History Main / NewChildLeftBehind

* As does Cotton Hill (though in his case the woman was Japanese) on ''WesternAnimation/KingOfTheHill''

* A ''StarTrek'' novel revealed Spock did this in the ''[[StarTrekTheOriginalSeries TOS]]'' episode All Our Yesterdays.

* A ''StarTrek'' novel revealed Spock did this in the ''{{[[StarTrekTheOriginalSeries TOS]]}}'' episode All Our Yesterdays.

* A ''StarTrek'' novel revealed Spock did this in the ''{{StarTrekTheOriginalSeries TOS}}'' episode All Our Yesterdays.

* A ''StarTrek'' novel revealed Spock did this in the ''Series/{{StarTrekTheOriginalSeries TOS}}'' episode All Our Yesterdays.

** ''SpeciesII'' plays this theme in the exact opposite way. A male alien goes around planting his seed in every woman that takes his fancy. They all die moments after being impregnated, by the alien baby that literally explodes out of their belly, leaving creepy Daddy to take care of them in his creepy barn.
*** The end of ''SpeciesII'' and start of ''SpeciesIII'' re-reverses the concept yet again, where the main character knocks up the sexy female alien, before dying in the climactic fight. [[BirthDeathJuxtaposition Though is seems like he kills her after doing her, the final shot of the movie shows her belly expanding to pregnancy-size.]] This is resolved in the sequel when the mother comes back to life and gives birth to a pure-breed alien baby, before being killed herself.

Sometimes the woman's existence is {{Retcon}}ned so that the main character can suddenly have a son, since of ''course'' a hero sires a male heir. In this case, see LukeYouAreMyFather. GlorifiedSpermDonor is another form this can take, and if the father dies it may overlap with HerHeartWillGoOn.

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* In ''Theatre/{{Tommy}}'', Captain Walker impregnated his wife Nora before shipping out to the War.

* In ''Theatre/TheWhosTommy'', Captain Walker impregnated his wife Nora before shipping out to the War.

* ''Film/{{Species}}'' is about a hot blonde human-looking alien looking trolling L.A. for a human mate to impregnate her. Several unsuitable candidates who never get to close the deal get killed along the way. Eventually she gets spermed by the science geek. She ''feels'' the conception taking place while still straddling the guy, and then [[DeathBySex kills the babydaddy]], too. Minutes later, she gives birth in a sewer.
** ''SpeciesII'' plays this theme in the exact opposite way. A male alien goes around planting his seed in every woman that takes his fancy. They all die moments after being impregnated, by the alien baby that litterally explodes out of their belly, leaving creepy Daddy to take care of them in his creepy barn.

* The origin of Peter Quill, the legendary Star-Lord, from ComicBook/GuardiansOfTheGalaxy is based on this trope. His father J'son accidentally crashed into Earth while fighting a war and was discovered by Earth born woman Meredith Quill. After some explanations are given, Meredith let's J'son stay in her house until he can completely repair his ship. During this period, they fall in love with each other. Then, one day after they consummated their relationship, J'son decided it was time to leave and continue his war. Meredith tried to get him to leave with her but J'son refused as he believed she was going to be safer on Earth. After he left, Meredith realized she was pregnant with J'son's child, Peter.

* Literature/JamesBond is supposed to have had a son by one of his many conquests (In the new books, not the originals).

This war movie trope has then been extended to other settings where the Hero has to leave to go [[HeroicSacrifice risk his life]] to save the world- or something else that's dangerous but necessary and suitably heroic. This often captures the emotional aspects of the trope but can lead to FridgeLogic, particularly the further away from the war movie setting you get, as you wonder why the father can't at least show up ''in between'' his adventures. It can be handled well, though, given enough [[JustifiedTrope justification]].

The protagonist has shore leave or something just before shipping out to the war zone, or maybe the war came unexpectedly and he got drafted without warning. He leaves to go off to war leaving behind a pregnant LoveInterest. Can be combined with AltarTheSpeed.

Sometimes the LoveInterest deliberately wanted to get pregnant (this is {{Lampshaded}}, and then averted, in ''Film/SinceYouWentAway''). This was a TruthInTelevision, and in many places still is. It represents the desire of a woman to have [[SomeoneToRememberHimBy something of her lover to keep]] in case the [[AnyoneCanDie worst]] happens to him. Of course, there is also some WishFulfillment for the man as well, since he gets to leave a mark on the world though he's going off into danger. A child means that part of him will live on if he dies.

