A plot where characters race, compete, or fight, to recover possession of a piece of computer data storage media containing highly desired information.
Oftentimes, it is scandalous or revealing information held by blackmailers, which the device's recovery will prevent from being leaked. In this scenario, the story will often ignore the blackmailer's ability to make copies of the data, which will not be destroyed by simply reclaiming the physical storage medium. In some cases, the creator may Hand Wave this by protecting the device with encryption or DRM that prevents the copying of files.
Note that the key distinction of the trope is that the device must contain valuable information, and said content must be either shown, alluded to, or mentioned in-story. Just having a device but no useful data on it doesn't count, as that would mean that all the effort to obtain such a device would render All for Nothing. It also doesn't count in those cases when the data and its uploading happen without the middleware, which is the focus of the trope.
In relatively modern works, the storage device is typically a USB flash drive or portable external hard drive, but the exact terminology and device can vary based on the circumstances.
Compare Neuro-Vault, where the MacGuffin data is stored in somebody's brain.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In My Hero Academia: World Heroes' Mission, Humarise is after a suitcase Rody accidentally grabs during a mix-up, but neither he nor Deku are able to figure out why. But after fighting Beros for the last time, the heroes discover a secret compartment at the bottom of the suitcase that contains a puzzle. When solved, the puzzle reveals a data drive acting as a permanent shutdown key for all of the Trigger Bombs that Humarise has placed throughout the world.
- By the third season of The Mysterious Cities of Gold, the medallions Esteban and Zia wear turn out to be this, as inserting them into each of the cities of gold downloads a huge volume of data into them until they're removed. Collecting all the information from the cities turns out to be the goal by the final season, meant to build the final city to stop an incoming meteorite from destroying Earth..
- The Pyramid of Mu also acts as this from the second season onward, already pre-loaded with tons of ancient information encoded in hard light-type constructs.
Films — Animated
- Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: When the FLDSMDFR goes haywire and destroys the town, Flint has a kill code on a flash drive that can power it down. He travels with his friends in order to reach its center, which proves to be difficult until Flint loses the kill code. He has his dad send him a backup, and although he struggles a bit, he's able to send it to him. However, Flint's dad sends him the wrong thing, so it doesn't work. Flint ends up destroying the FLDSMDFR by using his Spray-On Shoes to clog it up, and that's what ends up saving the day.
- The Mitchells vs. the Machines: Katie's plan to stop the robot uprising is to obtain a USB with a kill code that'll shut down the PAL Max robots, which gets provided to the Mitchells by defective PAL Max robots Eric and Deborahbot 5000. However, after the Mitchells fail to infiltrate the Rhombus of Infinite Subjugation, the kill code USB gets destroyed and they have to find another way to stop the robots.
- Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse: Miles goes to a lab where he meets Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man. He gives Miles a flash drive which can be used to shut down a dimension opening machine. Peter Parker, Peter B. Parker, Aunt May, Penny Parker, and everyone else besides Miles himself have such frequent experience with important flash drives that it's become commonly known as a "goober".
Films — Live-Action
- Parodied in Burn After Reading. The protagonist steals a random CD-ROM from the CIA and tries to convince Russia it's sensitive material so they'll buy it.
- The plot of Date Night centers around the antagonists' attempts to retrieve a stolen flash drive, which Claire refers to as a "computer sticky thing".
- Escape from New York: Manhattan has been converted into a giant penal colony—and Air Force One crashes there. Not only has the US President gone missing, but also the tape he was carrying with information on the construction of a practical nuclear fusion power source since he'd been en route to a global peace conference before the crash. The badass criminal Snake Plissken is forcibly recruited to retrieve both the President and the tape, in time for the conference. Snake does succeed in retrieving them both, but deems the President failed his Secret Test of Character. So Snake deliberately hands the wrong tape back to the President: the President embarrasses himself by playing "Bandstand Boogie" for the peace conference, while Snake destroys the info about nuclear fusion.
