gains it. Later, when he needs its power, it hatches into its first effective form.
* In the opening arc of ''YuYuHakusho'', Yusuke is given an egg that will feed off his spirit energy and hatch when he can come back to life. It is [[ChekhovsGun ignored completely]] when Yusuke is brought back to life for a different reason, and seems to be forgotten for another few arcs - until the Dark Tournament, when Koenma reveals that it's ''finally'' ready to hatch. Instead of the huge, horrible beast the characters feared, it hatches into a little blue penguin-y thing. Keiko dubs it "Puu" and it becomes her pet.
** Then in the next arc, [[spoiler:Yusuke dies and reincarnates as a demon. Cue Puu growing into a huge demonic version of itself.]]
* ''NatsumeYuujinchou'' - Natsume takes care of a small egg found in a nest - which hatches into a "dragon". At first, however, it appears to take the form of an extremely ''tiny'' version of whatever creature it sees first - namely natsume. It is possibly the [[http://media.photobucket.com/image/natsume%20yuujin%20chou%20tama-chan/looniekat/Natsume%20Yuujin-cho/snapshot20090128191748.jpg cutest thing to ever exist in anime.]]
* Played with in the ''{{Kirby}}'' anime, where the giant steel bird Dynablade lays an egg that later disappears, with fragments of its shell around. The other characters suspect that Kirby has eaten the egg, and [[MamaBear Dynablade ain't happy...]]
* In ''{{Digimon}},'' digi-eggs are the beginning ''and'' end of a Digimon's life cycle, with a Digimon reverting to egg form after "[[DeathIsCheap death]]." (There are exceptions to this, such as [[DigimonTamers season three]], which began the trend of new seasons being AU and thus had different rules, and [[spoiler: [[DigimonSavers season five]], in which rebirth was automatic again... making it all the more horrible when the villainous Kurata creates a means of corrupting a Digimon's data so it can't ever be reborn.]] Once, Seraphimon, a ''god/king'' to the [[DigimonFrontier season four]] version of the Digital World, had to be toted around by Bokomon, who had it strapped to his stomach and ''acted pregnant for well over ten episodes'' until Seraphimon hatched as Patamon. And then proceeds to refer to Bokomon as his "[[{{Pun}} papa-mon]]". No reference or mention is made of the fact that Bokomon could, if he wanted to, become TheManBehindTheMan ruling 1/3 of the digital world.
* In the ''{{Pokemon}}'' anime, Ash and his friends found and looked after an egg for a while which eventually hatched into a Togepi (that became the TeamPet for a while) This Togepi saw Misty as its mother. Perhaps slightly spoofed in that Ash was the one who caused the egg to hatch, and is pissed that the Togepi didn't therefore attach to him.
** Most of the cast members have received a Pokémon through this fashion. Ash received an egg with hatched into a Phanpy, May received one that hatched into an Eevee, Brock received one that hatched into a Happiny, and Dawn received one that hatched into a Cyndaquil.
** This happens in the games quite a lot as well.
** In the ''PokemonSpecial'' manga, Gold receives the Togepi egg, which at one point nearly gets eaten by a wild Gligar. Thankfully, it hatched into a KillerRabbit with a gambling problem and took the Gligar down itself.
* ''[=~Angel's Egg~=]''.
* Subverted in MaisonIkkoku, where Yotsuya gives an egg to Godai with no explanation before leaving on a trip. The entire episode revolves around the rest of the cast dealing with the fallout resulting, some helpful, others not so much. In the end [[spoiler: it is revealed Yotsuya had just found the egg that morning.]]
* Why hasn't SeireinoMoribito been mentioned yet? The entire series revolves around the bodyguard Balsa protecting the prince Chagum, who is carrying an egg from a water spirit within his body. Everybody wants this egg, for their own purposes, & this understandably leads to everyone wanting to kill the kid to get at it.

