History Main / ProductDeliveryOrdeal

* ''VideoGame/Castlevania64'': You're tasked with fetching a flask of nitroglycerin to blow open a crack in a wall, which requires you to go to the laboratory and back. Jumping or getting hit sets off the explosive, requiring you to not only be extremely careful but choose your route very carefully.

* CarryingACake: When the character needs transport a cake or any food item and has to make sure it doesn't spill or get eaten, among other delivery mishaps.

* CarryingACake: When the character needs transport a cake or any food item and has to make sure it doesn't spill, among other delivery mishaps.

* CarryingACake: When the character has to transport a cake or any food item and has to make sure it doesn't spill, among other delivery mishaps.

* ''VideoGame/ProfessorLaytonAndTheCuriousVillage'': The 7th puzzle revolves around someone who wishes to transport three wolves and three chicken while crossing a bridge. There's a raft that can support up to two animals, and at least one must be aboard to move the vehicle; and if there are more wolves than chicken in either side of the river (even when the person transporting them would try to quickly seize one of them back to the raft), then the wolves will eat the chicken. So Layton (the one who is trying to solve the puzzle) has to figure out the way to transport all six animals with all the aforementioned caveats in mind. The minimum number of steps (raft transports) necessary is 11.

Depending on the duration of this plot device in the work and the significance or value of the object that is being transported, the object may double as the plot's MacGuffin, which is common narrative examples outside of video games (where this trope is more often utilized in sidequests or lesser mission objectives).

* Featured as the core gameplay of ''VideoGame/DeathStranding''. You play as UnstoppableMailman extraordinaire Sam Bridges, whose job is to deliver precious cargo through the [[SceneryGorn obliterated]], [[GhostInvasion ghost-infested]] remnants of America from outpost to outpost, ensuring both he and his deliveries remain intact and on time. Gameplay is greatly centered around logistics and personal management -- you want to deliver as much cargo as you can, but how you navigate around the challenging landscapes and various antagonists (supernatural and mundane) as cleanly, safely, and efficiently as possible is up to you to figure out.

** Repeatedly occurs onscreen and offscreen, allowing the Wolf to deliver (among other things) Wilding tribes south of the Wall, dragonstone to Chaos Dwarves, gift his besiegers with huge amounts of meat to remind them he can't be starved out, and show the Dothraki khal that his homeland is vulnerable to the Wolf.

** ''VideoGame/Splatoon2'': The ''Octo Expansion'' has a few challenges where the player has to roll an 8-ball to a predetermined goal or through a number of rings in order to complete the current test. It's a difficult task because the ball cannot move on its own, has to interact with a number of features to traverse the level, and is entirely at the mercy of physics — both the level and the various ink shots being chucked around. If the ball falls onto a BottomlessPit, the mission fails instantly.
* ''VideoGame/SuperMarioMaker2'': Story Mode features a small handful of levels where Mario is tasked by Yellow Toad to bring a sturdy, heavy cubic stone to him in order to continue working on the rebuild of Princess Peach's castle (and according to him, Chief Toadette is very picky about which stones to use). The stones are very heavy, so Mario cannot jump highly when carrying one; the challenge is to work a way across each of these levels so the plumber can reach their goal with the requested object. More generally, the player can also make levels that can only be completed by reaching the goal while carrying a specific object, like a trampoline, P Switch, or POW Block, and requiring the players playing said levels to venture through their paths and obstacles with the object at hand.

-->-- ''Series/TheBrittasEmpire''

* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZelda'':

* There's a classic riddle that is sometimes proposed in schools and friend circles to see who can solve it first: A farmer wants to transport a tiger, a sheep, and a bundle of hay to a rural village (variations of the riddle replace the sheep with a goat, and/or the hay with grass). But at one point, the farmer meets a river, and while there's a canoe that can be used to transport people and their packages, it's only big enough to hold two entities (one of which, logically, will be a person). The farmer wishes to reach the other side with all three things he's traveling with, but he'll have sail across the river back and forth as he can only carry one thing at a time; if he tries to transport the grass first, the tiger will eat the sheep when they're left alone; and if he tries to take the tiger first, then the sheep will eat the grass. What should the farmer do? [[spoiler:Take the sheep first, because the tiger won't do anything with the grass. When the sheep is put into the other side, the farmer can go back to get either the tiger or the grass next. When the second item is placed to the other side, take the sheep back so it's left to where the remaining item is. This makes it so, in the final step, the tiger and the grass are now on the desired side; all the farmer has to do then is to sail back one more time to grab the sheep and take it to the other side and have all three items crossed to continue the travel]].

