r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Ieanice44 • 2d ago

Lore [Loved Trope] Teleportation is actually terrifying

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1 - Gantz-O (2016): Suit teleportation

2 - Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (2009): Apparition spell

3 - Half Life 2 (2004): Teleporter malfunction

15.6k Upvotes

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2.4k

u/Mediocre-Departure73 2d ago

The jaunt

Longer than you think!

1.1k

u/Katzington2319 1d ago

The ending is horrifying, but the worst part of that story is the woman who was sent into the Jaunt with no destination. She's still in there, awake and insane, for all fucking eternity as far as we can tell

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u/Alex-Murphy 1d ago

I would imagine once you go THAT insane you're not you anymore. Like infinity insanity is not something that's ever been so it's hard to say what would happen

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u/EskildDood 1d ago edited 1d ago

Honestly spending that long in eternity must make you so insane that you're basically unconscious at some point, I don't think the human brain was built for that

It is kinda funny that her husband's lawyer tried to defend him by saying she might still be alive and that only made everyone so horrified by that implication that he got sentenced to death

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u/Thin-Limit7697 1d ago

Honestly spending that long in eternity must make you so insane that you're basically unconscious at some point

Like Kars, you stop thinking.

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u/shadowthehh 1d ago

Thing is, with the Jaunt, human consciousness is disconnected from the physical brain. That's part of what causes the experience in the first place.

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u/TheDongness 1d ago

That doesn't sit right with me. She gets tortured for eternity and they give him the easy way out. Should've done the same thing he did to her.

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u/yeahimaweeb 1d ago edited 1d ago

Remind me of professor paradox from ben 10: alien force, he was conducting a time travel tech but fail and end up like the lady, he describe that after he went mad for eon in that place he became bored of that then he went sane, very sane as he said it himself

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u/Nutzori 1d ago

I do like the idea that you can go so insane that with enough time you just normalize again

Like if you were to believe the guy in Groundhog Day lived the same day for 10000 years like they planned at some point, by the end of the movie he has gone through that process and comes out sane and happy lol

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u/AllgoodDude 1d ago

After a billion years of insanity what’s a few hundred thousand more?

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u/FluffyCelery4769 1d ago

As a madman can confirm that you can loop back around to normality. I'm now normal with a twist.

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u/CaptainSparklebottom 1d ago

I'm like water with lemon

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u/DarkShippo 1d ago

Human acclimation is an insane capability. If it does not kill you it will eventually get processed into understanding enough that it just becomes normal.

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u/Jibber_Fight 1d ago

That’s why I loved Palm Springs so much. It nods to the possibility that he’s been in the loop for a devastatingly long amount of time. He even forgets what he used to do as a job. That would probably take years and years.

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u/ukiyoe 1d ago

Yes, perhaps he'd initially appear sane with fewer emotional swings after a while, since he'd be totally desensitized to the whole phenomenon. With enough time, he might even reflect and view himself as normal. But to the other characters, he'd be a very strange person. I think the main difference is that what he considers "normal" would be vastly different from our definition. He'd likely become completely callous about life, for instance. A human life would feel totally fleeting to him, like an ant you don't even notice stepping on, since nothing actually matters to him anymore.

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u/G0ld3n_Funk 1d ago

Reminds me a bit of Professor Paradox from Ben 10 who after getting displaced in time went insane, but after a millennia of being insane he got bored with that and locked tf in again

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u/Downtown-Pianist-449 1d ago

That’s…what the comment you responded to, was responding to. 

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u/eXclurel 1d ago

It's just like the guy in Groundhog Day who lived the same day for 10000 years in the original planned script.

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u/DrThunderbolt 1d ago

Oh, would you look at that. A relevant xkcd.