[[AC:{{Film}}]]
* ''IceAge III: Dawn of the Dinosaurs''.
* Subverted in ''{{Shrek}},'' when Princess Fiona accidentally causes a mama bird to expire, leaving a nest of orphan eggs. Her solution? [[spoiler:Fry them for breakfast]].
** [[FridgeBrilliance It probably wasn't all that accidental.]]
* The dream maker in ''[[BarneyAndFriends Barney's Great Adventure]]''.
* In the Eddie Murphy film version of ''DoctorDolittle'', the Maya character has an egg throughout the movie that she believes is a swan egg. At the end of the film, it hatches, and it turns out to be an alligator.
* [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel John Hurt's character]] is this to the crew of the [[{{Alien}} Nostromo]].

[[AC:{{Literature}}]]
* Baby Boomers will remember Oliver Butterworth's 1956 book ''The Enormous Egg'', in which a chicken lays an anomalously large egg from which hatches a triceratops. (If you don't remember the book, perhaps you remember the 1968 [[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0311075/ TV special]] based on it.)
* ''TheInheritanceCycle'' starts with Eragon finding a dragon egg and looking after it.
* Technically speaking, the same thing happens in ''[[{{Temeraire}} His Majesty's Dragon]]''. Laurence and Temeraire have another one to deal with two books later in ''The Black Powder War''.
* In DianaWynneJones' book ''[[{{Chrestomanci}} The Pinhoe Egg]]'', the main character finds a [[spoiler:gryphon]] egg in an attic, and cares for it until it grows up.
* In the DrSeuss book (and ''BobClampett'' cartoon adaptation) ''Horton Hatches the Egg'', an elephant takes on the task of hatching the egg of a irresponsible bird. The offspring ends up being a bird with the head of an elephant.
* The Daenerys subplot in ''[[{{ASongOfIceAndFire}} A Game of Thrones]]'' features three ''fossilized'' dragon eggs. [[spoiler: Once Dany figures out the meaning of her family's motto and its origins in Valyrian sorcery, it turns out her eggs are not so much dead as dormant -- which is why in the subsequent books she's called Daenerys the Unburnt, Mother of Dragons.]]
* In [[HarryPotterAndThePhilosophersStone Harry Potter and the Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone]], Hagrid gets ahold of a dragon egg, which hatches, producing a Norwegian Ridgeback which Hagrid dubs Norbert. Little Norbert, with his vicious, fire-breathing ways, quickly becomes a liability (especially as keeping dragons is illegal), and he is dispatched to Romania, much to Hagrid's distress.

[[AC:LiveActionTV]]
* In the ''StarTrekVoyager'' episode "Parturition" Neelix and Paris find a nest of repto-humanoids, one of which hatches, leading them to care for it until the mother returns.
* In the ''BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' episode "Bad Eggs", the students are given an egg to take care of to show them the responsibilities of parenthood. The eggs hatch into some kind of prehistoric mind-controlling parasites.
** Discovered when Xander cooks and tries to eat his.

[[AC:{{Mythology}}]]
* In Hawaiian mythology, [[PlayingWithFire Pele]] carries an egg from her original home in Tahiti to the Hawaiian archipelago. The egg hatches out her fully-formed sister [[NaiveEverygirl Hi'iaka]]

[[AC:{{Radio}}]]
* In one of Vivian Stanshall's ''Sir Henry at Rawlinson End'' radio sessions (but not the LP or film versions) one of the stone balls on a gateway turns out to be a diplodocus egg and hatches -- much to the annoyance of Sir Henry, who thinks ''he'' should be the only dinosaur at Rawlinson End.

