Emergency Stash

Bob's been retired from the CIA for ten years now. Once a top agent, he lives in his cabin and spends his time fishing.

However, The Call Knows Where You Live and his niece is kidnapped. Or maybe an old friend shows up, just in time to be murdered and Bob is framed for it.

In any case, Bob is on the run. Bob heads for a large city and goes to a bank there. He tells them the code number and they show him to the vault and hand him a safe deposit box. He opens it (in private, of course) and inside is three passports, several drivers licenses and credit cards, all in different names, and a large wad of cash.

Bob has just accessed his Emergency Stash.

Related tropes: Crazy Prepared, Hidden Supplies.

Examples of Emergency Stash include:

Comics

• In the Sandman volume Brief Lives an immortal who had been around for upwards of 10,000 years dies in a an accident and afterward the immortal's son finds dad's stash. When the main characters encounter the son, he is very drunk, shows them the stash, and wonders exactly why dad, (who he thought was just a kind of mousy attorney with a pony tail) had that stash and who dad really was. Towards the end of the volume we see the son again, and while he decides to give away or destroy most of dad's stash he does keep several of the fake IDs for himself. As the narration points out, it's handy to be able to disappear and become someone else when you really need to.

Fan Works

• Turns up in X Files fandom a lot. Mulder's allegedly got quite the stash, much of it willed to him by his father. The only people with the keys are him and Scully. Occasionally the Gunmen will have a clue as to where it is, but not access.

Film

• In Commando, Matrix just happens to have a gun safe with automatic weapons at his house.
• Neil Shaw (Wesley Snipes) accessed an emergency stash of I.D. and money in the movie The Art of War. It was hidden behind a mirror in the apartment of the one comrade who didn't betray him.
• In Men in Black 2, J and K access an emergency stash of weapons after the MiB HQ is in Lockdown. The people who live where the weapons are stored have no idea they are there.
• In Total Recall, a mysterious stranger delivers a suitcase with an emergency stash to Douglas Quaid. The twist is that Quaid set up the stash himself, but he has no memory of it.
• In The Bourne Identity, Jason Bourne wakes up with no memories, and the only information he's carrying is an address and a long number. Following them leads him to a bank account and an emergency stash that he doesn't remember having.
  • He's rather relieved when he finds a passport that has his name on it, then he finds the other passports and becomes even more confused.
• In The Long Kiss Goodnight, Charly has one of these.

Literature

• In a Hulk novella this is how Bruce Banner was able to restock himself with clothes - he kept accounts in several banks in larger cities, and he had his ATM cards stuck in a secure location in his clothes so when he Hulked Out he could get at the money.
• In Artemis Fowl it is mentioned the Butler keeps a large suitcase full of fake IDs, clothes, and assorted guns in every major airport in the world, as this saves a lot of hassle with the security (and given the many (many) weapons he keeps on his person, who can blame him?).
• In the Discworld book "Going Postal" Moist Von Lipwig has amassed and hidden a large amount money over the course of his career as a con man. He later digs it up and uses the money to rebuild the Post Office.
  • He also keeps supplies - disguises, forgery supplies, fake diamond rings, etc. - in several stashes spread across the city.

Web Original

• In Freeman's Mind, after Gordon realises the army knows his identity he starts planning how to get to a park where he previously buried $10,000 worth of gold for just such an occasion.