Egg MacGuffin



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

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

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

If the plot revolves around the unknown origin or result of a different kind of egg, it may be Who's Your Daddy?

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

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

Has nothing to do with breakfast sandwiches. You're probably thinking of an Egg McMuffin, for some silly reason.

Anime & Manga

 * Shugo Chara: The Embryo, and heck, the Heart's Eggs themselves, are there within order towards creating Dreams.
 * The egg that Skuld's angel Noble Scarlet hatches from in Ah! My Goddess.
 * In the Diamond is Unbreakable story arc of Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure, Koichi's stand Echoes actually takes the form of an egg when he first gains it. Later, when he needs its power, it hatches into its first effective form.
 * In the opening arc of Yu Yu Hakusho, Yusuke is given an egg that will feed off his spirit energy and hatch when he can come back to life. It is ignored completely when Yusuke is brought back to life for a different reason, and seems to be forgotten for another few arcs -- until the Dark Tournament, when Koenma reveals that it's finally ready to hatch. Instead of the huge, horrible beast the characters feared, it hatches into a little blue penguin-y thing. Keiko dubs it "Puu" and it becomes her pet. Then in the next arc,
 * Natsume Yuujinchou: Natsume takes care of a small egg found in a nest -- which hatches into a "dragon". At first, however, it appears to take the form of an extremely tiny version of whatever creature it sees first -- namely Natsume. It is possibly the cutest thing to ever exist in anime.
 * Played with in the Kirby of the Stars anime, where the giant steel bird Dynablade lays an egg that later disappears, with fragments of its shell around. The other characters suspect that Kirby has eaten the egg, and Dynablade ain't happy...
 * In Digimon, digi-eggs are the beginning and end of a Digimon's life cycle, with a Digimon reverting to egg form after "death." (There are exceptions to this, such as season three, which began the trend of new seasons being AU and thus had different rules, and Once, Seraphimon, a god/king to the season four version of the Digital World, had to be toted around by Bokomon, who had it strapped to his stomach and acted pregnant for well over ten episodes until Seraphimon hatched as Patamon. And then proceeds to refer to Bokomon as his "papa-mon". No reference or mention is made of the fact that Bokomon could, if he wanted to, become The Man Behind the Man ruling 1/3 of the digital world.
 * Pokémon
 * In the anime, Ash and his friends found and looked after an egg for a while which eventually hatched into a Togepi (that became the Team Pet for a while). This Togepi saw Misty as its mother. Perhaps slightly spoofed in that Ash was the one who found the egg, and is pissed that the Togepi didn't therefore attach to him.
 * Most of the cast members have received a Pokémon through this fashion. Ash received an egg with hatched into a Phanpy, May received one that hatched into an Eevee, Brock received one that hatched into a Happiny, and Dawn received one that hatched into a Cyndaquil. This happens in the games quite a lot as well.
 * In the Pokémon Special manga, Gold receives the Togepi egg, which at one point nearly gets eaten by a wild Gligar. Thankfully, it hatched into a Killer Rabbit with a gambling problem and took the Gligar down itself.
 * Subverted in Maison Ikkoku, where Yotsuya gives an egg to Godai with no explanation before leaving on a trip. The entire episode revolves around the rest of the cast dealing with the fallout resulting, some helpful, others not so much. In the end,
 * The entire plot of Seirei no Moribito occurs because Prince Chagum is carrying the egg of a water spirit within his body, at first leading many people to believe that he's possessed by a demon. The entire cast becomes very concerned both with making sure the egg hatches successfully (since there will be a horrific drought if it doesn't) and with making sure that Chagum isn't killed in the process, with much of the drama of the latter half of the series coming from the fact that the two goals may be mutually exclusive.
 * in XxxHolic, Watanuki is once given a magical egg as payment for a job. He is told that he just has to sleep with it and anything he wishes will come out. He uses it to hatch a little bird, Tampopo, that is immune to Himawari's bad luck curse to make her happy.
 * Revolutionary Girl Utena has an aptly-titled episode -- "Nanami's Egg" -- in which Nanami believes she's laid an egg in her sleep and no-one (except Utena) has the heart to tell her that it doesn't make sense. Nanami was already considered a character that straddled the Cerebus Syndrome, with both serious duel episodes and comic relief episodes based around her haughtiness and animals abusing her, but the 27th episode manages to marry both comedy of the absurd and very touching character development. It's Insert Song is "Hello, Baby.".
 * The Behelits of the Berserkerverse take on the shape of an egg with human facial features strewn all over it. There are two egg-grades of Behelits: the normal brown-grade Behelits that give you average evil nutrition, and then the red-grade Behelits that give you humongous God-like evil nutrition (and hence, this grade is also known as, "The Egg of the Conqueror/King"). And don't forget, these are also Clingy MacGuffins, as they always find their way back to their master when the time is right. So, they ain't going rotten anytime soon.

