Someone to Remember Him By

"When every private widow well may keep
By children's eyes her husband's shape in mind."

— William Shakespeare, "Sonnet 9"

Just before the Big Damn Heroes scene, or just after the hero's done his Heroic Sacrifice, the girl he left behind discovers that she's pregnant. He's gone, but not forgotten. Subtrope of New Child Left Behind.

Bonus points are awarded if this is the result of them having sex exactly once. Double Bonus if it was the girl's first time, too, or if the reaction to her pregnancy later on is "Well, thanks for leaving me with a child to raise by myself." Triple bonus if the one time was a Pre-Climax Climax.

It's generally considered very romantic, even in historical settings where a single mother can be expected to have a hard time of it (especially during wartime; even if he didn't die in the war itself—or at all—she can say he did), on top of all her other problems. Unsurprisingly, it is assumed in these circumstances that Babies Make Everything Better.

The intersection of Her Heart Will Go On with Babies Ever After. May involve a Birth-Death Juxtaposition, or result in Dead Guy Junior. This trope seems to be a recurring theme in horror films, sort of an extension of the puritanical belief that sex equals death. For when "Someone" wants to know about "Him", see Tell Me About My Father.

Can be gender-flipped by having the mother suffer a Death by Childbirth or other means of dying before the father discovers that she had given birth to their child.

Usually an Ending Trope, so there will inevitably be spoilers in the examples section. Sometimes a Beginning Trope, to introduce Turn Out Like His Father — and sometimes both, as Changing of the Guard occurs. Died in Ignorance usually accompanies this, as the father will be unlikely to ever know his partner is pregnant.

If the trope is ever gender flipped, the baby will be found somewhere around the mother’s corpse.

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Examples:

Advertising

• A series of 1990s New Zealand road safety PSAs depicted a newly married young couple living in the countryside. Just days after the wedding, the husband is killed when he drives home from the pub after drinking; and the final instalment mentions the now-widowed bride is pregnant and has moved away to live with family who can support her.

Anime & Manga

• In The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You, this is why Hakari was conceived - her mother Hahari had fallen in love with a terminally ill fellow student, and knowing that he didn't have long to live, she had herself artificially inseminated with his sperm so that they could be a family before he died.
• Possibly inverted in the Backstory of Air when Ryuuya finds out he is slowly dying of a curse. Uraha suggests that the only way he can work to save the soul of their beloved Kanna is for him to leave a line of descendants to do it for him and offers herself to be the mother of his child. He dies when she is heavily pregnant and their child becomes the ancestor of the series' main character Yukito.
• In Ai-Ren, Ai and Ikuru both die, but their child - gestated in an artificial womb - is "born" and taken care of by Haruka-sensei, who possibly would have been Ikuru's lover had circumstances between them been different.
• Ceres, Celestial Legend has Aya realize that she might be pregnant while there's an important infiltration mission going on at Mikagi HQ. And shortly after, upon overhearing Suzumi's phone conversation indicating that Tooya died, she learns that she is indeed pregnant and in her third month. Considering that her lover had just died, she was less than very happy about the news.
• Dragon Ball Z: Goku one-ups the other examples by not only leaving behind a (second) kid after his (second) Heroic Sacrifice^note The first of both were not related, but leaving behind a kid that's completely identical to him.
• Mine Kujyou discovers she is pregnant by Shuro (a.k.a. Akiba) at the very end of Eternal Sabbath, after Shuro has died in the final battle with Isaac.
• Emperor Hotohori in Fushigi Yuugi can fall under this trope. Though he was officially married and the pregnancy wasn't necessarily discovered after his death, the whole point of having the child was to leave behind an heir in case he died in the battle with Kutou. And said child, Prince Boushin and later Emperor Reitezei, looks remarkably like him as well!
• Mikan Sakura (or more appropriately, Mikan Yukihira) in Gakuen Alice was revealed to be this. Her father was accidentally killed by his student Persona right after the first (and last) time he slept with Yuka, who then didn't even know she was pregnant until Mikan's uncle Kazumi, the High School principal of the academy discovered there was a new light inside Yuka's stomach thanks to his own Alice a few days later. Despite her love for Mikan, Yuka later had to abandon her baby to a kind old man in a rural area to protect her from the Big Bad.
• A different take on this appears in Gunslinger Girl. After the Hilshire/Triela fratello are killed during the Turin operation, Roberta Guellfi talks of how she resents being left alone again after discovering love with Hilshire. Turns out Hilshire had a hospital preserve some eggs from his cyborg Triela, whom he once promised to help live a normal life (after she got turned into a cyborg, this was impossible due to the danger and the fatal effects of her conditioning). He leaves a letter asking Roberta to carry on in their stead; Roberta carries and gave birth to the child, eventually revealed to be a girl named Speranza, though it's not revealed if her father was Hilshire himself or an anonymous sperm donor.
• In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Jonathan Joestar is killed by his Arch-Enemy Dio Brando during his honeymoon with Erina Pendleton. Erina wants to be Together in Death with Jonathan, but he tells her to escape and rescue a recently orphaned baby girl in the process. As it turns out, Erina was already pregnant with Jonathan's son whom she names George and who will be the father of Joseph, with the mother being Elizabeth/Lisa-Lisa aka the little girl that Erina rescued.
• In Koizora, after Hiro dies of cancer, Mika reveals that she's pregnant with his child again.
• In the final chapters of Lady Georgie, Abel confesses his love for Georgie while he is in prison, and they have sex. Abel is killed and Georgie finds out she is pregnant with his child, whom she names Abel Jr. This subplot doesn't exist in the anime adaptation.
• Happens in the little-known anime movie Like the Clouds, Like the Wind. It's an especially sad example since the male member of the couple kills himself soon after having sex with his wife for the first time.
• Kinda what happens to Hayate after Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's. Following the Heroic Sacrifice-slash-Suicide by Cop of Reinforce (a magically-created Artificial Human), she creates Reinforce Zwei (a smaller magical Artificial Human who looks a lot like the original). The thing is, she ostensibly refers to the latter being "born" from her Linker Core (magical heart of sorts) after it merged with the former's Linker Core, in order to live the life the former wished for. In other words, we have here an example of technological lesbian procreation for the sake of this trope. Yes, it's weird like that.
• Marbette from Mobile Suit Victory Gundam, who goes from Action Girl to Pregnant Badass... and we find out about this a while after the baby's father, Team Dad Oliver, has perished in an Senseless Sacrifice.
  • Atra in Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans does the deed with Mikazuki in order to encourage him to not throw his life away due to having nothing to lose. They don't know before Mikazuki dies in an epic last stand whether she got pregnant or not - but the ending reveals that she did and named the child Akatsuki.
  • Also, in a Retcon from the original Mobile Suit Gundam, it's revealed that Icelina, Garma's fiancee, was carrying his child (and that's why she wanted to avenge him). Evidently, the embryo or fetus in her dead body is some kind of MacGuffin to Team Zeon. (In the original, there was no evidence or suggestion that she was pregnant, only that she wanted to avenge her fiance out of genuine Mad Love.)
• Meroune in Monster Musume tries to invoke this when the girls fear Kimihito is about to die. Hoping to tell her children the tragic story of how their father died. Miia stops her before she can get anywhere though.
• My Girl: Kazama Masamune spent the last few years of his life pining after his old girlfriend, who after a long relationship had suddenly moved away and cut off all contact with him. He was never able to move on from her and never started up any relationship since. He ends up being contacted by the girl's mother years later... to be told his old love had just died suddenly in an accident. Soon after he meets the girl's daughter, who is in fact his daughter, who he had no idea existed until that point...
• After Asuma Sarutobi dies in Naruto, Kurenai Yuuhi, hinted to be having a relationship with, is revealed as pregnant.
• Gender-flipped in Nicoichi, when the main protagonist adopted the son of his single mother girlfriend, who had passed away after being involved in a traffic accident. This act became the trigger for the plot of the series.
• Happens a couple of times in Pet Shop of Horrors.
  • One memorable episode was about the vengeful girlfriend of a criminal Leon killed in the line of duty. D manages to break the cycle of revenge by appealing to her that she did not want her unborn child's mother to be a murderer.
  • A second, much darker version occurs in Pet Shop of Horrors: Tokyo. A woman's dead boyfriend is temporarily brought back to spend O-bon with her on the one-year anniversary of his death. At the end, he prepares to return to the land of the dead, but she is unwilling to let him go. She is found a week later in her apartment with the rotting corpse of her boyfriend... and now pregnant.
  • Another one from Tokyo involves a down-on-her-luck novelist adopting a cicada larva simply because it was unusual. Through the actions of the larva turned human boy who helps her a la You're My Pet she hooks up with a composer who happened to be at Count D's the same day she was. Obviously they get together, but in true fashion when it comes to cicada's both males both die and leave the females (the man had gotten a female cicada larva) pregnant.
• A rather....um, odd example in Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei: technically speaking, Fuura Kafuka is Dead All Along and has been possessing the twelve girls (and one guy) who received her organs, whom eventually marry Nozomu. All the girls have children by Nozomu. They all look and act eerily like Kafuka.
• Happens at the end of Shadow Star. There's a bit of Artistic License – Biology in there, since the father conceived the kid while dying of radiation sickness from having a tac-nuke dropped on him.
• In a late arc of Silent Möbius, Katsumi Liqueur's boyfriend Roy is murdered by the Big Bad and she is possessed by a demonic weapon. After being freed from possession, she discovers a pregnancy that had been magically put on hold for several months. Their daughter is seen at the very end of the manga.
• While never expressly stated, it could reasonably be suggested in the anime version of Trigun, considering the last lines of dialogue Milly and Wolfwood share.

Ballads

• In the Child Ballad Fause Foodrage, the queen pleads for her life after her husband's death for her baby's sake.
• Gender-flipped in "The Foggy, Foggy, Dew": "Now I'm a bachelor, I live with my son, we work at the weaver's trade..."