[[AC:VideoGames]]
* The Time Egg from ''ChronoTrigger''. Or, more accurately, the Time Egg '''[[TitleDrop is]]''' the Chrono Trigger.
** In ''ChronoCross'', one of the first key items Serge can obtain in Another World is a Draconian Egg. Near the endgame, he can take it to an incubator in Fort Dragonia, where it will hatch into Draggy, a [[LethalJokeCharacter rainbow-colored infant dragon]].
* She may be the most hardboiled and BadAss of Nintendo's protagonists, but in the closing of ''Metroid II'' even Samus Aran couldn't bring herself to exterminate the last Metroid, a mere baby that mistook her for its mother. She instead turned it over to scientists, proving to be both a good thing and bad thing when the Space Pirates steal it in the beginning of ''SuperMetroid''.
* In a weird example, there's the Hummingbird Egg / Egg of Light from ''{{Mother 3}}'', which appears to be more of a Fabergé egg than a real one. Apparently it's so important that Wess would implement a trap that would drop thieves into a watery pit just to protect it. [[spoiler: The egg doesn't actually do anything in the story, [[MemoryGambit but it's plot-important because it has all of the original memories of everyone who came from Earth]]. Since life on the islands turned out to be a true utopia, it might have been made when there were doubts about how well the plan was going to work.]]
* [[YoshisIsland Yoshi]]'s main gimmick revolves around this.
* Kinda subverted in ''AnUntitledStory'', as ''your character'' is an egg that runs around and does stuff (until [[spoiler:you hatch it]]).
* The whole plot of ''{{Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg}}'' revolves around hatching an egg by feeding it fruit.
** And then there's the titular Giant Egg, [[spoiler:which ''does'' get hatched by [[BigBad Dark Raven]]]].
* The plot of ''SagaFrontier2'' revolves around a magical egg that causes grief for a family of adventurers and influences the history of the world.
* In ''SamAndMax Chariots of the Dogs'', the chicken was the McGuffin to answer an old mariachi's philosophical obsession. A rooster to be specific, who was left at the beginning of time where he promptly laid an egg. No one was more surprised about that than the rooster. This left forever unanswerable the question of "which came first, the chicken or the egg?"
* In ''SuperSmashBros Melee'' there was a mission where you had to keep an egg from breaking.
* The seven yoshi eggs in SuperMarioWorld.
* The [[spoiler:Sphere of Light]] in DragonQuestIII is actually the [[spoiler:Dragon Queen's final]] egg.
* DragonFable starts out with the hero recovering the Black Dragon Box, which contained a dragon egg. After several quests involving the egg and its fate, it eventually hatches into the dragon that you use for titan battles.
* The entire point of [[TheLegendOfZeldaLinksAwakening The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening]] is to collect the eight instruments and play them ''in front of a giant egg'' (belonging to the Wind Fish).

[[AC:WesternAnimation]]
* In the ''[[ChipAndDaleRescueRangers Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers]]'' episode "Three Men and a Booby", a booby bird loses an egg to an [[IncrediblyLamePun eggcentric]] collector. They retrieve the egg, but the booby is captured; part of the plot revolves around the guys caring for the egg (and later, the hatched booby) while Gadget builds a Trojan Easter basket...
* [[TheSimpsons Bart Simpson]] had to do this, after accidentally killing the mommy bird. Except that when they hatched they turned out to be lizards. [[NightmareFuel Apparently the female lizard eats the bird eggs and lays its own eggs in their place. The baby lizards then eat the bird.]]
* ''[[RockosModernLife Rocko's Modern Life]]'' had a relationship with a Cat and a Turtle which resulted in an egg that contained three children: One of them looking like Heifer (a Steer).
* A classic cartoon example has ''Daffy Duck'' looking after his own egg. It's a rare setting that has him married. His wife goes out and tells him rather sternly to be responsible for a change and don't let anything happen to Junior. After a while he gets bored and starts playing with the egg. He does a little stage magic and vanishes it. The third time he does that, the egg doesn't come back. Daffy gets hauled into divorce court for the egg's disappearance, and after playing the suspense for all it's worth, he manages to bring the egg back in perfect condition.
* An episode of ''{{The Wubbulous World of Dr Seuss}}'' involves a girl named Megan and her friend Horton the Elephant trying to retrieve the priceless Zubble-Wump egg which was stolen by the Grinch.
* An episode of ''The Super Mario World'' TV show "The Koopa Shuffle" uses this.
* ''AmericanDragonJakeLong'', "The Egg": Jake has to take care of a griffin egg ready to hatch -- and loses it in a factory full of candied eggs.
* In ''{{Gargoyles}}'', [[spoiler:Princess Katherine and her friends]] have to take care of ''thirty-six'' Gargoyle eggs because their parents are all either dead or unavailable. [[spoiler:They do a good job in protecting them, though.]]
* A ''FamilyGuy'' episode had Peter growing a beard, which a bird nested in. Due to the bird's endangered status, Peter had to keep the beard until the eggs hatched.