* ''VideoGame/ConkersBadFurDay'': During the Uga Buga chapter, Conker is caught freeing her girlfriend Berri and trying to leave the Rock Solid nightclub with the money she gathered while strip-teasing. The mafia leader Don Weaso decides to spare him in exchange for a favor: To carry a CartoonBomb and drop it onto a volcano's core to make the lava's level rise and eradicate the surrounding Uga Bugas (Weaso holds beliefs based on FantasticRacism against them), and Conker has to hurry because the fuse is already lit. The squirrel has to go through a small passageway, a prolonged descending slope, the mucous interior of a dinosaur with moving uvulas, and finally the corridor leading to the destination. All while also dodging the club swings from wandering Uga Bugas. Being hit by any attack or hazard, or taking too long, will lead to [[BoomInTheHand the bomb exploding, killing Conker in the process]].

* ''Series/ShippingWars'': This RealityShow revolves around this kind of situation, with the protagonists being several couriers who have to deal with absurd issues like life-sized (and very fragile) [[WesternAnimation/ToyStory Buzz Lightyear]] figures, carnival rides, and Formula-One race cars, that are very hard to fit in the transport trucks, with very little time to deliver, and occasionally underbidding on the contract so much so they would be hired that they are forced to do additional jobs along the way that cause their own type of mayhem.

* ''Film/ChillFactor'': A powerful chemical explosive that remains dormant in cold temperatures finds its way into the hands of a convenience store clerk and an ice cream truck driver who have to deliver the compound in the trucker's refrigerated truck to a military base, all the while being pursued by a rogue ex-Colonel and his band of evil mercenaries.

* ''ComicBook/MortadeloYFilemon'': Many stories consist in them having to travel long distances through all kinds of terrain and suffering a lot of AmusingInjuries along the way.. only to find out at their destination that they were given the wrong item, that the person who receives it does not want it anymore or even that the item itself was completely unnecessary from start.

* ''Film/{{Quick}}'': Ki-su is forced to deliver three packages by motorbike in thirty minutes a piece, or else a bomb planted in his motorcycle helmet (Inadvertently being worn by Ki-su's passenger, Chun-shim) will explode. To make things more complicated, Chun-shim still has to make a television appearance, and the police are on the hunt for Ki-su, after one of his earlier package deliveries turned out to be another bomb.

* ''Film/ThinkBig'': Rafe and Victor, two dimwitted trucker brothers with a reputation for missing deadlines, are given one last chance to take a job delivering a shipment of toxic waste from the Tech Star Company. As a safeguard against the brothers' supposed incompetence, their boss installs a countdown timer on their dashboard, to remind them of their deadline. After they pick up the shipment from the company, they find out that Holly, a TeenGenius from the company's school, has [[LittleStowaway stowed away]] with them in order to not let her [[HandyRemoteControl special invention]] to get into wrong hands. Now, the brothers have to outrun Tech Star's mooks, who are after the girl, while trying to make their delivery in time. The two brothers also have to contend with a repo man, Sweeney, who repeatedly attempts to take back their truck. In the end, [[spoiler:the brothers still miss their deadline, they lose their jobs, and Sweeney finally takes their truck (Unknowingly still carrying the toxic waste and spilling one of the barrels in the cargo container; the last we see of him he [[OminousHairLoss starts losing his hair in tufts]]). However, Holly market is able to market her invention and make considerable amounts of money. She then partners with Rafe and Victor into making their own transportation company.]]

* ''Film/TheKidWhoLovedChristmas'': Sideman's piano gets taken away by a collections agency, but a neighbor of his is willing to lend him another; all he needs is help moving it. Tony thinks it'll be a cinch and rhetorically asks everyone, "If we all pitch in, how hard could it be to move an ''itty-bitty'' piano up a couple flights of stairs?" GilliganCut to Tony and his friends stuck on the staircase and mightily struggling to move the piano. When Tony wonders how they're gonna fit the piano through the door, even if they could carry it up the stairs, Reggie comes up with the suggestion of taking down the door (of note is that Sideman himself doesn't give much [[{{Pun}} weight]] on the struggles Tony and the other guys have for moving such an upright piano up a flight of stairs to his apartment, because he only tells them [[SkewedPriorities not to scratch up the piano in the process]]). Another JumpCut later, and the door is being put back in its frame and the piano is finally in Sideman's apartment.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheBrothersFlub'' takes place in Retrograde, an inter-dimensional courier company that delivers everything from packages to people anywhere in the universe. An with Fraz and Guapo as the primary couriers messing around every delivery is very difficult and often wrought with doom.

* ''Film/EightHeadsInADuffelBag'': Mob {{Courier}} Tommy Spinelli receives orders from his superior to transport the heads of eight decapitated victims across the United States as proof of their deaths. While taking a commercial flight, he crosses paths with Charlie, a young med school graduate on his way to Mexico, and the two of them end up inadvertently switching their luggage because they had identical black duffel bags. HilarityEnsues as Spinelli tries to track down Charlie and retrieve the heads (and procure replacements from the cryonics lab at Charlie's med school, as some of the original heads get lost along the way) in order to complete the delivery.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheBrothersFlub takes place in Retrograde, an inter-dimensional courier company that delivers everything from packages to people anywhere in the universe. An with Fraz and Guapo as the primary couriers messing around every delivery is very difficult and often wrought with doom.