Comic Books

• In American Vampire, Abi does this with Book before putting him out of his misery.
• At the end of Camelot 3000, King Arthur has laid down his life in defense of the Earth, leaving the reincarnated Lancelot and Guinevere - free to be together, yet devastated to lose him - among the war's survivors. When she reads off the result of her pregnancy test, they both express hope that it's Arthur's child she's carrying.
• Captain America:
  • Ultimate Captain America slept with his girlfriend just before his fateful mission. The child ended up being raised practically from birth by the US Government, trying to create a new Cap. What they got was Ultimate Red Skull.
  • Mainstream Cap also got Sharon Carter pregnant before his death. (He got better.)
• Gender-Inverted Trope with Deadpool. He conceived Ellie with Carmelita the one time they had sex during a time Carm thought she was going to be killed. It's unknown if she was a virgin, but the encounter resulted in Ellie. Deadpool doesn't find out until she tracks him down much later and he chases them away to protect them. Sadly, the meeting happens in front of Butler, who kidnaps Carm and orders her death. Deadpool did manage to reunite with Ellie. They talk about Carm briefly and she asks if Deadpool knew her mom. He admits he didn't really know her, but he wanted to. He says he never got the chance and Ellie ask if she died. He silently turns away from her in grief.
• In ElfQuest, Krim is revealed to be pregnant with Sust after Skot dies.
• Judge Dredd: There's another rare Gender-Inverted Example in the "America" story. America Jara, a democratic protestor, is accidentally killed during an arrest to stop a terrorist attack. Her childhood friend and recent lover Bennet Beeny transfers his brain to her comatose body so they can always be together, but not before impregnating the body. He names their daughter "America" in her honor.
• Crossing over with Real Life, in Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical comic Persepolis, she tells the story of one of her relatives who was in jail, and about to be executed by the government. His girlfriend bribed a guard so they could have one last night together, wanting a baby to remember him by. He's not happy about it and warns her about how terrible life is for an unwed mother, especially in totalitarian Iran. Fortunately, according to the uncle that told her the story, she managed to get to Switzerland safely with her child.
• In Star Trek: Debt of Honor, it's lightly implied that Romulan Commander T'Cel's adult daughter T'Kir may have been sired by Jim Kirk after they escaped the destruction of USS Farragut early in the story. T'Cel leaves this universe to explore the dimension the monsters came from, but T'Kir stays behind on Enterprise with Kirk.
• Much of the last volume of Strangers in Paradise revolves around the characters attempting to fulfill this trope.
• The Wash one-shot "Float Out" of the Serenity comic Those Left Behind features a memorial of sorts for Wash that takes place after his death in the film. The last page reveals a very pregnant Zoe. The child, a daughter named Emma, is born in the first chapter of Leaves on the Wind.
• In Three, Damar has sex with Klaros on their final night in the gully before the Spartiates attack and kill him. She conceives twin boys, who she names after him and Terpander, the third member of their group who also died.
• The Transformers: Sector 7 comic has William Simmons sacrifice his life while fighting a traitor in order to let his wife (who has just found out she's pregnant) escape before his grandfather Joseph Simmons dropped a liquid nitrogen bomb on the location in order to keep Megatron NBE-1 on ice. Even then, she only survives because of Jetfire, whose life William spared during World War II. Jetfire also tells Joseph that she's carrying William's child. Joseph tells her to abandon this life and keep her child away from it. She opens a deli and has a son named Seymour, the same guy we see in the movies.
  • This puts a whole new spin on Seymour not wanting his mother to know about his research. It's not that she's unauthorized to know. It's that she knows this life got her husband killed and doesn't want to lose her son.
  • This contradicts with the Ghosts of Yesterday novel, which states that Seymour's father is named Walter, and he is alive and well in the late 60s. In the comic, William dies in 1954.
• Transformers vs. G.I. Joe kills off Cobra Commander in the end, but shows the Baroness to be pregnant with his child, who is implied to be this continuity's version of Serpentor.

Fan Works

• In the Hetalia: Axis Powers AU 1983: Doomsday Stories, it's revealed that Sopron is this for Austria, considering that he's the father, with Hungary being her mother.
• A Bolt of Light gave Oliver Queen, Barry Allen and Sara Lance a threesome two weeks before the Gambit's sinking. When she heard about the tragedy, Barry revealed her pregnancy to Moira Queen, reassuring her they would still have Ollie's child to love.
• Checkmate Anlashok has Johanna Mason coming from a long line of tributes; due to some ancestor doing something to piss off the Capitol several generations ago, at least one member has been reaped for the Games every generation. Johanna says that her mother deliberately got pregnant in order to leave someone behind due to suspecting that it would be her turn the next year, and she did indeed get reaped when Johanna was a couple months old.
• Child of the Storm reveals that Peggy Carter was pregnant with Steve's daughter when the Valkyrie went down - though it was so early that no one bar time-travelling Seer Doctor Strange knew it.
• The premise of the Downton Abbey fanfic Consequences And Control is that Mary finds herself pregnant with Kemal Pamuk's child after he dies having sex with her.
• The Differentverse: During the group's trip through the Everfree, Derpy reveals that her husband died of a heart attack during her pregnancy, making Dinky into this trope.
• Deconstructed by A Dovahkiin Spreads His Wings, as Ned was so traumatized by his sister Lyanna's Death by Childbirth he became rather controlling and smothering towards her child. He needs to be called out on this three times before reconciling with his nephew.
• Eden, by Obsessmuch: Lucius fathers Hermione's son, but dies long before his birth. She raises the child with Ron, never telling him the truth of who his father actually is due to promising his wife.
• A rather weird variant in Fate Ends, since Shen Qingqiu died from a qi deviation only for Harry to transmigrate within his body. Yue Qingyuan decides Harry is as good as Shen Qingqiu's child, and treats him as such.
• Firefly fanfic frequently invoked this trope after Wash's death in Serenity, even before it was confirmed by the canon comic "Float Out", due to Wash and Zoe discussing starting a family in "Heart of Gold".
• Gender-Inverted Trope in Flame's Shade. Ruby goes to a pillaged village and finds out that her half-sister's distant mother Raven has died. Raven left behind an infant daughter, who Yang and Ruby decide to raise.
• Frostbitten Flower starts with a heavily pregnant and recently widowed Celia mourning her husband Jack's death. He died a few weeks before their daughter was born.
• Godzilla 2000: New Era has Asuka Shinoda die in childbirth from radiation sickness complications after being too close to Godzilla during the 1984 attack. Her and her husband's daughter Io is remarked to look a lot like her as she starts to grow up, with her godmother and Asuka's midwife Dr. Chapman even getting teary eyed at the resemblance.
• The end of the Team Fortress 2 fanfic Gone But Not Forgotten reveals that Miss Pauling is pregnant with Scout's son after the latter dies on the battlefield.
• Subverted in Harry Potter and the Spiritus Crystalus. Ginny stops using contraception spells in case Harry doesn't survive the final battle, but Harry can sense it and avoids sex in such cases — wizards don't look kindly on out-of-wedlock children and their mothers.
• In HeatAndChills' Cabin Fever microfic, Cabin Fever: Promises To Keep, this is the outcome of Paul and Marcy's one night stand. Marcy survives; Paul doesn't. Marcy decides to name their daughter after their mutual friend and Paul's true love, Karen, while giving her the middle name Pauline, in remembrance of her father.
• With Matt's supposed death at Midland Circle in Hell's Kitchen, Full of Grace, Jessica thinks she's doing this when she decides to keep Peter. It isn't until after he's born does she find out that Matt survived.
• The whole reason why everyone is going after C.C in a Code Geass continuation, In the End.
• The Joestar Chronicles has Hollius Joestar (a male version of Holy Kujo) as this, as the son of Josephine Joestar and her lover Caesar Zeppeli, conceived before Caesar is killed in his fight against Wamuu.
• The Hobbit fanfic Kili's Promise has Fili survive the Battle of Five Armies and become King of Erebor, sent back because Thorin and Kili told him to "take care of his family". He learns that Tauriel is pregnant with Kili's child, conceived before Kili left for Erebor. The rest of the story involves Fili helping to raise the child, who is named Tili. So, in a way, it's someone for both of them to remember Kili.
• In the Death Note fanfiction Light's Legacy, it's established that Misa got desperate after Light started spending a lot of time with Takada, and tried to make sure he'd stay with her using The Baby Trap. Shortly after Light died, Misa found out she was pregnant with his child, which is the only reason she didn't kill herself sooner. However, not even the daughter she had with him was enough to fill the void left in her heart, so she left her at an orphanage and then committed suicide. The baby girl — named Hikari — grew up unaware of her true parentage and thinking her biological parents were deadbeats... until she found a mysterious notebook...
• In The Simpsons badfic Lisa Is Pregnant, Bart dies while trying to keep Lisa from freezing to death by having sex with her. This results in her getting pregnant, and Marge opposes Lisa getting an abortion because the last living part of her child is inside Lisa, causing Lisa to change her mind and have the baby out of respect for Bart.
• Love Can Surprise You At Any Time In Your Life:
  • Lars unknowingly got Leela pregnant a week before his death, mere days before he realized he was doomed at all. Given that he was doomed to die to prevent a paradoxical coexistence with Fry, this is a potential cause of concern, as there's no precedent for a time duplicate reproducing and there's a chance the baby or Leela would also be doomed.
  • The fic addresses how Kif's offspring are left without a father after Kif (temporarily) dies. Amy is unsure whether she'd want to raise them without Kif's help, but remarks that she's glad "everyone who passes this pond can look down and see a bit of Kiffy." This situation is what convinces Leela to keep her baby, seeing it as a remnant of her love with Lars before he broke her heart.
• In Naru-Hina Chronicles, Ino has an aunt named Hotaru, who ends up having the baby of her deceased boyfriend.
• Jeyne Westerling in The North Remembers, who discovers her pregnancy while at Greywater Watch, after being led there by Ser Brynden Tully for her safety. At first she's shocked, and then overjoyed because the potions she was given by her mother were actually contraceptives intended to stop her from conceiving an heir for Robb Stark. Unfortunately, the baby boy she delivers is blind and has no right arm because of this, and so the crown to the North passes to Sansa instead.
• An ER fic titled "One Candle Burns" is a re-write of Doug Ross's departure that had him going to Croatia to aid in the war effort. Carol gets word that he has been killed in the chaos, but consoles herself with the birth of their twin girls. Subverted at the story's end, when he is revealed to be alive.
• one day at a time (Nyame): Jason's adoptive daughter Helena Wayne is the biological daughter of his own adoptive father Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle. Selina discovered she was pregnant about one month after Bruce was murdered by the Joker, which led her to leave Gotham in hopes of giving Helena a normal life. Ultimately, it didn't take: Black Mask II tracked her down ten years later and tried to force her to work for him, which caused Selina to flee back to Gotham in hopes of getting the Bat-Family's protection. She was killed before she could reach them, but not before sending Helena to Jason, who would take her in as his daughter. Helena would later grow up to be Robin, Huntress, and eventually, Batwoman.
• Popcorn Love, a Once Upon a Time Transplanted Character Fic in which Regina is a businesswoman in New York and Emma is a college student she hires as a babysitter (only for romance to blossom between the two), and Henry is Regina's biological child by her boyfriend Daniel, who died in a car accident three days after Henry was conceived.
• Queens of Mewni: Febe the Red One was almost Driven to Suicide after her husband was assassinated in an attack meant for her when she realized the nausea she felt was Morning Sickness and she was pregnant with the future Festivia the Fun.
• In Remembrance of the Fallen, Tiana Lanstar is in her third trimester with a baby conceived in vitro using technobabble applied to her Bajoran wife Sobaru's genome.
• Toward the end of A Sad Story, Harry's girlfriend Maria tells him that he's going to be a father, and thus can't die yet.
• A Scream 2 fanfic titled Scream 2: Aftermath has Sidney finding out she's pregnant with Derek's child shortly after his death in the film.
• The West Side Story fic Somewhere a Place for You, Maria has Maria learn that she's pregnant with Tony's child after his death. She gives birth to their daughter Felipa in the penultimate chapter.
• Deconstructed in A Song of Ice, Fire and Heart, as Roxas is somewhat unsettled and annoyed by people constantly comparing him to his assumed father Ventus when he doesn't know anything about the guy.
• Johnny Lightfoot died in the final arc of Sonic the Comic. In the fan sequel Sonic the Continuation, it's shown that he was together with Vanilla and that Vanilla was pregnant with Cream when Johnny died.
• The Titanic fandom uses this trope all the time, on the assumption that Jack could've gotten Rose pregnant when they made love in that Model T.
• The Fire Emblem: Three Houses fic Treasures of a Demon mentions that the reason Marianne never took part in any of the battles during the War Phase (the route being Silver Snow) is that she was pregnant with Dimitri’s son, who she’s currently raising on her own after Dimitri’s death.
• In Turning Tables, it is after Thanos wins does Peter discover that Pepper was pregnant with Tony's child.
• The Legend of Korra fanfic Two Wrongs and a Right has this and a Dead Guy Junior. And a Family Relationship Switcheroo.
• We Must Be Killers: The male District 6 tribute in Nobody Decent leaves behind a pregnant girlfriend. Possibly subverted, as she kills herself at some point after his death in the arena and it is never mentioned if she waited to have her baby first.
• In the For Better or for Worse fanfic Who Silenced Elly Patterson, it's implied this happened with John and his second wife Kortney, with hints that he died not long after she gave birth to his twin sons.
• In the Xenoblade Chronicles 3 fanfic Stolen Moments, there's a rare female version. When the team first learns about babies (they're all born from Uterine Replicators as ten year-olds), Mio is excited about the possibility of leaving something behind despite the dwindling time on her clock. Of course, then she finds out how long pregnancy takes, so there's no way she can have a child in the one month she has left.

