"Hold it right there, slick. I don't do cakes. I don't bake 'em, and I don't jump out of 'em."
— Shego, Kim Possible
When a giant cake (actually a cake shell) has a person (usually a bachelor party stripper) hidden inside, so they can jump out of it for dramatic effect.
Girls have been jumping out of cakes since Evelyn Nesbit did it for millionaire playboy Stanford White in The Gay '90s, but the practice of enclosing a living creature inside a cake or pie shell goes back to medieval days. It's (possibly) the origin of the nursery rhyme "Sing a song of sixpence", where live blackbirds are put in a pie shell for a king's feast.
Mostly Played for Laughs, especially if the cake is at an unexpected (and inappropriate) place (like a child's birthday party) or the stripper inside is replaced with someone else, such as a cop, an Abhorrent Admirer who crashed the party to get her object of desire, an angry fiancée or wife who suspects that her husband will have too good of a time at his buddy's bachelor party, a Dirty Old Woman who used to be an adult entertainer when she was young and is still entertaining in her autumn years, a cross-dressing Camp Gay man who decided to come out of the cake — and the closet — all in one night, or a heterosexual man who was dressed in drag and put in the cake as a cruel joke. In more cartoonish works, the cake might be an actual one, causing the party-goers to be splattered with frosting and cake bits when the person inside jumps out.
Sometimes played for drama (or really dark comedy) if the man of the hour is Too Dumb to Live and thinks the novelty cake is a real one (and cuts it, either injuring or killing the girl inside), if a Mafia hitman is inside the cake and shoots everyone at the party (though it can be softened up to being funny if the hitman is dressed in outrageous and obvious drag), or if the stripper dies of suffocation inside the cake and no one realizes this until it's too late.
Examples:
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Advertising
- There was a phone commercial on how an old guy ended up delivering a girl-in-cake to a kid's birthday party. The point of the commercial was that it could have been prevented if his bosses could reach him, but he has no phone.
Anime & Manga
- At the end of Dragon Half (the manga), Rufa bursts out of Mink and Dick's wedding cake to announce the appearance of another Demon Lord.
- Gundam: In ∀ Gundam, during a party held to try and make a move towards peace between the Earth Race and Moon Race, a large cake made to look like the earth and moon is rolled out. Several soldiers then jump out from under the cake and attempt to assassinate the queen of the moon, Dianna Soriel, though they fail and are forced to escape instead. At first the Earth Race is blamed, but the Moon Race discontinue accusations when it is discovered that the would be assassins were members of the Moon Race. This is the first hint in the series that the moon has internal conflict and that not everyone from the moon is happy about moving back to Earth.
- One episode of Lupin III: Part 1 had the titular thief sneaking into a wedding inside the cake. Unlike most examples, he had no intention of revealing himself, he just needed a vantage point he could spy and snatch from.
- In One Piece Whole Cake Island Arc, the focal point is a Tea Party held by Big Mom. For her, sweets and parties are Serious Business, so she has a gigantic cake made to be eaten at the height of the party. When Luffy crashes the party, he does so by using a captured Devil Fruit user to burst from the cake...along with a small army of doppelgangers!
Comedy
- Jim Gaffigan mentions this trope in his Beyond the Pale special, and how nobody ever does it with pie. "'I'm here!' 'Go take a shower.'"
- Larry the Cable Guy has a bit about a midget stripper who jumps out of a cupcake.
Comic Books
- In the Batman comic, one mob boss was killed by The Tallyman this way.
- Inverted in a scene from Death's Head first solo title. A big cake is brought into a mobster's birthday party, so of course he assumes a gunman is inside it. He has his goons 'cut' the cake by blowing it to bits with blaster fire. Only it really is just a cake, which ends up splattered all over him. He then sits down to a slice of birthday cake, which explodes when he sticks his fork in it. Deaths Head set the whole thing up.
- Disney Ducks Comic Universe: Scrooge McDuck once goes to visit one of his hotels when the manager mentions a convention. Unfortunately, it is a Convention of Crime organized by the Beagle Boys and other criminals. They order a cake and Scrooge is told someone would come out of it. Scrooge orders whoever is in the cake to show up and he finds Madam Mim. When she asks about the outlaws she is supposed to present herself to, Scrooge tells her they were all arrested. Since she has already been paid, she leaves without caring. Scrooge and the hotel manager then get cop costumes and jump out of the cake, scaring the bad guys.
- One of the final issues of Excalibur has a supervillain hiding inside of the cake at a bachelor party (after replacing the stripper inside and leaving her bound and gagged in a closet) so he can assassinate the unsuspecting partygoers.
