Product Delivery Ordeal

Mr. Brittas: So where's my concert grand?
Julie: Nobody knows — it's been stolen from the warehouse in Croydon.
Mr. Brittas: What?
Julie: It's all right — they found you another one. They've had four man driving all night to bring it from Cardiff.
Mr. Brittas: So why isn't it here? Give me that number.
Julie: Apparently, they broke down in Swindon and had to carry the piano a mile and a half to where they could hire another van. They had quite a hard time by the sound of it.

— The Brittas Empire, "Mums and Dads"

A character is tasked by someone (or determined by themselves) to deliver or carry a product to a specific person or destination. The product can be anything—a briefcase, a large supply of contraband, a manila envelope, a fragile relic, something that's a complete mystery to the audience, it doesn't matter. Nevertheless, it sounds simple enough, so the character accepts the task and gets moving.

However, there is a problem. There is always a problem. Or several.

In fiction, delivery tasks are not as simple as they should be in theory, and various obstacles or challenges are sure to present themselves. Maybe the product gets misplaced. Maybe the moving truck gets a flat tire. Maybe the character needs to take a detour off the main highway and gets lost on some seedy scenic route. Maybe they have to cross a desolate wasteland with inconvenient beings like monsters or raiders lurking about. Whatever happens, the character(s) will do everything they can to overcome the obstacles and challenges before them and find a way to deliver their item to its destination. To heap on the pressure, there may also be a threat of severe punishment or other dire consequences if they fail to deliver their product and/or a looming deadline to meet, as well, thus having to deal with a Race Against the Clock (or, in a video game, with a Timed Mission).

How difficult or dangerous the product delivery ordeal may be can also depend on the product itself, leading to additional considerations:

• It may be durable, but heavy and/or large. As a result, it will have to be either pushed all the way or transported slowly with a vehicle. Hopefully, it can also fit through any narrow pathways that are encountered, and there won't be a need of raising it through a tall spot like a building's high floor or a cliff (because if that's the case, then tough luck).
• It may be relatively small, but also fragile, meaning it needs to be handled delicately and with proper finesse when navigating precarious terrain or protected from pesters who want to annoy the characters. In a video game, this will require the character(s) to deal with Mooks and/or obstacles for the sake of the object's integrity, thus doubling as an inanimate version of Escort Mission.
• Last, but not least, there's the scenario where the object isn't particularly big or fragile, but something or someone lurks along the way that the characters intend to avoid interacting with. The most common instance is a thief trying to transport something as contraband, but it may also happen with legal deliveries when a character doesn't wish to, say, pass through an expensive toll or approach a Tsundere or Jerkass who only wants to mess with the good guys. In the worst-case scenario, the object may be confiscated, seized, or stolen by the bothersome character, thus requiring an urgent retrieval (which is often a big challenge on its own).

Woe to the one who manages to reach their destination with the object intact but with no one else there to receive it... or it turns out the character(s) got the directions wrong. Compare the case of the Impeded Messenger, which is themed around a person (i.e. a courier or messenger) being unable to send a message/information or doing so too late, and focuses on what causes the failure or ill-fated lateness.

This trope is not only Truth in Television but also Older Than Dirt. There are ancient drawings depicting Egyptian workers transporting enormous bricks for the construction of pyramids.

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 in narrative examples outside of video games (where this trope is more often utilized in sidequests or lesser mission objectives).

Sub-Trope of Fetch Quest, a broader trope about finding things for someone and focusing more on where said thing can be found.

Sister Trope to Escort Mission, which revolves around taking someone to a marked destination while ensuring their safety (though both tropes differ greatly in terms of context and dynamic, especially when the escorted party also functions as a Living MacGuffin with whom the main character interacts, thus intertwining with tropes based on bonding or affinity).

Super-Trope to:

• 30 Minutes, or It's Free!: When a character is instructed to deliver a meal to a customer under a time limit so they can receive payment.
• Carrying a Cake: When the character needs to transport a cake or any food item and has to make sure it doesn't spill or get eaten, among other delivery mishaps.
• Courier: A character who usually goes through this as part of their job; though it's their life that is more likely to get the higher risk factor, instead of the package or message they're carrying.
• MacGuffin Escort Mission: When the object being transported doubles as a MacGuffin (as in, an object that isn't relevant to the main narrative, but is frequently pursued throughout it).
• Nitro Express: When the protagonists are tasked with delivering some kind of Hair-Trigger Explosive.
• Sheet of Glass: When this is what the characters are transporting. Fairly often, the glass is either broken due to an irresponsible speeder passing through or spared at the expense of said speeder hastily dodging it.

Someone who always overcomes every delivery ordeal, no matter how extreme, might be an Unstoppable Mailman.

Contrast: Instant Home Delivery, where the struggles are either nonexistent or brushed off as unimportant and thus not given focus.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Eiga Tamagotchi: Himitsu no Otodoke Dai Sakusen!: The delivery of the special egg to the Gotchi King goes decently until a vehicle appears and attempts to steal the package. Much of the short film is based around the Tama-Friends trying to get out of the vehicle's way and get the egg back from it.
• Saint Seiya: During the Poseidon arc, Kiki travels all over the dominion of Poseidon while carring the heavy golden Pandora's Box on his back to deliver the parts of Libra's armor to the Bronze Saints, because these parts can be used as weapons to destroy the seven pillars. The delivery is not only very taxing for him (who is only 8 years old), but also makes him a vulnerable target for Poseidon's Generals, including Kraken Isaac.

