Wizard: You must cast this rin- er... BAND into the fiery depths of mount... KILIMANJARO.
Sangwine: But... that's in Africa!
Wizard: DO IT!!!
Sangwine: But... that's in Africa!
Wizard: DO IT!!!
— How Not to Run a Comic, How Not to Introduce the Plot #7
While many important-item stories are about finding or recovering a MacGuffin, this trope is about when the MacGuffin is in The Protagonists' hands early. The rest of the story involves getting it from one place to another.
Compare Live-Action Escort Mission. Not to be confused with MacGuffin Delivery Service, where the villain uses the hero to obtain the item. Contrast Keep Away. If the MacGuffin is a fake, compare Decoy Convoy.
Sub-Trope of Product Delivery Ordeal.
Examples
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Anime and Manga
- Pokémon: The Series:
- Pokémon: The Original Series: The Orange Islands saga started with the heroes being sent by Professor Oak to Valencia Island to collect the mysterious GS Ball, and then taking it to Kurt the Pokéball expert in Azalea Town, Johto.
- Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon: Professor Oak entrusts an egg to Ash for him to deliver to Samson Oak in Melemele Island in the Alola region.
Film — Animated
- BIONICLE: Mask of Light: Takua and Jaller are sent off to find the Toa of Light with the help of the Great Kanohi mask, initially without the help of other Toa.
Film — Live-Action
- The 2008 Vin Diesel cyberpunk movie Babylon A.D. (in Babylon Babies, the book on which it's based, they just jump on the plane to Montreal, so the journey is less important).
- Chill Factor: Arlo and Mason have to take a super-weapon to a military base while being chased by terrorists who want it.
- The Dark Crystal: The plot revolves around Jen getting the Shard to the Dark Crystal before the Three Suns meet to end the reign of the Skeksis.
- The plot of The Hidden Fortress is about taking Princess Yuki and her gold across enemy territory to an ally's territory.
- In From Russia with Love, Bond acquires the Soviet decoding device early on. The rest of the film is about trying to get in back to England while SPECTRE tries to steal it back.
- The Big Fat Kill sequence in the anthology movie Sin City involves the transportation of a dead body to be properly disposed of. Later, it involves simply keeping the head out of the mob's clutches.
- The Transporter has the title character doing this as a job.
Literature
- Although the Seed of Charm only gets air-time later on in Dragoncharm, ultimately it needs to be escorted beyond the stars. Mantle is not the protagonist or villain but he performs the task.
- The Lord of the Rings, which involves Frodo Baggins having to take the One Ring, the source of Sauron's power, into the land of Mordor to cast it into the fires of Mount Doom to destroy it.
Live-Action TV
- The episode "The Duchess and the Devil" in the Horatio Hornblower telefilms has Horatio entrusted with top-secret dispatches to be delivered to the Admiralty. When his prize vessel is captured by the Spanish, his passenger the Duchess persuades him to give her the dispatches, as she won't be searched. Although she's sent on to England, she reappears on a shipwreck, still not having delivered the dispatches. It's never stated what is in them, only that they are vital and that Pellew was forced to scour "half the Atlantic" looking for them. Although it's unclear if Horatio's imprisonment was the full two years as it was in the book, it still took quite a while for them to get back into British hands.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons
- Module I12 The Egg of the Phoenix. One of the missions involves taking the Egg to Doc's Island overland and by sailing ship through hostile territory.
- Module Kidnapped. The party must get the ransom for a kidnapped boy to the kidnappers before time runs out.
- Shadowrun. In one published adventure, the runners had to deliver a large package to a specific location. They eventually discover that it contains an egg belonging to the dragon Masaru.
Theme Parks
- The plot for Kung Fu Panda Adventure at Universal Studios Hollywood revolves around Po, Master Shifu, and Mr. Ping trying to get the "Liquid of Ultimate Power" to the Emperor.
Video Games
- Dying Earth. In the adventure The Exasperating Cadaver, the PC's must find a specific person and deliver a package containing...a dead body?
- For the first half of Golden Sun: The Lost Age, you're taking the Jupiter Star to the Jupiter Lighthouse in order to light it.
- Done occasionally in the Legend of Zelda series:
- In Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, instead of collecting things like in the first game, Link has to take six mystic crystals to six monster-infested palaces and insert them into statuary.
- Most of the Force Gem sidequests in The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks involve transporting an item from one part of the kingdom to another, while avoiding thieves, vandals, monster attacks, and other problems along the way.
- Three types of Drablands Challenges in The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes have these: "Guard the Orb", "Transport the Orb Quickly", and "Don't Drop the Pot".
- In Sonic Unleashed the titular hero has all seven Chaos Emeralds from the start, but he has to take each one to an ancient temple on each continent in order to repower them and restore the fractured planet.
- Splatoon downplays this with its Rainmaker mode. Once a team arrives at the Rainmaker's initial position, they must get it to a goal deep within enemy territory without either dropping it from being splatted or having it self-destruct after being carried far too long.
- Protecting the hyperdrive generator from Darth Maul in the game of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.
- The final leg of 'Video Game/Nethack'' after obtaining the amulet of yendor is this. You have to take it back through all the many floors of the dungeon which now have harder enemies and the respawning wizard of yendor to get it to the astral plane
Western Animation
- An episode of Adventure Time, "The Other Tarts", had Finn & Jake transporting legendary level tarts to a meeting of various royalty.
- Red Puckett's story in Hoodwinked!!: Upon discovering a break-in at her Granny's store, Red fears that the mysterious Goodie Bandit is trying to steal Granny's secret recipe book, so she removes the book from its safe and decides to take it in person to Granny for safekeeping.
- WALL•E largely revolves around getting the plant to the scanner so the Axiom can return to Earth, while the autopilot tries to get rid of it, though this only really becomes apparent in the second half of the film or so.