- Lucky Luke:
- In Dalton City, a saloon dancer is concealed inside a giant cake, but the homemade pastry is so tough that, by the time she manages to get out of it, the party, the fight and pretty much the story are over. Tough enough to withstand gunfire, actually. Averell Dalton is that bad of a cook.
- The book cover shows Luke himself bursting out of a cake, surprising the Daltons. It's also in the opening of the Lucky Luke animated series.
- In the first issue of the four-issue miniseres that started The Muppet Show Comic Book, one of the attempts the other Muppets make at cheering up a homesick Kermit the Frog involves Miss Piggy jumping out of a cake.
- On the cover of an issue of the Saved by the Bell comic (yes, this exists), the bikini-clad girls jump out of a giant granola bar - which is, of course, healthier than a cake.
- In Secret Six, the rest of the Six hire a stripper dressed as Scandal Savage's dead girlfriend Knockout to hide in a cake and give her a lap dance on her birthday to cheer her up, but Scandal is too drunk to really realize what's going on (plus Knockout seems to possess the stripper for a moment to tell her to be happy). However, later Scandal meets Liana (the stripper) in a supermarket and they start dating.
- In a Super Goof comic, Goofy does this after being invited to entertain at the Police Convention; later, he's invited for the second day, but because he was up all night tracking down the bad guys, he asks them to make it a pie instead of a cake. (So he can catch up on his sleep before jumping out of it.)
- Wonder Woman (1942): A classic Wonder Woman story has the princess going home for "Diana's Day" at the winter equinox, with crazy pranks, dressing up, a big feast and lots of gift-giving. Some of the Amazon maidens dress in deer costumes while others, playing huntresses, capture and (of course) tie them up. At the grand finale the captured doe-girls are put in a huge pie shell and "baked" along with another girl who plays a roasted "dancing chicken".
Comic Strips
- Averted by Charles Addams: The cake really is a giant cake, and everyone except the guest of honor looks rather disappointed at the gigantic slices they get served.
- Inverted in Close To Home, much to the confusion and near-panic of the people in the cake. The model, meanwhile, looks quite satisfied.
- Garfield:
- Garfield has been known to jump out of his own birthday cake! Well, he does like to have all the attention! Examples include his 5th birthday in 1983, when Jon and Odie were going to wake him up and surprise him with a birthday cake. Instead, he surprised them by jumping out of the cake! Then there was the Garfield 21st Birthday Celebration Book published in 1999, where the front cover had Garfield jumping out of the birthday cake.
- In the June 19, 2002 strip
◊, a female mouse jumps out of a cupcake, as a present for Garfield's 24th birthday.
Mouse: Happy birthday, big guy!
Garfield: I'm not eating that. - In the June 18, 2006 strip◊, Garfield thinks the birthday cake some mice present him with is real, downs it in one gulp, and spits out the mouse who was in the cake. The other mice are, to put it mildly, embarrassed, as they look at their unconscious and missing-a-shoe friend.
Mouse 1: He's not looking very happy.
Mouse 3: Neither is Shirley.
- An old Monica's Gang newspaper strip had Monica and an adult woman having the exact same idea for a surprise, but the cakes got switched. As a result, Monica ends up in a room full of adult men whereas the woman shows up scantily clad on Jimmy Five's birthday party. Yup, comedy like that was pretty common for the franchise back then.
- One Little Annie Fanny comic in Playboy had someone hire Annie to do this for someone's surprise birthday party (she was told). In a twist on the theme, it was her surprise party.
- MAD:
- One wordless strip has a gang boss hearing the noise of someone within his cake and machine-gunning it, visualizing a gunman hiding within a la Some Like It Hot. The second panel shows him blushing as they carry the stripper off in a stretcher.
- A Don Martin comic had a lab-coated scientist who built an automatic cake machine. Its robot arms picked up the various ingredients (milk, eggs, flour) — then grabbed the scientist. After the finished cake emerged from the machine, the confused scientist jumped out (or was bounced out) in stripper wear.
- Another Don Martin comic has a unique variant for an undertakers' convention...
- One Pearls Before Swine Sunday strip has Pig carry on a conversation with a stripper inside the cake.
- A one-panel cartoon in Playboy shows an elderly, semi-nude showgirl climbing into a cake:
"Hef's not allergic to chocolate, is he? Last time I did this everybody got sicker'n hell."
Fan Works
- In A Birthday Surprise, Snape comes out of an exploding cake at Harry's 18th birthday party.
- In the Empath: The Luckiest Smurf story "Empath's Wedding", Nudie Smurf jumps out of the cake presented to Empath at his bachelor party, asking the party guests if they need a stripper. Everybody at the party laughs.
