Follow TV Tropes

Following

Courier

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/courier_2.png
"A courier came to the battle once bloody and loud
And found only skin and bones where he once left a crowd"
Remember the Alamo

You need something delivered to or across a barren Polluted Wasteland, deadly jungle, or simply a dangerous urban environment. The Internet or phone isn't going to cut it, either because a physical item (signed document, USB stick or priceless jewelry) has to be delivered or to reduce the risk of hacking. Regular Snail Mail won't cut it because it's slow and there's security risks, or because mail isn't delivered where you want it to go (a war zone or the lair of a Big Bad).

You're going to need something special: a Courier! A Courier is essentially a mercantile mailman/woman, delivering messages through cities and towns on foot or other single-person conveyance.

There are several varieties. A mainstream commercial courier is fast and reliable, but they won't transport illegal or contraband items (a Finger in the Mail) or goods that Fell Off the Back of a Truck. A Black Market courier, who either works freelance or for The Syndicate, is willing to take riskier or illegal parcels, for a commensurately high fee. The mainstream commercial courier is unarmed, but a Syndicate courier probably is packing heat, and moreover, they have the enforcement powers of their organization behind them. Another type of courier is one who works for the military or for a secret agency; they too are armed and backed by a powerful organization. Both Syndicate and military/spy couriers may travel in disguise with a cover story.

A diplomatic courier is a subtype of the government courier. They deliver sealed pouches with secret documents. By international agreement, diplomatic couriers cannot be arrested and their pouches cannot be opened.

In fiction this often comes with some level of danger involved, either from the environment the courier crosses, the package they're delivering, people who may be after the package they're delivering, or simply through the courier's own recklessness. The courier may have to elude tails, spies, and assassins to get their package safely to its recipient. If the package is highly valuable, the courier may have their own security detail.

Another element of risk is the trustworthiness of the courier themselves; Syndicate or spy couriers may be double agents who work for both sides. Even if your courier isn't working for the enemy on the side, their curiosity may drive them to peek at your secret message. Couriers who look inside the Big Bad's sealed package may be "permanently retired" if they open the package and see the contents.

Even if there's not an element of danger, there will usually be a tight deadline the parcel must be delivered by, forcing the Courier to bust their hump getting it there on time. Le Parkour, shortcuts through dodgy neighborhoods, Drives Like Crazy and other tricks may be employed to get quickly from Point A to Point B (the words parkour and courier both derive from the French for "to run").

Since it's a romantic spy type of job that still allows cynicism with money, combined with the fact that it's an easy way to bring characters to new places or into contact with interesting people, it's ripe for protagonist-hood, but this is not always the case. Can often turn up even in futuristic settings where you'd imagine advanced technology would make human Couriers obsolete, generally as a form of commentary on the presence of a Shadow Dictator in the setting. Less serious versions may include a silver plate delivery or a Singing Telegram.

Even though most Real Life couriers today use a truck or car, depicting couriers using bikes or motorcycles are Truth in Television, at least for highly time-sensitive, important deliveries in dense, congested urban centers, because cars and trucks are too slow in these settings.