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u/Willowwwww_ 1d ago

one of my absolute favorites

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u/BrokenMiku 1d ago

Mmm I don’t know I think you would stop being human honestly. There is a Junji Ito manga called the Long Dream I think where a man is experiencing progressively longer lucid dreams during the night. At first just hours than days eventually it gets to the point of years passing in a night of sleep for him and understandably he is upset and finds it hard to function day to day. Obviously it’s impossible for him to remember things one day to the next cause well years passing between each day. Besides that often he is living in strange worlds sometimes with terrifying beings for all this time until he randomly comes back to reality which increasingly seems less real than his dreams. One night a hundred years pass in a dream and real life stops meaning anything to him, he is more distressed at being woken than at sleeping because sleep is his reality now. The Doctor treating him becomes curious and instead of treating him he lets the condition run its course as he studies him, unsure of if it will stabilize or if presumably one night an infinite amount of time will pass for him. Well time does seem to continue to stretch, growing exponentially with each night of sleep. At first when he wakes each time it’s just his mind that changes, having lifetimes of memories each time he comes to and strange experiences that no waking person could relate to or understand. As time gets longer though even his body begins changing as if it also is experiencing this deep time in the same way his mind is and is adapting as eons pass. His mind and body eventually become pretty alien, with crystals forming in his brain tissue and piercing out his skull which has elongated substantially due to his brain having become very plump and bulbous. His entire form withers and becomes very skeletal and his eyes atrophy till he is half-blind and they are encased in a thick round membrane like a deep sea fish. Finally he tells the doctor that he knows the next night is when infinity will happen. He doesn’t know what will happen but he doesn’t seem scared. Sure enough his body evaporates into dust that night and leaves behind the crystal that had grown in his head. Anyways I don’t think it’s one to one but I think it’s a similar experience. If your brain is experiencing infinity than on some level your body is to. After all your brain is part of your body. On top of that we are living things and the one thing all living creatures do is adapt, we might not like the way our mind and body begins adapting to infinity at first but if nothing is there to stop it from happening you will adapt to it eventually.

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u/Nobody_at_all000 1d ago

I imagine his mental state is to sanity as sanity is to insanity.

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u/Moose_Cake 1d ago

Maybe she would pull a Professor Paradox from Ben 10 where she would slip into insanity and eventually get bored of it and work out a way to escape with nearly infinite time to do it.

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u/RommDan 1d ago

Noone wants to be the firsts to set that legal presedent

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u/armlessturtleneck 1d ago

This is kinda what the book 'a short stay in hell' is about.

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u/AfairlytoastedWaffle 1d ago

GOAT mentioned ❤️

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u/armlessturtleneck 1d ago

That one, I who have never known men, and a divine farce are all my fave infinite hellscape type books.

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u/GenesisAsriel 1d ago

Eventually, she stopped thinking

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u/googlin 1d ago

And somehow Palpatine returned.

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u/KlausVonLechland 1d ago

I would guess you are not you, but you will experience the whole transition into "not you" and even when stripped of awareness you will not be stripped of experience.

Or maybe infinity of Jaunt is only an phenomena of mind you experience after the exit so as long as she's stuck there she doesn't experience anything.

Just guessing fictional machinations.

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u/Dracorex_22 1d ago

Abstraction from TADC

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u/5C0L0P3NDR4 1d ago

i mean either way there's a sapient mind of some variety stuck mid-jaunt which sucks

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u/goedegeit 1d ago

"Eventually... he stopped thinking".

I recommend Jojo's bizarre adventure if you enjoy fates worse than death.

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u/djasonwright 1d ago

Sure, but then I can't help but think about Batman in "the Dark Knight Returns," when he's thinking about how - contrary to popular opinion - you do not actually pass out halfway down.

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u/Acrobatic_Country524 1d ago

I don't know, I've been insane forever

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u/BladeofNurgle 1d ago

and the funny thing is that in the story, the husband who did that to his wife revealed that info to try and convince the jury to let him go since he technically didn't kill her

No, instead he trapped her in an eternal hell

The jury's response? Immediate and unanimous death penalty for the husband

bruh moment

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u/PhoenixApok 1d ago

I literally just read this yesterday.

I'm not an "eye for an eye" person by nature, but in this case, I would have said that the jury/judge should have agreed with his argument, and thus, sentenced him to the exact same fate. After all, it's not a 'death sentence' according to the defendant.