- In Good Bunny, Hermione makes Lucius jump out of a cake while wearing a bunny suit at Harry's 25th birthday party.
- In Zero Context: Taking Out the Trash, this is attempted by Circe's maids at her bachelorette party. However, the one they selected was so apathetic to the whole thing that she fell asleep inside the cake and failed to respond on cue, then dug her way out the side when she woke up. Circe was amused, but the maid's co-workers were not.
- Vow of Nudity: In one story, Fiora and Walburt hide in a massive cake and burst out of it to begin Haara's Birthday Suit Surprise Party.
Films — Animation
- Aladdin and the King of Thieves: When Aladdin goes to his old hovel to get something he needs for his and Jasmine's wedding, Genie believes that he forgot to give Al a bachelor party, and he immediately conjures up a cake and pops out of it dressed like a busty stripper.
- In the opening of The Emperor's New Groove, the Theme Song Guy bursts out of Kuzco's cake to sing "Perfect World".
- Frozen: Olaf's Frozen Adventure opens with Olaf, restless for Elsa and Anna's surprise Christmas party to start, jumping out at and surprising random servants in the castle. On Anna, he jumps out of a kransekake (a Norwegian layer cake) on the buffet table, with some of the lower layers getting stuck around his mid and lower sections while his head ends up in Anna's hands. A bemused Anna has to put Olaf's head back on while Elsa sets him straight.
- Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa: During the lemurs' farewell to the zoo gang before they take off back to New York in their plane at the beginning of the film, King Julian surprises them by jumping out of a cake wearing a hula outfit.
- The Mad Monster Party? prequel Mad, Mad, Mad Monsters had a witch fly out of a cake at the Frankenstein monster's bachelor party.
- In a non-festive example, during the climax of My Little Pony: The Movie, the Mane Six and Capper use a giant cake to smuggle the pirates into Canterlot. When they get discovered the pirates jump out of the cake.
- In Over the Hedge, Stella the skunk explodes out of a real birthday cake during the montage of the animals stealing food (among other things) from the neighborhood homes.
Films — Live-Action
- The 2000 live-action 102 Dalmatians has a clever inversion in the climax, where Cruella is apprehended by trapping her inside a cake.
- Gruesome example, courtesy of the Addams Family Values: Gomez arranges for a stripper in a cake for Uncle Fester's bachelor party. Unfortunately...
Gomez: Lurch... was she in there before you baked it?
Lurch: [growls contritely]
Gomez: That poor girl....C'est la vie! - Dr. Dolittle 2: During Charisse's 16th birthday, she's about to blow out her cake's candles. But then a couple of rats popped out by messing with it.
- In How to Murder Your Wife, avowed bachelor Stanley Ford meets the future Mrs. Ford this way. She later says it was the only job she could get after someone stole all her clothes.
- The Milk of Sorrow: Mixed with Disturbed Doves, for Maxima's wedding. At the reception, the lid to the cake is removed, and a bunch of doves fly out from inside.
- In the 1943 German film Münchhausen, one of the highlights of a state banquet given by Catherine the Great is a giant pie which, when cut open, reveals a dwarf playing on a miniature piano.
- The Made-for-TV Movie Revenge of the Nerds Part IV: Nerds in Love has a stripper in a cake at Booger's bachelor party, even though he specifically didn't want it. It was set up by his sister-in-law-to-be's husband in order to get incriminating evidence to call off the wedding, but Booger didn't do anything bad.
- Kathy in Singin' in the Rain comes out of a cake at a Hollywood party. This after she gave Don a lot of grief about how she was a stage actress, as opposed to doing "just a lot of dumb shows" on films.
- A gunman hidden in a cake is a pivotal part of the plot at the climax of Some Like It Hot.
- A topless Erika Eleniak jumps out of a cake at the beginning of Under Siege and promptly gets dragged into Die Hard on a battleship.
Jokes
- Old joke. The woman gets in the cake before it is baked....
- Inverted in this tasteless joke: "What's the difference between a normal bachelor party and a bachelor party for a bulimic? At a bulimic's bachelor party, the cake jumps out of the girl."
- Chuck Norris ate a whole cake before his friends could tell him there was a stripper in it.
Literature
- Book of Brownies: Part of the misadventures of the brownie trio involves them captured alive by a giant, who decides to throw a tea-party to surprise his friends by having the brownies jumping out a cake. The brownies really doesn't want to comply, but the giant's wife threatens to have them pecked by giant-sized chickens.
- Discworld: In Night Watch, "Homicidal" Lord Winder has his guards stab the giant cake at a party to check for assassins inside (several times at different levels, in case it's a dwarf or someone kneeling down). He does get assassinated later at that same party, but it has nothing to do with cake.