Film — Live-Action

• The Air I Breathe: Sorrow finds out that she has become pregnant with Pleasure's baby after Fingers killed him. She runs away with the money from Happiness' bank robbery to start a new life.
• The Filipino film All My Life ends with Sam's love interest turned wife Louie (Short for Louisa) playing with her son by him, due to Sam dying from a fatal heart attack that rots his heart muscles, before this scene occurred.
• The ending of An American Werewolf in London is set up so that, while David is killed, his relationship with Alex ensures the possibility of a bouncing baby sequel. Although not explicitly stated, the character played by Julie Delpy in the An American Werewolf in Paris was, in fact, intended to be David's daughter.
• Austin Powers, the supposed reason why Scott was created. It would later turn out to be not totally true.
• The Babadook horribly deconstructs this trope. Amelia's husband died the same day that her son was born (driving her to the hospital, in fact), so Amelia had every reason to anticipate a long, happy life with her husband and child. Instead, her grief and her attempts to be a loving mother to Sam are deeply tangled, and she can't even celebrate Sam's birthday on the proper day. This furious resentment and grief is what gives the Babadook itself such power. Towards the end of the film, she screams at Sam that sometimes she wishes she'd lost her baby, and not her husband.
• Black Christmas (1974). Somewhat subverted in that the father was depicted as kind of a jerk, and the heroine may have had an abortion, assuming she never learned the truth about what actually happened.
• The mid-credits scene of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever reveals that Nakia and T'Challa had a son together around the time he was killed by Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War. While T'Challa was revived in Avengers: Endgame, he eventually succumbed to an illness at the beginning of Wakanda Forever. Nakia tells Shuri that at least this second time they knew what was coming, so she and Toussaint (their son) were able to prepare themselves for it.
• In Bones (2001), it turns out that Jimmy Bones’ girlfriend Pearl was pregnant at the time of his murder, as she reveals his identity to their daughter Cynthia in the film’s third act.
• In Braveheart Isabella of France, wanting to rub Edward I's nose in the fact that she will ultimately be having the last laugh, tells him that the child she is pregnant with, the future Edward III, was not fathered by Edward II, but rather by William Wallace, meaning that the reign of Edward I's bloodline is effectively over.
• Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh. Paul dies, but not before leaving Annie a parting gift.
  • The Candyman himself, whose death (after impregnating the daughter of a wealthy landowner) qualifies as terrifying.
• Happens in the epilogue of Dario Argento's The Card Player.
• A variation occurs in Carlito's Way. Carlito finds out Gail is pregnant before he dies, but the effect is still the same.
• The remake of Children of the Corn (2009), the movie ends with a proclamation that the cult's "age of sacrifice" has been lowered from 19 to 18. Enforcer Malachai is clearly one of the people who is now too old to live and resigns himself to his fate, leaving behind a very upset wife with a bulging belly. (This is in the original Stephen King story.)
  • Also implied: The movie features an occult ceremony deemed "The time of fertilization" by the Creepy Child high priest leading it. The ceremony includes a very vocal sex scene between two non-speaking unnamed extras. It is strongly implied that the woman gets pregnant from this. Her ceremonial sperm donor mightn't have a name, but he is addressed in the credits as "The oldest boy". So if other members of the clan were past the age of sacrifice, obviously the oldest boy must be, too.
• Cold Mountain; the main character, after reuniting with his wife.
• Creed: Adonis Johnson is the illegitimate son of the late Apollo Creed, who was killed in the ring before he was born.
• In Creep Josef explains to hired cameraman Aaron that he's dying of cancer, and wants Aaron to document his life so that his unborn child will one day be able to know him. This is just a lie to gain Aaron's trust and sympathy.
• This is the surprise twist at the end of Crush: Kate is revealed to be pregnant with Jed's baby. It is the only reason the movie avoids an unbelievably Downer Ending.
• In Demonic Toys, a cop tells her boyfriend (also a cop) about her pregnancy right before a drug bust. You can pretty much guess what happened right afterwards.
• Dragonfly (2002): at the end of the film Joe finds out that his wife Emily survived the accident for long enough to allow the locals to save the baby she was carrying. The final scene shows Joe playing with the child as a toddler, and she looks just like her late mother.
• In the Troma/Astron 6 spoof Father's Day (2011), the act of impregnating a woman makes you a target for the Big Bad, a rapist and serial killer whose preferred victims are fathers.
• Feast of Love: Just after it seems like Chloe's gotten a happy life with Oscar, marrying him and expecting their baby, the death prediction about him tragically comes true. He dies suddenly of a heart defect no one knew about before while exterting himself playing football, leaving Chloe pregnant. It's softened a bit by Harry and Esther agreeing to adopt her though, so she'll at least have their support.
• Female Agents: Louise finds out she's pregnant with her late husband's child early in the film, torn between happiness and worry over the danger she's in. She miscarries after being struck in the stomach during her torture by the Nazis. It is stated in the epilogue that the actual Louise married again, but never had other children.
• The Fly (1986): Veronica is impregnated by Seth Brundle before the end of the movie; although she seeks out an abortion because of the possibility the child will be a mutant, he — with this trope in mind, especially since it might have been conceived before his Tragic Mistake and thus be fully human — prevents this. Because the movie ends immediately after Seth/Brundlefly's death, the question of what would become of the child is a loose end that allows for their son to be the mutant protagonist of the 1989 sequel The Fly II. Interestingly, the first film was supposed to end with one of four filmed epilogues that would have tied up the end; in three of the four Veronica has an abortion (and one even has her subsequently carrying her previous lover Stathis's child instead), while one confirmed she would keep Seth's child after all no matter what it turned out to be — but none of the epilogues worked in test screenings, primarily because (according to David Cronenberg) Seth's death was too upsetting for audiences to be immediately followed by a hopeful coda.
• At the end of Gloomy Sunday, Ilona is shown to be heavily pregnant. It isn't revealed if Laszlo or Andres is the father, however both are dead by the end, so the trope applies either way.
• In the 2009 film Grace, the father-to-be dies in a car accident. The unborn child dies as well, but she gets better...sort of.
• Forms the plot of the 2009 tearjerker The Greatest. In this case, parents of a dead teen take in his pregnant girlfriend.
• Harrison Bergeron: Phillipa turns out to be pregnant with her and Harrison's child after he's been killed by the government. We later see him illegally watching the videos which Harrison broadcasted with a friend.
• How To Deal (2003): Halley's best friend Scarlett is pregnant by her boyfriend Michael, finding this out just after Michael had suddenly died from an unexpected heart condition.
• Hunting Scenes from Bavaria: Hannelore becomes pregnant, and claims to the villagers that Abram is the father, making the already-resentful villagers hate him further. This eventually leads to a confrontation that ends with Abram fatally stabbing her in a fit of rage.
• In a Valley of Violence: Ellen tells her fiancee Gilly that she's pregnant right before he leaves to die in a gunfight.
• Inside. As depressing as it is, it only begins this way and gets much, much worse. The 2016 remake has a happy ending.
• Jane Got a Gun: After Dan left to enlist, Jane discovered she was pregnant. When Dan did not return or write, she assumed he was dead, and life in Jane's war-torn town had become so wretched that she decided to take her daughter Mary and move West on the Bishop wagon train.
• Liz in September: Eva is seen in the end with a daughter, after having previously told Liz that it's both their child. She names her after Liz too.
• An example involving a villain in The Love Light. After Angela finds out that her Fourth-Date Marriage husband is actually a German spy, and said German spy plunges to his death off a cliff while being chased by a mob, she delivers his baby. She names the baby "Dolora" due to the circumstances of her birth being a total bummer.
• Parodied in Man Bites Dog. After Patrick, one of the film crew, is killed, Remy tearfully gives his condolences on camera to Patrick's pregnant girlfriend. After Franco, another crew member, is killed, Remy gives the same condolences...to the same girlfriend.
• Money Monster: Kyle's girlfriend is pregnant, which invokes this trope as it becomes apparent the police may shoot him. They do, although unusually for the trope, his child's mother hates him at the time of his death.
• The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor: Zi Yuan was apparently pregnant by Ming when the Emperor killed him, and transmitted immortality to their daughter Lin. Thus they were briefly able to see each other two thousand years later in the final battle.
• Subverted in My Life in which Michael Keaton's character isn't expected to live long enough to see his baby born. He does anyway.
• After Jack's suicide mission in Oblivion (2013) the film skips ahead two years to show Julia with a daughter that is obviously his. Then another Jack Harper clone who had appeared earlier and also showed traces of the original Jack's memories of Julia finds them.
• Defied in Pan's Labyrinth, in which a villain obsessed with his posterity is survived by a newborn son. As he's dying, the women who will care for the baby tell him point-blank that his boy won't even know his name.
• Pearl Harbor leaves Our Heroine and Our Hero together with Dead Hypotenuse's baby.
• People Will Talk, this is the basis for the plot with the added complication that they never married. When the doctor tells her about her pregnancy, she is so distraught about having to break her father's heart and admit to premarital sex that she attempts suicide. The doctor tells her that there was a mix-up with the tests and she wasn't pregnant, then proposes so that when she does have the baby, there will be nothing shameful (except the fact that she will give birth about seven months after the wedding, which no one seems to notice.)
• In Prevenge, a pregnant woman mourns the loss of her dead husband by killing off those responsible for his death, under the orders of her unborn child.
• Red: Werewolf Hunter: This may be the case with Virginia, who in the last scene is shown reading the story of Red Riding Hood to her daughter. Although it's not explicit that her father was Nathan, Virginia's boyfriend whom she had to kill, it certainly may have been him, since Virginia could have been pregnant without knowing it yet at the time of his death.
• Jack Bull's daughter with Sue Lee in Ride with the Devil.
• Discussed in Scream 4. This trope is listed as one of the signs that a cop will die in a horror movie, along with being about to retire and “being better looking than the other person.”
• In The Shaft (2001), Mark's partner Jeff leaves behind a pregnant wife after being strangled to death by elevator cables.
• Sleepers: Carol has a child with John, a son she names after the father, Michael, and Tommy. Her pet name for her son is Shakes.
• During the credits of Space Battleship Yamato Yuki is seen with her son from Kodai who died destroying the last Meteor Bomb. This is during the ending credits no less.
• In Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus, Spartacus makes his heroic sacrifice and is crucified along with his men. While escaping out of Rome, Varinia shows her dying lover their newborn son, who will grow up to be a free man.
• In Star Trek (2009) this is used as a beginning trope. Although, not completely true to form. Baby Jim Kirk was born moments before dad died, and Dad got to name him, instead of being conceived without soon-to-heroic-sacrifice dad knowing as is typical with this trope.
• Switch (1991): Gender flipped. Amanda dies giving birth, and leaves a daughter behind with Walter.
• Tender Mercies: In the backstory. Rosa Lee didn't even know she was pregnant until after her husband was drafted. Her husband was killed in Vietnam soon after; the movie starts with her and her 12-year-old boy Sonny living alone.
• The Terminator; Kyle Reese dies after impregnating Sarah Connor, enabling her to give birth to John Connor.
• The Terrorist: Malli learns she's pregnant by a fellow cadre, who's dead (they had sex just before he died). However, rather than having the baby, she goes through with her suicide bombing mission (possibly).
• Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead: Jimmy is killed, but not before getting Lucinda pregnant and leaving a Video Will for their future child.
• Not of the romantic variety (at least, not human), but in Turner and Hooch, after Hooch dies, Turner ends up with one of Hooch's pups.
  Turner: This is not your room.
• At the end of They Live by Night, Keechie is pregnant when Bowie is shot and killed by the police attempting to leave her a note before he heads for Mexico.
• An Unfinished Life: Jean was pregnant when her husband died in a car crash, and named her daughter after him. Her father-in-law doesn't learn this until ten years later.
• The World According to Garp: T.S. Garp is the out-of-wedlock son of a feminist mother, Jenny Fields, who wanted a child but not a husband. A nurse during World War II, she encounters a dying ball turret gunner known only as Technical Sergeant Garp ("Garp" being all he is able to utter) who was severely brain damaged in combat, whose morbid priapism allows her to rape him and get impregnated. She names the resultant child after Garp.

