"Who ordered the large supreme, extra infiltration, no greens?"
"You can get anywhere with a pizza box."
The default ruse for getting past guards, or convincing a subject to open their door, is to pose as a pizza (or other) delivery guy. As pizza is frequently ordered there is a high level of plausibility that someone does happen to be expecting one. As food is desired hot, guards are generally reluctant to delay drivers for an extended investigation.
Many pizza vendors don't have a uniform for their carriers, so there's no need to go to the effort of obtaining one. However, in some cases a real delivery boy will be Mugged for Disguise.
A savvy opponent will offer to take the box and give it to the recipient themselves, or ask to see inside the box. This requires the impostor to think fast, making up a lie about how they must collect a cash payment from the customer in person, or that the box can't be opened as it will cause the pizza to get cold. Of course, secure facilities IRL often have a rule where the delivery guy isn't allowed past the lobby, and the intended recipient must come to the lobby to collect their food in person.
A greedy subject will welcome the delivery knowing that it's not for them, believing that the restaurant has made a mistake and they are getting free pizza.
Compare Janitor Impersonation Infiltration, where the infiltrator pretends to be a new employee instead of a visitor, or Surprise Inspection Ruse, where the infiltrator poses as an inspector. Related to Bavarian Fire Drill, where the character impersonates a person in authority to get their way. Deadly Delivery is when this technique is used by a Professional Killer or other such criminal. Not necessarily related to Pizza Boy Special Delivery.
If the subject is in a hotel room, see Room Disservice. Sister-trope to Bathroom Search Excuse.
In the United Kingdom, the equivalent was, for most of the 20th Century, the Milk Man. (It is a dead trope now). There used to be an old Army joke that a man wearing a peaked cap and a striped apron, carrying a crate of milk bottles or driving a float, can get into any base or government building past the sentries without any difficulty whatsoever. "Where's Tom"? "Off sick — I'm the new guy". "OK, come in". Examples include James Bond, The Prisoner, Doctor Who and a Carry On film.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- AKIRA: The underground activists infiltrate the military research compound where Tetsuo is being held by pretending to come for cable repair service.
- In the second season of Darker than Black, the Anti-Hero, Hei, kidnaps someone after disguising himself as a delivery guy. In fact, this is kind of a stock-in-trade, as he frequently does infiltrations by going undercover doing some kind of menial labor—job changing has become a Running Gag among fans and in the series itself.
- Ghost In The Shell Standalone Complex.
- Played with when Kusanagi hacks a hotel maidbot to find out what's going on during a Yakuza meeting. This comes to an abrupt halt when a shootout occurs and the bot catches a stray bullet.
- To enter a Yakuza hangout, Kusanagi pretends to be picking up the garbage. When the Yakuza refuse to let her in, she insists they have to sign the required paperwork (Japan has strict recycling laws) which is on a clipboard too large to pass through the peep slot.
- My Hero Academia: During the Hideout Raid arc, Edgeshot announces the Heroes' arrival by knocking on the door and claiming he's pizza delivery to the League of Villains, much to to their confusion... right before All Might smashes through the wall with Gran Torino and Kamui Woods right behind him.
Comic Books
- The Authority had a villain infiltrate the team's headquarters using his unique biology, having sex with the deliverywoman the night before and impregnating her with... himself. Apollo and Midnighter, in the process of paying for the pizzas they assume were ordered as a prank, watch in horror as the woman spontaneously goes from slender to nine months pregnant, and then the villain, fully-grown, tears himself free from her belly.
- Detective Walsh does this in Strangers in Paradise in order to make contact with Katchoo while she's working for Darcy. Of course, he's delivering pizza.
- The Super Mario Adventures comic had Luigi (in disguise) 'order' pizza for the Koopalings to give Yoshi, Toad and Peach a chance to enter Bowser's Castle armed with a ton of bombs.
- Tintin: In "The Secret Of The Unicorn", Tintin gets abducted by the Bird brothers when two goons they hired to pose as delivery men arrive at his apartment. Tintin gives the "But I didn't order anything..." response before being knocked out with chloroform. The animated adaptation by Nelvana had the Bird brothers themselves posing as the delivery men.
Fan Works
- In Hunt
Harry and Hermione gain entrance to Umbridge's house by pretending to be delivering chocolate from Honeydukes.