- Goblins in the Castle: During the castle's celebration of "Goblin Freedom Day" in Goblins on the Prowl, Hulda goes to cut the cake, only for it to shriek... and then the little goblin Herky leaps out of it. It turns out he'd made a hiding space inside it after it was thoroughly baked and cooled, so he could leap out to surprise everyone. Hulda is not amused.
- Land of Oz: In The Magic of Oz, Dorothy and the Wizard get some monkeys to agree to be shrunk and put into a pie, to jump out and perform at Ozma's birthday party.
- Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain: In Henchmen, when Bull retires a bunch of supervillains cart him and his daughter off to a party. Evil Eye explains to the people who stayed behind that there's a giant cake, and the supervillain Delicious is going to jump out and punch Bull. Mechanical Aesthetic warns that Bull's daughter (who is a superhero) isn't going to take that well.
Evil Eye: That's why it's funny. Besides, Delicious is strong.
Mechanical Aesthetic: Not like Bull's daughter. - In The Secret of Platform 13, the hotel Mrs. Trottle and Raymond hide at has a dinner entertainment act where a girl jumps out of a fake cake and does a dance of seven veils. When the rescuers go to get Raymond from the hotel, one of the ways to get in close is to pay off the regular dancing girl and have Gertrude replace her.
Live-Action TV
- On The Amanda Show sketch The Girl's Room birthday special, Amber received one of these as a birthday gift from Tammy.
- One of these factors into a Zany Scheme hatched by GOB in Arrested Development.
- In "The Hour that Never Was", an episode of The Avengers, Steed reminisces about an officer's birthday cake during the war that had a showgirl inside. Unfortunately the icing was so thick that it cut off her air supply and she nearly asphyxiated, which Steed chuckles about.
- Boardwalk Empire has Nucky's mistress Lucy do this for his birthday. He's not entirely invested in the act, being more fixated on Margaret, with whom he just danced.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Referenced when the Scoobies put on a surprise birthday party for Buffy. Cordelia is hiding behind a large cake, so she appears to be fulfilling this trope when she jumps up and yells "Surprise!"
- In one episode of Cheers, Diane Chambers is hidden inside a cake at Sam Malone's bachelor party, when the two were getting married. When Sam says something unintentionally offensive regarding the marriage-to-come, she pops out—dressed in a Stripperific Ms. Fanservice costume—and is angry at him. (Woody, who was assigned the job of getting the stripper, had asked Diane to be the "beautiful girl" who pops out of the cake. Woody didn't get that the stripper was supposed to be someone other than the bride-to-be. Diane agreed to it because she was offended that Sam would even have a bachelor party with a stripper; she covers her chagrin at the prospect with laughter, verbally treating it like a practical joke.)
- Doctor Who: In "The Vampires of Venice", the Eleventh Doctor jumps out of a cake at Rory's bachelor party.
The Doctor: Rory! That's a relief. Thought I'd burst out of the wrong cake... again... That reminds me, there's a girl standing outside in a bikini. Could someone let her in and give her a jumper? Lucy. Lovely girl. Diabetic.
- On The Drew Carey Show, Drew's brother Steve thought Drew's bachelor was the perfect place to jump out of a cake, in full drag, and explain to their father that he was a transvestite.
- In a The Electric Company "Spidey Super Stories" sketch the Birthday Bandit decides that Spiderman is hiding in a kid's birthday cake. Spiderman comes up behind him while he's busy smashing it with a mallet.
- Referenced in a Twisted Cakes episode of Food Network Cake Challenge, where the cake was made to look as though it and a stripper inside had had a large slice taken out of them.
- General Hospital. Social-climbing Gold Digger Katherine has demanded that husband Ned — who she blackmailed into marriage — throw her a lavish birthday party. He does, a cake is wheeled in... and out pops Lois, Ned's OTHER wife (whom he married under his Stage Name Eddie Maine), stunning both of them, as Ned didn't know that Lois had found out.
Lois: Happy birthday, Mrs. Ned Ashton! From me, the other Mrs. Ned Ashton!
- iCarly: Attempted to be invoked in Carly's Birthday Episode by having Gibby jumping out of a giant pie, however, Gibby comes out of the pie before he is told to do so because he couldn't breathe, courtesy of Spencer who forgot to give Gibby something so he could breathe.
- I Dream of Jeannie: In "Jeannie and the Bachelor Party", Major Nelson has a girl coming out the cake in his surprise Bachelor Party.