Comic Books

• The Couriers: The series revolves around Moustafa and Special, two young "couriers" who specialize in the kind of loads that normal courier companies don't handle because they are illegal, or so in demand that they're likely to attract every gunman in town to try to steal them at gunpoint. Usually, it's both. Naturally, their deliveries tend to be very action-oriented and hyper-violent as they overcome all obstacles in delivering smuggled goods.
• Judge Dredd: The Story Arc "The Cursed Earth" is premised around a dangerous delivery across the North American continent. Mega-City Two on the western coast of the former United States of America is infected by the 2T(fru)T virus (which drives people violently insane before a painful death). Meanwhile, Mega-City One scientists on the eastern coast developed a vaccine but find it impossible to safely land at Mega-City Two airports. Therefore, the only option left is to send a land expedition across the "Cursed Earth" — the remnant of Middle America that nuclear war has reduced to a barren wasteland. The bulk of the story is episodic, detailing the many savage — and bizarre — perils that Judge Dredd's party encounters as they try to reach Mega-City Two and deliver the needed vaccine.
• Mortadelo y Filemón: Many stories consist in them having to travel long distances through all kinds of terrain and suffering a lot of Amusing Injuries 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.
• Usagi Yojimbo: One of Usagi's many adventures has him accompany a pair of ice carriers down from the mountains to the capital before it melts (as their lord's rival has sent goons to interrupt them and disgrace their master).

Fan Works

• The Mountain and the Wolf: The Wolf's longship can go through the Warp to bring him anywhere he wants, at the price of having to fight off demons the entire way.
  • First seen when Euron Greyjoy actually Theon in magical disguise claims to have a way to bring the Golden Company's War Elephants to Westeros fast enough to make a difference in the upcoming siege of King's Landing, bringing Harry Strickland along to organize the trip. While it certainly does work, the experience is a harrowing one, involving going through a realm of horrible demons twice. It's all part of the Wolf's plan to make the confrontation between Cersei and Daenerys as huge and bloody as possible, although he's disappointed in that regard.
  • Repeatedly occurs onscreen and offscreen, allowing the Wolf to deliver (among other things) Wilding tribes south of the Wall, bring dragonstone to Chaos Dwarves, gift his besiegers with huge amounts of meat to remind them that he can't be starved out, and show the Dothraki khal that his homeland is vulnerable to the Wolf.
• A Tale of Wandering Stars: After saving Ruri from Yuri, Ruri gives Yugo a letter for her brother and Yuto. Sadly, Poor Communication Kills and Yuto and Shun assume Yugo is an enemy, which causes them to attack on sight and keep him from delivering the letter. It takes Yuto and Shun kidnapping Yuya for Yugo to go Let's Get Dangerous! and call Jonathan for assistance. The Warrior of Light summarily scares the pair into submission... and hands them the letter.

Films — Animated

• Balto: A sudden spread of diphtheria is endangering the lives of many children in Nome, including a girl who has befriended the protagonist. A large supply of medicine is planned to be sent to Nome, and due to severe weather conditions, the only possible way to do the delivery is via sled transport. But the sled dogs get stranded and it's up to Balto and his friends to finish the job. The dogs' leader (Steele) runs away out of arrogance, so Balto is the one who guides the remaining dogs across the remainder of the path (including a perilous ice cavern with falling stalactites).

