"It's an ale! Five gallons, six ounces."
"Okay—now push! PUSH! Keep pushing... and... we're good! Life signs are holding steady. He's going to be fine. Congratulations, Megatron—it's a superwarrior.
— Rossum creating a Phase-Sixer, Said superwarrior then crushes Rossum's face with his bare hand. Transformers: More than Meets the Eye
A sub-trope of Does This Remind You of Anything?, this is a scene where someone (usually a man, though cases of Mister Seahorse don't count) goes through all the motions of a Screaming Birth, complete with screams of "you did this to me" and someone on hand to give encouragement being common. But what's really going on is something much more mundane or ridiculous.
Often goes hand-in-hand with Toilet Humour, as many examples of this trope use it to represent constipation or pushing out a fart.
Occasionally the victim will simply be the Panicky Expectant Father himself, struggling to get through the agony of his wife crushing his hand to cope with her own pain.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In the dubbed version of the second to last episode of Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit when Balsa and Tanda are getting the egg out of Chagum.
- Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt features Brief passing a miniature Panty and Stocking through his digestive system. Garterbelt decides to treat the process as if it were a birth, stirrups and all.
Comic Books
- The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye: A flashback in issue 14 has Overlord being infused with ununtrium to make him Nigh-Invulnerable, with scientist Rossum as the doctor and Megatron as the expectant parent. Megatron is tasked with pushing a button to douse Overlord with the stuff and not to stop pushing until it’s finished. When the process ends and Overlord crushes Rossum's head, Megatron beams.
He takes after me.
- Gaston Lagaffe has a strip where Gaston swallows a small toy. Fantasio drives him to the hospital, spends an hour chain-smoking in the waiting room, and then a nurse pops out to say "It's a plane!".
Eastern European Animation
- In Kayko & Kokosh, the scene when Cuddly's egg is about to hatch after Kokosh heated it up with him in bed is portrayed as such, with even Kayko patting his hand as Cudddly is born.
Fan Works
- In The Lion King (1994) fanfic Pride Lands Generations, although there is no intercut with the actual birth scene, this trope is implied — the expectant mother begins giving birth, the lionesses are quickly summoned to take her to the birthing den... only to switch to Dhahabu and his elephant friend helping break down the river dam created by the Big Bad, complete with "One, two, three, PUSH!" Then the real birth scene is shown (albeit mostly off-screen and without graphic detail).
Films — Animation
- In Robots, Herb and Lydia Copperbottom have received an assembly kit for their future son Rodney. The next scene has Herb yelling push, then it pulls out to reveal that they're pushing two pieces together.
- In Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Ellie is giving birth while Diego fights off some raptors trying to kill her. At one point Diego is the one appearing to go through labor pains, and then the camera pulls back to show him pushing a raptor off a ledge. She's telling him to push, he claims that she has no idea what he's going through, and then there's a moment of silence as he processes what he just said before sheepishly apologizing.
Films — Live-Action
- In the second Ace Ventura movie, Ace is spying on the villains from inside a mechanical rhino, but the combination of an extremely hot weather and lack of cooling inside the rhino forcing him to remove all his clothes, a jammed exit hatch and the only other available means of exit being a tiny hole in the rubber membrane covering the rhino placed just under its tail that Ace struggles to stretch enough to get through it makes it look like the rhino is giving birth to a grown man to a group of unwitting tourists.
- In Blankman, Blankman and his brother Kevin help a woman trapped in an elevator to give birth. All three are screaming loudly as this happens, though. The woman, for obvious reasons, Kevin, because when he offered his hand to the woman, she grabbed his crotch instead and squeezed as hard as she could, and Blankman because, well... he's a bit of a dork who doesn't really know what's going on.
- In Evolution (2001), when the doctors have to get the alien insect that cut its way into Harry's body by going in through the colon and pulling it out, and the scene plays out in this way.
- Prevenge: Although not shown onscreen, Ruth's partner's death is described as being like this. He and his friends were out climbing, there was a mistake, and the weight was too heavy. The leader had to cut the cord to let him loose, killing him but saving all their lives. As part of her Roaring Rampage of Revenge, she stabs a couple of her male victims in the stomach in an inversion.
Live-Action TV
- In one episode of The IT Crowd, Moss climbs into a crane machine to get an iPhone that was dropped in but gets stuck. Jen manages to use the crane to get the iPhone, but Moss has to try moving to the side to let the iPhone slip through. When it finally gets out Moss exclaims "it's beautiful."
- Friends rather justifiably does this with Joey's passing a kidney stone, and for extra laughs directly juxtaposes it with Phoebe's actual labour in the same hospital. Truth in Television in this case. Many women who have given birth and also passed a kidney stone will tell you, the kidney stone is the more painful experience.
- In True Blood, the scene where Jason has to get blood drained from his dangerously engorged penis is staged very much like a scene of a woman in a hospital giving birth.
- In Parks and Recreation, this happens when Ben gets kidney stones. When Leslie and his sister ask what's wrong, he says that he's giving birth.
- Happens to Doug in The King of Queens when doctors have to remove a large staple from one of his testicles. We even get to see poor Doug's legs up in stirrups and his wife holding his hand while he screams.