- On Impractical Jokers, Joe's punishment was to get into a cake dressed as a sailor and strip for what he thought was a bachelorette party. When he jumped out with an enthusiastic "Here we go, ladies!", he discovered it was an event for war veterans.
- Jessie: Bertram's mother does this as one of her ways to steal the spotlight on her son's birthday.
- A sketch on Love, American Style is about a professional cake baker, the girl he regularly uses to jump out of a cake, and her boyfriend. The boyfriend doesn't want her to do that any more, and proposes so she'll stop. She does, and the baker has to hire the waitress (who is unrequitedly in love with him) to jump out instead.
- Lucifer (2016): On Chloe's birthday a giant cake is wheeled into the middle of the precinct and a male stripper dressed as a cop jumps out to dance with her. Dan assumes it was sent by Lucifer but it actually turns out it was Ella Lopez who arranged it.
- In the Married... with Children episode "Peggy Loves Al, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah", Marcy plans to do this for Steve as a Valentine's Day present. Al has the cake delivered to the locker room of the Chicago Bulls.
- There's an episode of My Family where Susan is unhappy about Ben planning to order a cake with stripper for the bachelor party he's hosting. She decides to take the stripper's place inside the cake, only for the cakes to be mixed up. Hilarity Ensues.
- The Mads' Invention Exchange for the "I Accuse My Parents" episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 is "Cake & Shake", a cake mix with a real exotic dancer included. Frank thought he was being clever by folding the dancer into the mix before baking, thus saving a step. Dr. Forrester was incredulous, and they spend the whole experiment digging him out. Fortunately for them, Rodney (the dancer) was no worse for the wear.
Crow: Oh, it's beefcake!
- The Nanny: Fran Fine wasn't worried about her soon-to-be husband attending a bachelor party until her mother stated she once knew a man who left his bride for the woman who came out of the cake at his bachelor party. The man was Fran's father. She then entered the cake of Max's party and came out of it, right after Max's brother told him about his relationship with her. Fran then got back inside the cake.
- Hetty from NCIS: Los Angeles once hid in a cake, but it's unclear why.
- Newlyweds Nick And Jessica: Nick's birthday. Guess who's hiding in that cake.
- In the Power Rangers: Beast Morphers episode "A Friend Indeed", Betty and Ben Burke are shown to be hiding in the cake for the party the Rangers' Beast-Bots were planning.
- Reno 911! has a hilariously cringeworthy moment where Dept. Wiegel ends up popping out of a cake... while heavily pregnant... then her water breaks... and she's stuck.
- Saturday Night Live: According to the stories, Bill Brasky got one of these at his bachelor party. Before anyone could tell him about the girl, he'd already eaten the entire cake...
- In an episode of Saved by the Bell, Screech did this to surprise Lisa. She was not amused.
- In Special Unit 2, Carl gets one of these for his birthday, only for it to contain an angry ex-girlfriend, who punches him out.
- On That Girl, Don Hollinger put up with years of angry wisecracks from his fiancée's father, Lew Marie (a classic "You're not good enough for my daughter" situation). This continued even during Don's bachelor party, to the point at which Lew stormed out. Minutes later, they wheel in the giant cake and out pops Lew, in exotic drag. The partygoers love the joke.
Don: [drunkenly] That's either my future father-in-law — or the ugliest woman I've ever seen!
[Lew grins and smokes his cigar] - In the season 12 episode of That Metal Show featuring Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony (which was filmed on host Eddie Trunk's birthday), a big fake cake was wheeled onto the set during Stump the Trunk which former Guns N' Roses drummer Steven Adler popped out of.
- On Three's Company, Jack suggests that Janet and Chrissy do this at a party, which they're on board with until Jack says they'll be nude. When they refuse, he suggests that they do it clothed instead—and that everyone else at the party be nude.
- In the Xena: Warrior Princess episode "Soul Possession", Joxer organizes a girl jumping out of a cake for Ares's bachelor party. It turned out to be Meg, an Identical Stranger of Xena, who he was going to marry.
- In an episode of Step by Step, Frank recognizes his father's much younger fiancée as the stripper at a friend's bachelor party—"She jumped out of the cake wearing. . .cake."
Magazines
- An illustration by Willie Rushton for the 500th issue of Private Eye showed all the fictional columnists and contributors at a party held by Lord Gnome. In the centre of the image was a cake with a naked Robert Maxwell bursting out of it, throwing writs in all directions.
Music
- Bob Martin sees one at the American Legion party in "Third War Rag":
Birthday cake about ten feet tall,
Girl jumped out all naked and all,
Ran around pledging allegiance to the flag.
Pinballs
- In Bugs Bunny's Birthday Ball, Honey Bunny jumps out of Bugs' birthday cake while holding a "50 Million" indicator.
