Unstoppable Mailman

"I'll deliver these letters if I have to scuba-dive down to the goddamn mailbox!"

"Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these courageous couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."

— Greek historian Herodotus, on the Persian mounted postal couriers. Adapted into the unofficial motto of the United States Postal Service.

Fiction has a tendency to treat the mail carrier as an unstoppable force. Come downpour, blizzard, flood, The End of the World as We Know It, Big Friendly Dogs, or the apocalypse, your mail will still be delivered. Sometimes, it's even exaggerated to the point where the mailman will find you and deliver the letter no matter where you are in the world. They may even be the Flying Postman.

In comedies, of course, the mail they're delivering is usually something our hero doesn't want - e.g. a tax bill, or a jury summons.

Keep in mind that this isn't merely about unstoppable characters who happen to be mailmen; it's about mailmen who display impossible persistence in the process of delivering the mail.

The source of the page quote itself is nearly a direct quotation from the description of the Persian messenger system in The Histories of Herodotus written between 450 and 420 BC.

Compare the Non-Giving-Up School Guy who's ridiculously persistent in giving you an education rather than delivering your mail, the Determinator who's merely ridiculously persistent in general, and the Implacable Man who's just not playing fair. See also: Courier and Product Delivery Ordeal.

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Examples:

Advertising

• A commercial for Energizer batteries features a mailman trying to deliver mail during a hurricane, with cheerful music playing all the while. The announcer describes him as being one of those who never quits, and the Energizer Bunny shows up at the end of the commercial, dressed in a raincoat.
• In the wake of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on New York City and the Pentagon, the United States Postal Service released a commercial reassuring the nation that, despite everything that had happened, the people of the United States could still count on them. It's actually pretty heartwarming, and its message fits this trope:
  "We are mothers and fathers and sons and daughters who every day go about our lives with duty, honor, and pride. And neither rain, nor snow, nor heat, nor gloom of night, not the winds of change, nor a nation challenged will stay us from the swift completion of our appointed rounds. Ever."

Anime & Manga

• Banya from Banya The Explosive Delivery Man fits the trope, as one might expect from the title. Nothing stops this guy. And he doesn't exactly have it as easy as mailmen in our world have it, either.
• Cells at Work! features Red Blood Cells acting as couriers. The main character, identified as AE3803, shows this quite well in a few chapters, but the most notable example is a Double Subversion during the hemorrhagic shock arc, where she fights a snowstorm in order to deliver oxygen to the cells in need. However, she collapses halfway through... To be rescued by a blood transfusion that restores the body's standard temperature and makes her come to, allowing her to complete her delivery.
• In a filler episode of Naruto, Jiraiya's newest novel draft gets mixed up with a diplomatic message from one kingdom to another, and Naruto desperately tries to chase the mailman down, despite his adamant refusal to listen to what Naruto is saying. In the end, Naruto fails, but the Daimyo turned out to be a fan of Jiraiya's work, so things turn out well.
• While a very specific type of courier, the News Coo seagulls in One Piece seem capable of bringing a newspaper to almost everybody in the world, regardless of if the recipients are sailing out in the open ocean, in areas with dangerous weather, in ultra-secure locations, or even in hiding. The only known exception is the Calm Belt region; the sea monsters that live there are apparently too much for even the News Coos.
• Substitute "Chinese food delivery girl" for "mailman" and you have Aika from Persona 4: The Animation: The Chinese diner she works for has a "we deliver anywhere" policy and they do mean anywhere. As an example, Aika once delivers food to the heroes while they're running for their lives, having not been given an address, since they aren't in a physical building at the time. She treats the whole thing like just another day at the office.
• The Letter Bees from Tegami Bachi: Letter Bee are given a companion and told to deliver their mail no matter what monster tries to stop them. There are often many complications with the letters themselves, such as the intended recipient having moved or being in a difficult area to reach.