Literature

• Xavier Lightman has sex with his wife just before the final battle in Armada. After his Heroic Sacrifice, we skip ahead a year to discover she's given birth to a son.
• In Lois McMaster Bujold's novel Barrayar, Padma is in fact killed while his wife is in labor, but Alys finds baby Ivan if not a consolation at least a distraction from grief.
• Subverted in Robin McKinley's Beauty. Grace's father suggests that she and Robbie marry quickly and "get started on a baby" before he departs for his voyage, but both Robbie and Grace refuse, preferring to wait until he returns.
• Ben Safford Mysteries: In There is No Justice, the mistress of the second murder victim is revealed to be pregnant with his child at the end of the book.
• In Beyond the Summerland, the first book of L.B. Graham's The Binding of the Blade series, Joraiem is murdered right after the end of his and Wylla's honeymoon; in the epilogue, when they are bringing his dead body home to his parents, we find out that Wylla is pregnant with his baby.
• Lila Merriweather of the Black Blade series never knew her father because he was murdered before she was born.
• In The Black Magician Trilogy, after the Ichani invasion in which her lover Akkarin is killed, Sonea realizes that she is pregnant by him.
• The Bronze Horseman ends with Alexander arrested by the Soviet secret police, but his wife Tatiana makes it to America with their baby (then Paullina Simons wrote a sequel getting them back together via a number of Contrived Coincidences).
• It does not happen at the end of the book, but in A Brother's Price the Whistler husband died a few months before the book started. Eldest Mother had slept with him the night before the accident, but initially assumed that the early signs of pregnancy were actually the signs of approaching menopause. Social conventions hold that talking openly about a pregnancy will jinx it, so her family keeps quiet. At the end of the book it turns out to be a healthy boy. Since men are generally more susceptible to heart attacks, disease, and inherited weaknesses, this actually isn't uncommon in the book.
  • Technically Eldie was this for Keifer to his sister Kij, five years before book's start.
• The second book of Anthony Trollope's The Chronicles of Barsetshire opens with Eleanor's husband having died between books, leaving her completely devastated until their baby was born.
  "And thus the widow's deep grief was softened, and a sweet balm was poured into the wound which she had thought nothing but death could heal."
• Cold Mountain: between Inman and Ada. Apparently this is based off of the real conception of the author's great-great aunt.
  • This book contains multiple examples of this trope. Again, its use is somewhat justified—it takes place during the American Civil War, prior to which many couples were married—and then, of course, many of the guys didn't come back...
• Heavily played with in the Dirk Pitt Adventures. At the end of Valhalla Rising, Dirk discovers he sired children with Summer Moran, his love interest in Pacific Vortex!, the earliest book in the series. In a twist, the now adult children reveal to Pitt that Summer survived her apparent death, but, embarrassed and debilitated by her injuries, chose not to reunite with him. Instead, she raised the children in secret, intending for them to follow in their father's footsteps and ultimately seek him out... but only after her passing. In effect, at different points in the series, the children have served as "someone to remember them by" to both of their parents!
• The Dresden Files:
  • Played with in Changes when the mother dies and leaves behind a child for the father to remember her by — an eight-year-old child that the mother had until then kept secret from the world.
  • A particularly bizarre version happens in Skin Game, in which it's revealed that Lash, the mental copy of the fallen angel Lasciel that used to live in Harry's head, had committed an "act of love" when she sacrificed herself to save him, resulting in the creation of a new spiritual entity formed of herself and Harry, which has been dwelling and growing within Harry's mind ever since, and now needs to leave to be able to continue its growth. Or, as Harry puts it, he's pregnant.
• Played with in the Enchanted Forest Chronicles, in that Cimorene's pregnancy was revealed well before there was any hint that anything would happen to Mendanbar, and that he's not actually dead, simply Sealed In A Can. The baby turns out to be a really good thing, though, since only a member of the royal family (which is currently quite depleted) can wield the sword and release him.
• In Endo and Kobayashi Live! The Latest on Tsundere Villainess Lieselotte, Fiene was conceived when Elizabeth and August decided to consummate their relationship during the last days of August's life; he died around the same time when Elizabeth found herself bearing his child.
• In Generation Warriors, this happened on a society-wide level with the heavyworlders during their colony's harsh first winter. The men impregnated their wives, then committed suicide so that they wouldn't be a drain on their wives' resources, their wives could eat their bodies, and the colony as a whole could survive. Their children are not happy with the Federation of Sentient Planets, who dropped their parents into this situation with no support and are now trying to tell them how to live.
• Inverted in Douglas Coupland's Girlfriend in a Coma, as Karen, the titular girlfriend gives birth while in a coma, giving her boyfriend someone to remember her by.
• In the Backstory to Edgar Rice Burroughs's Gods of Mars, Dejah Thoris was consoled for losing John Carter with his son, Carthoris. It was when Carthoris vanished as well that she did something foolish.
• In Gone with the Wind, after Scarlett's first husband dies she has his son. Subverted in that Scarlett is actually annoyed at how people keep saying how lucky she is to have something to remember her husband by.
  • Played straight when Melanie and Scarlett learn that Ashley has been captured. Fearing the worst, Melanie says, "At least I've got his baby."
• Aenea from Hyperion Cantos is an extremely odd female version of this due to a Stable Time Loop. She spends several years of her life transported a few years into the future, where she has a child with Raul. She then has to leave the child behind and return to the original timeline, where she is killed about a year later. She does tell him in the "present" timeline that she had a child during this absence but never tells him it's his; from his perspective they are able to reunite for a time after her death.
• Inkmistress: It turns out that Ina has become pregnant by Garen, who's dead when she tells Asra this.
• The Kingdom of Little Wounds looked at this trope and said "nope." Ava is left pregnant after Jacob runs away, but she miscarries. Isabel is still pregnant when Christian dies, but she also miscarries. Midi manages to carry her baby to term, but she's not sure who the father is and the afterword would suggest she's not so attached to Arthur, the man she supposedly loved, after all.
• The Last Dragon Chronicles: The end of David's first story, Snigger and the Nutbeast. And at the end of the third book, Zanna reveals she's pregnant with David's child.
• The Last Werewolf ends with Jake's death, but Talulla already knows she is pregnant with his baby, although she never gets a chance to tell him that. In the second book in the series, Talulla Rising, she gives birth to twins.
• Lessons in Chemistry: Calvin dies in an accident; Elizabeth gives birth to their daughter afterwards and raises little Madeline as a single mom.
• The Licanius Trilogy: Raeleth and Niha meet and fall in love in the temporally displaced city of Zvaelar, then become separated again when the time bubble collapses, sending them both back to their own times. It's not until after her return that Niha finds out she's pregnant.
• In Michelle Magorian's A Little Love Song/Not a Swan, Hilda, who is a nurse during World War I, falls in love with an injured soldier. They have sex just before he has to go back to war, and then he dies in battle. Even more heart wrenching in that when Hilda's brothers find out she's pregnant, they put her in a mental institution and force her to give up the baby for adoption as soon as he's born.
• Gender flipped in The Masterharper of Pern when Robinton's boyhood friend F'lon loses his wife Larna to Death by Childbirth. Robinton, whose own wife Casia died on their honeymoon, sends his heartfelt condolences to his old friend - but at the same time is a bit jealous that F'lon at least has a son to remember her by.
• A Memoir by Lady Trent: At the end of the first book, after Jacob dies saving Isabella, she discovers she's pregnant, and names her son after his father.
• At the end of Mockingjay, Annie has this from Finnick. (Katniss also finds it something of a consolation.)
• Nighttime Is My Time features a deconstruction and subversion with Jean and Reed's daughter; she had told him she was pregnant with his child shortly before his untimely death and prior to that tragic event she'd intended to raise the baby. However, Reed's death was what made her decide to give the baby up for adoption, because without him she didn't have anyone to help her (her parents were too wrapped up in themselves and their bitter marriage, while Reed's family didn't even know he was dating Jean and she wasn't sure they'd support her). She was also only eighteen years old at the time. She is eventually happily reunited with her daughter though.