Films — Live-Action

• 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag: 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. Hilarity Ensues 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.
• 1917: An isolated regiment is scheduled to launch a full-on attack on their front line. However, aerial reconnaissance has revealed that the Germans are planning to lure them into a massacre. With the field telephones to the regiment's sector cut, the only way to get word to stop the attack is to send two runners, Lance Corporal Blake and Lance Corporal Schofield, to deliver the message in writing. The two soldiers go on a hazardous, harrowing trek through enemy territory, hoping to reach the regiment and stop the attack before it's too late.
• Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia: After a scornful Mexican crime lord known only as "El Jefe" offers a $1 million bounty to whomever brings him Alfredo Garcia's head, Bennie, a barroom pianist, ends up on a quest to collect the bounty. Finding Garcia proves easy enough, after Bennie learns that he died in a drunk driving accident a week prior. Bennie plans to dig up Garcia's grave, decapitate the corpse, and collect the money on it. However, after finding the grave, things get much more complicated. Others with similar motivations attack Benny, kill his girlfriend, claim the head for themselves, and prompt Bennie to track them down and retrieve it again. After that, he's ambushed by members of the Garcia family who also reclaim the head. The hitmen who initially told Bennie about the bounty show up and gun down most of the Garcia family before they, too, try to kill Bennie. Another firefight breaks out when Bennie returns with the head to one of El Jefe's business associates. Then, at last, Bennie delivers the head to El Jefe's hacienda. Bennie's given a briefcase containing the million dollars before he relates how many people died for Garcia's head, including his girlfriend. El Jefe tells Bennie to take his money and throw the head to the pigs on the way out. Infuriated that the object responsible for his girlfriend's death and all this madness is viewed as nothing more than garbage, Bennie guns down all of El Jefe's bodyguards before offing the boss, as well. Then, as Bennie finally drives away from the scene, El Jefe's remaining men shoot him to bits with machine guns.
• Cast Away semi-jokingly frames its Robinsonade as this. Tom Hanks is a FedEx executive who is the only survivor of a plane crash over the ocean, and washes up on a Deserted Island with a load of undelivered FedEx boxes. A few of these he raids for supplies, but one of them strikes him as special, and he holds onto it, unopened, out of a sense of professionalism. At the end of the movie, when he is rescued and brought back to civilization, he finally delivers the last box. FedEx themselves teased this ending in a Super Bowl Special commercial. Turns out, the package was a satellite phone, fishing equipment, water purifier, and seeds. "Just some silly stuff."
• Gone in 60 Seconds (1974): A Colombian drug lord contracts Maindrian Pace and his team to steal 48 cars in a week for $400,000. The last car on the list, a 1973 Ford Mustang codenamed "Eleanor," proves the most difficult to attain. Pace is aware of one such car model at the International Towers in Long Beach, but his brother-in-law tips off the police to stake out the location. Consequently, when Pace steals the car, it leads to a destructive 40-minute Car Chase, as Pace tries to shake off the police and deliver the car to the Long Beach docks. Eventually succeeding at evading the police but with the Mustang irreparably damaged in the process, Pace happens to be fortunate enough to spot an exact duplicate of the car at a car wash. Noticing an opportunity, Pace leaves his current vehicle at the car wash and dupes the owner of the other Mustang under the guise of being the car wash's manager. After a quick license plate swap and disguise removal, Pace leaves the car wash with the newer, pristine model, leaving the wrecked one for the other car owner to find. The police, spotting the wrecked Mustang, quickly descend upon the scene to arrest the real car wash manager (who happens to match Pace's description), as Pace safely clears a police checkpoint to finish the last delivery with relative ease.
• Gone in 60 Seconds (2000): Loosely based on the previous film, protagonist "Memphis" Raines, a former master car thief, is forced to return to his former trade and steal fifty high-end cars for a British gangster who threatens to kill Memphis's brother. Here, "Eleanor" is a 1967 Ford Shelby GT500 which Memphis "saves for last." As in the original, when Memphis goes to steal the '67 Shelby, police were already lying in wait, leading to a Car Chase. After Memphis shakes off the police, he arrives at the gangster's junkyard twelve minutes late, and he refuses to accept the slightly damaged Shelby.
• The Greatest Beer Run Ever: The protagonist ("Chickie") goes onto a dangerous (and illegal) trip to bring a duffel bag full of Pabst Blue Ribbon to his neighborhood chums fighting in The Vietnam War as a token of support and appreciation. While he succeeds in the delivery and makes it back to New York in one piece, in the whole process he remains scarred from everything he witnessed (including a gut-wrenching scene where he finds "Oklahoma" dead on the street during the Tet Offensive), making him lose faith in the US government.
• Johnny Mnemonic: Johnny is a "mnemonic courier" (data trafficker) who has an implant that allows him to securely store data too sensitive for regular computer networks. Johnny uses this implant to deliver such data between contracting parties. On one delivery run, he accepts a package that not only exceeds the implant's storage capacity (and will kill him if the data isn't removed in time) but also proves to contain information far more important and valuable than he had ever imagined. Johnny must deliver the data before it kills him, but a Mega-Corp sends assassins out after him to suppress said data.
• Kangaroo Jack: Two childhood friends, a New York hairstylist and a would-be musician, get caught up with the mob. After botching their first job delivering stolen televisions, the two men are given a second chance and must deliver $50,000 to a contact in Australia. As simple as the job sounds, complications emerge when a wild kangaroo runs off with the money. Now, the two friends must find the kangaroo and get the money back before they find themselves in a worse predicament.
• The Kid Who Loved Christmas: 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?" Gilligan Cut to Tony and his friends stuck on the staircase and mightily struggling to move the piano (of note is that Sideman himself doesn't give much 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 not to scratch up the piano in the process). 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. A quick Smash Cut later, and the door is being put back in its frame and the piano is finally in Sideman's apartment.
• The Mexican: Jerry, an errand boy for a notorious gangster, is tasked with one One Last Job—fly to Mexico and pick up an antique pistol, the eponymous Mexican, then bring it to his boss. However, Jerry's boss isn't the only one who wants it. His girlfriend is taken hostage on her way to Las Vegas, his contact in Mexico gets killed by an errant bullet, his car gets stolen with the gun (and the contact's body) inside it, he's briefly arrested by the police, his boss's second-in-command orders him killed, and he loses his passport. It all eventually culminates in a Mexican Standoff between Jerry and the mobster's second-in-command before he can finally turn over the gun.
• The Music Box: Laurel and Hardy play a pair of deliverymen who have to deliver a piano up a steep flight of stairs. It's Played for Laughs.
• Operation: Dumbo Drop: The US Army occupies a village overlooking the Ho Chi Minh Trail until Viet Kong forces overrun it, and slay the village's sacred elephant as a penalty. The Army decides to regain the trust of the locals by delivering a new elephant to them. Since the Viet Kong control all the approaches to the village, the only way to get the elephant there is by airdrop from a C-123.
• Overnight Delivery: Inverted. The protagonist, Wyatt Tripps, is convinced his girlfriend is cheating on him, so he writes a particularly nasty breakup letter and sends it by an overnight delivery service. However, come the following morning, he realizes he made a mistake and now has to prevent the delivery of the letter or get it back before it reaches his girlfriend. The antagonist is the Unstoppable Mailman who is committed to delivering the letter.
• The Package 2012: Tommy Wick is a Courier for a crime lord who is tasked with delivering a package to a rival crime lord known only as "The German." It seems like a routine job until a third gang kills Tommy's partner and tries to take the precious cargo for themselves, forcing Tommy to fight them off every inch of the way to completing his task. After eventually being captured by the German, it turns out that the "package" that Tommy was initially handed was just a meaningless prop, and the real "package" is Tommy, himself (The German is actually dying and requires blood transfusions; Tommy happens to share the German's extremely rare blood type, so the German "bought" Tommy from his own employer). Tommy, however, manages to break free from his restraints while the German's people are taking his blood and kill his captors. Afterwards, Tommy goes back to his old boss, and they agree to let bygones be bygones as they go their separate ways.
• The Plank: The film is about the various ordeals and slapstick gags two workmen go through as they try to deliver a single plank from the lumber yard to the job site so they can finish building a floor.
• Premium Rush: A New York City bike messenger picks up an envelope for delivery that is so valuable a corrupt detective pursues him throughout Manhattan to try and get the envelope before it's delivered. And as if having to contend with bent cops wasn't enough, nobody in New York obeys any traffic laws.
• Quick: Ki-su is forced to deliver three packages by motorbike in thirty minutes apiece, 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.
• Smokey and the Bandit: The story concerns the delivery of a truckload of Coors beer to Georgia. Two problems: 1) at the time, it was illegal to ship Coors to the eastern United States, and 2) to make the delivery in time, they'll have to break the speed limit the entire way, getting them chased by the police (or, in '70s trucker parlance, "Smokey"). The movie's first sequel, Smokey and the Bandit II, uses the same plot, but the cargo is a live elephant.
• Think Big: 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 Teen Genius from the company's school, has stowed away with them in order to not let her 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, 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 starts losing his hair in tufts). However, Holly 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.