- In Stupor Heroics,Sam Sharp poses as a pizza delivery person wearing a thick coat and hat for disguise in an attempt to confirm Lincoln's location as part of her and Luna's plan to kidnap him because no Loud worth their salt can resist pizza. Lori being present on premises opens the door suspicious enough to suspect something since no one actually ordered any pizzas and doesn't let Sam in or see the inside of the apartment, but the would-be infiltrator is able to avoid raising red flags despite not expecting Lori by playing up the role of irate pizza delivery and stating the boxes have already been paid for before making a show of putting them down and walking off. Lori, while still suspicious, ultimately succumbs to bringing them inside for free dinner, not knowing Sam hid a transmitter inside one of the boxes. Luna uses her powers to boost the signal on the device letting them confirm that Lincoln is in fact there by hearing his voice and letting them advance on the next stage of their plan.
Film — Animation
- Despicable Me: This becomes the basis of Gru's plan to steal the Shrink Ray when he sees that girls selling cookies are allowed past Vector's otherwise impenetrable security systems.
- Lampshaded humourously in Madagascar. Alex decides to join Marty's safehouse along with Melman and Gloria on the titular island where the Zoosters are stranded. He knocks on the door and this conversation occurs:
Marty: Who is it?
Alex: It's the pizza man. Who do you think it is? - Oliver & Company, combined with Totem Pole Trench. Interestingly, while this works, it's not a perfectly straight example since Sykes doesn't remember ordering pizza and preps to shoot the "delivery guy" as soon as he finds him.
- On Toy Story 2, the gang consider this as a way to enter Al's apartment. Hamm suggests "a ham sandwich (himself) with fries (Mr. Potato Head) and a hot dog (Slinky Dog)", and Rex as the free toy.
Film — Live-Action
- A non-infiltration example in 16 Wishes when Abby accidentally wishes herself into an adult and is forced to live in her own apartment. At the end of the film, Celeste shows up at her doorstep "delivering" a pizza. Abby is fully aware that she didn't order a pizza, but Celeste says it was just an excuse to come over and console her.
- Used in the opening scene of Ace Ventura to infiltrate the apartment of a man who has stolen a puppy from his ex-girlfriend.
- A variation in Accident. A hitman orders takeout sent to the door of his target's apartment. After the deliveryman knocks on the door, gets no answer and leaves, the hitman knows he's free to break in and plant bugs.
- In the beginning of Airheads, Chazz sneaks into Palatine Records this way to try and show his band's demo tape to the executives. Judging by the reactions of the security guards and a secretary, this isn't the first time he's done this.
- An Invoked Trope in the opening of Another Stakeout. A couple who are under witness protection are hiding out from the mob at a remote farmhouse under police surveillance. The cops see a pizza delivery, realizing that none of them ordered a pizza, and emerge from hiding to take down the deliveryman. But this was a ruse on the mob's part - they ordered the pizza as a diversion, and the sewage truck nearby was pumping explosives under the house. The explosion kills the cops and one of the witnesses, sending the other into hiding, which kicks off the plot.
- There's a Bait-and-Switch in The Art of War (2000) when Wesley Snipes appears to be using Marie Matiko's character to infiltrate a Triad brothel, which is hidden behind a Front Organisation of a restaurant. Instead he handcuffs her to the steering wheel, grabs a crate of groceries which are being unloaded from a truck, and walks in that way.
- In Blue Streak, Miles Logan (Martin Lawrence) attempts to get into the police station with this trick. He fails, as the cop tells him that only two kinds of people get through that door: cops and criminals. Miles tries the next best thing - steal a detective's entry card and have a forger make a copy for him, as well as documents proving that Miles is a kick-ass detective from another precinct.
- The Dark Knight Rises: Bane enters the Stock Exchange by posing as a motorcycle delivery man, wearing a full-visor helmet to hide his gas mask. One of his accomplices, Petrov, poses as a food delivery man to get a pistol onto the trading floor.
- In Den of Thieves, Donnie gets a job at as a delivery guy at a nearby Chinese restaurant; knowing that employees at the Federal Reserve often order lunch from there and he will be legitimately allowed into the building to deliver it. This forms part of his exit strategy following the heist.
- Done in the movie Detroit Rock City to rescue one of the four main characters out of Sunday school. The pizza is laced with 'Shrooms.
- Eraser:
- John Kruger is a top Witness Protection agent whose new assignment is to secure a witness in a high-profile case involving the sale of experimental weapons to Russian terrorists. The witness refuses to abandon her life, although she promises to testify. Kruger "borrows" a balloon delivery van and pretends to be a deliveryman partly in order to obscure his identity (she has already met him) and to use the balloons to block the view of any potential sniper. This works, temporarily. Unfortunately, the sniper is using one of the experimental weapons (a railgun with an X-ray scope), but Kruger is able to get close enough to the witness to protect her. Her Jerkass ex-boyfriend isn't so lucky, though.
