Basic Trope: A character must care for an egg.
- Straight: Alice finds an abandoned nest. She takes the egg home and keeps it warm until it hatches.
- Exaggerated:
- The egg hatches out something unusual, such as a fairy, a dragon, a demon, a monster, etc.
- The egg is a Cosmic Egg, with the beginnings of a whole new universe (or deity) inside.
- Downplayed: Alice enjoys taking care of baby pets for others, and one of her jobs is to hatch an egg and take care of it for somebody.
- Justified: Eggs can often contain something cool, and may be found or otherwise obtained by a character.
- Inverted:
- Alice is curled up inside the egg.
- Alice participates in an Easter egg hunt, but cannot find any eggs.
- Subverted: Alice finds an egg and decides to take care of it, but she drops it and it splatters.
- Double Subverted: She finds a second egg from the same nest.
- Parodied: The egg hatches out... Candy.
- Zig Zagged: Some eggs are significant to the plot, others are not.
- Averted: There is no egg.
- Enforced: You must care for my egg and hatch it, or else: Among some Brood Parasite birds
, if the "Mafia Hypothesis" holds. - Lampshaded: "I can't come to dinner tonight, Bob. I have to sit on my egg." "You laid an egg?" "No, I found one."
- Invoked: Alice trips and lands just in front of an abandoned nest.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: Alice decides to leave the nest alone, just in case the mother bird/dragon/dinosaur/whatever comes back.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: Alice may not know how to care for the critter in question.
- Reconstructed: Alice does her homework and learns how to go about it.
- Played For Laughs:
- Alice is chased away when she tries to pick up the egg.
- The egg hatches out Marshmallow Cheeps.
- Alice participates in a Calvinball-like variation of an Easter egg hunt.
- At the episode's climax the egg finally hatches, only to reveal... another egg.
- Played For Drama: Alice has to teach the hatchling to be whatever its species is, but (obviously) can't do that.
Back to Egg MacGuffin
