"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 enter or leave a place, so you have to smuggle them (migrants, who are deemed not valuable enough or too valuable to cross the border). 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
- Bookcase Passage
- Book Safe
- Briefcase Blaster
- Cargo Concealment Caper
- Carpet-Rolled Corpse
- Coat Full of Contraband
- Coffin Contraband
- Decoy Hiding Place
- Diplomatic Impunity (using diplomatic pouches)
- Discouraging Concealment (something unpleasant that no one wants to search)
- 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: Hiding information within someone’s brain.
- Nothing Up My Sleeve
- Organ Theft
- Person of Holding: Using a person to hide the goods.
- Running the Blockade
- Scaramanga Special
- Secret Compartment:
- 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: Hiding items in one’s bra.