- In an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise, Dr. Phlox is putting Malcolm through some physical therapy for a leg injury, and it looks a lot like a birth scene, including Dr. Phlox telling Malcolm to push.
- Complete with grunting and groaning.
- In an episode of Bones, Hodgins is host to a larve in his neck, which eventually needs to come out... screaming, controlled breathing, and all. Earlier in the episode, Wendell even asked if he needed to boil some water. The whole thing played out like a pregnancy.
- Eve (2015): In the first episode. Unplugging Project Eternity involves removing a thick blueish cord connected to her stomach. Swaps abruptly to the other end of the metaphor when the teenage boy realises it's hurting her and, to save her life, thrusts the phallic plug at the end back into her middle...
- Zig-zagged in one episode of Raising Hope—after Sabrina expresses dismay at not feeling like Hope's "real" mommy, Barney sets up an elaborate rebirthing ceremony to make Sabrina feel like she's giving birth to Hope. Unfortunately, Hope gets stuck in the tomato-sauce-filled tunnel they used to simulate the birth canal—when Jimmy goes in to rescue her, he's the one who has to be "birthed". The whole scene plays out like a particularly messy labour, complete with Jimmy getting the "cord" (his rescue tether) wrapped around his neck, and emerging from the tunnel crying, confused, and covered in chunky red liquid.
- On My Name Is Earl, Joy wanted to induce labor because she was overdue and the pregnancy was hard on her, but her half-sister Liberty, for whom she was a surrogate, wanted her to do a 100% natural birth. Joy snuck to the hospital and tried to get herself induced, but Liberty (a wrestler) suplexed the doctor who had the needle full of Pitocin. Darnell got stuck with the needle, and went into "labor."
Darnell: I think I'm about to give birth to poop-tuplets!
Western Animation
- Big Mouth: In "Poop Madness," the long-constipated Andrew finally taking a shit is framed as a delivery, with Nick serving as the supportive "father" helping Andrew through the strain. When the poops come out, they wrap them in blankets and treat them like twins (since they are the size of actual infants).
- Centaurworld: The portal in Glendale's stomach is sometimes used for pregnancy allusions. The most blatant example is the two-part finale: Glendale steals a lizard creature from the Minotaur army and hides it in her portal, then when she's later unable to keep him inside any longer, she expels him while acting like she's giving birth. She even expels the knife that was plunged into him before, referring to it as the "afterbirth." Durpleton is elated, adopting the lizard and convincing himself it's an actual baby.
- On The Cleveland Show, Junior accidentally drinks a glass of water containing Rallo's pet goldfish, swallowing it whole. The two expect him to eventually "pass" it without incident and spend the next few days acting like he's pregnant. When he actually goes to the bathroom, he finds out the fish was in fact digested and the fish is metaphorically stillborn.
- In the Futurama episode "The Route of All Evil", Fry and Leela brew some beer inside Bender, the whole thing being an extended pregnancy metaphor (right down to the fermentation process causing his belly to expand). Naturally, the scene where they bottle the beer is just like this.
Bender: I think I'll call it Benderbrau if it's an ale, or Botweiser if it's a lager...
- In the Pinky and the Brain episode "Brinky", The Brain attempts to clone himself, which almost works until Pinky's DNA (from a clipped toenail) accidentally gets combined with Brain's, thus essentially making them parents of the resulting clone (and Pinky calling himself the clone's "mommy"). Most of the dialogue during the cloning process is scripted like an actual birth: for example, when the door on the cloning machine won't close (which is the reason Pinky's DNA is even in there), the Brain tells Pinky to help him "push", complete with Pinky doing Lamaze breathing.
- A second-season episode of Ugly Americans presents Mark's oversized soul in this manner, complete with Randall acting like a Panicky Expectant Father.
- The Harvey Beaks episode "Icky Chicky" opens with a scene of the day Harvey was born. We hear Miriam groaning and Irving coaching her to push. It turns out that she was trying to open a jar of pretzels while waiting for Harvey to hatch from his egg.
Miriam: Why do they make these so hard to open?
- Double Subverted in the Cow and Chicken episode "The Day I Was Born." We flash back to the titular day where Dad is pacing back and forth in the waiting room, listening to the Red Guy scream "PUSH! PUSH!" from the other side of the door to the delivery room. In the midst of the chaos, Mom walks in, Dad explains to her that she's having a baby and the Red Guy finally pushes the gurney with the incredibly heavy baby Cow on it out the door.
- Big Mouth: The climax of "Poop Madness" has Nick help Andrew deliver the poop he's been holding in all summer, complete with Andrew doing breathing exercises, Nick wrapping the poop in his shirt like a blanket, and Maury and Connie walking onto the scene with an "It's a Shit!" balloon to celebrate. And then Andrew poops again, remarking that they're having twins.
Nick: Should I cut the cord? I think it's linguini.
- Used as wordplay in the Merrie Melodies short "Believe It or Else," where the narrator tells the audience that they're presenting the birth of a baby. It turns out to be a baby already up and kicking resting in a train berth.
- In one episode of The Secret Show, the Floaty Heads tend to perform a ceremony to detach their heads from their bodies. After Victor gave encouragement to the Floaty Head Princess, she actively tries to "push" out her head while Victor cheers her on to "keep pushing", and once she succeeds with popping her head out, Victor happily says "It's a head!"