- A more straight example later, when a friend of Kruger's tries the traditional "pizza delivery" trick. However, they know that it won't work and the goal is to distract the security and have the guy take antacid to cause him to foam out of his mouth. He's taken to the company's medical room. Meanwhile, Kruger and the witness pretend to be paramedics and use the opportunity to sneak in this way.
- The Fugitive. Richard Kimble steals a workman's uniform and grabs a crate in order to sneak into a hospital and self-treat the injuries he received escaping from prison.
- Tak's first onscreen kill in Fulltime Killer starts out like this, with him posing as a flower deliveryman. The twist being that the flowers are just a way to disguise his shotgun, and he just shoots his way to the target's cell before throwing dozens of hand grenades at him and riding off.
- In Grand Slam, Weiss poses as a flower delivery man to return the key to Jean-Paul so he put it back before Mary Ann discovers it is missing.
- In The Great Muppet Caper, Kermit and Fozzie pretend to be pizza delivery men to break into the National Gallery. Unfortunately, the guard hates pepperoni.
- In The Incredible Hulk, Bruce Banner gets past the guard (played by Lou Ferrigno) in the laboratory by showing up with pizzas and leaving him one for free.
Banner" [dressed as a pizza delivery man] Tell you what, I have an extra medium. Take it on the house. [guard takes the pizza and waves him through]
- Later we see a scientist eating a piece of pizza, suggesting that Bruce simply bribed each person who tried to stop him with a pizza.
- In The Italian Job (2003), Charlie's crew gets into Steve's house in this way. They tamper with Steve's cable box, then send Stella into Steve's house disguised as a cable repair girl (as Steve won't recognize her). To help the illusion, Handsome Rob obtains a cable company van and uniform for Stella by flirting with an actual cable girl in a hilarious Instant Seduction scene, then stealing them the morning after he's taken her to bed.
- Parodied in the film version of Judge Dredd. When the title character and his Side Kick are trying to get back into Mega City:
Fergie: C'mon, Dredd, there is no way in, are you even listening to me? We can't just knock on the wall and say "Hello, Cursed Earth Pizza!"
- In the movie The Last Dragon, Leroy gets the idea to infiltrate a fortune cookie factory using this device. He gets the idea after he sees a clip of Bruce Lee doing the same thing in another movie.
- In the film version of The Losers, Jensen impersonates a courier to sneak into the security company. He sings as obnoxiously as possible to ensure he gets an elevator all to himself, then switches to his second disguise on the way up.
- Machete: Except in this case, the title character uses Mexican gardener infiltration technique. Lampshaded by the guards who let him pass.
- In the documentary Man on Wire, tightrope walker Phillipe Petit explains how he was posing as a delivery man to get inside the buildings he wanted to climb. He thought his ruse would be foiled when he happened to injure his foot. It was the opposite however, and by entering buildings as an injured person on crutches, he found he was able to slip inside even more easily (thanks to people's sympathy).
- In the movie Miami Vice, Rico gets the drug dealers to open their door by calling out "Milano's Pizza!"
- In The Movie of My Babysitter's a Vampire, Jesse sends one of his Mooks disguised as a pizza delivery guy to capture Sarah at Ethan's house. Ironically, this trope is even more convincing because Benny actually did order a pizza.
- In The Professional, protagonist Mathilda, bent on revenge, walks into DEA headquarters as a 12-year-old food delivery person with a bag of guns. She gets past security, at least.
- The Siege: The FBI hit an apartment where conspirators to the bombing of an MTA bus are holed up. Learning from the building super that they eat pizza all the time, they send an agent ahead of the SWAT team disguised as a pizza deliveryman to drop off a box, which the terrorists take inside. It actually contains a flashbang grenade meant to disorient them when the SWAT team kicks down the door moments later.
- The climax of The Silence of the Lambs has the FBI preparing to raid Buffalo Bill's house by having an agent disguised as a flower delivery guy ring the bell. (It turns out to be the wrong house.)
- In Sneakers, the delivery boy isn't the infiltrator, he's the distraction (trying to get the guard to sign for a huge shipment of drain cleaner) while the real infiltrator slips by his desk.
- In the Canadian comedy Starbuck, the main character impersonates a pizza delivery man in order to get in his biological daughter's flat. She lets him in as a matter of course.