* Inverted somewhat in the anime ''{{Bokurano}}'' when [[spoiler: Chizu Honda is found to be pregnant after she has gone off to save the word via giant mech. Her lover, who is also her teacher, ends up being the one left behind and alive. Not that the jerk deserved it.]]
* In ''FushigiYuugi'', Hotohori and Houki have been married for about a month, and Hotohori needs to go fight Nakago and his army. Meanwhile, Houki is pregnant with Hotohori's son Boushin. [[spoiler: Nakago kills Hotohori, so he never gets to meet his son while he's alive. As a ghost, however, he does.]]

* ''Comicbook/{{X-Men}}'': In the "Fling" story, Colossus was seduced by girls who had the expressed intent of getting pregnant, and he objected on the basis that he couldn't stay to be a father. They told him children were raised by the whole tribe and they really did want his babies because he was obviously good breeding stock. (OK, it wasn't quite that bad.) So the writers went out of their way to avoid the implication of the (young and idealistic) character acting without consideration for the consequences.

* Teased with ComicBook/TheFlash. The one-nighter clearly thought that the kid was Flash's--understandable, since the baby's eyes flashed with lightning. She died before she could tell Flash (and might not have for she respected his current marriage to somebody else). Then it turned it out was actually the Weather Wizard's. Awkward.

* In ''ElfQuest'' with that bit about "leaving a kid behind so in case I die, there will still be something of me left." Skot said this shortly before his death. Basically, to the Go-Backs, life was just doing what you could for as long as you could, and then having a kid who could keep going after you. It was described visually as a person walking through the snow, then collapsing, and another person carrying on from that point... a little depressing, but solid enough as a belief.

* {{Lampshaded}} and then averted in ''Film/SinceYouWentAway''.

* In ''SailorOfTheKing'' Captain Richard Saville and Able Seaman Andrew Brown are in for a shock and Lucinda Brown is going to have some explaining to do.

* In ''TheNightsDawnTrilogy'', notorious womanizer Joshua Calvert uses a business trip to a planet with self-imposed limits in technological and social progress to seduce and deflower the teenage daughter of his business partner. After he leaves the planet again, she finds out she's pregnant and he finds out he does not forget her as easily as his other affairs. Both are greatly chased around by the plot, so for the majority of the trilogy the trope applies. Fortunately for them said plot seems to wrap up quickly enough that they are reunited even before the pregnancy is immediately recognizable.

* In the third book of Lynn Flewelling's ''{{Nightrunner}}'' series, Seregil speculates that he may have done this to one or more women during his stay with the Dravnians in the previous book. In Dravnian culture it's considered good fortune (due to their isolation and presumably limited gene pool) if a woman gets pregnant by an outsider, and Seregil, who was slightly uncomfortable about it, only slept with them to comply with the tribe's bizarre etiquette and preserve needed diplomatic relations, but there's still a certain amount of ValuesDissonance bordering on WhatTheHellHero when considering his casual attitude about the whole thing after the fact, and his total lack of curiosity about whether or not he actually does have any half-Dravnian descendants running around.

* This is the entire plot of ''MammaMia''.

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* Inverted somewhat in the anime ''Bokurano'' when [[spoiler: Chizu Honda is found to be pregnant after she has gone off to save the word via giant mech. Her lover, who is also her teacher, ends up being the one left behind and alive. Not that the jerk deserved it.]]

* A variation on this happened in ''{{Myst}}: The Book of Atrus'': Atrus' mother [[DeathByChildbirth dies giving birth to him,]] and his father Gehn leaves for the ruins of D'Ni, cursing his mother Anna as he leaves, who ends up raising Atrus in his stead.

Examples:

* In that quasi-''Film/GroundhogDay'' movie, ''Premonition'', this happens.
* In ''Film/PiratesOfTheCaribbean: At World's End'', after the final battle and Will and Elizabeth's wedding, [[spoiler:the pair spend the day together and he gives her his heart before he sails away as captain of the Flying Dutchman. The movie's [[TheStinger Stinger]] reveals that, ten years later, he returns to find that he has a son]].

* Subverted in TakingLives. AngelinaJolie plays an FBI agent trailing a serial killer. The morning after sharing a night of passion with the only witness to any of the killer's attacks, she [[OhCrap discovers that her one-time lover was, in fact, the killer himself.]] He manages to evade the authorities yet again and Jolie is fired for getting poked by the man she was supposed to pinch. Cut to the final act where we see her some months later, with a very big belly. Psycho loverboy suddenly shows up in her isolated cabin, hoping to build a happy family with her and their lovechildren. After a brief struggle, the killer stabs her in the womb. [[spoiler:Only then is it revealed that her whole pregnancy was faked, because she knew he would come back to her if he thought she was carrying his child.]]

* ''OnePiece''. [[spoiler:Gold Roger got Portugas D. Rogue pregnant with Ace soon before he was captured. Rogue managed to stay pregnant for over a year as to make sure her child would actually be born.]]