Literature

• Temeraire: The protagonist buys a red porcelain vase as a gift for his estranged father, not expecting its delivery to be a book-and-a-half-long, 5000-mile ordeal involving multiple natural disasters, bandits, a ship fire, months of military campaigning, several aerial battles on dragonback, and an English horseback deliveryman. It makes it, but they never get the chance to mend their relationship.

Live-Action TV

• The Big Bang Theory: In the Season 1 episode "The Nerdvana Annihilation", the guys purchase what they believe to be a miniature time machine replica, realizing too late that the product is actually a massive prop. Once the item arrives, they struggle to figure out a way to take it to Leonard and Sheldon's apartment, since the building's lift is broken. With no other choice, they slowly and painfully push the machine up the stairs but end up blocking the stairwell. This in turn prevents Penny from arriving at work in time, setting the episode's conflict in motion.
• The Brittas Empire: In "Mums and Dads", Brittas orders a piano to be taken to the centre for a concert, but the actual trip to get it there proves to be difficult, starting with the original piano getting stolen. This naturally leaves the delivery men at their wit's end, just in time for Brittas to chew them out for parking on the disabled spot, and it leads to a piano on its side in reception.
• Friends: Ross' subplot in "The One with the Cop" involves him and Rachel trying to carry a big couch to his apartment. Unable to get the large item up his building's narrow stairwell, they resort to asking for Chandler's help, though their combined effort only ends up getting the couch stuck in the shaft.
• Perfect Strangers: An episode has Lydia ask Larry and Balki to deliver a piano to her apartment so she can audition for a music producer. They get the piano to her building without issue, but it won't fit in the elevator so they have to carry it up ten flights of stairs. The piano gets destroyed in the process, but it turns out Lydia didn't need it after all.
• Shipping Wars: This Reality Show 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) 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.

Radio

• Cabin Pressure: In "Ottery St. Mary", after Martin twists his ankle, he has to call in for help from Arthur and Douglas to assist his removal van company in moving a piano from a house in Fitton to a pub in the titular Devon village. However, due to Arthur's stupidity, they end up failing to pick up the address of the pub in the first place, and then Arthur accidentally locks the keys in Martin's van^note Or so it seems; after the below scene, it turns out Douglas is the one who messed up there, because he put them in the piano., so they have to use their airplane to fly to Devon, after which they have to push the piano all the way from the airfield to the pub.
  Martin: I'm really, really grateful for all your help.
  Douglas: You're welcome.
  Arthur: Yeah, you're welcome!
  Douglas: He didn't mean you!
  Arthur: What? I helped!
  Douglas: You forgot the address and locked the keys in the van. In what way, precisely, did you help?
  Arthur: Well, you wouldn't be able to push the piano without me!
  Douglas: We wouldn't have to push the piano without you!

