"It's the nature of the business, it's the Smugglers' Tropes!"
Smuggling — the covert and illegal transport of property or people — is a common event in fiction, and the many, many methods and motives for doing this make for a lot of tropes. People or things need to get snuck in somewhere (a metal file into a prison, drugs into a country). Or people or goods need to get snuck out of somewhere (a prisoner out of jail, top secret files out of a spy facility).
Some items or people are smuggled because they're illegal (hard drugs, child laborers). Some items or people aren't allowed to leave a place, so you have to smuggle them (citizens of a totalitarian state who want to defect). Some normally legal items are contraband in some places (cellphones in jail).
Tropes:
- Arms Dealer
- Ass Shove (self-inflicted)
- Black Market
- Black Market Produce
- Bodybag Trick
- Book Safe
- Bookcase Passage
- Briefcase Blaster
- Cargo Concealment Caper
- Carpet-Rolled Corpse
- Coat Full of Contraband
- Coffin Contraband
- Diplomatic Impunity (using diplomatic pouches)
- Discouraging Concealment (something unpleasant that no one wants to search)
- Decoy Hiding Place
- Emergency Cargo Dump (if the cops are about to catch you with contraband)
- Friend in the Black Market
- Hammerspace (if in-universe rather than a graphic convenience)
- Hidden in Plain Sight (mobile/portable examples)
- Hidden Weapons
- Human Mail
- Human Traffickers
- Infraction Distraction
- Jail Bake
- Loose Floorboard Hiding Spot (for small, expensive items)
- Neuro-Vault
- Nothing Up My Sleeve
- Organ Theft
- Person of Holding
- Running the Blockade
- Scaramanga Special
- Secret Shop
- Secret Underground Passage
- Senseless Violins
- Sickbed Smuggling
- Smuggling with Dolls
- Stomach of Holding
- Sword Cane
- Totally Not a Criminal Front
- Treasure Chest Cavity
- Trojan Horse
- Trojan Prisoner
- Underground Railroad
- Underside Ride
- Venturous Smuggler
- Victoria's Secret Compartment