Comic Books

• Several from the Disney Ducks Comic Universe:
  • In the Carl Barks comic story "The Persistent Postman," Donald Duck is a persistent postman who delivers the mail on a nearly impossible route. He buys a helicopter to try and make the route go faster and gets into a fight with a giant eagle who steals his sack of mail, but in the end still manages to deliver everything.
  • In another Carl Barks story, "My Lucky Valentine", Donald gets a job as a mailman and has to deliver a valentine by walking miles in a blizzard. When he realizes the valentine is addressed to Daisy from his "dirtiest rival," Gladstone Gander, he throws it away, but then feels guilty and goes through all kinds of trouble to get it back and deliver it.
  • And in a story by Don Rosa, Scrooge gets a telegram from the Tsar of Russia. While he (Scrooge, not the Tsar) is in the middle of the polar waste, near the North Pole. (The delivery man gets no tip from Scrooge, though. Cheapskate!)
  • Then there is another story where Scrooge, due to his complaining about the postal service, becomes the mailman and having declared that every real place must receive mail, has to deliver a letter... to the planet Venus. To his credit, he accomplishes the task in the end.
• In the DC Comics Crisis Crossover Final Night, at least one Metropolis mailman is still on his rounds when everyone is certain that the world is about to end.
• Marvel Comics:
  • During the Onslaught mega-crossover, Hulk and Onslaught are slinging punches hard enough to shatter windows of buildings across the city. Willie Lumpkin, (the Fantastic Four's mailman who shows up every once in a while) tries to push through the crowd and begins to deliver the famous passage... but even he gives pause as the two behemoths battle.
  • After Willie retired, his granddaughter Wilhelmina "Billie" Lumpkin took over the Fantastic Four's route with the same determination. One example happens during the "Heroes Reborn" debacle where the universe kept shifting like crazy (something that the Four could see but nobody else noticed) and yet they could see Billie still coming their way, even after being turned into an eldritch thing, a Jungle Princess riding a raptor, and walking through a war zone before the universe shifted back to normal by the time she knocked on the door.
• Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire is troubled by one of these in the Gallimaufry arc, the mailman in question attempting to serve him a summons for his tax duties.
• Space Bastards is about the Intergalactic Postal Service, a delivery service consisting of the meanest and most vicious lowlives of the galaxy scrambling to deliver and claim the extremely high fees. Since whoever completes the delivery gets paid, it means that the titular Space Bastards are all more than happy to try and kill one another for the sake of being the deliveryman.

Fan Works

• Pony POV Series: Derpy is this by virtue of her Determinator status, but her potential Alicorn self is the Anthropomorphic Personification of Determination and Letter carriers, making her literally the personification of this trope. It's actually more epic than one would think, given it basically manifests as nothing being able to stop her from reaching the destination she's heading for.
• The Discworld of A.A. Pessimal sees a demarcation dispute playing out in Ankh-Morpork. The intrepid Witch-pilots of the Pegasus Service, witches who have upgraded from broomsticks to [magnificent flying horses, are used by Vetinari to deliver diplomatic communications, people, and, increasingly, Air Mail. The Postman's Guild complains and it is ruled that anybody delivering anything that could be interpreted as a letter should be a fully-articled Postman. The Pegasus girls discover that for them, The Price of Flight means they have to undertake the ordeal known as The Postman's Walk.
• Steal the Truth, Reach Out For Your Heart: The delivery services of Aiya's Nikudon remain ridiculous. To prove a point to Ryuji, Ren places an order from Tokyo for three beef bowls and then sprints randomly through Yongen-Jaya's backstreets with him and Nanako in tow. Aika Nakamura still shows up on her moped and delivers the order with impossible speed, despite Inaba being several hours away by train. A later chapter justifies this by revealing that Aika has access to both the TV World AND the Metaverse, which she used to make her deliveries faster.

Films — Live-Action

• The Western Union Man in Back to the Future Part II is able to deliver a letter at the exact minute specified despite a thunderstorm and an obscure delivery site. Granted, they had decades of advance notice and there is even a bet going on in the office that there would be nobody there. (Marty is; the delivery man is delightfully disappointed to be one of those who lost the bet.)
• Cast Away:
  • FedEx manager Chuck Noland leaves one of the packages that wash up on the island with him unopened. After five years, he escapes the island and delivers the package. He also kept track of the addressees for the packages he opened and buys replacements for many of the items he used, which he is delivering to their intended recipients at the end. FedEx and the film's writers were not above some Self-Deprecation by saying (and making an ad showing) that the answer to the Riddle for the Ages that is the contents of the unopened package were a satellite phone that would have gotten Chuck saved instantly^note in the script they were instead a couple of bottles of hot sauce. The film also mentions that at one point in the past Chuck's delivery truck broke down and he borrowed a kid's bike to continue his delivery route.
  • Inverted with the FedEx Moscow office of the prologue, which is tremendously slow and inefficient by the standards of a company that prides itself in delivering packages anywhere in the world by next day. Chuck is there to whip them into shape.
• Independence Day: Will Smith's character notes that his mail was still delivered despite an Alien Invasion.
• A non-Postal Service example in Overnight Delivery. The main character sends a breakup letter by 24-hour parcel service, then changes his mind and tries to get it back. The driver absolutely will not give up on getting his packages delivered.
  Driver: [After main character accidentally sets delivery van on fire to distract the driver] With God as my witness, you will not stop this delivery! Not on my watch! [Takes off in delivery van, which is still on fire]
• The Postman lives this trope, naturally. For starters, Costner's character (the eponymous postman) is delivering letters in a Post Apocalyptic world. Despite originally only doing it to get food and a warm bed, the letters give people hope and the role grows on him. The younger couriers take it even more seriously than the protagonist does, as his first apprentice declares "I would die to get a letter through."
• Tol'able David is a 1921 silent movie about a young rural man who ends up fighting the local thugs to deliver the mail - this movie played in the theater at the climax of The Tingler.