See Pony Express Rider for the 1800s mounted variety and Unstoppable Mailman for the government-employee version. May involve Deadly Delivery, Shoot the Messenger or You Got Murder. A courier may use a bike, motorcycle, Cool Car, a flying courier may have a Cool Plane or, in science fiction, a Cool Starship; if they drive a vehicle, they may be a Badass Driver. A Venturous Smuggler specializes in illegal deliveries and knows how to avoid police and customs inspections. Given their occupation and its inherent risks, a courier is often used to undertaking a Product Delivery Ordeal, making this a Sub-Trope thereof.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • Akudama Drive: Courier is a serious man known for transporting products with high efficiency. He'll deliver any packages or even get involved in insane, history making heists.
  • The crew of the Black Lagoon call themselves couriers. The terms 'smugglers', 'pirates' and 'mercenaries' would also fit.
  • Bleach: Ryuken's role is in the Final Arc in the present storyline outside of the flashbacks in which he delivers the Still-Silver Arrow to his Uryu.
  • In Cells at Work! and its spinoffs such as Cells at Work! CODE BLACK, which is about a human body depicted as a city populated by anthropomorphized cells, red blood cells are depicted as workers in a package delivery service. They deliver oxygen and nutrients to various parts of the body and then carbon dioxide to the lungs.
  • Dragon Ball Super: Monaka's occupation is being a delivery man in space.
  • In Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet, this is what Amy and her friends do for a living. They make heavy use of gliders in order to get around the fleet in good time. It's also portrayed as completely normal and non-dangerous (though Amy's sometimes reckless use of said gliders might prove otherwise).
  • Gunsmith Cats has Bean Bandit (from spiritual predecessor Riding Bean). His line of work in general is getting things to their destination guaranteed, almost no questions asked. His reputation comes from being a Combat Pragmatist as well as being a Badass Driver.
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
    • Diamond is Unbreakable: Over the course of the story, Jotaro has meetings with agents from the Speedwagon Foundation who pass information to assist him during his time in Morioh.
    • The JOJOLands: As a child, Jodio was invited to be a gofer to deliver objects to their recipients. It wasn't long until the praise and receiving pocket money made him embrace his mechanism.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans: Takaki's job is to procure supplies for the Tekkadan group while also acting as a messenger.
  • A filler episode of Naruto introduces courier ninjas, shinobi trained to deliver their packages and defend them against any ninja who might attempt to steal it.
  • Sonic X: Bokkun acts as Eggman's delivery robot whenever he plans on sending a message out to Sonic and co. about his latest schemes. Of course, this being Eggman, the messages that Bokkun sends have a tendency to self-destruct.

    Comic Books 
  • Drowntown: Gina Cassel works as an aqua-courier in flooded London. This can be dangerous — when we first see her, she's being chased by a gang of thugs. (She's rather annoyed at the end of it when the supposedly important package is just a rich guy's clothes which he could easily have waited for or replaced.)

    Fan Works 
  • Paul and George get thrust into this role by the Guardians in The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World. After the “debacle” by George and John the previous day, the only mission that the Guardians will give them is a boring courier mission to a distant coastal town. (Though things get a lot livelier when the recipient of their delivery turns out to have been missing for several days.) The four find being couriers desperately boring and pointless, and they make it clear later on that they will not accept such missions any longer.
  • Vow of Nudity: Fiora grew up in a primitive village where her mother serves as the “runner,” aka the one who delivers messages on foot to other clans in the savannah. Her frequent extended absences are what allowed Fiora to teach herself magic in secret.

    Film 
  • Back to the Future Part II: The Western Union. Upon receiving a letter in 1885 with specific instructions to deliver it to somebody, at a spot in the middle of nowhere, the company sees to it that a representative is on that spot, with that 70-year-old letter.
  • Cloud becomes one in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children under the business Strife Delivery Service. He delivers the items while Tifa manages client calls.
  • Johnny Mnemonic is about a digital information courier who is pursued by killers from the Yakuza.
  • In The Postman, a drifter in post-apocalyptic America puts on a scavengered US Postal Service uniform and mailbag and starts a courier service. When the scattered inhabitants of the wastelands were able to send letters to friends and family, it strengthened their sense of connection and it gave them hope that society could be rebuilt. Eventually, the charismatic Postman was able to recruit others to help deliver messages.
  • Premium Rush is all about bike couriers, and the rush of navigating a busy city like New York. In the movie, he is transporting a priceless MacGuffin that a Dirty Cop is obsessed with stealing. As a result, there is a cross-city chase between the bike courier and the car-driving cop.
  • Ronin (1998) is about a team of retired spies who take on a mission to steal a priceless MacGuffin in the possession of a Big Bad's team. The MacGuffin is always transported by an armed courier who has it in a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. The courier is always protected by a heavily armed security detail.
  • The protagonist of The Transporter is an ex-special forces soldier who has a new career as a Badass Driver for hire. He gets the package to the delivery point no matter what the risks or obstacles, by violating numerous traffic laws and safe driving practices.