• Malorie Blackman's Noughts & Crosses - a pretty big plot point towards the end, with a bit of a twist. Callum gets Sephy pregnant, and soon after gets arrested for terrorism and raping Sephy (the latter is a lie, it was consensual) but Sephy's dad, a high-ranking government official, offers them a choice: he will free Callum if Sephy has an abortion, or if she keeps the baby, Callum will be hung. They choose the latter, resulting in this trope and a Heroic Sacrifice of sorts from Callum.
• In Sharon Draper’s November Blues, the story starts with the titular character November finding out that she is pregnant with the child of her boyfriend, who died in a tragic hazing accident prior to the events of the book.
• In Robert Buettner's Orphanage the besieged Ganymede Expeditionary force have finally located the enemy base. Because it's on the other side of Ganymede and they are about to be overrun, their only hope is for their mothership to bombard the site the next time it overflies the target. The ship's captain Metzger confesses that their computers are out and that it'll be another orbit before they can take the shot, which will too late. The expeditionary force's CO then tells Metzger that Mrs Metzger, currently on the surface, is pregnant. Evacuating the rest of the crew, Metzger manually pilots the ship to crash into the enemy base, saving the expeditionary force and his unborn child.
• After Claire leaves Jamie in the 1700s, their daughter Brianna fills this role at the end of the second book in the Outlander series.
• Subverted in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians/The Heroes of Olympus novels, seeing as male gods love to impregnate female mortals and then leave, never to see them or the kid again. This is Percy's main criticism of his father, Poseidon. However, it is subverted by the fact that some of them occasionally visit their lovers/kids (like Hermes, for example, though it is rare). Most are pretty much out of the picture though.
  • You could also argue that the female gods pull similar shit on male mortals, deliberately having a one night stand to purposely impregnate herself, and then dumping the guy with a baby nine months later with no convictions to pay child support or help raise it. (Like Athena, for example)
• Both of Cathy's sons in Petals on the Wind were born after their fathers died. Jory's father Julian killed himself shortly after Cathy found out she was pregnant, and Bart Jr.'s father was killed when Foxworth Hall burned down shortly after his conception.
• A side plot in Jill Paton Walsh's A Presumption of Death concerns a young RAF aviator who has disappeared, leaving a pregnant fiancee in great want. Harriet determines that he died the day after the two of them consummated their relationship, but that the military is covering up his death because they planted false information about Norwegian defences on his body, then secretly dumped it off the coast of Germany to be found by the Nazis. Lord Peter is able to convince the military to declare the young man dead, which frees up his estate.
• At the beginning of Private Wars, Tara Chace learns she is pregnant by her lover Tom Wallace, who died at the end of A Gentleman's Game.
• In The Rapture of Canaan, James commits suicide out of fear when he learns that he is the father of Ninah's unborn child.
• In Reaper's Gale, book seven of the Malazan Book of the Fallen, Seren Pedac discovers she is pregnant after her love interest Trull Sengar has a particularly random bridge dropped on him via a random knife In the Back. It even manages to check all the bonus points: they have sex exactly once, on the night of the book's final, and it's also the latter's first time (technically). At least that last part is gender flipped.
• Red Queen: Farley finds out that she is pregnant with Shade's baby shortly after he dies. She plans to name the baby after him if it is a boy, but it ends up being a girl, so she names her after her mother Clara instead.
• In The Red Tent, Dinah becomes pregnant by Prince Shalem, which she discovers after her Jerkass brothers kill him. She has a Gut Feeling that the baby is a boy, and wants to name him Bar-Shalem ("Son of Shalem"). But, her mother-in-law doesn't want any mention or reminders of the son she lost, so she takes the baby to raise as her son, and calls him Re-Mose instead, telling him that he's an Egyptian and relegating Dinah to his glorified nursemaid.
• The Sally Lockhart novel The Shadow in the North. Though this does address the "unwed mother in 1870s England" issue by making the custody of Sally's child a plot point in the next book.
• Part of the backstory to The Scholomance. Gwen Higgins' lover Arjun saved her from a Maw-Mouth on their graduation day about seventeen years back, going into it's gullet in her stead as he told her he loved her. Galadriel was born six months later, and favors her Mumbai-born father greatly.
• At the end of Secret Sacrament by Sheryl Jordan we find out that Gabriel has (and will no doubt die of) the disease that has been plaguing the Shinali and it's also revealed that his Shinali girlfriend is pregnant. The sequel is about his daughter.
• The Silmarillion has this among two brothers, Hurin and Huor. Huor is killed and Hurin is captured after the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, with their wives giving birth to children months after the battle.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • Queen Rhaella Targaryen was pregnant with her daughter Daenerys when King Aerys II was killed in the Sack of King's Landing.
  • Tragically subverted with Daenerys' son, Rhaego. In hindsight, her husband, Drogo, was going to die either way; had she not agreed to revive him using Blood Magic, she would have given birth to his healthy baby. Instead, Rhaego is rendered stillborn to revive Drogo into a vegetative state, forcing Daenerys to kill him to end his suffering, meaning she loses her husband and son.
  • Gilly gives birth to her son by Craster around the same time that he is murdered during the mutiny at his keep.
• Stinger: "Treasure" Lochett died giving birth to Cody, whose distant father only comes out of The Mourning After enough to appreciate this trope (in a Heel Realization manner) during the main story, almost twenty years after her death, when their son is in danger.
  Treasure was in Cody. She had left him part of herself, and he’d tossed the gift aside like a snotty rag.
• Tandia by Bryce Courtenay (sequel to The Power of One) ends with the protagonist Peekay dead but the woman he loves - Tandia alive, safe and carrying his baby in Switzerland
• Similar to the midpoint of The Thorn Birds, where Meggie becomes pregnant by Father Ralph just before he leaves her and returns to the Church and specifically says that this baby will be a part of him that she can keep. The child becomes one of the two major protagonists of the second half of the novel, and is a prime example of the "Turn Out Like His Father" trope. Her mother Fee did this with her son Frank, since she and his father could not be together (he was married).
• A Thread of Grace: Claudia and her fiance play this trope very straight at first. They get married, have sex (her first time), and he dies in an attempt to save the local townspeople. They even marry knowing that he's likely going to be dead by the end of the week. Subverted in that the child is born premature and dies two days later.
• Timeline-191: When Yossel Reisen dies in World War I, his fiancee Sophie names her unborn son after him. Yossel II grows up just in time to serve in World War II, though he survives.
• Time Scout: Carl's got a baby on the way.
• In A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Katie is pregnant when her husband dies. Annie Laurie Nolan is born five months and three days later.
• Gender-inverted example in the Twilight book Breaking Dawn. Vampire-human hybrids always kill their mothers during childbirth, leaving the fathers with only the hybrids as consolation. This happened to Joham, a vampire who impregnated three human women who died giving birth to his children, and nearly happens to Edward when Bella ends up dying after delivering their hybrid daughter Renesmee, until Edward decides to turn Bella into a vampire at the last minute.
• In the Ngaio Marsh book Vintage Murder, an English theatre impresario is killed during a theatrical tour of New Zealand. His wife, the leading lady, is suspected of having committed the murder along with the leading man, with whom she is supposedly having an affair. It turns out that the wife had indeed fallen in love with her leading man but refused to have an affair, citing moral grounds; after her husband's death, she agrees to marry the leading man only to discover, joyfully, that she's pregnant with her husband's child. The killer is the deceased's business partner, who has a secret gambling problem.
• In The Wheel of Time:
  • Elayne becomes pregnant by Rand shortly before the Last Battle in which Rand is prophesied to die. Subverted when a timely "Freaky Friday" Flip lets him survive, although he and his lovers intend to keep that fact a secret.
  • The prequel New Spring discusses the trope: a young Moiraine is confused at how frequently it happens, given how inconvenient it is for the widow, whereupon an older and more worldly Aes Sedai points out that there are certain things couples tend to do when it might be their last night together.
• A twisted version in Who Is The Prey: He Yan ends up having Fu Shenxing's baby after he dies, as Yuan Ze pleaded with her not to abort it, saying the baby was innocent of Fu Shenxing's crimes. It's unknown exactly how she feels about the child.
• In Jasper Fforde's The Woman Who Died a Lot, when Thursday is attacking her irresponsibility, one of Tuesday's defenses is that she might get this trope if Gavin does indeed die on destiny's schedule.
• The World According to Garp: "He said 'Garp', then he said, 'Good!', then he died."