Literature

• In Adrian Mole, Adrian's father tries to instruct the postman not deliver any letters with a Sheffield postmark (from his wife's former lover). But the postman brings one anyway, saying "The Royal Mail has to get through, Mr Mole. We're like the Pony Express in that respect."
• Beware of Chicken has Lu Ri of the Cloudy Sword Sect when tasked to deliver a missive to Jin, formerly of the sect. Between Jin having followed the proper procedure when leaving the sect and the letter coming from a very important personality, Lu Ri made his goal to deliver it... And tracked down Jin (who was actively hiding) across the world in a province where ambient Qi was so low he, being rather powerful and accustomed to much richer lands, had trouble breathing, taking over the local gangs and reorganizing them into a proper intelligence service just to find him in the process, and, six months after leaving the base of the Cloudy Sword Sect, gave Jin that letter and waited to see if Jin wished to reply.
• Codex Alera features the Cursors, the mail service funded and operated by the First Lord. They're also his spies, saboteurs, and assassins. In Alera, everybody is a badass, and that includes the mailmen.
• The Discworld novel Going Postal obviously has a few examples.
  • The book features a slightly damaged version of the page quote: "Neither rain nor snow nor gl om of ni t will stay these mes engers abo t their duty.^note DONT ARSK US ABOUT: rocks; troll's with sticks; All sorts of dragons; Mrs Cake; Huje green things with teeth; Any kinds of black dogs with orange eyebrows; Rains of spaniel's; fog; Mrs Cake" It had been complete once, but some of the letters were stolen. ^note Moist drops by a certain hairdresser salon and reclaims the missing letters.
  • Probably as a Shout-Out to the Irish post mentioned below, in the follow-up book, Making Money, there's a section in the Post Office dedicated to identifying improperly addressed mail for proper delivery. They manage five out of every six, though Lord Vetinari is shown to be consistently more skilled than even them.
  • The golem mail carrier once failed to deliver a message to a king before the kingdom was destroyed. Roughly 10 thousand years later, he still carries the message in the belief that time is cyclical and he'll eventually get another chance to deliver his message. His personal version of the motto is "Neither Deluge Nor Ice Storm Nor The Black Silence Of The Netherhells Shall Stay These Messengers About Their Sacred Business.^note Do Not Ask Us About Sabre-Tooth Tigers, Tar Pits, Big Green Things With Teeth Or The Goddess Czol."
  • In the Ankh-Morpork Post Office Handbook, it is revealed that the status of Hero of the Post Office is conferred on those who go way beyond the call of duty. One postman managed to deliver a parcel containing a delicate piece of glassware without dropping it, despite trailing a firmly attached Lipzwiger dog down the full length of a very long driveway, ringing the bell and handing the item to the butler before passing out due to loss of blood (and later, loss of leg).
• In Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens, the same mailman finds the four horsemen of Apocalypse anywhere they are (from an African country torn by civil war to good old England) to hand them their symbols/weapons of power. He even kills himself to meet Death and deliver him his package. Note that he is a regular guy, with no powers or special skills.
• Harry Potter:
  • No matter where you are, an owl with a letter for you will find you, even if you've moved (like Harry in the first book) or are deep in hiding (Sirius). The letter will even have the correct address. Justified as a wizard literally did it.
  • Also, Hagrid: to prevent Harry from getting his Hogwarts letter, the Dursleys have moved on a shack in the middle of the North Sea, with a powerful storm preventing navigation, and yet Hagrid arrives, punches down the door, bends the barrel of the shotgun Vernon is threatening him with, delivers the letter, and forces the Dursleys to let Harry read it. You may stop a post owl, if you know what you're doing, but not Hagrid in mailman mode.
• A delivery man in the Knight and Rogue Series carries a letter meant for Fisk for three months and devises a method to track him through a number of towns to deliver the darn thing.
• In Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle's Lucifer's Hammer, not even a comet impact is going to stop Harry the mailman from the completion of his appointed rounds. (Not that there's much mail from out of town afterwards.)
• In Malazan Book of the Fallen the Trygalle Trade guild is an extremely expensive guild of couriers who can deliver packages to just about anywhere, using magic that amazes even the most accomplished mages in the series.
• The Postman is about this trope: After the End Of The World As We Know It, some guy puts on a postman's uniform, and reconnects the world that fell apart. Played with in that the only reason he put on the uniform was that bandits had stolen his clothing and he found the uniform in an abandoned mail truck he took shelter in. It was only after reaching a settlement that he came up with the idea of actually delivering mail.
• Charles Bukowski's Post Office about his experiences first as a carrier, then as a sorter, in the USPS. As a carrier he picks up mail even in a flood.
• In A Song of Ice and Fire: Tycho Nestoris is a humble middleman looking to carry the negotiations of the Iron Bank to Stannis, and for that end, he appears at the end of the known world, and at the sites of two separate battles, including one during a fierce blizzard that kills many. Each time he only appears moderately disappointed that he's missed Stannis.