Video Games

• Astral Chain: A sidequest available early on in File 06 consists of buying a tall ice cream to a girl in Harmony Square. The girl is located in a walkway reached upstairs, while the ice cream stand is located past a crosswalk to the other side of the street. The player's character has to buy the tallest version of the ice cream (Avalanche Special) and carefully carry it across the street and then walk upstairs to give it to the girl in the walkway. The ice cream will frequently lean between sides, thus requiring a lot of balance while moving; and the character also has to avoid clashing against any person passing by, especially when going upstairs to the girl's location.
• Baldur's Gate III: Shadowheart, who has gotten her memories (including her real name) suppressed, only remembers that she was instructed by Lady Shar to deliver a sacred artifact to Baldur's Gate, no matter the cost or the means necessary to do so. The reason why her memories are suppressed is to ensure the secrecy of this mission, since it's extremely confidential.
• Boxbrawl Delivery: Carter must deliver the boxes to his customers in a perfect state. Failing to do so will drop the rating by .5 stars if the package is slightly damaged or 1 star if the box is severely damaged.
• Conker's Bad Fur Day: One of the multiplayer modes features the story of a group of hungry Uga Bugas who are looking for food. They get the idea of seizing dinosaur eggs from the mother raptor's nest (located in the extreme of a location) and transporting it to their large frying pan to cook it (located in the other extreme). Whoever reaches the nest and grabs an egg will have his hands full, exposing him to the risk of being attacked by the mother raptor, so the other Uga Bugas have to provide a distraction while the carrier reaches the other far side with the egg. Interestingly, the mother raptor is also undertaking this trope, because her newborn baby is hungry and has to carry an Uga Buga with her mouth to the baby and feed it with the victim, all while dodging the attacks of the unlucky caveman's comrades who try to save him.
• Death Stranding: This is featured as the core gameplay. You play as Unstoppable Mailman extraordinaire Sam Bridges, whose job is to deliver precious cargo through the obliterated, 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.
• Euro Truck Simulator: Being a truck driving simulator, the player is tasked to undertake product deliveries for various companies, and to this end it'll be necessary to travel across cities while keeping numerous perks in check, such as respecting transit signals (including those regulating the speed limit), obeying regional or national driving customs (such as driving on the left side in the United Kingdom), accounting for tollboths in countries with privatised road networks, respecting local cargo weight limits, going through border inspections... all while also keeping an eye on your truck's fuel. Similar shenanigans also occur in the game's sequels, including American Truck Simulator.
• Fallout: New Vegas: The Courier is tasked with delivering a mysterious poker chip to New Vegas. Unfortunately, they're ambushed, shot in the head, and left for dead before making the delivery. Much of the game's plot revolves around retrieving the chip and potentially completing the delivery.
• God of War: Subverted. After finding Pandora's Box, Kratos is tasked with pushing the box all the way off of Cronos to Athens. After a minute of the player moving it for a while, Ares finds out and throws a wooden spike all the way to Kratos, who is sent to the Underworld.
• Hollow Knight: In one side quest, the Grey Mourner asks you to deposit a Delicate Flower on a grave in the Queen's Gardens, all the way on the opposite side of the map. The flower is in fact so delicate, it gets destroyed if you take any damage on your route. Fortunately, despite the Grey Mourner's description of the flower as unique and irreplaceable, you can go back to her to get a new flower as many times as needed to finish the quest.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Zelda II: The Adventure of Link: Prior to the events of the game, Link is told by Impa that the only way to awaken a long-dormant incarnation of Princess Zelda is with the power of the Triforce in its completed form. Link has the Power and Wisdom fragments, but Courage is still missing. That fragment awaits in the Great Palace, but to access that location Link has to dispel its barrier by delivering six sacred crystals to their respective Palaces, each one built in a specific part of Hyrule. Not only are the Palaces guarded by powerful opponents, but the overworld is filled with monsters that wish to kill Link in order to use his blood to resurrect Ganon (who was defeated in the previous game), making an already difficult delivery quest even more dangerous.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: The trading sequence to get the Biggoron Sword is unique for having some of the items in need of being traded under a time limit. The Odd Mushroom (third item) and Eyeball Frog (eighth item) lack preservatives and thus will spoil and rot if not delivered in time, but the path is relatively easy to undertake as long as Link has Epona to travel quickly across Hyrule Field. However, the hardest part (and where this trope kicks in) is delivering the ninth item (Eye Drops, whose healing effects have an expiry limit of only four minutes), because not only will Link need to travel fast across the aforementioned Hyrule Field (making the ordeal impossible without Epona from the get-go), but also running across Kakariko Village and then all the way from the foot of Death Mountain (including climbing a tall wall and potentially dodging eruptive rocks if the Fire Temple wasn't cleared yet) to the summit to give the Drops to Biggoron so he can heal his eyes and repair his namesake's sword. It's also strongly advised to have planted a Magic Bean next to Dodongo's Cavern in the past era to create a helpful shortcut in the future. Last, but far from least, using a warp song to attempt a shortcut via Death Mountain Crater will deplete the time limit instantly.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: After Link manages to clear the path between Termina Field and Romani Ranch, as well as help Romani save the cows from the ghostly entities trying to abduct them during the first day, he hops onto Cremia's carriage to accompany her in the next delivery of milk to Clock Town, so it can be served in the local Milk Bar. The delivery's path would be straightforward, except Cremia notices that the Gorman Brothers put fences onto it, forcing her to reroute into their unsafe territory. She asks Link to use his bow to shoot arrows at the Brothers, who are riding their horses to try to destroy the milk bottles placed behind. Succeeding in the quest nets Link Romani's Mask, allowing him to enter the Milk Bar and buy some of the milk he helped bring there.