Literature
- In the Alex Rider novel Scorpia, Alex uses this trick to infiltrate a safehouse, hiding a gun inside a large cola bottle. He "forgets" it while going through the checkpoint, drawing the guard's attention to the pizza box itself as the obvious place to hide something, and the guard hands it over without taking it under the metal detector.
- In Lawrence Block's The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian, Bernie pretends to deliver flowers to a resident of the Charlemagne in order to get past security. He ends up doing it again when he can't come up with a good enough excuse to stay until the elevator operator's gone during his first attempt.
- Discworld: In Moving Pictures Victor gets into Century of the Fruitbat Productions by pretending to be delivering a message, observing "No one with their sleeves rolled up who walks purposefully with a piece of paper held conspicuously in their hand is ever challenged."
- In The Dresden Files, Harry Dresden once got into a dead guy's apartment by dressing up as a flower delivery guy. He almost got away with it...
- Variant: In the final story of a Shadowrun anthology, attacks by street gangs leave Wolf and a woman he's escorting without transportation. They enter an all-night pizza shop to catch their breath, and Wolf has a quick word with the employees. Next scene, they're arriving safely at their destination, where Wolf hands over both the woman and some pizzas from the delivery van he'd bribed the shop's staff into lending them.
- A Song of Ice and Fire: In A Storm of Swords, the Hound pretends to be delivering vegetables and a horse to get into the Twins. The horse comes in handy for distracting the attention of a nobleman who's encountered the Hound before.
Live-Action TV
- Arrow
- In "Darkness on the Edge of Town", Team Arrow sneak Felicity Smoak into the building owned by Malcom Merlyn so she can access the mainframe by disguising her as a delivery girl. Unfortunately she gets caught in a restricted area, but Diggle (working on site security) turns up, thanks the guard for catching her and removes her from the building, claiming she's a Stalker with a Crush chasing Merlyn's playboy son.
- A variation in "Home Invasion". The hitman Mr. Blank forces a courier to open the door for him at gunpoint. The guard notices the courier's hands are shaking and draws his pistol, only for Mr. Blank to kill them both.
- On an early episode of The A-Team, the team gets captured by Col. Lynch. Murdock gets onto the military base the team is held at by stealing a truck and posing as a delivery guy for a bakery. He even tells Amy, "Security is always weakest through the kitchen."
- Banacek: In "If Max Is So Smart, Why Doesn't He Tell Us Where He Is?", various flunkies are preventing Banacek from getting into a hospital room to talk to the owner of the stolen supercomputer. Banacek dons a white coat, picks up two bunches of flowers and waltzes into her room unnoticed. Bonus points for him proceeding to arrange the flowers in a vase while conducting his interrogation.
- Boardwalk Empire. In "You'd Be Surprised", a young Bugsy Siegel gets past Gyp Rosetti's guards by posing as the paperboy, pretending the original paperboy is ill. When fleeing the scene afterwards he runs into the real paperboy, and shoots him to death.
- The Brady Bunch: Marcia & Greg sneak into Davy Jones' hotel room pretending to be bellhops delivering lunch.
- Burn Notice
- In one episode, Jesse pretends to be a delivery guy in order to gain access to the security room of a bank. At the same time, Madeline, who's just opened a new account, goes into the vault to access a safety deposit box and lights up a cigarette, setting off the alarm. The whole point of the ploy was for Jesse to be in the security room to see how the security team reacted to situation, since he was planning to rob the bank later and needed to know how quick they would react to a break-in.
- In an earlier episode, Michael points out that a common way for spies to break into a place is as a delivery man. As a result, most real spies know to be suspicious of delivery people. Cue the bad guys grabbing the completely innocent delivery man Michael sent.
- Daredevil (2015): In "Shadows in the Glass", corrupt police detective Carl Hoffman is threatened by Wilson Fisk into killing his wounded partner Christian Blake. He uses a meatball sub sandwich to slip a syringe past Sgt. Brett Mahoney at the door.
- Elementary: In "The Invisible Hand", a hitman murders two of Morland's employees and plants a bomb in his office by posing as the delivery guy from the bottled water company.
- In an episode of Everybody Hates Chris, Chris uses this (with a pizza box) to sneak into the hotel Wayne Gretzky is staying at so his brother can meet him. "You can get anywhere with a pizza box", he says; Narrator-Chris then comments that's how George Bush got into the White House.
- In an episode of The Fall Guy Colt captured a large violent bail jumper after pretending to deliver a pizza. He knocked the bad guy out with the pizza box, which contained a metal manhole cover.