Live-Action TV

• Babylon 5 has the Earthforce's mail service, who won't be stopped by a meteor swarm (so they claim), nor by a revolution and a blockade from the rest of Earthforce (shown on screen). There's just one problem: the revolution tripled their prices on the station. What really sells it, though, is Zack's implication that the Post Office is scarier than Earthforce:
  Garibaldi: Come on, Zack! I'm head of security on this station. We've stared down two Earthforce carrier groups...
  Zack: Yeah, but this is the Post Office!
• Clem from The Bite is actually a messenger from a delivery service, but he meets the criteria. He's called upon by Rachel to deliver samples and equipment to and from her apartment in the midst of a Zombie Apocalypse. As more zombies appear, his job gets more and more dangerous, but he keeps making the deliveries without a complaint. In the finale, he even kills a group of zombies to get to Rachel's door. He doesn't even show signs of infection.
• Cliff Clavin on Cheers played with this.
  • One episode had Cliff come down with a cold in the middle of his route. He convinces Norm to finish it for him and gets him arrested. He spends the rest of the episode debating whether or not to admit to it.
  • Subverted in the episode with the raging thunderstorm which turns out to be a dream of Diane's.
    Cliff: You know, in my line of work, we have a saying.
    Woody: What's that, Mr. Clavin?
    Cliff: Nor rain nor snow nor hail nor dead of night will stay these couriers from their appointed rounds.
    [another patron runs in]
    Patron: Hey, Clavin. My battery's dead. Can you give me a jump?
    Cliff: What? And catch my death? Hit the bricks!
• One of the Face-Off games in Nick Arcade is Post Haste where players have to control their mailmen down a street while avoiding pets, old ladies, trash cans, and other obstacles.
• Generally averted, but discussed in Seinfeld.
  • Among other shortcomings, Newman doesn't work in the rain.
    George: Shouldn't you be at work by now?
    Newman: Work? It's raining.
    George: ...So?
    Newman: I called in sick. I don't work in the rain.
    George: ...You don't work in the rain. You're a mailman. "Neither rain, nor sleet, n—" IT'S THE FIRST ONE!
    Newman: I was never that big on creeds.
  • In fact, the show makes a point of showing how decidedly lazy the workers of the United States Postal Service are. When Jerry delivers mail in place of Newman (on Sunday), they find out Newman hadn't done his job because too many people got their mail. If anything, Jerry ends up playing the trope a lot more straight, and he's not even a mailman.
    Newman: They knew it wasn't me.
    Jerry: How did they know?
    Newman: Too many people got their mail! Close to 80%. Nobody from the post office has ever cracked the 50% barrier! It's like the three-minute mile!
    Jerry: I tried my best.
    Newman: Exactly! You're a disgrace to the uniform.
• Played with on the old Nickelodeon comedy show Out of Control which did an episode themed around the mail. A heroic-looking letter carrier stands on stage to say that the mail will not be halted by "rain, nor snow, nor hail, nor mustard" - each punctuated by the relevant item falling from above onto Dave. When she starts to say "nor a great big sixteen-ton w-", though, he cuts her off.
• In the Amazon Prime adaption of Good Omens (2019), the same mailman delivers the notice of the apocalypse to each of the four horsemen, going from England to Africa to America and even kills himself to meet Death and deliver him his package. Note that he is a regular human guy, with no powers or special skills.

Poetry

• Rudyard Kipling's "The Overland Mail":
  Is the torrent in spate? He must ford it or swim.
  Has the rain wrecked the road? He must climb by the cliff.
  Does the tempest cry "Halt"? What are tempests to him?
  The service admits not a "but" or an "if";
  While the breath's in his mouth, he must bear without fail,
  In the name of the Empress, the Overland-Mail.

Radio

• The Wacky Musical Adventures of Ronald McDonald: Intergalactical Magical Radio, an Audio Adaptation of The Wacky Adventures of Ronald McDonald that fell into obscurity due to only being distributed through United Airlines' in-flight radio, has a mailman refuse to let Ronald and friends being in outer space keep him from delivering a package to Ronald in the track "Unidentified Knocking Object".

