Basic Trope: Two characters use a condom when having sex, but they get pregnant/infected with an STD anyway.
- Straight:
- Bob and Alice have sex, and use a condom. But she still gets pregnant.
- Bob and Alice have sex, and use a condom. Bob still gets an STD.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob and Alice have sex, use a condom and a spermicidal lubricant, and Bob pulls out before he finishes. But she still gets pregnant.
- Bob and Alice have sex with a condom...and Bob gets AIDS.
- Every time a condom is mentioned as being used, it breaks.
- Bob and Alice use every contraceptive method known to man, and only stick to sex acts that don't result in children, but she still gets pregnant.
- Alice can't get pregnant, and somehow, she does.
- Downplayed:
- Alice and Bob use a condom. Alice becomes pregnant, but has a Convenient Miscarriage.
- Bob gets gonorrhea, which is relatively easy to cure.
- Justified: The condom broke. Either Bob didn't put it on right, or it was intentionally sabotaged.
- Inverted: Bob and Alice don't use a condom, have sex when she's most fertile, and he stays inside her while finishing. She doesn't get pregnant.
- Subverted:
- Turns out Alice's pregnancy was just a scare.
- After Alice becomes pregnant, she confesses that she cheated with Charles.
- It turns out that one of them purposefully poked a hole in the condom.
- Double Subverted:
- But the (with-condom) sex they have that night to celebrate results in a real pregnancy.
- That was just to soften the blow when Alice reveals she got chlamydia from Bob as a result of last night.
- Charles also used a condom.
- Parodied:
- Alice somehow gets pregnant without having sex at all.
- Alex and Bob use a condom. They take the 1% failure rate very seriously, as Bob ends up pregnant.
- Bob's sex doll gets pregnant.
- The condom is branded with a 99.9% failure rate. Guaranteed.
- Zig Zagged: Condoms prove infallible in season one. Then there is a break in one in season two. Turns out that batch was defective. By season three after the lawsuit they're back to being infallible again. Until Bob uses one stored improperly....
- Averted:
- The condom works just fine.
- Bob and Alice do not use a condom.
- Bob and Alice do not have sex.
- Enforced:
- A Moral Guardian is writing the episode to scare people away from sex.
- Rule of Drama
- Lampshaded:
- Invoked:
- Bob and Alice had unprotected sex. They use this as an excuse to those that question their wisdom in having children in their fiscal state.
- Alice wants to get pregnant to trap Bob in a relationship, so she sabotages his condom.
- Bob wants Alice to get pregnant so she's trapped with him, so he sabotages the condom.
- Exploited: Alice tells Bob, "I'm pregnant. Now you have to stay with me."
- Defied:
- Knowing that condoms can fail and Good Girls Avoid Abortion, Bob and Alice abstain from sex.
- It is the future and they use a scanner to make sure the condoms are of sufficient quality.
- Discussed: "Did you get pregnant, Alice? Condoms don't always work, you know." "No, I'm just gaining weight."
- Conversed: "Condoms never work on TV. It's called the Law of Inverse Fertility or something."
- Deconstructed: The prevalence of this trope leads people to thinking condoms don't work, or to thinking that they're worthless because they sometimes fail, and not using them at all. The pregnancy and STD rates go up.
- Reconstructed: Because of all the infected people, pregnant women, and infected pregnant women around, a campaign is started to educate people on the proper use of condoms, but there will always be some failures.
- Played For Laughs: Alice strips naked and lies perfectly still on Bob's bed. Bob has unprotected sex with her, thinking she's a sex doll.
You're pregnant, Alice? But We Used a Condom!! Didn't we?