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: After Makar is rescued by Link in the Forbidden Woods, he and the other Koroks perform the Korok ceremony, and those fellows resolve to travel all over the Great Sea to plant seeds in other islands so new forests are born. However, when Link meets any of those Koroks, he's told that the trees will only grow in full when poured with Forest Water, so he has to return to Forest Haven and scoop some water with a bottle to travel to every island having a Korok tree and water it. Besides the long distance between the islands (and some of them having perilous obstacles, like the moving thorny branches in Cliff Plateau Isles), there's the bigger caveat that the magical effect of the Forest Water will expire after 20 minutes past the moment when Link leaves Forest Haven, so he must hurry (this also makes this quest impossible without learning the Ballad of Gales first). The game's Wii U version makes this quest easier by extending the time limit to 30 minutes and providing the option of traveling faster with the Swift Sail.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: During the sidequest involving Malo's plan to purchase the price-abusive emporium from Hyrule Castle, Link is tasked to bring a barrel of hot spring water to a lethargic Goron who ran out of strength after repairing the bridge connecting Hyrule Field with the west entrance to Hyrule's Castle Town. The problem is that the water needs to be hot (making this a Timed Mission), the barrel will fall down and break if Link is hit by any enemy, and Link cannot attack them because his hands are full due to the size and weight of the barrel. The most common enemies are Leevers, which have a tendency to pop up frequently in Hyrule Field. This delivery is necessary so the Goron can replenish his strength, bring additional hot spring water on his own, and reunite funds that greatly reduce the price to buy the emporium.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks: Once Link manages to add a freight car to the Spirit Train, he'll be able to undertake sidequests where he's asked to deliver a specific product located in one part of Hyrule to someone who is waiting for it in another. Unlike the usual Escort Missions where Link is taking a passenger (who gets impatient every time the train is hit by an enemy attack or Link fails to follow the road signs), here Link has to protect the train because any attack will directly affect the integrity of the product. In cases where he's transporting a specific amount of something, that amount will decrease by one with each hit taken (in the case of the vessel Link buys from Papuchia Village to deliver it to Steem in Snow Sanctuary, any hit will break it). The most extreme case is the delivery of Dark Ore from a Goron mining station to Linebeck, because the ore will also deteriorate with sunlight over time, and it's actually impossible to succeed unless Link has previously activated a certain pair of teleporters for the Spirit Train to head ASAP to Linebeck's Trading Company in the Forest Realm; to make matters worse, along the way lies a Rocktite in the caves, and if it's fought the Spirit Train can only be hit once during battle (it's possible to defeat it before undertaking the delivery, though).
  • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword:
    • One of the tasks assigned to Link during his part-time job to pay for the broken chandelier of Lumpy Pumpkin's bar consists of transporting a pile of pumpkins to a storage area located outdoors in the bar's island. Link has to make his way there while carefully keeping the pile's balance, and for that he has to move forward carefully when the pumpkins are in line and sideways when the upper pumpkins are leaning to a side, potentially falling down if he isn't careful.
    • During the quest for the Triforce, Link is asked by the owner of Pumpkin Landing to deliver a large bowl of hot Pumpkin Soup to Levias, who wanders around the interior of the Thunderhead. However, when Link arrives to the spot where he's supposed to deliver the bowl, Levias appears and is shown to have been corrupted by a parasitic monster known as Bylocite, thus forcing a Sequential Boss battle. Only after Link wins the fight, Levias will return to normal and receive the soup he likes so much.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild:
    • There's a sidequest called The Perfect Drink, which takes place in Gerudo Desert. Link finds a dehydrating Gerudo named Pokki next to a Shrine, and to help her he has to bring some Noble Pursuit drink to her. The problem is that the drink's supply in the bar of Gerudo Town is running out, and Link needs to bring some ice from a storage north of the desert to Furosa (the bartender) so she can replenish it. Link goes to the storage, where another Gerudo (Anche) instructs Link to take a large block of ice and transport it to where Furosa is, but she warns him that the extreme heat of the desert will gradually melt it. Thus, Link has to travel between the shadows of the ruins and pillars along the way to mitigate the block's shrinking (the ice storage is closed during night, so the idea of waiting until after sunset to grab the ice block is ruled out). There are also Fire Lizalfos that must be defeated, to prevent their fire attacks from near-instantly melting the block. Once Furosa receives the ice block and prepares new Noble Pursuit supply, Link can go to the Shrine where Pokki is and give the drink to her so she returns to the town, allowing Link to finally enter the Shrine.
    • A sidequest called Special Delivery involves a young Zora girl called Finley located in the Bank of Wishes who wants to send a letter to a human friend called Sasan in Mercay Island, and to this end, she encases the letter within a wooden cylinder and drops it to the river so it goes downstream to its destination. She asks Link to keep an eye on the cylinder while it moves along with the water and make sure nothing happens to it. The cylinder is not only susceptible to physical attacks but also fire, so Link has to kill any enemy who threatens its integrity; for extra difficulty, if Link strays too far from it or vice versa, it will be lost and will have to repeat the sidequest. The letter will also disappear if a Blood Moon occurs (this is due to technical reasons), so it's recommended to do this during day or at least after the most recent Blood Moon. When the letter arrives to Sasan, he shows his gratitude to Link, who can then meet both at Zora's Domain to receive his reward.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: A reoccurring side-quest has Link reuniting a backpack-laden Korok with their friend some distance away, usually with there being some sort of obstacle between them. What keeps it from being an Escort Mission is that the Korok does not move and you have to either carry them or glue them to a contraption to get them to the destination. Many players use this as an opportunity to torture the Korok in ridiculously hilarious ways, however.