Video Games

• Penguin Logistics from Arknights. In a world where a terrorist group lurks around every dark corner, they're a company that ensures your cargo reaches its destination never matter what happens underway. For that, they had to adapt many side skills, such as bodyguarding (as their boss, Emperor, is an accomplished rapper), owning a jazz bar, and escorting a pharmaceutical company that tries to exterminate said terrorist group.
• Deadly Rooms of Death has the Truth Vessels. The tracking-you-down aspect is even justified by stating that some of them keep tabs on Beethro's location. It's exploited when they deliver a message to every single person on the surface, without actually trying to deliver anything. Beethro just attached the message to them all and sent them to get an answer to a question so hard, they needed to search the entire Eighth.
• The mailman Psychopath Carl Schliff in Dead Rising 2. Even a Zombie Apocalypse isn't enough to keep him from his appointed rounds — or from demanding a signature on delivery. When he finds out who you are (that is, the guy who's been framed for starting the zombie outbreak), he attacks you — not for causing the death of thousands of innocent people, but for screwing up his schedule. Even killing him won't stop him from making one last delivery, life-saving Zombrex to the hero. In Off The Record, where you play as a different character who has no connection to the outbreak, he instead attacks you for signing for the package, but not being the person it's addressed to, concluding you're committing mail fraud.
• Sam from Death Stranding is a played-with example. The obstacles Sam has to face are a little more dangerous than your average dog — namely various Eldritch Abominations, insane Revenant Zombies with superpowers and crazed reavers roaming post-apocalyptic America — and it's true he doesn't let that get in his way. However, he is stoppable, though if he ever dies, he'll just resurrect. Over the course of the game, Sam gets more and more tech allowing him to be even less deterred by any terrain obstacles, such as ladders and ziplines. By the time the end of the game draws near, there is precious little that can stop Sam from finishing a delivery, outside of a complete fluke on the part of the player. Sam also inadvertently inspired various loyal followers to dress up like him and complete deliveries in as determined a fashion as he (the other players).
• Not exactly a mailman, the pizza delivery guy from EarthBound (1994) definitely counts. If you order a Pizza, he will deliver it within 3 minutes, even if you are in an area heavily filled with monsters.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • The nameless courier(s) in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim WILL deliver that museum pamphlet to you. Typically he'll find you in a town (even if a dragon is attacking), but on occasion, he will cheerfully track you down at a remote and hazardous ancient ruin, the frigid dragon-infested mountaintops of northern Skyrim, the polar-bear-bestowed ice floes off the northeast coast of Winterhold, or the top-secret hidden entrances to the Thieves' Guild and the Dark Brotherhood Sanctuaries. Even if bandits have taken all of his clothes, he'll still get that letter to you, pants be damned.
  • Lucien Lachance, of the Dark Brotherhood in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, finds new recruits for the guild of assassins. He visits the first time the player wakes from sleep after murdering an innocent person, to extend the greeting of the player's "new family," before casting an invisibility spell and walking off. The implication is that Lachance has been stalking you the entire time without your notice, whether you've been clearing bandit camps or storming the gates of Oblivion. That's frightening enough, but the lengths to which Lachance will pursue you are nothing short of uncanny. One quest requires you to enter another character's dreams to pull him out of a days-long sleep. You invade the dream by wearing specialized jewelry, and then falling asleep with the assistance of another mage. If you haven't slept since your first murder, Lucien will be there, in the dream, to welcome you to the Brotherhood. The boundaries of human consciousness and the physical universe pose no challenge to Lucien Lachance.
• Fallout:
  • Fallout: New Vegas:
    • The Courier, the Player Character. The game starts with you tied up, getting shot in the head and the package stolen. The first half of the game involves you tracking your would-be murderer across the Mojave to take it back. You still deliver the package^note Unless you kill the one that was supposed to get it before you deliver it, of course.
    • Invoked by the Mojave Express, as a matter of fact. They have a policy of sending hit squads after couriers who don't complete their assignments (presumably, this discourages vagabond thieves from signing up for jobs and simply absconding with their packages). Mailmen in the Mojave have to be unstoppable, or else.
      Cass: Caravan code of the wastes is you don't fuck with the one who brings you your mail...
    • Also, the player's mystery archnemesis through all four DLC, Ulysses, who goes through all the hellish places you do, and then some. It's telling that he's the only survivor of The Divide which was ravaged by underground nuclear detonations. Unstoppable is the right word, and he has a message for you...
  • Fallout 4 references this with the postman uniform, one of many pre-war outfits that can be found early in the game. Equipping it raises the player's endurance stat by one point.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy IX has you being the Unstoppable Mailman for the Moogles, who are save points. While you rarely have to go out of your way to deliver their letters, you have to wonder just for what reason the Moogles are hanging around in deadly dungeons.
  • In one Final Fantasy Tactics Advance mission, you must intercept a Bangaa postman before he can deliver a message to a place it should not be going. He will end up fighting your clan over the mission, and while he is not especially difficult, he puts up a fight.
  • In Final Fantasy XIV, the Warrior can become an assistant postmoogle in a long chain of sidequests. Their efforts to deliver the mail frequently take them into territory littered with hostile beasts threatening to rip them apart. Besides this, they also make one full lap around Eorzea while chasing down the recipient of one such missive who is constantly on the move, stopping in all three major city-states while trying to track the person the letter was sent to.
• The postman from The Legend of Zelda games is of the track-you-down-anywhere variety. Specific examples:
  • The postman's endurance is most noticeable in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, where he becomes an Implacable Man who can't even be deterred by the Twilight that is gradually reducing everyone in Hyrule to spirit form. After clearing the Twilight from Faron province, he finds his way barred by the wall that blocks off Eldin and Lanayru... implying that he was continuing with his deliveries while in the Twilight (and thus in spirit form), and just happened to be in Faron when Link cleared it out. He can also be found at the very end of The Cave of Ordeals, a Brutal Bonus Level, which suggests he fought (or sneaked) his way through rooms full of Darknuts, Redeads, and Aeralfos just to deliver a letter to the Great Fairy herself. That takes a lot of dedication to your job.
  • Majora's Mask deconstructs this trope with a mailman who is such a Schedule Fanatic that he can't stop, no matter how much he desperately wants to. In the face of the impending apocalypse, he just keeps delivering the mail, because "escape from falling moon" is not written on his schedule. His boss has to give him a direct order to leave.
• The Prodigious Postman from Miitopia will deliver the letters from various NPCs to the player... even if places like, say, the Dark Lord's castle. This fellow has real guts of steel.
• Mirror's Edge: The main characters' group are one. Neither lack of routes, nor dizzying elevation, nor hails of gunfire, nor the entire force of the police-state stays these courageous couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.
• The much-revered Mailer Daemon in NetHack. If properly set up in a UNIX system, he/she/it can deliver actual e-mails from your mailbox. Normally invincible, people have devised creative and exciting ways to kill him.
• Paperboy: Not even tornadoes or the Grim Reaper will stop him. Paperboy 64 even has them going through monsters, pirates, and aliens to deliver the news.
• Parakarry in Paper Mario 64 constantly receives more mail throughout the course of the game. While he's unstoppable in spirit, he's not in physical capability, as he often requires Mario's help to reach difficult locations.
• Howard Blackwood. He has been delivering his mail and giving sage advice to whoever is damned to the mad hellhole that is Silent Hill for at least a century, whatever unspeakable horrors are in his way. As of yet he's only an NPC and as such the player never sees the obstacles he faces, but it can't be any less than the rest.
• The island of Nuncio in Sunless Sea has a mystical pull that attracts undeliverable letters to it, along with postal workers who are burdened by their failure to deliver them. The residents consider it their civic duty to collect and sort through the dead letters as they wash up, and deliver them if a recipient ever turns up. The pull seems to extend to all messages ever sent - you can find letters so old they're written on stone tablets, and even burning a letter won't get rid of it.