Pro Wrestling
- In a 2004 episode of Wrestling/WWERAW, the night after defeating Randy Orton for the Title, Triple H and the other remaining members of Evolution (Ric Flair and Batista) were celebrating in the ring. There was a huge cake in the ring. After much bragging, HHH decided to see what hot woman was in the cake, deciding it must have been a gift from then-RAW General Manager Eric Bischoff since both Flair and Batista denied being the ones responsible for it. It ended up being Orton, who began a beatdown on the heels, with HHH ending up upside down in the remains of the cake, legs flailing about.
Tabletop Games
- In Deadwood, the film "Jesse James: Man of Action" has scene 14: Best Friend's Wedding, with a role requiring you to leap out of a cake. (Every other role involves getting shot, since this is a bad Western.) An earlier scene, 8: Birthday Party, requires an actor leaping into a cake. (Again, supporting roles get shot.)
Toys
- There's a LEGO set exclusive to LEGO stores, which consists of a small birthday cake with a lever on the back. When this is pressed, a jester attached to the end pushes open the lid and pops up.
- There is actually a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic game called "My Little Pony: Poppin' Pinkie Pie" where the object of the game is to make Pinkie Pie pop out of a cake.
Video Games
- In the intro to Conker's Pocket Tales, the Evil Acorn jumps out of Conker's birthday cake much to his and Berri's surprise and steals her and his presents.
- In Hiddenverse: Witch's Tales 2 Prince Percydal's fiancee Rapunzel is terrified of frogs, so Alice decides to hide him in a cake, in the hope that when he jumps out and surprise-kisses Rapunzel the curse will be broken.
- You can surprise guards in Hitman: Absolution by pulling this off.
- In LEGO Harry Potter 2, Bellatrix jumps out of a cake at Bill and Fleur's wedding. The achievement for finishing the level is called "Cake or Death Eater?"
- In The Sims, you can buy a giant cake to have a dancer come out and dance. Of course you have to keep children out of the room. The dancer can be of either gender (and you can hire both with two cakes). Rarely (guaranteed when a child is in the same room), a gag dancer, like a person in a monkey suit, will come out instead.
- Sonic Dreams Collection has Tails do this in one of the Sonic Movie Maker sections.
- Super Mario Bros.: In New Super Mario Bros. Wii, the Koopalings and Bowser Jr. hide in a cake to kidnap Peach during her birthday.
Web Animation
- Played for pitch-dark comedy in Madness Combat, specifically the non-canonical Incident:101A episode. The whole episode sets up a mundane package delivery, which turns out to be a Surprise Party for the courier, complete with cake. Unfortunately for all parties involved, the cake contains a clown. The only clown in Nevada is Tricky. Tricky promptly guns down everyone for no apparent reason, steals a handful of cake and the package, and runs off, leaving a horrified janitor to discover the mess.
- In Red vs. Blue, apparently Donut does this for Sarge's birthday while wearing his "Officer Hotpants" uniform.
Simmons: Oh my God, that cake is huge! It's big enough to fit a person in it.
Grif: Why does the cake smell like baby oil? Oh God, where's Donut?! - Referenced in the Zero Punctuation review of Haze, where Yahtzee says the game trying to combine an anti-violence message with the usual shooter action strikes him as trying to have its cake and eat it, too.
Yahtzee: ...a phrase I never really understood; I mean, I think it's perfectly reasonable to want to eat a cake that you have. There's not much else you can do with a cake, except maybe hide in one if you're a stripper. ...Sorry, lost my train of thought.
Webcomics
- In And Shine Heaven Now, Pip due to a case of Mistaken for Lesbian hires a girl to jump out a cake at Integra's birthday party. Further complicated in that the girl turns out to be a vampire, while Integra comes from a long line of vampire hunters.
- Hark! A Vagrant: The last of the "Gangsters" strips has a mobster jumping out of his friend's birthday cake.
Second Mobster: I was expecting a girl.
First Mobster: Twenty years we've known each other, and now you don't wanna see me jump outta da cake. You insult me! - In a certain Kevin & Kell strip, "Pop Goes the Weasel" was being played during a birthday party for Coney. When the song ended, an actual weasel popped out of the cake and Coney ate it.
- The Perry Bible Fellowship: "Miggs" uses the "mafia hitman" variant to Bloody Hilarious effect.
- During Gus and Geoff's "cake vs. pie" feud in Rooster Teeth Comics, Gus cites this as a reason why he prefers cake when he gets one for his birthday. Then Geoff jumps out of the cake to deliver a Pie in the Face.