Comic Strips

 * In US Acres, Orson the Pig took care of two abandoned eggs, from which hatched Booker and Sheldon.

Films -- Animation

 * Ice Age III: Dawn of the Dinosaurs.
 * Subverted in Shrek, when Princess Fiona accidentally causes a mama bird to expire, leaving a nest of orphan eggs. Her solution?.
 * The whole plot of Angels Egg.

Films -- Live-Action

 * the dream maker in Barney's Great Adventure.
 * In the Eddie Murphy film version of Doctor Dolittle, the Maya character has an egg throughout the movie that she believes is a swan egg. At the end of the film, it hatches, and it turns out to be an alligator.
 * John Hurt's character is this to the crew of the Nostromo in Alien.

Literature

 * Baby Boomers will remember Oliver Butterworth's 1956 book The Enormous Egg, in which a chicken lays an anomalously large egg from which hatches a triceratops. (If you don't remember the book, perhaps you remember the 1968 TV special based on it.)
 * Inheritance Cycle starts with Eragon finding a dragon egg and looking after it.
 * Technically speaking, the same thing happens in His Majesty's Dragon. Laurence and Temeraire have another one to deal with two books later in The Black Powder War.
 * In Diana Wynne Jones' book The Pinhoe Egg, the main character finds a egg in an attic, and cares for it until it grows up.
 * In the Dr. Seuss book (and Bob Clampett cartoon adaptation) Horton Hatches the Egg, an elephant takes on the task of hatching the egg of a irresponsible bird. The offspring ends up being a bird with the head of an elephant.
 * The Daenerys subplot in A Game of Thrones features three fossilized dragon eggs.
 * In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone, Hagrid gets ahold of a dragon egg, which hatches into Norwegian Ridgeback which Hagrid dubs Norbert. Little Norbert, with his vicious, fire-breathing ways, quickly becomes a liability (especially as keeping dragons is illegal), and he is dispatched to Romania, much to Hagrid's distress.
 * In the Leviathan trilogy, there is a veeeeeeery mysterious Egg MacGuffin in the first book.
 * In Taltos, young Vlad takes care of the jhereg egg that he'd obtained from its mother in Jhereg. When Loiosh hatches, he calls Vlad "Mama", although he switches to "Boss" once he's grown some.
 * Not an egg, but in Perdido Street Station, Isaac rears a caterpillar-like larva to adulthood in a similar manner to this trope, mostly to see what it'll grow up to be.
 * In Nomads of Gor Tarl is tasked by the Priest-Kings to retrive the last egg of the Priest-Kings, the only female, to start their cycle anew.
 * Septimus Heap: The rock that Jenna finds in Magyk turns out to be one.

Live-Action TV

 * In the Star Trek Voyager episode "Parturition" Neelix and Paris find a nest of repto-humanoids, one of which hatches, leading them to care for it until the mother returns.
 * In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Bad Eggs", the students are given an egg to take care of to show them the responsibilities of parenthood. The eggs hatch into some kind of prehistoric mind-controlling parasites. (Discovered when Xander cooks and tries to eat his.)
 * In the Shake It Up episode "Heat it Up", Tinka (the comedic relief) enters an egg into a science fair that she genetically engineered. It hatches and proceeds to attack her.
 * In Merlin, Merlin and company go looking for a dragon egg in "Aithusa".

