What's really f'd up is when you double-down. When I was writing a lot of Saltstack modules, I'd import internal modules by first checking if it was already registered with the interpreter. If so, setting a reference in the local namespace. If it wasn't already referenced, it would be imported the typical way.

In my defense, this was to get at non-trivial functionality that was buried in a core or 1st tier module. It wasn't good python, but I like to look at it as an example of good problem solving.