* A different take on this appears in ''GunslingerGirl''. [[spoiler:Hilshire has a hospital preserve some eggs from his cyborg Triela, who due to her limited life span won't live long enough to have children. He leaves a letter with his girlfriend Roberta informing her of this before the Hilshire/Triela fratello leave on their last fatal mission. Roberta carries and gives birth to the child, eventually revealed to a girl named Speranza, though it's not certain if her father was Hilshire himself or an anonymous donor.]]

* ''SupermanReturns'' with [[spoiler:Supes and Lois' son]].

* In ''PiratesOfTheCaribbean: At World's End'', after the final battle and Will and Elizabeth's wedding, [[spoiler:the pair spend the day together and he gives her his heart before he sails away as captain of the Flying Dutchman. The movie's [[TheStinger Stinger]] reveals that, ten years later, he returns to find that he has a son]].

* In ''ASongOfIceAndFire'' Eddard Stark got his new wife Catelyn pregnant before riding off to fight in Robert's rebellion. When he returned she presented him with his son, and was rather less than pleased to discover that he'd [[HeroicBastard brought another one home with him.]]

* ''{{Baywatch}}'' episodes "{{Baywatch}} Down Under (parts 1 and 2)". One of the lifeguards discovers that an Australian woman he married and later separated from had a son without telling him. She withheld the information because she knew that if she had told him, he would have felt obligated to stay with her.
* Part of [[spoiler:John Casey's]] backstory in ''{{Chuck}}''.

* ''TheSimpsons'': Grandpa Simpson has a kid like this with a woman in England.
* As does Cotton Hill (though in his case the woman was Japanese) on ''KingOfTheHill''

* ''Literature/{{Revan}}'' (a sequel to KnightsOftheOldRepublic) has this happen to the titular character and Bastila before he heads off to Sith space, never to be seen again.

*** The end of ''SpeciesII''/ start of ''SpeciesIII'' re-reverses the concept yet again, where the main character knocks up the sexy female alien, before dying in the climactic fight. [[BirthDeathJuxtaposition Though is seems like he kills her after doing her, the final shot of the movie shows her belly expanding to pregnancy-size.]] This is resolved in the sequel when the mother comes back to life and gives birth to a pure-breed alien baby, before being killed herself.

* At least one of Comicbook/{{Wildcat}}'s kids is like this.

* At least one of [[DCComics Wildcat's]] kids is like this.
* Teased with the {{Flash}}. The one-nighter clearly thought that the kid was Flash's--understandable, since the baby's eyes flashed with lightning. She died before she could tell Flash (and might not have for she respected his current marriage to somebody else). Then it turned it out was actually the Weather Wizard's. Awkward.

* JamesBond is supposed to have had a son by one of his many conquests (In the new books, not the originals).

Sometimes it's an unimportant minor character that gets pregnant, and it doesn't have any long-term repercussions whatsoever (for the story and the father that is). He probably doesn't even know she got pregnant; because she's just so considerate she decides not to tell him. In that case, his blissful ignorance neatly evades any and all of the inconvenient MoralDissonance of being a absentee parent.

* In the third book of Lynn Flewelling's ''{{Nightrunner}}'' series, Seregil speculates that he may have done this to one or more women during his stay with the Dravnians in the previous book. In Dravnian culture it's considered good fortune (due to their isolation and presumably limited gene pool) if a woman gets pregnant by an outsider, and Seregil, who was slightly uncomfortable about it, only slept with them to comply with the tribe's bizarre etiquette and preserve needed diplomatic relations, but there's still a certain amount of ValuesDissonance bordering on WhatTheHellHero when considering his casual attitude about the whole thing after the fact, and his total lack of curiosity about whether he actually does have any half-Dravnian descendants running around.

* In ''Series/StargateSG1'', "A Hundred Days": This may have happened with Jack O'Niell's fiancée when he is GoingNative while stranded. It's never proven, but implied from the way she touches her belly when she leaves.
** On the other hand, they still have contact with those people after they leave, so presumably if she were pregnant a plot point about it would come up. Also, it seems a lot like the day he leaves is right after the day he decides to marry her, and she had been talking about wanting a baby, so it could just be her hoping that she is pregnant.

* [[DefiedTrope Defied]] in ''HarryPotterAndTheDeathlyHallows'', after Lupin and Tonks get married and Tonks gets pregnant, Lupin learns that Dumbledore sent Harry on a secret mission and offers to go with him to assist him in whatever he can, Harry refuses and tells him that his wife and son are more important and leaving them would be an act of cowardice. Lupin storms off but realizes that Harry was right and spends the rest of his time with his family.