Web Animation

• Red vs. Blue: The sinister-looking, deep-voiced soldier in a FOTUS helmet who hunts Tucker across several planets and warzones turns out to be a legal process server who serves Tucker several child support papers.

Web Comics

• In one El Goonish Shive Q&A comic, a mostly unseen courier is able to deliver an appropriately-sized message to a shrunken Amanda and Lisa at exactly the instant it is needed, and then vanishes into the ether.
  Lisa: Who the hell delivered that telegram?
• In Homestuck, PM goes to incredible lengths to retrieve a package she's supposed to deliver when it falls into the hands of an official on the opposite side of the war her people are fighting. She also survived the destruction of her home, wandered for an untold number of years in a wasteland, duty-bound to deliver the mail to long-gone people. Then her friends are killed through time shenanigans and she decides to dedicate the next few years to chasing down their murderer and kicking his ass... through the Furthest Ring, an Eldritch Location that requires the presence of both a Reality Warper and a Time Master to properly navigate. She is neither and yet she effortlessly powers through the Ring fueled by pure Power Of Hate. Even slaughtering the Noble Circle of Horrorterrors left and right only slows her down for a split second.
• Looking for Group once featured a mailman who was able to deliver a letter to Cale even though he was in the middle of the woods.
• In The Perry Bible Fellowship even the apocalypse doesn't stop the US mail from making a delivery. Too bad it's junk mail.
• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal has a comic with a mailman impaled by multiple swords dragging himself to the mailbox saying "The... mail... must... get... through!"
• Wapsi Square once featured a mailman who was still able to deliver the mail despite a snowstorm of the worst variety.
• The Weekly Roll: In the kingdom mail delivery is handled by the monks of Pos'thal, who are so badass that even Trevor gives them a wide berth.
  Trevor (looking at a group of dismembered bandits): "Yeah, don't fuck with the postal order."

Web Original

• Eddie Dear from Welcome Home (Clown Illustrations) is described as a Determinator who always gets his mail delivered to the others right on schedule. Being the only mailman in a neighborhood isn't an easy feat.