- In Force of Nature: The Dry 2, the reason why Aaron and Carmen — Australian Federal Police officers who investigate financial crimes — join the search for Alice Russell when she disappears on the corporate retreat in the wilderness is because Alice was acting as The Mole inside a company they are investigating, and had a flash drive containing the evidence they need to convict Corrupt Corporate Executive Daniel Bailey on her when she vanished.
- The Green Hornet: In the final act of the film, Reid manages to record an Engineered Public Confession from D.A. Frank Scanlon that reveals he is The Man Behind the Man to Chudnofsky and he manipulated Reid's father to deliver fake news about the city's crime rate… and had him assassinated when he finally had enough and stopped reporting them. The (sushi-shaped) data drive of the digital audio recorder becomes the target of Scanlon and Chudnofsky for the final battle, as they unleash every single mook they have to chase the Green Hornet and Kate and kill them and get that drive before they can send the recording to the authorities. In an uncommon twist, Reid discovers as he tries to send the file that he screwed up the recording and the drive is empty. However, said final battle manages to kill all of the bad guys, especially Scanlon who is run over (and out a window) with the Black Beauty when he tries to escape.
- Johnny Mnemonic is a data courier who carries gigabytes of data in his head in a world where the evil mega-corp PharmaKom monitors all network traffic. Johnny's brain is effectively a wetware hard drive that's holding the cure to a neural plague. PharmaKom has a monopoly on the expensive (read: highly profitable) treatment, so they dispatch killer mooks to intercept Johnny before he can download the data to his client.
- Jönssonligan
: One of the movies revolves around a chip containing governmental city development plans.
- Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation: The latter two acts of the film center on retrieving a digital ledger that contains information on several bank accounts that collectively serve as a slush fund for the Syndicate, the shadowy organization Ethan Hunt and his allies are fighting.
- Star Wars:
- A New Hope: The Rebel Alliance has stolen data tapes containing the complete plans for the Empire's new superweapon, the Death Star. For the first two-thirds of the plot, the heroes' goal is to get those stolen plans to the Rebel headquarters, so the Alliance can analyze them and find the Death Star's weak point — and the Empire will do anything to get those plans back.
- Rogue One: As a direct prequel to A New Hope, Jyn Erso leads a team of rebel infiltrators to obtain a data file containing the aforementioned Death Star plans from a tower full of data drives on Scarif. She recognizes the filename "Stardust" as her father's nickname for her, and succeeds in absconding it, then transmitting its contents to her rebel allies orbiting the planet.
- The Action Prologue of Skyfall has Bond and Eve on a mission to recover an encrypted hard drive containing the identities of every undercover NATO agent. They fail; the bad guys get away with the data, and Bond ends up missing, presumed dead.
- The Suicide Squad: Upon entering the Lab to destroy any traces of Project Starfish, the Thinker reveals they were merely sent to cover up America's part in it. Flag becomes disturbed at being used like a pawn, before ripping out the hard drive and proposing they expose it to the public. Peacemaker kills him for this, before eventually being killed himself, allowing the Suicide Squad to use the hard drive as blackmail to be let free from prison.
- Under Siege 2: Dark Territory: In the film's second act, Casey Ryback tries to disrupt the Big Bad's plans by stealing the CD that contains his Kill Sat's firing codes. The subsequent action sequence kills a number of the villain's goons and probably buys some time before the villain executes his plan to destroy Washington, D.C., but the bad guys manage to get back the CD, making Casey's efforts mostly useless.
Literature
- Virtual Light: A variation. Instead of a hard drive, it uses a pair of VR glasses that hold the data on a MegaCorp's plans for Villainous Gentrification of San Francisco. When Chevette Washington gets a hold of said glasses by happenstance, the assassins of said megacorp come looking for her.