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[[AC:Mythology]]
* In Hawaiian mythology, Pele carries an egg from her original home in Tahiti to the Hawaiian archipelago. The egg hatches out her fully-formed sister [[NaiveEverygirl Hi'iaka]]

* In''{{Gargoyles}}'', [[spoiler:Princess Katherine and her friends]] have to take care of ''thirty-six'' Gargoyle eggs because their parents are all either dead or unavailable. [[spoiler:They do a good job in protecting them, though.]]

** [[ThirtyXanatosPileup Between Leder's plans, the Magypsies' ancient purpose, and everything the Pigmasks do,]] the plot becomes exceedingly intricate when you look back on it at the end. The game presents things to you in manageable chunks through the chapters, but TheReveal is still a lot of plot to handle [[spoiler: even if you played Earthbound.]]

* The Hummingbird's Egg/Egg of Light from {{MOTHER 3}}: Duster has to fight through ghosts, {{Demonic Spiders}} (The literal form), and 2 painful minibosses for it, and still doesn't manage to get ahold of it the first time. And when he does, he gets thrown into a lake/reservoir/moat and has to fight another boss for it. And then we're sent after it again 3 chapters later. [[spoiler:In the ending, it's revealed by Leder that it contains all of the memories of the people on the White Ship.]]

* In''{{Gargoyles}}'', [[spoiler:Princess Katherine and her friends]] have to take care of ''thirty-six'' Gargoyle eggs because [[their parents are all either dead or unavailable.]] They do a good job in protecting them, though.

* In [[HarryPotterAndThePhilosophersStone Harry Potter and the Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone]], Hagrid gets ahold of a dragon egg, which hatches, producing a Norwegian Ridgeback which Hagrid dubs Norbert. Little Norbert, with his vicious, fire-breathing ways, quickly becomes a liability (especially as keeping dragons is illegal), and he is dispatched to Romania.

* In a weird example, there's the Hummingbird Egg / Egg of Light from ''{{Mother 3}}'', which appears to be more of a Fabergé egg than a real one. Apparently it's so important that Wess would implement a trap that would drop thieves into a watery pit just to protect it. [[spoiler:However, aside from restoring Duster's lost memories later in the story, it doesn't really do anything at all.]]
** [[spoiler: Actually, said egg holds the memories of the people who arrived at the Nowhere Islands from Earth, the egg was a failsafe in case another atrocity were to occur so that they could find out what they can do to stop the tragedy that occurs.]]
** [[spoiler: So, kind of like a backup in case [[MrExposition Leder]] died or was otherwise unable to fulfill his duties I guess. And at the same time, he was a backup in case the egg failed.]]

* Brilliantly subverted in ''{{Shrek}},'' when Princess Fiona accidentally causes a mama bird to expire, leaving a nest of orphan eggs. Her solution? [[spoiler:Fry them for breakfast]].

** And then there's the titular Giant Egg, [[spoiler:which ''does'' get hatched by [[BigBad Dark Corvo]]]].

* ''TheInheritanceTrilogy'' starts with Eragon finding a dragon egg and looking after it.

* The plot of ''SagaFrontierII'' revolves around a magical egg that grants an exiled prince unparalleled power [[spoiler: and eventually turns him into a near-God of Death]] and causes grief for a family of adventurers.

* No mention of the Hummingbird's Egg/Egg of Light from {{MOTHER 3}}? Duster has to fight through ghosts, {{Demonic Spiders}} (The literal form), and 2 painful minibosses for it, and still doesn't manage to get ahold of it the first time. And when he does, he gets thrown into a lake/reservoir/moat and has to fight another boss for it. And then we're sent after it again 3 chapters later. [[spoiler:In the ending, it's revealed by Leder that it contains all of the memories of the people on the White Ship.]]