Western Animation

• Parodied in Futurama. Many of Professor Farnsworth's contracts are deliveries to places that no sane company would attempt. He even produced a commercial showing a guy in a spacesuit dodging lasers, minefields, and so forth to deliver a package.
  "Our employees are expendable — your package isn't."
• In one episode of Garfield and Friends, Garfield is trying to get some sleep, but is continually harassed by Binky the Clown, who's running a birthday greeting service and thinks Garfield's house is the home of one Edna Fogerty, to wish her a 97th birthday. Since Garfield can't tell Binky he's at the wrong house, all he can do is keep throwing the clown out. Eventually, Garfield hits upon a solution — he dresses up as an old lady and lets Binky think he's made his delivery. Alls well that ends well, right? Nope! Turns out it's also Garfield's birthday, and Jon hired Binky! Cue the tubby tabby fleeing into a desert, only to find Binky waiting for him atop the mesa he climbs.
  Binky: Neither rain nor snow nor gloom of night — nor cat with bad disposition — will stay this clown from his appointed rounds!
• The entire premise of Get Ed: The main characters have to be Unstoppable Mailmen when their main competition tries to force them out of business via death every time they deliver something.
• The mailman from Hey Arnold! still has to do his job after the city gets hit with a ton of snow. He makes a song out of it just to lament his situation and to keep going.
  Mailman: I hate the snow. [takes a step] I hate the snow. [takes a step] I hate the rain, [takes a step] and I hate the sleet [takes a step] but man, I sure do hate the snow. [takes a step]
• The Huckleberry Hound Show: Huckleberry Hound is a mailman trying to get a letter to a house guarded by a dog who won't let him deliver it (episode "Doggone Dog"). Huck decides he's going to get to the door no matter what — even the dog biting him in the butt.
• Parodied on Jimmy Two-Shoes, when Heloise wakes up to find Beezy in her bedroom, now a mailman, to deliver her a package. The joke being that Beezy's sloth is legendary.
• The episode of Johnny Bravo that was a send-off to Bio-Dome has an unstoppable deliveryman, who manages to unlock the door that is supposed to only open after months to give Johnny his pizza.
• An episode of KaBlam!, in the short of "Life with Loopy", she has to deal with one unstoppable mailman who never stopped at anything to deliver bills to her dad. She even inflated her home like a balloon to avoid him, and yet he used a flying machine to get there!
• In Klaus (2019), the Royal Postal Academy of an unnamed Scandinavian country is a pseudo-military boot camp; its worst recruit, the Postmaster General's lazy son Jesper, is exiled to the remote whaling town of Smeerensburg to establish a working post office and meet an annual quota of 6,000 letters. The only way for him to generate mail traffic is to deliver presents to children made by the local woodsman. Since the whole town is divided between two Feuding Families, every home is an armed fortress. Jesper has to go to absurd lengths to deliver the presents, including dropping down their chimneys, avoiding booby traps, and slipping past guard dogs.
• The Little Man From the Draft Board from the Looney Tunes short "Draftee Daffy", who will stop at nothing to give Daffy Duck his conscription notice, even follow him all the way to Hell.
• A Running Gag both in the shows, animated films, and comics is a young man popping out while yelling "Telegram, telegram for Lucky Luke!", with the aforementioned message being what starts the adventure, no matter where Luke is. Which includes the literal middle of the desert, days away from any civilization, with no way of telling how the heck he managed to track Luke.
• An episode of Mike, Lu & Og has one (with a Canine Companion) delivering air mail to the island who was undeterred by a ferocious storm and Lu's attempts to get rid of the "invader".
  Mike: Neither rain, nor sleet, nor pain-in-the-butt princess wannabees will stop the mailman from delivering the mail.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Since a sizable portion of the population lives in the clouds, their postal service and even moving services cover the sky.
  • In season 5, a mailpony delivers a letter to Discord, who lives in his own personal pocket dimension, a World of Chaos. Season 7 reveals he got stuck in there.
  • In season 8, it's revealed that elder villain Tirek, while imprisonned in Tartarus, corresponded with his disciple Cozy Glow on the outside. If the Equestrian Postal Service is involved here too, they are be both admirably dedicated and alarmingly oblivious.
• Ninjago:
  • The Postman always catches up with the ninja, whether they're at a mountaintop monastery outside the city, living on a flying pirate ship (even if it means he needs to pedal a flying bike to track them down), or on the run from the police and a genie (though in that case, since the letter he was delivering was part of a wish, the genie might have been responsible). When the villains of season 9 make a point of hunting down various recurring characters, the Postman is the only one who never gets caught.
  • The paperboys and papergirls of Ninjago City are likewise determined. It's their duty to make sure that the citizens know what chaos is currently engulfing their city, so not even literal flaming snakes raining from the sky can stop them. The only thing that puts a dent in their route is a broken overpass, and they even manage to traverse that. Note that this is a group of teenagers with no special powers or training, and their only equipment is bikes and standard helmets and padding.
• Phineas and Ferb: Throughout the show and movies, the postman/delivery man has dutifully delivered parts for Phineas' and Ferb's projects. While often in the comfort of their backyard, he occasionally brings the supplies to the tops of mountains, the middle of lakes, and even space. The episode Delivery Of Destiny is focused on the postman, following him as he makes his normal rounds, which includes climbing up 60 flights of stairs with a large box, sliding down a tube into OWCA's headquarters, and then delivering tools to Perry who was trapped back at Doofensmirtz Evil Incorporated.
• Postman Pat sometimes goes to great lengths to deliver letters; on one occasion travelling on the back of a tractor driven by Miss Hubbard, to deliver a registered letter to two hikers.
• Rocky and Bullwinkle: In one "Peabody's Improbable Histories", Mr. Peabody and Sherman travel back in time to see the founding of the Pony Express. However, rivals attempt to put the Express out of business by arranging for the first message they have to deliver being inscribed on a huge boulder. Mr. Peabody blows the boulder apart, and each piece is given to a separate rider so it can be reassembled at the destination. However, one piece is left, containing the final period. Without this, the message will be incomplete. Mr. Peabody and Sherman set off to deliver it personally, and have to become Unstoppable Mailmen as the rivals use every dirty trick in the book in an attempt to stop them from getting through.
• One episode of The Simpsons briefly shows a mural on the wall of the Post Office depicting a mailman delivering a letter despite being struck by lightning and attacked by dogs in a blizzard.
• The title character of SpongeBob SquarePants (and Squidward) for an episode, assuming you replace Unstoppable Mailman with Unstoppable Pizza guy.
• This is essentially Baloo's job in TaleSpin. The cargo he receives is almost always dangerous — either the material itself is hazardous, or it attracts dangerous people. He's determined to always deliver the packages on time, even if doing so brings harm to himself.