    Literature 
  • The Company Novels: In Black Projects, White Knights, Kalugin has a run-in with a brain-damaged immortal literally named Courier, who goes berserk if he spends the night in one place for more than one night in a row.
  • In Good Omens, a courier is tasked with informing the Horsemen of the Apocalypse that Armageddon is imminent. He tracks down all of them including Death, despite having no apparent powers of his own.
  • In Guns of the Dawn, Penny Belchere is an official military courier for the kingdom of Lascanne, and is the first woman most of the characters have seen in army uniform. It's an early sign that Lascanne is running out of male conscripts and is thinking about how women can be put in military roles, which presages Emily's own conscription. (Penny herself shows up again a number of times, including once when her supposedly non-front-line role doesn't stop her getting captured.)
  • The Hardy Boys: Bart in the Casefiles book "A Killing in the Market". As the office assistant of a person of interest in the case, he's assigned to serve as a Courier to the Hardy Boys, but while he's trying to meet them, he aborts the meeting and makes a beeline out of there when he spots a couple of mooks who had beaten him up earlier.
  • In the Honor Harrington universe, there are no Subspace Ansibles, so messages are instead run between starsystems via specially designed Courier Boats, which are basically some cramped living spaces and a very powerful hyperdrive crammed into a hull with not much else. Occasionally, characters will hitch rides on these as the most expeditious way to get to a location quickly.
  • William Gibson's short story "Johnny Mnemonic" is about an underworld courier who transports digital information in a brain implant.
  • In Umberto Eco's Loana, the protagonist remembers reading a fascist children's book about a hero trying to smuggle an important message to Italy's then-colony Abyssinia (Ethiopia). This being a serial novel, in Real Life, Abyssinia is liberated from the Italian fascists long before the story ends. At the end, the oh-so-secret message delivered essentially boils down to: "Hold out!"
  • Matty from Messenger pretty much embodies this trope, minus the money-making aspect (though he does crave the admiration and prestige that comes with doing a dangerous job).
  • In Ranger's Apprentice, Couriers are a mixture of Ambadassadors and Badass Bureaucrats, with a healthy dose of Silk Hiding Steel. They bring important messages around the nobles of the Kingdom of Araulen and work on treaties with other nations. Though not warriors, they're definitely not weaklings to be pushed around, either. Especially since both of the ones we see end up married to Rangers.
  • Koguma, the protagonist of Super Cub, starts to work part-time as a courier by transporting documents between schools.
  • Sword Art Online: Tomo/Argo is friend and fellow beta tester of Kirito. Within SAO, she works as a Knowledge Broker and messenger.
  • Several secondary characters in the Temeraire series:
    • In Europe, Couriers hold the rank of captain because they each have their own dragon, but they're low-status captains because their dragons are of the smallest breeds and they don't have a crew to manage.
    • The Chinese Jade Dragons are a breed so small they cannot hope to take off with an adult human, but their great speed and endurance means a network of them are employed for high priority correspondence. Since the series avoids Easy Logistics, the Jade Dragons are a huge tactical advantage.
  • In The Two-Headed Eagle by John Biggins, the Chief of Staff of the Austrian military gets Otto Prohaska to transport a package of top-secret documents in his aircraft. Otto is proud to be selected for such an important mission, but his airplane crashes in a storm and his pilot is seriously injured; Otto has the chance to save him if he surrenders to Italian troops but realises that they will find the secret documents and evades them instead, losing his direction and any chance of leading a rescue party to the crash site. It turns to be All for Nothing, as the 'top-secret documents' are just love letters the Chief of Staff was delivering to his wife by airplane as a Grand Romantic Gesture.
  • In "The Ultimate Rush" by Joe Quirk, protagonist Chet Griffin is the only rollerblading messenger at a San Francisco courier service.
  • In the Vorkosigan Saga, a courier position is the cover story for Miles Vorkosigan as opposed to his real job as head of the Dendarii. A mistake during the rescue of a real courier is what eventually ends his military career.
  • The Wandering Inn: Being a courier is a very prestigious and well-paid job, as only few meet the requirements to become one. The setting is much bigger than our world and is inhabited by countless monsters, so a courier has to be strong to make their deliveries.
  • In the Warrior Cats series, apprentices play this role during the battle against the Dark Forest cats — traveling through a battle-filled forest where any enemy will kill them on sight so that the Clans can send messages to each other on the status of their warriors.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Because of the way Faster-Than-Light Travel works in Andromeda, messages have to be relayed by couriers, so courier ships are a common sight.
  • In Babylon 5, this is one of the roles taken on by the Anla'Shok, also known as the Rangers. Due to the density of conspiracies that happen to pass through Babylon 5, a wide variety of one-off (and often killed-off) minor characters will also fill this role for various parties.
  • Half the cast of Dark Angel work for a bike messaging service called Jam Pony that pays minimum wage and has high turnover. Max and Alec particularly like the free sector passes and opportunity to case joints.
  • While it's just a throwaway gag, in The Mighty Boosh, Vince subscribes to hyper-cutting-edge fashion magazine Cheekbone, which has to be delivered by ninjas to avoid being obsolete by the time it's read.
  • In season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery, the Burn cripples Casual Interstellar Travel so much that many colonies are dependent on couriers to bring them supplies. Unfortunately, many of these couriers work for the Emerald Chain and exploit their customers.