- In Family Matters, "Dog Day Halloween", a bank robber holds up a bank where Steve and Laura had gone to to get some funds before heading to a Halloween party. After a bit of a stand off, Carl infiltrates the bank as a Jamaican pizza delivery guy, allowing him to get the drop on the robber and save the day.
- D'Argo in Farscape has some trouble with the intricacies of this trope. In "Scratch 'N Sniff" he has to get into a Big Fancy House to find out if Chiana and Jool are being held prisoner there. He hammers on the door and it's opened by a Faceless Mook.
Mook: Deliveries are round the back.
D'Argo: Oh, oh, round the back?
Mook: Yeah.
D'Argo: OK, thanks. [punches mook and walks in the front door] - An episode of First Wave involves a young woman (played by Sarah Chalke of later Scrubs fame) being hit by a car and becoming the conduit for the spirit of Nostradamus thanks to her near-death experience. Since Cade's actions are guided by the lost quatrains of Nostradamus predicting an Alien Invasion, he is eager to meet her. Unfortunately, the girl's prophetic powers attract media attention, and dozens of reporters camp outside her house. Her roommate orders a pizza. Cade pretends to be her boyfriend and picks up the pizza, intending to deliver it in order to sneak in (he's a wanted fugitive and, understandably, camera-shy). Using this trick, he's even able to sneak past the roommate's cop boyfriend, who is busy keeping the reporters away. The girl sees Cade and immediately recognizes him from her visions.
- Game of Thrones. Jaime and Bronn (already dressed as Dornish cavalrymen) get inside the Water Gardens by riding in at the rear of a supply column, pretending to be part of their escort.
- In How I Met Your Mother, Ted needs to get a sulky Lily to talk to him so that he can apologize. He knocks on her apartment door:
Lily: Who is it?
Ted: Pizza delivery.
[Lily opens the door]
Ted: Did you really think it was the pizza guy?
Lily: Nah, I was just hoping you at least had a pizza. - Knight Rider. Michael Knight has to get on an army base, and so bribes the cook to let him borrow his vehicle. The cook says that for an additional payment, Knight can be his cousin. Which is fortunate as Knight is caught snooping around, but the cook verifies that his 'cousin' is handing the delivery today when the CO rings him.
- Law & Order: Special Victims Unit:
- A bad guy does this with a pizza box that actually has a bomb, which goes off in the squad room. Fortunately, nobody is seriously injured.
- Another episode had a victim's brother using a flower delivery to get into Casey Novak's office to beat her up (since she was the one who'd convinced his sister to come forward about her sexual assault, he felt she was the one who'd brought shame to his family. Somehow). The floral arrangement he carried had the added bonus of covering his face from the cameras.
- And another has the detectives realizing that a killer did the same thing—after knocking out the friend who was showing up with champagne and flowers—to gain access to a dinner party and rape and kill everyone.
- On Leverage this occurs during "The Top Hat Job". Elliot attempts to recon their target company by posing as a pizza man. Doesn't quite turn out like he figured: while he is chatting with the receptionist, the security guards x-ray his pizza, and he is forced to fight his way out.
- In the Batman Cold Open of the Mann & Machine episode "The Dating Game," Eve pretends to be a pizza delivery girl so she can infiltrate a Hostage Situation.
- One early episode of Mission: Impossible has the team infiltrate a high-level meeting of mafia dons by arranging to become the staff of the meeting's caterer. Since they really are the caterers, they then have to juggle preparing and serving the don's dinner with their mission of framing the host don of embezzling from the Syndicate.
- NCIS: Used in several episodes. Lampshaded in the episode "Identity Crisis," when Tony comments on how he once saw a kid in a liquor store T-shirt and carrying a brown paper bag walk right into a high-security building.
- The Professionals
- In "Blackout", Ray Doyle poses as the milkman to get close to a house where villains are holding someone hostage. A couple of CI5 agents with rifles are also crouching behind the slow-moving milk van. In this case the goal is just to get close to the building without arousing suspicion, rather than get inside (which they do by kicking down the doors).
- In "The Acorn Syndrome", CI5 are staking out a house waiting for some kidnappers to deliver a ransom note, but the only person who turns up is the milkman. Moments later one of the agents sees the real milkman stagger past him, clutching his bleeding head.
