History Main / CheckpointCharlie

* ''Podcast/FriendsAtTheTable'': "Sangfielle": Before the Blackwick Group can enter Sapodilla, the largest city in Sangfielle, they first have to go through customs in a special intermission episode. Adapting the rules of ''Inhuman Conditions'', a game inspired by the Voight-Campff Test from ''Film/BladeRunner'', each member of the group is subjected to an invasive, cryptic, and dehumanizing interrogation regarding their identity and reasons for visiting, as the Glim Macula, Sapodilla's police force, seeks to bar anyone insufficiently normal (by the Glim Macula's [[AntiMagicalFaction standards of normal]]) from entry. One of them doesn't make it through and gets thrown in a dungeon; most of the rest are restricted from entering certain parts of the city.

* A 1983 TV movie ''Love Is Forever'' is the BasedOnATrueStory of an Australian journalist who helped his Laotian wife escape her country by having them swim the Mekong River underwater using scuba gear. This is pretty dangerous even before the border guards start shooting at them; there's a strong current that makes it impossible to swim directly across and carries all kinds of debris, and thanks to the dirty water you can barely see where you're swimming and thus might not see an object before it hit you.

* Spoofed in the 1985 action-comedy ''Gotcha'' where the young protagonist has to run the gauntlet of Checkpoint Charlie's {{Obstructive Bureaucrat}}s. He [[FlippingTheBird flips them the bird]] once he's safely through.

* In the Nomad lifepath story from ''VideoGame/Cyberpunk2077'', Nomad V is tasked with smuggling corpo contraband across the border from the [[DividedStatesOfAmerica NUSA state of South California]] to Night City. Because the world of Cyberpunk is a CrapsackWorld, the border guard's response is to rat her and Jackie out to Arasaka, the corp that owns the contraband, leading to a chase across the Badlands of North California.

* In ''Franchise/StarWars: ''Film/ANewHope'', Obi-Wan Kenobi gets his party through a Stormtrooper-manned checkpoint in Mos Eisley because [[JediMindTrick those weren't the droids they were looking for and they didn't need to see their identification]].

* ''ComicBook/{{Tintin}}'': In "[[Recap/TintinTheCalculusAffair The Calculus Affair]]," after rescuing the Professor and making off with a Bordurian tank, Tintin and Haddock make their way to the border, only to find that the Bordurians have set up a barricade ahead of them, and there's anti-tank defences on both sides so they can't go around it. With no other option, Tintin drives the tank through the most lightly fortified portion of the checkpoint – [[CarMeetsHouse the customs house]].

* In the Nomad lifepath story from ''VideoGame/Cyberpunk2077'', Nomad V is tasked with smuggling corpo contraband across the border from the [[DividedStatesOfAmerica NUSA state of South California]] to [[FreeCity Night City]]. Because the world of Cyberpunk is a CrapsackWorld, the border guard's response is to rat her and Jackie out to Arasaka, the corp that owns the contraband, leading to a chase across North California.

* In the Nomad lifepath story from ''VideoGame/Cyberpunk2077'', Nomad V is tasked with smuggling corpo contraband across the border from the Badlands of South California to Night City. Because the world of Cyberpunk is a CrapsackWorld, the border guard's response is to rat her and Jackie out to Arasaka, the corp that owns the contraband, leading to a chase across the outskirts of the city.

* In the Nomad lifepath story from ''VideoGame/Cyberpunk2077'', Nomad V is tasked with smuggling corpo contraband across the border to Night City. Because the world of Cyberpunk is a CrapsackWorld, the border guard's response is to rat her and Jackie out to Arasaka, the corp that owns the contraband, leading to a chase across the outskirts of the city.

* In the Nomad lifepath story from ''VideoGame/Cyberpunk2077'', Nomad V is tasked with smuggling corpo contraband across the border to Night City. Because the world of Cyberpunk is a CrapsackWorld, the border guard's response is to rat her and Jackie out to Arasaka, the corp that owns the contraband, leading to a chase across the Badlands.

* ''Film/{{Machete}}'' begins with a failed US-Mexico border crossing, serving to demonstrate the villain's [[KillEmAll complete lack of morals]] (and intelligence, as they capture the whole thing on film, with the US Senator helpfully identifying himself as he shoots a pregnant woman).

* ''Film/MenInBlack'' starts with K arresting one of the aliens trying to cross the Mexican border.

** Even more so, ''Film/{{Octopussy}}'' partially takes place around the border sections near Karl-Marx-stadt (Chemnitz). 009 and [[spoiler:General Orlov]] get killed trying to cross it.

* In ''Film/StarWarsANewHope'', Obi-Wan Kenobi gets his party through a Stormtrooper-manned checkpoint because [[JediMindTrick those weren't the droids they were looking for and they didn't need to see their identification]].

* ''Charlie Muffin'' (1979). Charlie's superiors set him up to be arrested when he crosses the Berlin Wall. Fortunately Charlie is suspicious and gives his papers to an East German hoping to escape to the West. The German panics when the arrest takes place and gets killed.

Sometimes the border is marked by concrete walls, barbed wire, machine guns, attack dogs, and constantly roving searchlight beams. At other times it's merely a stretch of open water or wilderness, but still [[BorderPatrol patrolled at regular intervals]].

The real [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checkpoint_charlie Checkpoint Charlie]] is now a tourist attraction.

Compare MetalDetectorCheckpoint, RoadBlock and WalkIntoMordor. [[JustForFun/NotToBeConfusedWith Nothing to do with]] reaching video game {{checkpoint}}s.

* ''Literature/TheDogsOfWar'' details how guns are smuggled across the French border -- they can either take the random risk of a permanent customs point, or try a forest road that could be manned by a flying customs check that searches every vehicle.

* ''Film/FuneralInBerlin'', also by Creator/LenDeighton, has a defector being smuggled by faking his death and being taken across the Berlin Wall in a coffin. The idea has been reused several times, such as in the TV series ''Series/JasonKing'' and ''Series/MacGyver''.

Compare MetalDetectorCheckpoint, RoadBlock and WalkIntoMordor.