- In Rusty and Co., Anti-Madeline jumps out of a cake destined to Malevolus. This isn't done for fanservice, though, but as a variant of Jail Bake. Also, since she's so small it's not a giant cake but a normal-sized one.
- Parodied in Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal when a sociologist jumps out of a cake.
Did you know that the connection between food and sex is highly cross-cultural?
- The Whiteboard: Used for the second anniversary strip, although Doc's plan to use a cutting laser to cut the cake threatens the survival of the unseen woman inside.
Western Animation
- Adventure Time: Ice King does this for Finn's 17th birthday (the cake is a giant Finn Cake, a cupcake that looks like Finn, on top of that). Bizarrely, he's dressed up as Finn's ex-girlfriend, Flame Princess, everyone at the party was apparently in on it, and nobody thinks that's really weird. Finn is pretty shellshocked by the whole thing, although it doesn't help that a lot of other traumatizing stuff happened just before that and he's holding a bucket of his own vomit at that moment.
- Batman: The Animated Series:
- The debut of Harley Quinn came about in a roundabout way thanks to this. One draft of an episode had her doing this to capture some police officers, and in fact Harley was created because it was thought that The Joker doing this would be too bizarre. In the actual episode, Harley pushes the cake in, and the Joker DOES jump out of the cake, but Dini liked Harley enough that he kept her character and the rest was history.
- In a Stripperific twist, Harley herself does this in a slinky, sexy way in the episode "Beware the Creeper", only she does it with a giant cream pie while singing "Happy Birthday" to the Joker. As a showtune. Not that it fazes him at all; he just orders her to track down the Creeper and tosses her out into an alley.
- In the BoJack Horseman episode "After the Party", Mr. Peanutbutter tries to get everyone to stay for Diane's birthday party, claiming he was gonna get Paul McCartney to jump out of a cake. Naturally, hardly anyone believes this. In the end, Sir McCartney (voiced by himself) does indeed pop out of a cake, but by this time, everyone is gone and Diane and Mr. Peanutbutter had gone to bed.
- In an episode of Brandy & Mr. Whiskers, when Brandy is trying to subtly tell Mr. Whiskers that he isn't invited to her slumber party, he mistakes it for this.
- An episode of Chowder did this. Endive cooks herself a "beefcake" — which in the context of the show is a living food that looks like a man — but gets the recipe wrong and he turns out ugly. She rejects him, but later finishes cooking him and he turns into his "true form"... a pink cake with a topless cowboy coming out of it.
- In the intro to The Critic (the FOX version, not the ABC version), when Jay's family presents him a birthday cake, his Cloud Cuckoolander father wearing a "Happy New Year 1937" sash jumps out.
- In part one of the Darkwing Duck episode "Just Us Justice Ducks", Gizmo-Duck's particularly convoluted plan for the team to stop the Fearsome Five involves this, complete with visual demonstration.
Gizmo-Duck: Then at the appointed hour, Morganna, Stegmutt and I leap out of the cake, taking the villains completely by surprise!
- In the teaser of one Earthworm Jim episode, Jim wonders if a girl is going to come out of the cake at his birthday party. It's actually Professor Monkey-for-a-Head, who proceeds to zap Jim's friends with his Fat-tomic Ray Gun.
- Family Guy had one with a stripper. Peter accidentally kills her while cutting the cake but is concerned only that the cake has coconut frosting.
- The Fanboy and Chum Chum episode "Present Not Accounted For" has Man-Arctica jump out of Chum Chum's birthday cake.
- The Flintstones:
- The episode "The Buffalo Convention": The cake at the Water Buffalos' convention in Frantic City was supposed to have showgirls inside. It had their angry wives instead, rolling pins in hand.
- In the episode "Pebbles's Birthday Party", the local caterer accidentally sends a clown to the Water Buffalo lodge party, and a troupe of chorus girls to Pebbles' 1st b-day party (who jump out of the birthday cake just before it's cut). The caterer couldn't care less about his faux pas as he was "the only caterer in town".
- The later "I Yabba Dabba Do" special played with this in having the original woman who was to jump out of the cake at Bamm-Bamm's bachelor party walk out because she wanted more money — resulting in Barney ending up jumping out of the cake.
- In the Futurama episode "I Second That Emotion", the crew is holding a birthday party for Nibbler. Leela tells Bender to make a cake. She adds that if he plans to have a stripper jump out of it, he needs to bake the cake first.
- The thirteenth episode of Garfield Originals has Garfield displeased when a cake he was about to eat has Nermal jump out of it.
- God, the Devil and Bob: When the Devil removes evil from the world due to God forgetting his birthday, Bob is horrified to discover that bachelor party cakes now contain elderly couples who give advice on married life.