- On Seinfeld, Jerry is perplexed when his apartment is buzzed and the personal identifies themselves as "Federal Express", as he didn't order anything. Kramer is immediately convinced that the person is posing as a delivery man in order to get into the building and rob or kill someone.note Luckily, this turns out to be a benign example of this trope—it's Elaine, back from her European vacation (and the actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus, back from her maternity leave), resulting in a genuinely enthusiastic several minutes while she and the guys scream and laugh and hug each other.
- In the She-Hulk: Attorney at Law episode "Is This Not Real Magic?" ending, a guy comes to Jen's door saying he has a pizza for delivery. Jen immediately recognizes him as a Process Server, delivering the warrant that Tatiana is suing her over the use of the "She-Hulk" name.
- Soap: Sally has ruined Burt's marriage by telling his wife that he'd been sleeping with her and an 18 year old. Burt goes to Sally's apartment and rings the bell, when she asks who it is he calls out in a not-very-convincing fake voice, "United Parcel".
- In Spaced, Tim uses an actual delivery man to distract the security guard so that he can sneak into the offices of Dark Star Comics to retrieve an insulting image he drew of the man about to view his portfolio.
- In an episode of The Suite Life on Deck, London does this in an attempt to thwart Zack, Cody, Bailey, Marcus, and Kirby's standoff for the whales in the engine room. Marcus was the only one fooled.
- Stranger Things: In Season 4, The boys attempt to invert this by ordering a pizza in the hopes of using it as an escape method, as the driver will be their friend Argyle. Unfortunately, this backfires when the Army raids the house and accidently invokes the trope when the agent answering the door drops his guard thinking it's the pizza delivery. Then Argyle *does* show up, allowing for the originally planned escape.
- In an episode of The Thin Blue Line, Fowler pretends to deliver a pizza to get into a bank robbery that has turned into a hostage situation. He quickly blows his cover, thinking that the robbers are just students playing a prank - but since he's a police officer with armed backup outside, he survives.
- Gwen attempts this to enter Torchwood in the Torchwood episode "Everything Changes". Subverted in that the only reason she was let in was because they wanted her to get in. Anyone else delivering a pizza (for real or not) would not have gotten in past the first room.
- Played straight in Torchwood: Miracle Day. Oswald Danes infiltrates Gwen's house by posing as a delivery man from a local grocery store. The real delivery man is briefly shown tied up and gagged in the back of his van, divested of his uniform and hat.
- In True Jackson, True, Lulu, and Ryan disguise themselves as pizza delivery men to get into the recording booth with Justin Bieber.
- Used by a female assassin in an episode of V.I.P. She gets close to her target by disguising herself as a pizza delivery girl (with the real delivery girl supposedly disposed of offscreen).
- In Victorious, Trina does this to get close to a boy she had a crush on. To sell the deception she creates fake coupons, pretends to be the restaurant manager when he calls, and even bakes the pizzas herself.
- In The Wild Wild West episode "The Night of the Turncoat", Artemus Gordon poses as a mailman in order to sneak into a house.
- A mild version on Without a Trace, when Agent Martin Fitzgerald disguises himself as a pizza delivery guy so as to visit Agent Samantha Spade at her motel room and not give away that she's working undercover.
- Used in an episode of Wonder Woman. The villainess Formicida has her mook deliver a box of killer ants to an intended victim by posing as a delivery boy. The real delivery boy is left Bound and Gagged in a crate, stripped down to his undies.
Music
- The Coup's "Pizza Man Skit" from Steal This Album features a repo man who gets in an old lady's house this way, and then takes her TV away. Followed by the song "The Repo Man Sings for You".
Video Games
- Betrayal At Club Low: Subverted. The Player Character is disguised as pizza delivery, but nobody at Club Low is fooled by it. The first challenge of the game is actually getting inside the building.
- Played for Laughs in BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger, where Ragna calls out that he's delivering pizza. The funny comes from the fact that [A] all the guards are gone (likely liquidated to fuel Nu's smelting) and [B] he first said that he's come to kill them all.
- Dragon Age: Origins has this. Depending on which party members are chosen for the infiltration, they might pretend to be priests or circus performers, but the default is to be delivering rather odd things such as "items of a personal nature" or "several hundred lovely knitted... scarves".
- A possible tactic in many levels of the Hitman series. Notably:
- Agent 47 can disguise himself as a flower delivery guy and infiltrate a target's mansion in Hitman (2016).
- Played with in Hitman: Absolution when 47 finds himself riding an express elevator to his target's penthouse alongside a very real sushi deliveryman. When the elevator doors open, genre savvy guards immediately riddle the sushi guy with bullets; 47, however, has long since escaped through the hatch in the ceiling.