    Music 

    Radio 
  • Our Miss Brooks: The bicycle-riding telegram delivery boy, in "Telegram for Mrs. Davis". Mrs. Davis is too superstitious to open the telegram or allow Miss Brooks to open the telegram on her behalf. The boy won't leave until he gets the requested reply...

    Tabletop Games 
  • BattleTech: FTL communications do exist... but they do so primarily in the form of large stationary installations called Hyperpulse Generators (or HPGs for short) run by the same ostensibly neutral monopolist throughout the Inner Sphere, so all the alternatives remain alive and well. After Grey Monday, when most of the HPG network went permanently offline and started the Dark Age, "pony express" style courier services became the primary means of getting information between star systems.
  • The Skateboys from I.C.E.'s Cyberspace are a gang who carry messages and packages while riding motorized skateboards.
  • In the Dying Earth RPG supplement Scaum Valley Gazetteer, the River Skaters use ice skates to carry messages along the frozen Scaum River during winter.
  • New Horizon: While all the major cities have communication links to each other as well as railroads and ports, smaller towns need couriers to deliver goods and messages, and sometimes, it's better to send someone to ensure the package arrives. Also, this is a background that can be selected, allowing the player to smuggle and depending on the type of courier, better movement in areas or the ability to operate certain vehicles with ease.
  • Shadowrun: Runners sometimes get hired to do a courier job. One memorable one was to deliver a dragon's egg. Some characters can even be specialized in the job, with headware designed to carry data that can only be extracted by someone with the proper key.
  • Traveller: FTL communications are not possible, so messages have to be carried through jump space on a starship before being transmitted. Usually messages are carried by the Imperial Interstellar Scout Service's X-Boats, though the IISS often loans out surplus ships to retired scouts who become private couriers.