No stripper?!
Well, that'd be rude. Guy's getting married tomorrow! - Kim Possible: In "The Big Job", Junior begins to explain that he sprung Shego from prison because his father's birthday is coming up. Shego cuts him off with "I don't do cakes, okay? I don't bake 'em, and I don't jump out of 'em!" The writers were surprised the line passed censors.
- Looney Tunes:
- In "The Unmentionables" (1963), Bugs Bunny (dressed as a flapper girl) does the pop-out-of-a-cake bit at a birthday party for mobster Rocky.
- In "Blooper Bunny", Yosemite Sam pops out of the cake during Bugs Bunny's anniversary celebration. Behind-the-scenes footage shows that he's not happy about it.
Yosemite Sam: Do I look like some hootchie-cootchie girl to come a-shimmyin' out of a cake? Why, it ain't decent!
- Monster Farm had this trope spoofed in the episode "P.S I Love Ewwe", where Zombeef falls in love with Dr. Woolly's monstrous alter ego Mr. Ewwe and attempts to marry him. At Dr. Woolly's bachelor party, Jack presents the monster animals with a large cake. Count Cluckula expects a beautiful woman to pop out of the cake, but instead a scientist mixing chemicals who ends up blowing himself up comes out of the cake.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- In "Baby Cakes", Pinkie pulls off an Offscreen Teleportation to the inside of the twins' "one-month-old" celebration cake. It is a tiny cake (by comparison), so she essentially makes it explode from the inside-out, destroying it.
- In the episode "Twilights Kingdom – Part 1", Discord bursts out of a huge cake he just materialized by himself while talking with Tirek.
- In "Amending Fences", this is how Pinkie Pie introduces herself to Moondancer at the party.
- In "Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?", Luna manages to combine this with Tele-Frag by appearing inside a cake during Pinkie Pie's nightmare, making it explodes.
- "The Hooffields and McColts": Another non-festive example, as several Hooffields are jumping out of the "apology cake" used as Trojan Horse to attack the McColts from inside their fort.
- The Owl House:
- In episode "Agony of a Witch", King bakes a hollow cake to jump out of as a surprise for Luz. He can barely breathe by the time he finally does it because Luz arrives a lot later than he had planned.
- In "Hooty's Moving Hassle", doing one of these is on Gus' bucket list.
- Phineas and Ferb once terrified their obnoxiously big sister Candace with a gorilla in her 14th birthday cake.
- Rugrats:
- A variant in the 1991 series episode, "Baking Dil"; the babies find a frog that they plan to give to Didi as a birthday gift, but lose it in the bakery where Stu and Lou are getting her chosen birthday cake, which is plate-sized. At the end of the episode, the frog jumps out of the cake in surprise.
- Another variant in the 2021 reboot episode, "Tot Springs Showdown"; Charlotte's birthday cake is wooden and it is planned to have bunnies pop out of it. Angelica's older cousin Simon plans to sabotage the cake by replacing the bunnies with lizards, so Angelica and the babies team up to stop him.
- In Robot Chicken's Voltron parody, "Voltron Got Served!", when the Lions are called for, the blue lion bursts out of a cake at a bachelor party.
- The Simpsons:
- The episode "Rosebud" has a scene where Smithers imagines the one thing he really wants for his birthday: Mr. Burns, clad in only a sash, popping out of a cake.
- Another episode had the residents of the old folks' home try to cheer up Grampa with a stripper in a cake, but she died while they were wheeling the cake to him.
- Another episode parodies this with McBain jumping out of an ice sculpture and gunning down everyone in the room. "Ice to see you."
- In a later episode, after failing to kill Bart yet again, Sideshow Bob imagines jumping out of a cake the Simpsons are celebrating with and killing them all.
- In The Smurfs episode "Papa's Wedding Day", Balthazar does this when Flowerbell gets Papa Smurf alone in the forest with a big giant cake waiting there.
- Knuckles does this for Sonic in Sonic Boom. What follows is about a minute of uncomfortable silence.
- The South Park episode "Butters' Bottom Bitch" has an undercover cop posing as a hooker in one of these.
- The Toxic Crusaders episode "A Sight for Sore Eyes" has Toxie's girlfriend Yvonne jump out of a cake prepared by Toxie's mother to celebrate the Toxic Crusaders getting new jobs.
- In the WordGirl episode "Becky's Birthday" an energetic Bob the monkey does this.
Real Life
- Reportedly, Czar Peter the Great of Russia amused his friends by hiding a naked woman in a cake at a party. Hardly out of character for that hard-partying monarch.