  • Hyrule Warriors: During the "Land in the Sky" mission, the heroes find themselves overwhelmed by the Dark Forces and have to convince the sky spirit Levias to help them. They do so by making offerings of the deity's favourite meal at specific spots on the map, with Link clearing the path of enemies so that Fi can transport gigantic batches of pumpkin soup to the required destinations.
• Monster Hunter:
  • The object delivery quests that appear in the games are divided into two types: The standard Fetch Quest where the hunter simply has to gather a number of collectibles (mushrooms, berries, goldenfish, etc.), and the challenge is simply based on checking where they are,... and the more difficult variant where you probably know already where the requested object is, but it has to be carried with both hands due to their bigger size, weight and fragility. Under this condition, the hunter is unable to attack, and cannot run for too long because running out of stamina will force them to drop the object and break it. And nine times out of them, there will not only be several small monsters lurking around but also a very powerful large monster (like Rathian or Deviljho). In addition, for quests tailored for single player (where no other player can provide a distraction for the monsters), the game will arbitrarily place enormous boulders in certain parts after the first item is placed to the delivery box in the camp base, in order to force the hunter to take a longer route, going through areas where they'll likely have to climb a very tall rocky wall through vines, or carefully descend between spots (as falling down abruptly will also break the item). Last, but far from least, transporting a Wyvern Egg will also have the Raths actively chase the hunter.
  • There's a kind of delivery quest where the hunter is sent to a volcanic region to find and deliver a hot volcanic material to the camp base. The biggest caveat isn't the small (or large) monsters lurking around or the convoluted transport path(s), but the high temperature of the object in the hands. For obvious reasons, it will make the hunter's HP gradually decrease, thus needing the help of a Palico (or Shakalaka, in the case of Monster Hunter 3 (Tri) and 3 Ultimate) who can heal them periodically.
• Poptropica: In "The Great Pumpkin Island," Lucy asks the player to get a big pumpkin from the pumpkin patch to her house in one piece so she can carve it, so the player must carefully roll the pumpkin up and down hills and across obstacles. If it breaks, the player must then start all over.
• Professor Layton:
  • Professor Layton and the Curious Village: 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.
  • Professor Layton and the Unwound Future: The Parrot minigame revolves around a parrot who volunteers as a delivery bird taking belongings to people who are in Future London. The objects in question are relatively mundane, such an apple (to Luke), a soccer ball (to Raleigh), or a cup of coffee (to Silky); in one instance there's a living pet the parrot has to be delivered as well (a dog, to Viv), though. Due to the products' weight, the parrot cannot fly too efficiently on his own towards the recipients, so the player has to use the touch screen of the Nintendo DS to draw ropes between marked dots (which represent dotted hooks) and create perches that guide the bird. The angle and placement of each rope is essential, and only a limited number of them can be made (the exact number depends on each level of the minigame). For extra difficulty, there cannot be any intersection between ropes, no hook can attach more than one rope, and a rope can only be attached to two hooks.
  • Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask: The 12th and 80th puzzles revolve around two porters who have to transport a number of pieces of luggage (six small ones in the earlier version, two large ones in the later one) into the room of a hotel where the guests await. In both versions, each piece of luggage weights differently (and specifically, the six pieces in the earlier version are labeled from A to F, ordered from lightest to heaviest), but the porters are tasked to carry the same total amount of luggage mass in one trip, so the player has to figure out the correct distribution. The solution for the first version is to have each porter take three pieces in a way such that one of them carries the heaviest (A) and the lightest (F) to even things out, while the solution for the second version is to have the two porters carry the two big pieces together.
  • Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy: The 50th puzzle revolves around a young forest boy who is carrying a wooden wheelbarrow stocked with the apples he gathered to take them home. The problem is that he gets lost, but some forest animals are willing to give him directions to exit the forest in exchange for feeding them with apples. Each animal guides him a number of squares on the way, but no two animals from the same species in a row can guide him, nor can there be any animal in the tiles with bare trees, so the player has to figure out the exact sequence of animal placements. Unfortunately for the boy, by the time he returns home, he realizes that he spent all apples on the animals who took him out of the forest, thus making his quest for food a futile one.
• Rebel Galaxy: One mission type involves transporting a badly-needed trade good to a randomized planet. This delivery usually involves at least one ambush and concludes by forcing the player to run a gauntlet of pirates to reach the delivery location.
• Shrouded Thoughts: One of the gimmicks has Madeline carry a box across hazards so she can hit a switch. The secret Rust Berry involves a very lengthy version of this where accidentally breaking the box will kill her.
• Splatoon:
  • Series-wide: The Rainmaker ranked mode is effectively a multiplayer version of this: the goal is to pick up the eponymous Rainmaker weapon and carry it to the enemy base. Said weapon shoots powerful ink blasts, but also has a lot of drawbacks ^note It takes a long time to charge up, slows your movement to a crawl, shows enemies your position, prevents you from super jumping or using your specials, and will explode if you hold onto it for too long, meaning that the rest of the team has to cover the player who's carrying the Rainmaker if they want to have any chance at making progress. Exactly what category of escort mission this falls into largely depends on the competence of the player carrying the weapon.
  • Splatoon 2: 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 Bottomless Pit, the mission fails instantly.
• Super Mario Maker 2: 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 that the plumber can reach his 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.