Real Life

• The Pony Express (as noted on the Briefer Than They Think page, it only lasted a year and a half, but during that time it was vitally important). Its only rider who was killed by attackers in the line of duty, Billy Tate (taking out seven of his twelve assailants in a Last Stand... when he had twelve bullets, even), had the honor of delivering his package even in death since his horse went to the station without him.
• The Barefoot Mailmen who provided delivery service between Palm Beach and Miami, Florida between 1885-1892.
• The main post office of San Francisco was both damaged by the 1906 earthquake and the subsequent fires, but the postal workers fought off the fires using empty mail bags, saving the building and all the mail therein.
• When a post office burned down to the ground in a suburb to Stockholm, Sweden in the '80s, destroying all the records of who lived where, the mailmen still managed to deliver all the overnight mail the next day only a few hours late, working entirely from memory.
• Not the mail but close enough: the NY Times let it be known that no matter what happened during Hurricane Irene, they still would deliver. The fact that Irene ended up not being as bad as thought does not change how insanely badass that is.
• The U.S. Postal Inspectors are, by some measures, the country's most effective law-enforcement agency. They consistently maintain a 98-100% conviction rate.
• Most definitely inverted with the Russian Post Service, whose tardiness and obstructiveness has become the stuff of legends. Or at least of countless jokes and jabs, such as when a girl signs up as a sorter at their facility just so that she could locate a package she's waiting for, or that the meteorite that crashed in Chelyabinsk in February 2013 was meant to bring about End of The World prophesised by the Mayan calendar at the end of 2012, but RPS was tasked with delivering it.
• Completely inverted by the Israeli Postal Company, who have at this point stopped even trying to find excuses for not delivering the mail, and instead simply don't do it. It's even been reported that disgruntled Israelis waiting for the mail have gone to the post office and seen massive stacks of unsent mail, dating as far back as eight months, sitting right by the front door, which the postal employees insist they'll only send them when they feel like it. A joke that came out around 2015 was something to the effect of "Israeli Post Office Serving the Central District Destroyed in Horrible Terrorist Attack- Service Not Expected to Change." This all sounds funny, but when this means court summons and draft notices come months late, or don't come at all, you'll find yourself in a lot of legal trouble.
• An Post of Ireland are locally famous for being able to deliver mail with unorthodox (or extremely vague) addresses. One even managed to deliver a letter with nothing on it but a map hand-drawn on the envelope itself!
• When the liner RMS Empress of Ireland sank, the recovery effort was as much centered upon pulling up as much mail as they could from the wreck as it was retrieving valuables. And yes, all the mail was dried out and delivered.
• The Vatican's postal service is widely considered to be one of the most efficient in the world, with Vatican officials striving to ensure any letter posted via the Vatican Post Office is on a plane that same night. The United Nations reports that more mail is posted per year from the Vatican than any other postcode on the planet, and it's said many citizens of Rome will choose to post important letters and parcels from the Holy See than trust the notoriously inefficient Italian postal service, particularly at Christmas.
• Even the collapse of the Reich didn't prevent the Reichspost from doing its duty: even as cars and trucks were unuseable due to Allied bombings and military requisitions and as roads weren't in very good state, postmen often rode bicycles to cross hills and mountain to transport their mail.

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