Live-Action TV
- At one point in Bates Motel, Norma is handed a flash drive by a dying stranger, which contains documents implicating various officials in the complicity of the town's shady underground activities. A gangster resorts to drastic measures to recover the device from her.
- Criminal Minds: In the episode "Internal Affairs" Hotch is told that a DEA agent might be working for the local drug cartels. The only proof is on the agent's flash drive, which he keeps closely guarded. The agent is killed, and his assistant reveals the agent was not working for the cartels and was skeptical of Hotch and his team. The flash drive does reveal the real traitor.
- CSI: NY: A stolen flash drive pursued by various characters throughout most of Season 5 is said to contain scandalous information that could ruin the lives and careers of a number of city officials.
- Leverage: A season 4 episode, "The Carnival Job", has the team attempt to retrieve a data drive from a vault in the mark's high-tech home... however, that quickly becomes secondary to saving the mark's daughter, who's been kidnapped by the Russian mafia in an attempt to recover the drive for themselves.
- Sherlock: A cell phone instead of a data drive, but same function: in "A Scandal in Belgravia", high-class prostitute Irene Adler has a huge amount of blackmail material and photographed secret information from millionaires and government officials from all over the world on her cell phone, and she went the extra mile to destroy the original copies of said secrets and modified her phone so it will explode if anybody tries to hack it or open it without her password (a fact she immediately tells Mycroft Holmes when he says he could just destroy the phone and remove her leverage). Unsurprisingly, spy agencies from all over the world are willing to do anything to get their hands on the phone, with MI-5 (Mycroft) and the CIA being the two most active in the episode.
- In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "A Simple Investigation", a woman shows up on Deep Space Nine and looks for a particular character who had previously been killed. It turns out that most of her memories were stored on an external storage device and removed from her brain to keep her safe from a telepath when she was spying on the Orion Syndicate.
- One episode of The Suite Life on Deck has the protagonists trying to recover an SD card containing information held by the CIA. It turns out to be a mayonnaise recipe developed by the Condiment Intelligence Agency.
Video Games
- ANNO: Mutationem: After learning of Ryan's disappearance, Ann discovers a data ROM in a Ransacked Room showing his last location before getting cut off by Corrupted Data. The ROM then gets stolen by The Factio Pugni seeking information about a machine called The Prophet while Ann seeks to retrieve it to find out Ryan's whereabouts.
- Deponia: Along with Goal herself, her brain implant is key to the plot, as it contains the Ascension Codes into Elysium. The Organon, on the other hand, wants to take them, so they can erase her memory about life on Deponia.
- A side mission in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided tasks the player with obtaining a disk in an obsolete format* along with a companion disk drive, in order to reconstitute Eliza Cassan's original, self-aware personality and memories. Unfortunately for the player, agents from Picus are also searching for the disk, and are prepared to go to any lengths to keep the information on it from getting out.
- One of the missions in Grand Theft Auto IV requires Niko to kill a blackmailer who is carrying a storage device containing incriminating evidence of a corrupt cop's crimes.
- Half-Life 2's Episodes are focused on Gordon and Alyx retrieving information from the failing Combine Citadel and escorting it to White Forest. They begin Episode One just meters away from the Citadel, whose dark energy core is about to cause a chain reaction, threatening to delete City 17 with it. Gordon and Alyx not only manage to delay the reaction but also store information gathered by Judith Mossman and intercepted by the Combine in Alyx's multi-tool. Such information is so important that they get chased by the Combine all across the city. Episode Two has them ultimately reach White Forest, allowing Magnusson and Kleiner to decipher the contents of the multi-tool which turns out to include the location of the Borealis, an Aperture Science vessel containing technology that could turn the tide of the conflict between humanity and the Combine.
- Both of the DLC levels of Hitman 2 incorporate this to some degree:
- "New York: The Golden Handshake" has the player retrieve a data core containing the identities of the Providence Partners, either by breaking into the bank vault and retrieving the core directly, or by stealing three hard drives containing the backup copy from three different bank officers.
