This wick check will examine the tropeworthiness of Courier, which is highly suspected to be about nothing but "a mercantile mailman/woman, delivering messages through cities and towns on foot or other single-person conveyance," which is chairs.
Wicks checked: 61/61.
- Quick wick check results:
- 40/61 or 67% are just "A courier exists" or "X is/works as a courier" and stray potholes.
- 6/61 or 10% are examples with some useful context.
- 8/61 or 13% are misuse and other unsortable examples.
- Long analysis: Unsurprisingly, more than half of the examples have little to no context due to the trope's lack of significant purpose further than "couriers exist." A few examples have some significant context but don't share a common pattern enough to form a cohesive trope. Lastly, less than a quarter of the examples are misuse that applies the trope for non-characters (ships and the like), despite the description specifying that it's a mailman/woman, or other misuse and unsortable usage.
- Solutions:
- Cut.
- Or disambiguate between Deadly Delivery, Delivery Guy Infiltration, Delivery Stork, Flying Postman, Instant Messenger Pigeon, Unstoppable Mailman, and possibly other tropes.
open/close all folders
"A courier exists" or "X is/works as a courier" ZCE and contactless potholes (41/61)
- Anthropomorphized Anatomy: Cells at Work! & Spin-offs: Cells at Work! entirely revolves around a large city, representing a body, filled with workers, all representing different cells. The main characters are a clumsy Red Blood Cell, one of the many responsible for delivering nutrients and oxygen around the body as couriers, and a White Blood Cell, who works alongside a team of ruthless assassins that target and (quite violently) kill pathogens infecting the body. — An excerpt of a longer example
- Handsome Lech: Alec/X5-494 on Dark Angel, is attractive (he's Jensen Ackles) and flirty but isn't seen to have much success. Asha is hung up on Logan, Mia is manipulating him to help her boyfriend and bring down a mob boss, and it's a matter of fan interpretation whether he's interested in Max that way. One time we see that he has been dating two of his Jam Pony co-workers at the same time, they found out about it and quit.
- Mail and Delivery Tropes: Mercantile message/cargo delivery person.
- Obvious Crossover Method: Fallout: New Vegas: The Big Mountain Transportalponder from Old World Blues malfunctioning because the Think Tank from Big MT are incompetent seems to be a popular option to get the Courier into whatever universe you want him/her to be.
- Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: Death Stranding: Sam and Fragile. Sam is more stoic, withdrawn, and pragmatic about his job as a porter due to being essentially a normal man with no supernatural abilities that let him traverse the terrain more easily. Fragile is more energetic and preppy, and enjoys pushing Sam's buttons from time to time. She can also teleport, which adds to her more energetic image, allowing her to zip around and deliver her cargo much faster and with less physical effort than Sam.
- Analysis.Fallout New Vegas: When you stop to think about it, you as The Courier are a logistics professional - skilled at delivering things from Point A to Point B. And a large majority of the problems you solve for various factions are logistical problems, which is why you becomes so influential by the end game.
- Characters.Atelier Firis The Alchemist And The Mysterious Journey: (Tiana), Her jobs seems to be making deliveries.
- Blonde Sunrise: (Kane), He delivers mail in Creston.
- Dota 2 NPCs: (Greevils), Outside of the Greeviling, the Greevils act as custom couriers.
- Characters.EXAPUNKS: (Nivas, in the Main characters' folder), Their job.
- Characters.Fargo Series Gerhardt Family: (Ollie), Ollie is introduced being given a bag money to drop off for a criminal associate.
- Characters.How The Grinch Stole Christmas: (Betty and Lou Who), Lou is the town's mailman.
- Characters.Kakyoin Waifu Connoisseur Others: (Baba), She acts as this, as she delivers 21 from the afterlife to the set via DoorDash.
- Characters.Miamaska: Aleco, Son of Pamfilos, Alodia.
- Characters.Rangers Apprentice: (Alyss, in the Protagonists; folder), Literally one.
- Characters.Sin Kids AU: (Kimberly, in the Kids and Teens' folder), Always on time cause she's fast.
- Characters.The Almighty Johnsons: (Stacey), Her day job.
- Characters.The Giver Quartet: (Matty, in the Recurring Characters' folder), Matty craves the admiration and prestige of being the village's Messenger. — Character wants to be a courier is another form of ZCE
- Characters.The Wandering Inn Earthers: (Ryoka), Her job as a City Runner delivering letters and packages. Courier is the title for Runners considerred to be Gold or Named-rank. In 7.59, she is officially made a Courier.
- Characters.Unlimited Saga: (Ventus, in theThe Seven Main Characters' folder), Joins the Carriers' Guild at the start of his story, and gets access to various delivery quests.
- Characters.Ys IX Monstrum Nox: (Silhouette), Effectively, her duty is to buy and deliver items to Adol.
- ComicBook.The Couriers: Naturally.
- Fanfic.A Certain Electric Deliveryman: Cole is one, naturally, and his official job is to teach this to Misaka. They both recognize that this is false, and the real job is training. They still do it, though, as Cole is a professional. — Some context but it boils down to "X is a professional courier"
- Fanfic.Team Courier: The titular Team Courier.
- Film.Blindman: Blindman is one of these, only involved in the plot because he was hired to guide 50 women to the mining town where their new husbands live.