Myths & Religion

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

Radio

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

Video Games

 * The Time Egg from Chrono Trigger. Or, more accurately, the Time Egg is the Chrono Trigger.
 * In Chrono Cross, one of the first key items Serge can obtain in Another World is a Draconian Egg. Near the endgame, he can take it to an incubator in Fort Dragonia, where it will hatch into Draggy, a rainbow-colored infant dragon.
 * She may be the most hardboiled and Badass of Nintendo's protagonists, but in the closing of Metroid II even Samus Aran couldn't bring herself to exterminate the last Metroid, a mere baby that mistook her for its mother. She instead turned it over to scientists, proving to be both a good thing and bad thing when the Space Pirates steal it in the beginning of Super Metroid.
 * In a weird example, there's the Hummingbird Egg / Egg of Light from Mother 3, which appears to be more of a Fabergé egg than a real one. Apparently it's so important that Wess would implement a trap that would drop thieves into a watery pit just to protect it.
 * Yoshis Island: Yoshi's main gimmick revolves around this.
 * Kinda subverted in An Untitled Story, as your character is an egg that runs around and does stuff (until ).
 * The whole plot of Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg revolves around hatching an egg by feeding it fruit. And then there's the eponymous Giant Egg,.
 * The plot of SaGa Frontier 2 revolves around a magical egg that causes grief for a family of adventurers and influences the history of the world.
 * In Sam and Max Freelance Police Chariots of the Dogs, the chicken was the McGuffin to answer an old mariachi's philosophical obsession. A rooster to be specific, who was left at the beginning of time where he promptly laid an egg. No one was more surprised about that than the rooster. This left forever unanswerable the question of "which came first, the chicken or the egg?"
 * In Super Smash Bros Melee there was a mission where you had to keep an egg from breaking.
 * The seven Yoshi eggs in Super Mario World.
 * The in Dragon Quest III is actually the  egg.
 * Dragon Fable starts out with the hero recovering the Black Dragon Box, which contained a dragon egg. After several quests involving the egg and its fate, it eventually hatches into the dragon that you use for titan battles.
 * The entire point of The Legend of Zelda Links Awakening is to collect the eight instruments and play them in front of a giant egg (belonging to the Wind Fish).
 * In World of Warcraft, a Quest Chain in the Badlands results in you stealing a Black Dragon Egg. You end up purifying it, creating the only known uncorrupted Black Dragon Egg in the entire World. Naturally, Deathwing wants it destroyed
 * The plot of Spyro: The Year of the Dragon revolves around the fact that the 150 dragon eggs have been stolen, and it's up to Spyro to recover them. Each of them hatches upon discovery, with many of the babies having their own unique animation.
 * Two of them in Bastion; they're minor, and don't really have much to do with the plot on their own, but they're largely unimportant aside from spawning a couple of pets at your home base (which are themselves largely cosmetic) and your companions will have remarks to make about them.
 * In Shining Force III there is a hidden character that requires you to go through a lot of work to get, probably falls under Guide Damn It territory. You first have buy some chicken food and lure a chicken to follow you. Later in the game you have to find a couple boiling an egg, buy the egg for 1000 gold, find the chicken your lured sitting in your HQ and then place the egg under the chicken and it'll instantly hatch. The creature will run off and then right near the end of the game you'll find the character "Penn" who turns out to be a Joke Character as he starts at level 1, unpromoted, when all your other characters are promoted at level ~15.

Western Animation

 * In the Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers episode "Three Men and a Booby", a booby bird loses an egg to an eggcentric collector. They retrieve the egg, but the booby is captured; part of the plot revolves around the guys caring for the egg (and later, the hatched booby) while Gadget builds a Trojan Easter basket...
 * The Simpsons: Bart Simpson has to do this, after accidentally killing the mommy bird. Except that when they hatched they turned out to be lizards. Apparently the female lizard eats the bird eggs and lays its own eggs in their place. The baby lizards then eat the bird.
 * Rocko's Modern Life has a relationship with a Cat and a Turtle which resulted in an egg that contained three children: One of them looking like Heifer (a Steer).
 * A classic cartoon example has Daffy Duck looking after his own egg. It's a rare setting that has him married. His wife goes out and tells him rather sternly to be responsible for a change and don't let anything happen to Junior. After a while he gets bored and starts playing with the egg. He does a little stage magic and vanishes it. The third time he does that, the egg doesn't come back. Daffy gets hauled into divorce court for the egg's disappearance, and after playing the suspense for all it's worth, he manages to bring the egg back in perfect condition.
 * An episode of The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss involves a girl named Megan and her friend Horton the Elephant trying to retrieve the priceless Zubble-Wump egg which was stolen by the Grinch.
 * An episode of the Super Mario World episode "The Koopa Shuffle" uses this.
 * American Dragon Jake Long, "The Egg": Jake has to take care of a griffin egg ready to hatch -- and loses it in a factory full of candied eggs.
 * In Gargoyles, have to take care of thirty-six Gargoyle eggs because their parents are all either dead or unavailable.
 * A Family Guy episode had Peter growing a beard, which a bird nested in. Due to the bird's endangered status, Peter had to keep the beard until the eggs hatched.
 * One episode of Earthworm Jim has Psycrow using a magic orb which turns out, after Jim ends up sitting on it, to be an egg that promptly hatches. The entity inside the egg makes all sorts of vague promises about how it will help usher in a wonderful new age for the universe, at which point a cow lands on its head for no reason.
 * The Dofus in Wakfu. These dragon eggs are extremely valuable due to the incredible amount of Wakfu contained in them.
 * The Phoenix egg in the My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic episode "Dragon Quest". It plays a pivotal role in the climax of the episode In the last minute of the episode
 * In the The Backyardigans episode "Tale of the Mighty Knights", Tyrone and Uniqua are tasked with guarding the king's egg, which promptly rolls away.