Live Action TV

• Genderflipped in Angel, where Darla dies giving birth to Connor.
• Belgravia This is the Dark Secret Mr. and Mrs. Trenchard are hiding, that their daughter Sophia died giving birth to the son of Viscount Bellasis who was killed at the Battle of Waterloo.
• In the Black Mirror episode "Be Right Back", a woman's boyfriend is killed the day after they move into their new house, and she discovers shortly afterwards that she is pregnant. Her grief drives her to use new software to create a clone "substitute" of him.
• Referenced in Bones: In "The Critic In the Cabernet", Brennan decides she wanted to have a baby via artificial insemination, and wants Booth to be the donor. Later, after Booth starts to hallucinate Baby Stewie haranguing him, Brennan has him rushed to the hospital, where he is diagnosed with a brain tumor. Before the surgery, Booth tells Brennan that if he doesn't make it, he wants her to use some of his "stuff" to have a baby.
  • Then later, just before Sweets dies, we find out Daisy is pregnant with his child. Overlaps with Dead Guy Junior, as the boy is named Seeley Lance Sweets-Wick.
• Played with in an episode of Chicago Hope. A woman suffers a miscarriage and her husband dies of a heart attack on the same day. She convinces the doctors to artificially inseminate her with her husband's sperm before they too die off and she successfully becomes pregnant.
• At the conclusion of the Mini Series Children Of The Dust, Rachel is seen embracing the child of the man she'd loved since they were children—her being white and him being Native American meant they could never be together and he was killed by a mob after killing her abusive husband.
• Genderflipped in the finale of Chinese Paladin, when Ling'er dies in a heroic sacrifice, leaving Xiaoyao to return home with their infant daughter. For additional irony points, the baby is named after Xiaoyao's ''other'' dead love interest.
• In a non-romantic gender-flipped example, several young women were kidnapped and forced to bear children for an evil infertile couple on Criminal Minds. One of the captives was murdered after having a girl (the couple wanted boys to act as a surrogate for their own stillborn son), but genetic tests revealed that a toddler raised by the couple was actually her son, leaving her parents with Someone To Remember Her By. The grandparents are also granted visitation rights to their granddaughter, who has been Happily Adopted.
• Downton Abbey:
  • Genderflipped. Sybil dies from eclampsia just hours after giving birth to her daughter, leaving Branson to raise the baby alone.
  • Happens in the Series 3 Christmas special when Matthew Crawley dies in a road accident while driving back to Downton just after Mary has delivered their baby.
  • DA also subverts the romantic aspects. Housemaid Ethel's upper-class lover has already rejected their illegitimate child by the time he is killed in World War I. The consequences of unmarried motherhood in the early twentieth century are not pretty for Ethel; then the father's parents swoop in offering to raise the baby so that they can have someone to remember their son by. Ethel refuses but by S3 has descended even further into poverty and prostitution, and eventually decides she must give up her child to his grandparents for his own good.
  • A more traditional example is Edith, who gets pregnant after spending one night with her lover, Michael Gregson- who then goes to Berlin and disappears. It is later confirmed that he was killed by the brownshirts.
• EastEnders had Abi Branning having an affair with Steven Beale, the fiancee of her sister Lauren. This resulted in her becoming pregnant with his child and after his death from injuries he received trying to rescue Abi from a fire, she decided to keep the baby. And Lauren never found out about it!
• Subverted in an episode of ER, in which a woman claims she is pregnant with her deceased husband's child. In fact the "pregnancy" is a nasty teratoma with hair and teeth.
• Played straight in season 3 of Eureka, though this is also a case of Real Life Writes the Plot, as the woman who plays Allison Blake was really pregnant.
• Everwood: Defied. One episode featured Dr. Brown's patient whose husband died several years ago, but tried to invoke this trope during his illness. He made her promise to have in vitro with his sperm and have his child. He really longed to propagate. She wants to do it for him, but it took her a long time to recover from her grieving and prepare to go through it. She's also in a new relationship. Her new spouse originally claimed he was OK with it, but in fact he was very uneasy about the whole thing and wanted to conceive his own child. She considered breaking up with him but Dr. Brown ultimately convinced her that it was unfair of her late husband to ask her for such a thing and that she's not bound to fulfil his wish.
• In the Farscape episode "Taking the Stone", one of the young hedonists, Das, leaves behind a pregnant girlfriend after committing ritual suicide. It isn't considered a tragedy (at least, by the hedonists), since their society demanded it, and the alternative was becoming an outcast and slowly dying of radiation poisoning. The girlfriend isn't affected at first, though, despite being heavily pregnant, later tries to get drunk.
  • In a way, Aeryn Sun's son D'Argo Crichton-Sun could be considered an example. John Crichton was "twinned" in one episode and in the next the party split in half for multiple episodes and the two Johns went with different groups. The John Crichton who was with Aeryn developed a relationship with her, then died shortly after. It took a while after the group reunited for Aeryn to get together with the other Crichton, by which time she was confirmed to be pregnant by the dead Crichton, the live one considers it his son all the same though.
  • Rorf and Rorg, a mated pair of Scarily Competent Tracker bounty hunters first introduced in "'Til The Blood Runs Clear". When they return in the second season Rorg is pregnant, which is what motivates Rorf to accept the cast's job offer. Rorg stays behind due to her pregnancy and Rorf ultimately dies taking a bullet for Crichton without meeting his offspring. A fellow conspirator promises to deliver Rorf's share of the profit from the job to Rorg and her children.
• Invoked in-universe in FlashForward: Demetri Noh, having seen nothing in his flashforward, fears he's doomed to die. Janis, his lesbian coworker, laments that she won't conceive a child in time to have the sonogram/pregnancy she sees in her flashforward. Demetri proposes sleeping together so that he can have a kid before he dies, and she will get her baby.
• Grey's Anatomy combined this with a Time Skip in the two-part episode after Derek's death: a grieving Meredith flees town with her two children and at some point finds out that she's pregnant again. She returns to Seattle a year later after the birth of her daughter Ellis.
• Jeremiah: Gender-Inverted in "Tripwire". Blind Seer Damien is the son of a victim of the Big Death who was born just as his mother died of the disease.
• Kamen Rider Kiva: Maya got pregnant with Wataru shortly before Otoya died.
  • Kamen Rider Decade: Gender-flipped in World of Kiva, where AR Wataru's father is the Fangire King and his mother, a human, has died; leaving Wataru as his father's only memory of her.
• Parodied in The Kids in the Hall, with a sketch where recurring character Flying Pig is killed by flying into power lines. Then, we see some pregnant chick lifted off her feet. That's right, she's having Flying Pig's baby!
• The King's Woman: Subverted. Shortly after Han Fei's death, Lady Han discovers she's pregnant with his child. Unfortunately, by the time she learns of her pregnancy, she's become one of Ying Zheng's concubines. Another concubine has her assassinated while she's still pregnant.
• Law & Order:
  • In one episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a teen girl, as part of a pregnancy pact, has sex with a schizophrenic homeless man in his early 20's. The girl's brother reacts by castrating and immolating the homeless man. After both the girl's brother and mother are sent to prison the girl is left pregnant and alone, but is taken in by the homeless man's father, so that he can support her and his grandchild.
  • Inverted and then cruelly subverted in another episode of SVU. A female soldier had her eggs frozen before being deployed to Iraq, so her husband could have their child in case of her death. Unfortunately not only she died but the eggs ended up destroyed too.
  • Happened in an episode of the original Law & Order. A hospital orderly who raped a comatose woman is discovered to have done so because her mother paid him; she knew her daughter didn't have long to live, and wanted a grandchild while she still could have one.
  • In an episode of Law & Order, the cops and prosecutors are surprised to learn that the much younger Trophy Wife of their victim not only isn't a Gold Digger and is genuinely devastated by his death, she's equally devastated by the fact that she can't invoke this—she suffered several miscarriages and the surrogate they hired ran off with the baby.
• Gender flipped at the end of MacGyver, when Mac discovers that the girl he loved and wanted to marry back in college had given birth to his son, and he now has someone to remember her by.
• Mayfair Witches: Deirdre discovered she was pregnant from her tryst with Patrick after his death (which she believes was a murder to keep them apart), and was very depressed for much of her pregnancy as a result. It's later revealed however that Rowan's father was Cortland, due to him raping Deirdre, who's still living.
• Mirai Sentai Timeranger: Subverted at the end where Honami Moriyama gives birth to the child of Domon/TimeYellow. Why is it a subversion? Because Domon doesn't really die, he just goes back to his time. In Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger episode 40, Sixth Ranger Gai Ikari meets Honami and her son (named Mirai^note Japanese for "future") and even sends a photo of them to Domon when GoJyuDrill returns to the 31st Century.
• Mouse (2021): Hong-ju was pregnant with Yo-han's child when Yo-han died.
• NCIS:
  • Genderflipped but otherwise played completely straight at the time in the season 13 finale. The team finds out Ziva died in a bombing, leaving Tony heartbroken. A few minutes later, we find out that Ziva was pregnant with Tony's daughter, Tali, whom she had been raising on her own. This eventually prompts Tony to retire from NCIS to raise Tali. Ultimately subverted in season 16 when Bishop discovers that Ziva is in fact alive (and Ziva leaves her a note asking her to keep it secret), though it's not known if Tony and Tali know the truth yet.
  • Another version in the episode "Seek", when the team reunites the victim's widow with the bomb-sniffing dog he had been paired with (they had raised him from puppyhood to one year before he was deployed). She outright says that having him makes her feel like her husband is still with her.
• NCIS: Los Angeles: Very fond of this trope. At least 5 murder victims have left behind pregnant wives/girlfriends so far and they are only in Season 5.
• NOS4A2: Just after losing her boyfriend in the effort to stop Manx, Vic learns that she's pregnant by him.
• On One Life to Live, after Patrick is "killed", his pregnant widow Marty is comforted by her archenemy Blair of all people, who reminds her that at least she has his baby. Blair herself was in this position two years earlier when Todd was presumably murdered.
• Happened to Karen after Keith dies in One Tree Hill. She has a daughter she names Lily.
• Picket Fences: Gender-Inverted in multiple episodes.
  • In "Thanksgiving," a woman who has cystic fibrosis and will die from it in a few years discusses wanting to have a baby first.
  • In "The Body Politic," a brain-dead car accident victim is pregnant, and her husband and mother go to court arguing about whether to keep her on life support long enough for her child to be born, with her husband calling that idea one of the only things he has left after her accident and discussing how the baby will have her eyes.
• Dr Sara in Prison Break, with Michael's baby.
• Inverted in an episode of Private Practice. An older women (about sixty) and a young man (thirty) are married. The woman is nine months pregnant after being artificially inseminated, ready to have her baby. The baby has complications, Addison fixes it, but the mother dies after giving birth due to complications associated with her age. The woman very nearly says this trope's name.
• The Purge: Rick and Jenna's baby turned out to be this for her.
• The Shadow Line has Jonah Gabriel's wife, who gives birth to his son after he's been shot dead.
• Painfully subverted in Skins when Jal terminates her pregnancy by recently deceased Chris. This is particularly heartbreaking because the condition that has just killed Chris is genetic and had also killed his brother some years before. Had Jal chosen to invoke this trope and have the baby so she could hold onto Chris, she would have also chosen a life of constant fear that her child might die from this condition at any moment. It is heavily implied that this exact fear is what led Chris' mother to abandon him in the first season.
• Stargate Atlantis: Teyla's pregnancy seemed to be going this way, as the (previously unmentioned) father of her child was kidnapped by Michael and (as she found out later when she was also kidnapped), experimented on. Ultimately subverted when the Big Damn Heroes rescue Teyla, her baby, and Kanaan, and Dr. Keller is able to undo his mutation.
• At the end of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine with Kasidy, who was revealed to be pregnant with Ben Sisko's child in an earlier episode. This is a variation as Sisko isn't dead; he's gone to live with the Prophets, and nobody knows when he'll be back.
• Gender flipped in Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Reunion". K'ehleyr, who Worf had sex with in second-season episode "The Emissary", introduced him to their son, Alexander, then was murdered.
• Tidelands (Netflix): Not long after they find out that Violca is pregnant with their baby, Colton's killed.
• The Walking Dead (2010): Glenn is killed while Maggie is pregnant with his child, although in this case, they both already knew this before his death.
• The War of the Worlds (2019): Sometime after the invasion, Amy gives birth to her and George's son, named George Jr, after George has been killed protecting them.
• Baby William becomes this for a short time on The X-Files. Luckily, Mulder isn't as dead as we thought.
• Your Honor: In Season 2, after Adam was accidentally shot and killed, it turns out that Fia gave birth to their son.

