History Main / FakePregnancy

* ''Film/RevengeOfTheBridesmaids'': GoldDigger Caitlyn lies to everyone except her mother that she’s pregnant with Tony’s baby from their one-night stand so he’ll marry her.

* "[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2172417/1/False-Smiles False Smiles]]" features a variation of this where even the mother didn't know she was lying; Faith has a late period and assumes that she is pregnant after her one-night stand with Xander, but the reader later learns that Whistler faked the later pregnancy test so that Faith and Xander would bond enough to avoid Faith making her crucial mistakes such as staking the deputy mayor.

* ''Film/FatalAttraction'': A [[AmbiguousSituation possible interpretation]] of Alex's claim to pregnancy, as she never actually provides any objective evidence of it. Her StalkerWithACrush obsession with the alleged babydaddy gives her ample reason for such a ruse as well.
* In the movie version of the play ''I am a Camera'', Sally Bowles plans to abort the baby but Chris offers to marry her despite not being the Father, however after Chris gives her the money, Sally changes her mind but the next realises she miscalculated her dates so was never pregnant to begin with.

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* In ''Theatre/{{BloodBrothers}}'', Mrs Lyons fakes a pregnancy so it's believable that the child she's taking from Mrs Johnstone is hers. She does this since her husband and her are having trouble conceiving but he won't adopt.

* ''WebAnimation/GossipCity'':
** As part of her act, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc3NJYyhulU Kaori]] pretended to be 5 months pregnant. She tried to order wine but she is stopped by Hiroshi and then she tried to play it off as a joke.
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHVcKvyfEMM Kaori]] pretended to be pregnant with Shota's baby after he cheated on Sanae with her. When Tomiko was about to hit her, she begged her not to because she's pregnant, but Tomiko knows that she's not pregnant.

* In ''Film/TheRoom'', Lisa tells Johnny she's pregnant and one scene later, confesses she made it up "to make things interesting". Like many things in this movie, this subplot is [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse never mentioned again]].

[[folder:Real Life]]
* Positive pregnancy tests are sold on eBay and Craigslist -- an easy way for pregnant women to make money, and an easy way for a not-pregnant person to fool someone. For a while, at least.
* After the death of the young Earl of Gloucester at Bannockburn, his widow claimed to be pregnant with his posthumous child... [[LongestPregnancyEver and continued to claim this for over two years]].
* A horrific example can be found in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Bobbie_Jo_Stinnett Lisa Montgomery]], who -- in an effort to prove that she was indeed pregnant after falsely claiming to be several times before[[note]]she had undergone a tubal ligation, which prevented her from getting pregnant again[[/note]] -- [[ImperiledInPregnancy murdered eight-month-pregnant Bobbie Jo Stinnett]], cut the baby out of Stinnett's womb, and passed the baby off as her own until she was arrested the next day. (The baby was returned to her father.) For her crimes, Montgomery was sentenced to death and was executed on January 13, 2021.
* In February 2019, California rapper Lil Xan announced that he and his fiancée Annie Smith were expecting a child. Two months later, Smith reported that she had miscarried. In [[https://people.com/music/lil-xan-questions-annie-smith-faked-pregnancy-miscarriage/ an interview]] several weeks later, Xan admitted that he was suspicious of Smith after several of Xan's social media followers noted that the ultrasound photos Xan had received from Smith [[SpottingTheThread looked identical to photos which could be found on Google Images]]. However, the claim has not yet been confirmed.
* Some contemporaries of the period believed UsefulNotes/MaryTudor had done this during her second 'pregnancy' to try to coax her husband Philip of Spain to come back to England, and some may have even thought her first 'pregnancy' was faked to keep him from leaving England. Mary, for her part, seemed to genuinely believe her pregnancies were real, up to the point they were proven otherwise, and it's likely she suffered pseudocyesis, or false pregnancies, tricking ''herself'' into thinking she was pregnant due to her desire to be so, and mistaking symptoms of other ailments as pregnancy symptoms.
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* ''LightNovel/NyarukoCrawlingWithLove'': PlayedForLaughs in Episode 7 of the first TV series; Nyarko claims that she's pregnant with Mahiro's child ''the very next morning'', and [[FunnyBackgroundEvent can even be seen doing Lamaze breathing exercises in the background]] (note that they haven't even had sex to begin with, she's lying about that too). To Mahiro's annoyance, everyone believes it, including his level-headed friend Yoichi and his own mother, though in her case it might have just been IWantGrandkids. When Hasta believes it and runs off crying, Mahiro quietly mutters "Well, maybe it's okay for ''him'' to believe it..."