- The Longest Journey Saga:
- In The Longest Journey April breaks into the Vanguard headquarters by pretending to deliver pizza.
- In Dreamfall, she breaks into Friar's Keep by pretending to deliver a sandwich.
- Max Payne tries to do this early on in the first game. The mobster at the door buzzes him off and he has to look for another way to get in. Of course, Max isn't carrying a pizza, isn't dressed like a pizza delivery guy, and isn't let in because the guy that the door doesn't recognize him anyway, so it's more Max being a sarcastic asshole than anything.
- In Persona 4, Namatame uses his job as a delivery man to get close to people shown on the Midnight Channel without arousing suspicion. and throw them into a TV he hides in the back of his delivery-truck.
- In Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal, a Vid-Comic shows Captain Qwark trying this in a maid outfit to infiltrate Dr. Nefarious' base on Magmos. The plan works, not because Nefarious is fooled in any way, but because he wants to sic his killer robots on Qwark inside. Qwark pulls a similar trick on the same guy in A Crack in Time, this time posing as Nurse Shannon and infiltrating their ranks.
- Toward the end of XIII, you slip into the evil conspiracy's mansion from a fake catering van.
Web Comics
- Done as part of Roast Beef's hack of Yahoo! Personals in Achewood.
- Arianna pretty much put the plot of Castoff into motion by her attempt to do this only with Vector instead of a pizza and get into the town citadel for her own Mysterious Past related reasons.
- Virus and Rogue tried this one in Exterminatus Now. It almost works until Eastwood blows it by refusing to take part in such an obvious ploy.
- In one Nukees strip, Gav claims he can break into a military base using a piece of cardboard. The piece of cardboard is placed on the roof of his car with the words "Gav's Pizza" written on it. It works.
- In Episode 133 of Secret Of Mana Theatre, Fawn and Seth use this ploy to sneak into Elinee's castle. At first the guards refuse to let them in until told the flowers being delivered are from them.
Web Original
- Played for laughs in the Transformers (2007) Alternate Reality Game, where a pizza delivery man breached the facility due to a door being left open and nearly getting to where Megatron was stored.
Western Animation
- In All Hail King Julien, our heroes need to get into a super villain's locked and guarded lair, so Julien knocks on the door claiming to have a special delivery. The guard refuses to open citing specific instructions not to open unless it's an emergency, so Julien claims it's an emergency and the guard opens the door.
- The Joker uses a variation of the strategy in The Batman to kidnap Yin. He first slips a flyer for a pizza place under the door to her apartment (with a coupon); when she comes home from work, she's too tired to cook and decides to use it. She's suspicious when the operator says there's a "fifteen-seconds or it's free" offer, especially when it seems he actually gets there on time. Unfortunately, by then he has the jump on her.
- In the Batman: The Animated Series episode "Make Em Laugh", The Joker kidnaps Lisa Lorraine this way. Lisa knows she didn't order pizza, but offers to buy it anyway, which is when the Joker opens the box, which contains knock-out gas.
- In Batman Beyond, Terry pretends to be a pizza delivery boy in order to infiltrate Shreeve's laboratory. Although Shreeve is initially suspicious - the classic "I didn't order any pizza," - Terry manages to smooth it over by pretending that he got the address wrong and now the price of the pizza has to come out of his own paycheck, appealing to Shreeve's sympathy (Shreeve is desperate for funding for his work and can understand a minor act of rebellion against an unsympathetic corporate overseer) and offering to split the extra-large pie. They manage to have a very cordial conversation for a while over the pizza, until Terry pushes his luck with one too many probing questions about Shreeve's technology and rouses his suspicions again.
- In Bob's Burgers, Gene poses as a pizza delivery guy to infiltrate a teen party so the kids can reach Jonas, who had taken Louise's class chinchilla pet. Gene, being Gene, stupidly says a line ahead of being asked why he's there delivering pizza ("Well, someone did!"). Still, he manages to get inside because the teen he was talking to didn't even know what to make of him.
- In Courage the Cowardly Dog, Courage uses this trick to get in a villain's lair, convincing Eustace to act as the delivery man while he hides in the pizza box. The villain is smart enough to know he didn't order pizza, but his dimwitted assistant who answers the door does not. Eustace doesn't know what's going on, but he doesn't complain; as he says, it'd the easiest twenty bucks he's ever made.
- Darkwing Duck once tried to infiltrate the Fearsome Five's headquarters by pretending to be a flower delivery guy. Of course Negaduck hates flowers, so DW had to backpedal and change it to delivering skulls.