Music

• The end result of the story of "The Hazards of Love", The Decemberists 2009 concept album.
  • Actually a subversion, as the lyrics of the last song imply that the whole family - father, mother, and unborn child - die together. There is no mention of the child's birth or a miscarriage, and Margaret is obviously in the sinking boat with William when the river claims them (she is described as arranging rocks around the hull to weigh it down). A better Decemberists example of this trope would be "Yankee Bayonett," a surprisingly cheerful love song between a pregnant woman and her dead soldier lover.
• The Kingston Trio's "Ballad on the Shape of Things" ends this way:
  "Triangular is the garment thin
  That fastens on with a safety pin
  To a prize I had no wish to win...
  It's a lasting memory
  That my true love gave to me!"
• "Never Went To Church", by British rap group The Streets, plays with this trope. It's about a man, the narrator, lamenting his father's death and emulating his actions, both on purpose and subconsciously. In the last verse, it is revealed that the narrator himself embodies this trope.
• The Statler Brothers song "Silver Medals and Sweet Memories", with the narrator's father never returning from World War II.
• Tommy. Subverted in that the father comes Back from the Dead to kill the mother's new lover (or to be killed by him in the film adaptation).
• Gender-flipped in the music video for Travis Tritt's 1994 song "Tell Me I Was Dreaming". The song is the second of a trilogy (with 1991's "Anymore" and 1998's "If I Lost You") where Tritt plays a Vietnam veteran in the music videos of the trilogy. In this video, his wife, who is heavily pregnant, falls off a boat dock and hits her head on the way down. Their child is born, but she dies. The baby is even named after his wife, Annie.

Roleplay

• This happened to Devora Brukhis in Cerberus Daily News, with one twist - she was the one who went off to war, leaving her boyfriend behind. He was killed in a terrorist attack a few days before she found out she was pregnant.
• Fire Emblem on Forums:
  • Final Hour: Catherine, who ends up with Harlan shortly before his death and winds up pregnant with his child in the epilogue. The child, Amber, is a major character in the sequel.

Tabletop Games

• In the storyline accompanying the BattleTech game, Kitsune Kurita is a gender inversion of this; mother dies, father lives on. He was secretly born to Omiko Kurita, fathered by Victor Davion. Both their families and realms they ruled were traditionally enemies but found a mutual greater enemy in the Clans at the time. During a summit to discuss the Clan threat, the two took a shine to each other, and it blossomed into an illicit romance over time. Omi was later killed by an assassin hired by Victor's treacherous sister, and he thought her gone forever... until Kitsune came back years later, already a man and making a name for himself, and declaring to the whole Inner Sphere his true parentage. A cabal of reactionary Draconis hardliners were disgusted to learn their prospective Puppet King was "tainted" with Davion blood, and FedSun hardliners painted Omiko as some Kurita harlot who seduced and corrupted gallant Victor. Victor himself? He was just elated to see some legacy of his romance with Omi survive. Omi chose "Kitsune" for the boy's name, in honor of his paternal grandfather, First Prince Hanse "The Fox" Davion.^note "Kitsune" is Japanese for "Fox"
• Werewolf: The Apocalypse had the were-bull Apis, who were midwives and matchmakers, had a ritual to create a baby, grown inside the earth. While it would work on any two parents, provided both were at one point capable of siring children, the stereotype of its use was that if a woman died young, her widowed husband would take a lock of her hair to the Apis, so they could create the baby she would have borne.

Theatre

• In Carousel, Billy dies before his daughter Louise is born. He does get brought down to earth so he can visit her before meeting his judgment.
• Elizabeth Proctor in The Crucible, although her husband knew she was pregnant (as it saved her from being executed for witchcraft like him).
• This is how Frollo views his nephew Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame following the death of his estranged brother Jehan. His treatment of Quasimodo, however, makes it clear he just wants to control him in the way he couldn't control his late brother.
• Subverted with Serafina in The Rose Tattoo. The shock of her husband's death causes her to have a miscarriage.
• In There Shall Be No Night, Erik and Kaatri get married right before he goes off to fight in the Winter War against the Soviets. Not long after the family gets word that Erik has been killed, Kaatri finds out that she's pregnant. The family sends her to America to have the baby in safety.