- While not a mandatory objective in "Haven Island: The Last Resort", the player can get into the good graces of one or more of their targets by stealing various USB drives at their request.
- Quake II: The game contains the Data CD and Data Spinner key items, which are needed in order to open paths to proceed further, and to interface with computers, usually for sabotage or information uploading purposes:
- In the Mission-Pack Sequel The Reckoning, a CD is picked up from Joker's fallen comrades in the level "Outer Compound", and then used in the level "Intelligence Center" in order to upload information about the Strogg Counterstrike Fleet.
- In Ground Zero, another CD is found in the level "Tactical Command", and contains information that must be uploaded to a communications network in the level "Logistics Complex". The item is then used in the communications computer of the former level again.
- Finally, the whole point of the 2023 remastered edition's Call of the Machine expansion is to collect six discs with the required information to open a portal to the Temple of the Creator.
- Resident Evil 6: Jake and Sherry must traverse a snowy mountain during a snowstorm to retrieve 3 data chips containing the former's DNA after their plane crashes.
- Unreal series:
- Unreal Mission Pack: Return to Na Pali: During Prisoner 849's inspection of the UMS Prometheus, not only 849 stumbles upon the Data Cores but also a transmission where the UMS planned to dispose of her for knowing too much. So she decides to rebel against the UMS, fending off the invading waves after she transmits the cores, and finding an alternate way to escape from Na Pali. She also decides to keep recording her happenings during the whole ordeal in order for anybody to learn the truth should she die at any point. By the end of the game, 849 successfully defeats the UMS Bodega Bay and escapes with the data.
- Unreal Tournament 2004: In the Bonus Pack 2 mission AS-BP2-SubRosa, which recreates a N.E.G. assault on a Liandri Corporation facility, the N.E.G. discovered that Liandri was transferring experimental weapons data across said facility, and sent a squad to retrieve said data. The attacking team must retrieve a heavily protected data stick and transfer its data to the N.E.G. headquarters.
Web Animation
- DEATH BATTLE!: A flash drive with valuable data is what causes Solid Snake and Sam Fisher to fight one another. Sam is trying to prevent Snake from getting his hands on the flash drive while Snake is trying to take it from him.
- The Red Ape Family: Episode 1 of the show focuses on the titular family stealing an old USB from a museum, which apparently contains an important NFT. It's trying to hide this that is (at least partially) why they've decided to head to Mars.
Webcomics
- Sluggy Freelance: The first half of "The Research and Development Wars" centers on a raid against Hereti-Corp, wiping its backup corporate servers and absconding with the master set of hard drives. For most members of the attacking alliance, this is simply a matter of corporate espionage; for Torg, It's Personal as (among other things) Hereti-Corp's secret files are his only lead on who Oasis is and how to stop her from endangering his loved ones.
Western Animation
- Batman Beyond: In the premiere episode "Rebirth", enforcers working for Derek Powers kill Warren McGuinnis and pursue his son Terry to recover a disk with information about Powers' nerve-gas project. These events, along with Terry's discovery of Bruce Wayne's identity as the original Batman, lead to Terry becoming the new Batman with Bruce assisting him and taking steps to regain control of his company from Powers.
- Phineas and Ferb: Star Wars: Phineas and Ferb are tasked with delivering a disc containing the schematics for the Death Star and information on its built-in self-destruct button to the Rebel Alliance so that they can destroy the machine for good.
- South Park:
- In "Make Love, Not Warcraft", the programmers of World of Warcraft agree to help the boys take down the griefer by giving them the Sword of a Thousand Truths, a ridiculously powerful sword which had been Dummied Out, now stored on a locked-up flash drive.
- In South Park: Post Covid, Stan, Cartman, and Kyle retrieve a hard drive from Kenny McCormick's rectum. The drive shows what Kenny was doing immediately before his death.