- Laughably Evil.Hitman: Billy Jack aka Red Bird instantly sets the tone for "A murder of crows." A delivery man for a dangerous group of assassins, he waltzes around in a giant crow outfit and speaks with a thick high-pitched accent, politely conversing with anyone who will give him the time of day.
- Literature.Super Cub: Koguma gets a summer job transporting documents between schools. Reiko namedrops the "courier" term and discusses the kind of job they do. — The job is being discussed in general which doesn't seem to be noteworthy
- Literature.The Hardy Boys: Under Screw This, I'm Outta Here: A non-villainous version comes from Bart in the Casefiles book "A Killing in the Market". As the office assistant of a person of interest in the case, he's assigned to serve as a Courier to the Hardy Boys, but while he's trying to meet them, he aborts the meeting and makes a beeline out of there when he spots a couple of mooks who had beaten him up earlier.
- Music.Rust Never Sleeps: "Sedan Delivery" again. From the reference to "chemicals and sacred roots", it sounds like he's in the drug trade.
- OurMissBrooks.Tropes A To I: The bicycle-riding telegram delivery boy, in "Telegram for Mrs. Davis". Hilarity Ensues when Mrs. Davis is too superstitious to open the telegram, or allow Miss Brooks to open the telegram on her behalf. The boy won't leave until he gets the requested reply . . . . — Context irrelevant to the trope
- PlayingWith.Please Shoot The Messenger: Alexi delivers a letter to Bjorn, who reads it over twice, looks up at Alexi poker-faced as she waits for his reply, and shoots her.
- Podcast.On The Threshold: Matthew in "Cost of Delivery" is a driver for DoorDash, and two of his midnight deliveries are the basis of the episode
- Series.Chou Sei Shin Gransazer: Tenma's main job is a motorcycle deliveryman.
- VideoGame.Defense Of The Ancients: In animal form. — Who??
- VideoGame.Lunar Dragon Song: Jian and Lucia support themselves by delivering items to people.
- VideoGame.Mega Man ZX: The Giro Express transporters are essentially this.
- VideoGame.Pizza Pop: The main character is a pizza delivery boy.
- Webcomic.Damaged Goods: The main conceit of the lowblood soldiers.
- Webcomic.Kukuburi: Nadia's day job is delivering packages on a scooter. Inbetween, Reggie's the unstoppable sort. — Reggie is a ZCE of Unstoppable Mailman
- WesternAnimation.Bikes: In a world of anthropomorphic bikes, Speedy is a young Courier mountain bike residing in the town of Spokesville who aspires to become a racer.
- WMG.My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic Setting Ponies: Cadance's association with Venus allows her to harness the Power of Love, while the next zodiac will either be a Blood Knight (Mars) or a Courier (Mercury).
Useful context (e.g. a certain depiction/stereotype or specific situations) (6/61)
- BloodKnight.Anime And Manga: Kurodo Akabane from Get Backers is a perfect example; he only takes on Transporter assignments that can provide him with "the greatest possible amount of amusement" through the conflicts that inevitably ensue. — Character only seeks entertainment in this job
- Characters.Ace Attorney Witnesses And Other Characters Manga: (Bobby, in the Turnabout Gallows' folder), Robin has him deliver something, supposedly to give him work experience but actually to get him out of the way. — Character uses this job to keep another preoccupied and out of the way
- Characters.Charby The Vampirate: (Benito), He delivers messages for Samrick, by carrying them in a pouch inside his second mouth. Character has an unusual way of carrying messages
- Creator.William Gibson: The short story "Johnny Mnemonic" is about an underworld courier who transports digital information in a brain implant. — Delivering things in an unusual way
- Literature.Messenger: Matty serves as this for Village, carrying messages to and from the community. Although there's no moneymaking involved, he craves the prestige of such a job. — Doing a job for fame/reputation
- Literature.The Wandering Inn:
- True Couriers are Gold and Named-rank Runners who securely deliver anything anywhere via some combination of Super-Speed, magic, or just being a One-Man Army that cannot be stopped.
- "City Runners" are considered a step below Courier, and deliver more mundane packages between cities.
- "Street Runners" are the lowest rung in the Runner's Guild, and deliver things within a city. — Supoer powered couriers + they're divided by ranks
Misuse/Uncertain/Other (8/61)
- Delivery Guy: If you thought this was about some other type of delivery guy, you should look up the guy who visited nine months prior under Pizza Boy Special Delivery or Courier if the deliveries typically arrive in boxes and aren't infants.
- Spy Ship: Honor Harrington presented many variations on this: Fast Courier Boats, either operating in an official diplomatic capacity or simply under the employ of a merchant or journalist agency that would have legitimate need to send messages quickly. — Misuse since the trope is about a character, not an inanimate object
- Unstoppable Mailman: See also: Courier.
- Venturous Smuggler: May also overlap with Courier.
- Characters.Nero Wolfe: (Dr. Edwin, in the Recurring Characters' folder), Sometimes Wolfe uses him as a messenger. — Character doesn't work as a courier just used as one sometimes
- TabletopGame.Traveller: There's no faster-than-light communication other than sending a ship. The IISS maintains a mail system throughout the Imperium. — Misuse the trope is only about characters delivering things
- Trivia.Snowpiercer: (The film), Paul the Courier is played by Paul Lazar.
- VisualNovel.Daughter For Dessert: MC disguises himself as one to break into Mortelli’s office. — Delivery Guy Infiltration