Video Games

• The second campaign of Age of Empires III ends with the hero's Native American girlfriend giving birth to his son. Since the campaigns follow a family over six generations, it was practically the only way that one of the hero characters could make a Heroic Sacrifice.
• In Batman: Arkham City, if you look near Harley's old outfit from the first game, there is a positive pregnancy test on the floor; The Joker dies at the end, making this a villainous example.
  • Also, she can be heard briefly singing to the baby during the credits at the end.
  • However, the Harley Quinn's Revenge DLC heavily hints that Harley is not actually pregnant, having instead gotten a false positive after many negative tests. It might be even worse, since it's been speculated that losing the Joker caused enough stress to create a miscarriage. Hence the reason her methods are both erratic and self-defeating, insanity notwithstanding.
• Baldur's Gate has the silver dragon Adalon in Shadows of Amn invoke the trope. She and her mate were engaged in a pitched battle, and the male dragon died in the assistance. When Adalon was granted a wish for her service, she tried to resurrect her husband with it. When that failed, however, she asked for dragon eggs that were impregnated by his ghost, which works.
• Another gender-flipped example in the After Story of CLANNAD, with Nagisa dying giving birth to Ushio, leaving Tomoya alone. Subverted, the True Ending fixes this and Nagisa is saved.
• In the "Severed" DLC for Dead Space 2 Lexine is pregnant with Gabe's child; both the Government and Religion of Evil had plans for her. Gabe sacrifices himself in order to allow Lexine to get away from the Necromorph-infested Sprawl.
• This can potentially occur at the end of Dragon Age: Origins. When a Grey Warden slays an Archdemon, both of their souls are destroyed, and both perish. If the PC is male and romances Morrigan, she will want him to make love to her on the eve of the final battle, as part of a magic ritual where they will conceive a child that will absorb the soul of the Archdemon instead of him, and save his life. However, if he refuses to do so, she gets upset and leaves, and if he subsequently slays the Archdemon himself, he will die. The epilogue in that case reveals that she already became pregnant at some point before the endgame (since the ritual was refused), and is now carrying his child. Said child is then encountered in Dragon Age: Inquisition if the relevant world state is imported; if Alistair is the Grey Warden ally, he and Morrigan have a remarkably civil conversation about the boy's father.
  • Discussed in Dragon Age II between Aveline, whose husband Wesley dies during the prologue, and Bethany. They have a serious conversation about why Aveline and Wesley never had children, and then Bethany asks whether Aveline regrets it now that Wesley is gone. Aveline (not at all unkindly) tells Bethany that the subject is too personal.
• After completing the bonus dungeon in Dragon Quest VIII, the origins of The Hero are revealed: a girl from the Dragovian Tribe visited the human world and fell in love with a human prince. The girl's father disapproved of their courting, and took his daughter away, back to the Dragovian Village. The prince searched all over the world for his lost love, eventually dying just before he could reach the village. The girl was heartbroken, but soon after she received word of his demise, she discovered she was pregnant with his child...
• In the final route of Duel Savior Destiny Taiga goes off to fight an eternal battle. Apparently, though, he had gotten Crea pregnant a few days before despite being unconscious during their only time together. He does return a few years later, though.
• Occurs in Ever17. Tsugumi is pregnant with Takeshi's children after he dies on LeMU. However, subverted because he gets better.
• Fire Emblem:
  • One of the more absurd examples occurs in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. Ena discovers she's pregnant with Rajaion's child 23 years after the last time it would have even been possible for him to get her pregnant. Additional materials reveal that the child even becomes a Dead Guy Junior. This could be explained by the fact that she's a dragon, but it becomes confusing again when the sporadic accounts of Ena's almost-sister-in-law Almedha's pregnancy makes it clear that it did not last nearly as long. (Though to be fair, Almedha's baby daddy was a human and their kid was a Branded...)
  • This can potentially happen in Fire Emblem: Awakening, if a married first generation male character who isn't a Lord is killed in battle while his girlfriend/wife survives to the end, since their Kid from the Future is slated to be born after the game's ending. This might also happen to a Second Generation male, should said girlfriend/wife be a Female Avatar.
• In Grand Theft Auto IV, this shows up at the end if the player chooses the "Deal" ending and Roman dies at his wedding. Malorie reveals she is pregnant after Niko avenges his death. In the "Revenge" ending, this doesn't apply.
• Horizon Forbidden West: After Varl's death, Zo reveals to Aloy that she's pregnant with his child.
• Knights of the Old Republic: The canonical version is that LSM!Revan trucked off to the great unknown to fight the True Sith, never returning, and leaving Bastila knocked up (with the likely prospect of exile, among other consequences). Their descendant Satele Shan is a major NPC in Star Wars: The Old Republic.
• The Last of Us Part II: Dina reveals to Ellie that she's pregnant with Jesse's child at the end of their first day in Seattle. Jesse isn't told when he shows up, but he guesses it anyway. Jesse is killed by Abby on their third and final day in Seattle. Several months later, Dina gives birth to their son, who she and Ellie name JJ after both Jesse and Joel.
• Mass Effect has a sidequest where Shepard has to resolve a debate between a woman, Rebekah, and her brother-in-law, Michael. Rebekah's husband, Jacob, died recently and she's pregnant with his baby. It turns out Jacob had a rare heart defect that could shorten the baby's lifespan. Michael wants the embryo to get routine genetic therapy to eliminate the possibility of the baby developing the same condition, but Rebekah refuses because it has a tiny chance of killing the baby.
  • After the Time Skip in the sequel, the two can be seen again in the Citadel, discussing other ways to improve the health of the new toddler, also named Jacob.
  • The couple are seen arguing again in the third game, this time over whether Jacob should be allowed to socialize in daycare or if he should be kept at home to minimize the danger to him during the Reaper War.
  • If you encouraged her to hook up with Charr in the second game, Ereba will be pregnant with his baby in the third game. Unfortunately, he gets killed after only six months of marriage. You have to bring her his final letter.
  • It isn't outright stated, but in her scene before the final push on Earth, it's hinted that a romanced Liara is impregnating herself when she telepathically shares a memory with Shepard.
• Metal Gear Solid: While it has been known that Solid Snake is a clone of Big Boss since very early in the series, it's revealed near the end of the series that he wasn't grown in a test tube but inside an actual woman. The clones were created by the Patriots when Big Boss appeared to be mortally wounded, and the woman who volunteered was his occasional girlfriend EVA, who (by her own account) loved him and wanted this trope to happen.
• The ending of Muv-Luv Unlimited has Takeru's girlfriend and their daughter standing on a field of a distant planet, looking towards the night sky in the direction of the Earth. Takeru himself had died in the last stand of humanity against the BETA back on Earth.
• Played with in the ending of Overlord: Raising Hell. After you complete the Bonus Level of Hell only to get stuck down there, the final cutscene shows Gnarl reminiscing on the sinister exploits of the Villain Protagonist, and discovering that the Overlord's mistress is bearing the Overlord's child. "Evil always finds a way..."
• In Sampaguita (the 3rd game of the Yarudora series), this happens in the 3rd Good Ending: the main protagonist ultimately dies, and his soul lingers for several years in Japan, before he finally manages to go find his lover Maria; she's now returned to her native Philippines and lives with her family. She now has a child, who's the fruit of the time she and the protagonist spent together during the storyline. The child is able to see his father's soul, so they can meet for the first time.
• Noh is implied to be pregnant in her ending for Sengoku Basara 2, despite the fact that historically she never bore Oda Nobunaga any children.
• Soul Calibur V: Sometime between the conclusion of SC IV, yet prior to V, series' protagonist Xianghua and Kilik finally consummated their feelings for each other. But since he was still plagued by feelings of guilt, due to being infected by The Evil Seed, he left her before she awoke and departed for the Astral Chaos to train, in hopes of purifying himself. Kilik hasn't been seen, or heard from since; leaving Xianghua to wonder what's become of him and ultimately marry another man to rebuild her life on her own. What he didn't know is that he had left her with child: their then-unborn son, Xiba.

Webcomics

• AntiBunny: Though Mors dies, his wife Knell survives to later give birth to their child.
• Suspecting he might die if he goes off to war, Candi invokes this trope by trying to get herself pregnant with Donte's child in the Ciem Webcomic Series.
• Fans! has a two-in-one: the time-travelling Joseph Oberf was born after both his father (Rikk) and his genetic mother (Rumy) were killed, since he was implanted as a fetus in his birth mother (Ally).
• In Girl Genius, Oggie, a member of the trio of Jagermonsters that frequently are in Agatha's party, is a rarity among his long-lived brethern: he has descendants. He takes solace in that he never has truly completely lost his beloved wife, because he can see glimpses of her in all of their descendants. This page and the next show Oggie reminscing fondly about her and their shared legacy.
• A decidedly skewed version occurs at the end of It's Walky!: After Walky's heroic sacrifice, Joe mentions that they may be able to resurrect him using Imported Alien Phlebotinum, but only if they can find a complete genetic sample. Cut to Walky's deeply religious (and assumed-to-have-been virginal) girlfriend Joyce looking extremely embarrassed.
  • It should be noted that she was only "assumed to be virginal" by the other characters—there was a month-long storyline about Walky and Joyce's first time having sex (and then the multiple times they had sex afterwards) that came right before the final storyline (and served as foreshadowing for this moment), so the readers were certainly in on the joke.
    Joyce: Premarital hanky-panky saved Walky's life. I'll never hear the end of that...
• My Daughter Is A Zombie: Jeonghwan starts a romance with his childhood friend Yeonhwa before a resident in their town finds out his daughter Su-ah is a zombie. He plans to skip town without saying goodbye, but he is caught by soldiers, asks Su-ah to bite him, and is shot as he turns into a zombie. Yeonhwa has a child by him, and his mother wonders when they had the time to get busy.
• In the backstory of The Order of the Stick, for the black dragon and his mother.
  • Also Durkon and his mother. That is, if the story he first heard telling him about his father is true.
• Whale Star: The Gyeongseong Mermaid: Yeongyeong lost her husband to torture by the Japanese and now raises their infant son without him.
• In Wurr, the dog Niavel, who "got involved with hellhounds," was recently confirmed to be pregnant with what are likely the now-deceased Issan's pups.

Web Original

• An interesting variation that circumvents the pregnancy occurs in Red vs. Blue. In it, there are several A.I. programs that are eventually revealed to all be severed fragments taken from a single, original A.I. known as Alpha, which was in turn copied from an actual human mind. Later, it is revealed that Church, one of the main characters of the series, is actually what was left of the Alpha A.I. implanted into an artificial body (something that he himself was unaware of). Long story short, Church, or rather, the Alpha A.I., dies for real. Shortly before his death, however, Caboose is entrusted with Epsilon, one of the A.I.s that were severed from the Alpha A.I. (in this case, Church's memory), which he decides to befriend, raise, and basically use as a Replacement Goldfish for Church, which isn't especially hard since Epsilon remembers being named Church and acts just like him and Caboose loves to tell him stories about the Alpha. Interestingly, the Reds and Tucker don't seem to be aware of the switch, despite "Church" not remembering who they are since Epsilon was severed from the previous Church before they met him.

Western Animation

• Subverted in the Bob's Burgers episode "Ear-sy Rider." A biker gang mourns the loss of their leader, Horny Dave. His lover, Mudflap, is heavily pregnant, and her fellow gang members assume it's Horny Dave's baby. However, when she goes into labor at the restaurant, she confesses that Horny Dave had a vasectomy in 1993 and the actual father is Critter, the new leader, as Mudflap had an affair with him before Horny Dave died.
• An episode of Clone High parodies this trope at the end of a film Abe Lincoln made, with a random human woman revealing she's pregnant right before the giraffe protagonist's Heroic Sacrifice.
  Girl: I have your baby in me, Giraffe!
• In He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983) and its reboot, this is the origin of the Sorceress's daughter (who is revealed to be Teela). Though some hints are dropped that her biological father might not be dead after all.
• OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes: In "Big Reveal", Carol confines that K.O.'s biological father is Laserblast; she discovered she was expecting shortly after Laserblast was apparently killed in the "Sandwich Incident". Though it turns out Laserblast is not only alive, but now the supervillain known as Prof. Venomous.
• Primal (2019): Mira and Spear conceive a child while the latter is suffering hideous burn injuries and looking likely to die. It's left ambiguous whether he actually does, but this trope was clearly the plan. Fang's clutch by Red also serves as this.
• In Star Wars Rebels, Kanan Jarrus and Hera Syndulla bicker Like an Old Married Couple, and while there's not much else the writers can depict on a kid's show, adult viewers mention that they still ACT like they're in a rock-solid relationship, especially since they've worked together for ten years in one of their prequel novels. It eventually turns out that they've had a romantic/sexual relationship going on since before Kanan's Heroic Sacrifice, because the epilogue shows her raising his son.

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