    Video Games 
  • The game Courier Crisis has you playing as a bicycle courier, delivering packages through multiple levels, dealing with angry dogs, traffic, and the occasional gunshot on the bad side of town... all while being berated and insulted by your boss.
  • The protagonist of Daughter for Dessert disguises himself as a courier to break into Mortelli’s office when he suspects that the detective isn't telling him everything.
  • Death Stranding: Couriers became extremely important to what's left of society after the Death Stranding... with the collapse of infrastructure and the loss of the mail system and Internet, people hand-delivering packages from place to place became the only method of long-range communication left. The player character, Sam Porter Bridges, has this for a job. It's particularly dangerous due to the Timefall (rain that rapidly ages whatever it touches) and the ghostly BTs (which could possibly cause a nuclear-level explosion if they manage to catch a living human). There are even gangs of rogue couriers known as MULEs, who have become "addicted" to package delivery and will steal packages from legitimate couriers to hoard them for themselves.
  • Couriers are absolutely critical in Dota 2, typically being animals who deliver items from the shop to heroes across the map. Using couriers is the more efficient play instead of returning to the shop each time, and professional games have been won or lost on sniping enemy couriers carrying valuable items.
  • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: Letters and packages are delivered across the province of Skyrim by a network of couriers. Amusingly, since the couriers are randomly spawned in when conditions are ready for you to receive a package, a bug in some versions of the game could cause the couriers to turn up deep in zombie-infested tombs, ancient Dwemer ruins, or even the planes of Oblivion. Occasionally, due to an unrelated bug, they would do so wearing nothing but a loincloth. This has led to Skyrim's couriers achieving Memetic Badass status.
  • Fallout:
    • Fallout: New Vegas:
      • The protagonist is The Courier, with the default name being simply "Courier". Some refer to them as Courier Six. The plot revolves around the package they're carrying, over which they were shot in the head at the start.
      • Ulysses, the Big Bad of Lonesome Road and a major player in the other three DLCs (and several major events in the game) is another courier. It's later revealed that the reason he became one is after witnessing the Courier unwittingly delivered a package that ended up destroying Ulysses' adopted homeland, showing him the effect that one individual can have on the world.
      • It seems that being incredibly badass is one of the job requirements for being a courier, since their job requires them to travel across the post-apocalyptic wastelands, often by themselves. Seemingly reinforced by Cass' comment:
        Cass: Caravan code of the wastes is you don't fuck with the one who brings you your mail...
    • Fallout 4 has the entire Cabot House questline fired off by one of their couriers being killed and his package stolen. You are sent to retrieve that package and deliver it to the Cabots.
  • Keith can take on quite a few courier or passenger transport missions in Galaxy on Fire. Often the better paying gigs have him traveling far and into dangerous pirate infested places.
  • inFAMOUS: Cole is couriering the Ray Sphere when it activates. There are also side missions in which Cole must spy on enemy couriers.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Throughout the series, Link is asked to transport/protect an item while delivering it to its destination.
  • Mega Man ZX: Vent and Aile are couriering the Biometals when they activate. In ZX Advent, it depends on which main character you choose: Grey meets Model A because he's delivering it to Legion, while Ashe meets it because she's trying to steal it.
  • Mirror's Edge: Runners, including the player character, have a valuable job for La Résistance 20 Minutes into the Future, because it's virtually impossible to send secure messages over the net. Thus, they give physical packages to fearless parkour runners.
  • The series of hidden missions at the end of Red Dead Redemption has John Marston Junior pretending to be one.
  • In the SNES Shadowrun game, Jake Armitage is almost killed on a delivery run in the intro of the game and part of the plot revolves around the information he's supposed to deliver.
  • In Star Citizen, information runners are basically couriers in space and functioning part of a vital line of communication that keeps the Human civilizations together in a universe where Faster-Than-Light Travel is hazardous and/or unstable. There are ships either dedicated or better-equipped out of the factory for this role although many plain-vanilla civilian ship models with sufficient internal capacity can presumably be configured for info runner duties as well.
  • In Transformers: War for Cybertron, Bumblebee is acting as a courier because the communications in Iacon City aren't safe from the Decepticons. Ironically, the one he's trying to get a message to (Optimus Prime) is the one that saves him from a Deception ambush. The message he's delivering (that Zeta Prime is assumed dead) is disturbing enough that Optimus decides to step up and take "temporary" command of the Autobots.
  • Unlimited Saga has the Carriers' Guild, which Ventus joins at the start of his scenario. Parts of his quest involve him making deliveries; in addition, he can take several optional Side Quests of this nature. While other characters can recruit him during their stories, they still can't access these special quests themselves.
  • Ys IX: Monstrum Nox: Silhouette's duty is to buy and deliver items to Adol.

    Webcomics 

    Western Animation 
  • One episode of Phineas and Ferb stars Paul the Delivery Guy, the guy who always delivers Phineas and Ferb's supplies.
  • The Simpsons: In "Bart on the Road", Bart and his friends get stranded halfway across the country, so he gets a job as a courier in an attempt to get back home.
  • A Thousand and One... Americas:
    • In the eleventh episode, as Chris and his pet dog Lon walk through a paved road in the middle of the Sechura Desert in Peru, they meet a Chasqui, a messenger from the Incan civilization to whom an important information was entrusted in order to send it to a destination (in this case, the city of Moche). This one in particular got his leg injured due to an ongoing battle between factions, but he tells Chris that he must fight his way to send the message no matter what, since that's what Chasquis were trained for. Chris manages to convince him to take his place to deliver the message so the man can rest and heal his wounds.
    • In the twenty-fifth episode, Chris learns about Toltec messengers who lived in Tula, and used to perform letter deliveries by running quickly to their destinations. In his dream, he meets and befriends one such messenger.

    Real Life 
  • Postmen are basically Government Couriers. The existence of laws specifically against Mail Tampering are there to deter people from interfering in these couriers’ job.
  • Courier businesses have existed for thousands of years, and were among the most crucial occupations in pre-Columbian civilizations like Incans and Toltecs.

Alternative Title(s): Par Kourier

Top