Webcomics

• Homestuck: One of the plot threads in Act 4 follows the Parcel Mistress, a highly dedicated Prospitian mail worker seeking to deliver two packages. However, the location where she's tasked with finding these objects has been secured and impounded by an agent from the enemy kingdom of Derse, the Authority Regulator, who has taken the parcels as evidence. She's able to obtain one of them and mail it along, but he keeps the other and returns to Derse with it. In order to finish her job, the Parcel Mistress ends up having to travel to Derse itself, where she finds it in the hands of its viceroy Jack Noir, who will only relinquish it in exchange for the crowns of the king and queen of Prospit, then returns home to try and talk her rulers into giving her their crowns, fights off and kills another Dersite agent who attacks her, and is only then able to radio Noir to exchange the crowns for the package and finish her delivery.

Western Animation

• The Brothers Flub takes place in Retrograde, an inter-dimensional courier company that delivers everything from packages to people anywhere in the universe. And with Fraz and Guapo as the primary couriers messing around, every delivery is very difficult and often wrought with doom.
• Chowder: Season 3’s “The Blast Razz” has the gang trying to transport fruit for Gazpacho across a treacherously rough road… oh, and the fruit is explosive.
• Codename: Kids Next Door: In one episode, Numbahs 2 and 3 had to deliver a large truck full of soda to its destination without being shaken up. Turns out the truck had contained a cake for the Delightful Children from Down the Lane.
• Futurama: The main characters work for an intergalactic delivery service that advertises itself as willing to take on the most difficult of deliveries, no matter what happens to their crews. Meaning that hazardous deliveries form the set up for at least half the episodes, and most of the B Plots.
• King of the Hill: In the Season 8 episode Livin' On Reds, Vitamin C and Propane, Hank gets to live his childhood dream of being a trucker by transporting his mom's fragile belongings from Texas to Florida in an 18-wheeler. Problems arise when Dale, Bill, and Boomhauer sneak along for the ride and other truckers deride Hank as an amateur. It culminates with Hank and the guys having to pull off a risky maneuver driving backwards down a mountain; they succeed, earning the truckers' respect, and join a convoy to Florida.
• The Magic School Bus:
  • In the Season 2 episode "Getting Energized", a short circuit renders an electric generator unusable to fuel a Ferris Wheel. Mikey then suggests Ms. Fizzle and her classmates bring an alternate source of energy to make the Wheel operate again and satisfy the impatient customers. They then choose to use the large boulders located behind a small mountain to make the Wheel move with their kinetic energy. After lots of thought and some trial and error, by the end of the episode, the kids end up placing a waterwheel next to a river to move a conveyor belt that transports the boulders into a catapult (powered by water boiled with sunlight) that launches them to seats of half of the Ferris Wheel to move it while the customers safely ride in the seats of the other half. The episode is meant to showcase the applications of Energy, hence the assets used by the kids to solve the problem at hand.
  • The Season 3 episode "In a Beehive" is set up by Tim and Wanda delivering cartloads of jars of honey for Tim's family's bee farm. They crash and smash most of the delivery, leading to the episode's plot of learning about how bees work and how honey is made so that they can replace it.
• The Simpsons: In the Season 10 episode Maximum Homerdrive, Homer feels guilty over the death of a truck driver (Red Barclay) he was competing against in an eating challenge. He and Bart then decide to deliver the product Red intended to transport while driving 2200 miles to Atlanta, Georgia. What seems to be a simple (if lengthy) task, however, becomes a life-or-death adventure after Homer is told that all trucks (including Red's) are Automated Automobiles and the other truckers threaten to kill him if he reveals the secret to the public (since they had fallen into complacency and laziness thanks to the automation system doing almost all the job for them); Homer and Bart manage to flee from the mob (at one point, they do a very risky driving maneuver to get past their largest blockade) and thus deliver the shipment (revealed to be artichokes, though surprisingly some migrant workers were inside as well) to its destination, fulfilling Red's final job.
• South Park:
  • In the Season 9 episode "Follow That Egg!", all children are tasked to raise and protect an egg as part of a parenting project, and are paired as mixed-gender couples to this end. The exceptions are Wendy and Bebe as well as Stan and Kyle (none of those students are gay or dating, but Ms. Garrison pairs them as such and wants them to fail in the egg nurturing in order to convince the governor of Colorado not to approve gay marriage). During the climax of the episode, Stan and Kyle aim to deliver their egg and call Ms. Garrison to tell her that they're on the way, but as they drive a car across the street they have to escape from an assassin whom Garrison hired to destroy the egg and thus sabotage their delivery.^note He already succeeded in shooting at an egg Stan thought to be the one assigned to him and Kyle, but it was fake The assassin is shooting at them during the pursuit, and also makes some landmines in the road explode. The two boys manage to escape but, due to their wounds and overall fatigue, they collapse right after showing the now-safe egg to Ms. Garrison; the state's governor sees this as proof that gay couples can raise a family and thus approves gay marriage.
  • In the Season 10 episode "Hell On Earth 2006", Satan is planning to do a party to celebrate his birthday, Sweet 16 style. His greatest longing to this end is a cake shaped like a real-size Ferrari Enzo, and his loyal servant instructs three historical murderers brought back to life (Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and John Wayne Gacy) to deliver it. Over the course of the episode, the three killers attempt to lift the cake with a tow truck's crane to transport it, but ultimately their ineptitude leads to the cake falling down and crumbling to pieces. They hastily try to remake the cake, but end up killing each other due to their mutual hatred.
• Special Agent Oso: In the Season 2 episode The Manny With The Golden Bear, Oso's training exercise is to deliver a briefcase to an agent on a submarine. A lot of struggle along the way ensues.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: The Season 1 episode Pizza Delivery sees SpongeBob and Squidward attempting to deliver a pizza to a customer, only to get stranded out in the middle of nowhere and thus having to figure out how to get back on track. While they do succeed in the delivery, the customer ends up rejecting the pizza for not including a drink (and it's ambiguous on whether or not the customer made sure to request it in the first place). The customer does get comeuppance for this, though.
• TaleSpin: The episode "A Spy In The Ointment" involves Jack Case as a covert agent charged with delivering a package to the Thembrian High Marshall. Case hires Higher For Hire to fly himself into hostile Thembria, which is modeled somewhat after the Soviet Union, paranoia included. During the process, it's discovered that the package meant for the High Marshall is just fishing lures, and that Case isn't a covert agent. He's just a mailman that screwed up his deliveries, and is trying to right his wrong without anyone finding out.
• Thomas & Friends:
  • In "Thomas Gets It Right", Thomas is tasked with delivering Farmer McColl's eggs all over the Island of Sodor. Because of how fragile the eggs are, Farmer McColl advises Thomas to move slowly. Thomas becomes upset when his friends are able to do more jobs than him, so he tries to speed up the process by moving faster. Unfortunately, this results in one box of eggs breaking. Feeling bad, Thomas continues his job by moving slowly for the rest of the journey and learns that sometimes it's more important to move slowly. Despite Thomas only being able to complete that one job, most of the eggs are delivered safely, and the broken ones are delivered to Sir Topham Hatt so he can have scrambled eggs for breakfast.
  • In "Thomas and the Lighthouse", the engines are getting ready for the harvest festival celebration, and Thomas is tasked with delivering a new light bulb to the lighthouse by nightfall so that ships at sea can find their way to Sodor safely. Sir Topham Hatt advises Thomas to go slowly since the bulb is very fragile. At first, Thomas goes slowly and carefully, but when he sees his friends getting ready for the party, he becomes more and more excited and goes faster and faster, eventually breaking the bulb when he crashes into a barrier. Thomas goes back to the warehouse and collects a new bulb, being much more careful with it despite knowing that he will miss the party if he does.
• A Thousand and One... Americas: Halfway during the fourth episode, Chris, Lon and an Olmec kid the former two befriended beforehand witness a group of Olmec men who were tasked to deliver an enormous mass of rock from a far-away location to the village they are at that moment in order to build a sculpture. Chris notes how tired the men are, since the mass is extremely large and heavy and they've had to push it during the whole way (this misfortune is inevitable, because wheels weren't used, or even even heard of, by the Olmecs in Real Life). Later in the episode, as the boys keep strolling within the village, they witness the men pushing the stone, noticing that they're now using ropes (as well as trunks that stand in for otherwise-absent wheels) to pull it upward across a slope... and to the shock and horror of the boys, the ropes then break due to the object's weight. The men try to sustain it with their strength, and the boys alert other men so they can help solve the crisis. They barely succeed.
• VeggieTales: In the short "Going Up!", Larry, Jerry, and Mr. Lunt work for a delivery service run by Mister Nezzer and they are given the difficult task of delivering a piano up a large staircase for their customer, Madame Blueberry. Jerry and Mr. Lunt eventually get distracted when an ice cream truck passes by, leaving Larry to deliver the piano by himself.
• Young Justice: The Season 1 episode "Coldhearted" revolves around Kid Flash having to run all the way across the United States (from Boston to Seattle) to make an emergency delivery of a donor heart for Queen Perdita of Vlatava, who will die without the transplant. Along the way, he has to evade the allies of her villainous uncle Count Werner Vertigo, who wants Queen Perdita to die so that he can claim the throne of Vlatava for himself.

Real Life

• 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 hay 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 hay. What should the farmer do? Take the sheep first, because the tiger won't do anything with the hay. When the sheep is put into the other side, the farmer can go back to get either the tiger or the hay 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 hay 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.

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