- In an episode of DuckTales (1987), when Launchpad finds out the entrance to the villain's lair is trough a deli, he tries to get in by disguising himself as a bread delivery man; but the clerk isn't expecting bread. Launchpad finds out he is expecting a delivery of pickles, but when he comes back to try that, he's interrupted by the real pickle delivery man. Not willing to give up, he manages to get in by hiding in one of the guy's pickle barrels which works for a while, until the smell of pickles gives him away.
- A cutaway gag on Family Guy which lampsahded several heist movie tropes featured a "super gymnastic Asian Peter" being delivered to a house.
- In Futurama, the prank delivery that gets Fry frozen was planned out by Nibbler.
- In the two-part House of Mouse short "Mickey Foils the Phantom Blot", Donald and Goofy disguise themselves as delivery men (wearing only fake mustaches) to distract the Phantom Blot by having him his name on clipboards, while Mickey (who was hiding in their cardboard box) sneaks past him to obtain Professor Von Drake's unlimited credit card, which the Blot stole.
- King of the Hill: Stood on its head in "Soldier Of Misfortune": in order to rescue his friends from a Right-Wing Militia Fanatic named "Mad Dog", Dale orders a large number of flower bouquets to be delivered to Mad Dog's address. Mad Dog sees the delivery people carrying long, rectangular boxes just the right size to hide machine guns, assumes the FBI has finally caught up with him and is trying to pull this trick, and runs away.
- Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!: In "Go Away Ghost Ship," Shaggy and Velma are dressed as a chef and maid respectively with Scooby under the cart tureen and Fred and Daphne in the cart's lower part. This is so they can get into shipping magnate C.L. Magnus' penthouse and help him with the mystery of who is raiding his ships.
Velma: Room service.
Shaggy:Yeah. Breakfast is ready.
Butler: At eleven o'clock at night??
Shaggy: Sure. That way you won't have to wait till morning to eat it! - In The Secret Show, the alternate dimension protagonists use this to get into the villain's base.
- In The Simpsons episode "Trash of the Titans", Homer gets backstage at a U2 gig by pretending to perform a potato delivery.
Guard #1: Can I help you?
Homer: (Irish accent) Potato man.
Guard #2: Where the hell have you been? - In Sonic Boom, Sonic and Amy try to infiltrate the Lightning Bolt Society to get Tails back, only to argue on which method to use: Sonic preferring straight Big Damn Heroes, while Amy insists on this trope.
- Star Wars Resistance: In "Descent", Kaz sends CB-23 to the tower to deliver a message to Captain Doza. She gets past the stormtroopers by ambushing a First Order ball droid and stealing the tray of food it was delivering. And, indeed, when she gets to Captain Doza, he initially points out that he didn't order any food before Torra recognizes CB as Kaz's new droid.
- As one might expect, it happened a couple of times in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987):
- In one episode, Shredder uses this trope as the basis of the plot. In a rare case of savviness, Shredder opens a pizza joint that specializes in weird pizzas, planning to stay in business until he gets an order for a pizza that only a mutant turtle could love. Then, he would follow the pizza to the Turtles' lair through a tracking device. The plan falls apart when he a) hires a disguised Michelangelo, and b) the Rat King steals the tracking pizza.
- The Turtles themselves do it in another episode to infiltrate the warehouse where Shredder is holding April hostage. Shredder knows he didn't order pizza, but Rocksteady and Bebop are more gullible.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) uses a variation: When April's antique shop is placed under surveillance by the Foot Clan, Angel smuggles secret messages between April and Leo hidden inside a pizza box.
Real Life
- Mike Meyersnote claims to have pulled something like this off in his A+ Certification textbook's chapter on computer security. A friend of his in another firm asked him to help test his fancy new firewall, so our intrepid author dug out an old jumpsuit and ID badge, bluffed his way past the receptionist and walked out the door with the unplugged server on a parcel trolley.
- Terry Sweeney (a former writer and cast member of Saturday Night Livenote ) actually posed as a sandwich delivery man (complete with buying the sandwiches out of pocket) in order to get Jean Doumanian (who was setting up her now ill-fated era of SNL in 1980) to hire him as a show writer.
- This dude managed to get into the Lollapalooza music festival two years in a row. The first year he posed as an ice delivery person. The second year he used a Clipboard of Authority.
- The perpetrators of the Harvey's Resort Hotel bombing delivered the bomb (which was contained within a massive and oddly shaped metallic box) by posing as an office supplies company delivering a photocopier.