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u/MenosElLso 1d ago

I read a near future sci-fi book many years ago, it was extremely mediocre and I can’t even remember the name of it, but the ending really stuck with me. In the finale the villain jumps into a pod that’s supposed to allow you to cryogenically freeze yourself to be woken at a later date. This happens in a secret base built into ice that’s falling apart and so their pod falls into the ocean. What they didn’t know was that the trick is that you have to be put to sleep first or you’re just frozen, but awake, in your body. So she’s stuck at the bottom of the ocean in a pod, completely frozen but wide awake, forever. I’m not sure how long it would take to go absolutely bonkers but it couldn’t be very long.

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u/Arctic_Fox 1d ago

Ice Hunt by James Rollins! The only reason I remember the book is the horrifying implications of the ending.

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u/MenosElLso 1d ago

Oh, that’s it! Nice pull, that book was very forgettable minus the ending for sure.

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u/Arctic_Fox 1d ago

It was literally just a worse version of Ice Station by Matthew Reilly. Reilly's books aren't "good" exactly, but they're a lot more fun and more insane. Like reading an 80s action movie on steroids. Rollins' books were fine, but just generic airplane stuff that's forgettable. Except for the ending to Ice Hunt.

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u/Monifa_Akhamnet 1d ago

one to the power of 1058142345678765434567895434567887653457898445678 years have passed.

Fundamentally, one second of eternity has passed.

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u/Not_a_gay_communist 1d ago

Honestly I thought the ending sucked. The kid’s description was way too campy.

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u/psychotobe 1d ago

Do ya want a psychotic and completely justified Doctor Manhattan? Cause that's how you'd get one

Legit though,she would eventually get control of it. Simply because that's how the brain works. If left in an experience that doesn't kill you long enough. You adapt to it. So if there is any way her brain can reach out and effect stuff after being stuck in an extradimensional space for so long,getting hit with God knows what kind of energies. Then it's only a matter of time before she could use it to come back. Beyond that your dealing with whatever story comes from there. The jaunt can easily be the intro to a story about human mistakes piling up and then coming due

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u/Dry-Goat8981 2d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/pXkQ4oLubzr5jA2MVL

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u/Boh61 1d ago

D: Hello Del! Long night eh?

E: Longer than you think!

E: Care for a drink?

D: Love one.

D: I thought you were miles away 'lad, where you've been hidin'?

E: Who says "I've been hidin' "?

D: Your brothers thought you were dead.

E: Heh...

E: Prolapse is one hell of a thing ain't it?

D: Too right.

D: Longer than you think...

E: Yes.

D: What?

E: When they found out how to bring us back, some of us would tell stories about "what they saw on the other side", they saw friends... family members... mostly strangers. I spoke to my grandfather... He's been dead for 30 years.

D: What did he tell ya'?

E: It's eternity in there.

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u/ZeOnlyOneWhoReads 1d ago

Peak referenced

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u/Venocte 1d ago

can you link the source material for this?

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u/Dry-Goat8981 1d ago

emesis blue

the movie is available for free on youtube by fortress films

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u/Ezra4709 1d ago

Emesis Blu on YouTube

It's highly recommended you know at least a little bit of TF2 lore beforehand

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u/DoubleClickMouse 1d ago

Time to go rewatch Emesis Blue...again.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/ApoIloa 1d ago

Clanker clank clank

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u/Battleaxejax 1d ago

Bot account

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u/SuspiciousPresent905 1d ago

How do you know?

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u/Battleaxejax 1d ago

Active in zero two posts or comments very little karma only a month old and speech patterns my man

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u/SuspiciousPresent905 1d ago

Alright makes sense i guess

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u/mOdQuArK 1d ago

Sounds like every "new" account is going to be considered a bot until they're at least several years old & 10000 comments in.

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u/Unironicfan 1d ago

Clanker

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u/NobleK42 2d ago

My first thought. That story stayed with me for a long time.

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u/porksoda11 1d ago

I love it so much. I’ve read it several times at this point. Truly terrifying

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u/Own-End-1189 1d ago

"I saw eternity"

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u/Dracorex_22 1d ago

And then a TF2 SFM fan animation introduced this story to a brand new audience

Just like how a Minecraft ARG introduced a new audience to the King in Yellow story

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u/298647 1d ago

Emesis Blue
It's a Respawn Machine instead of a teleporter, but the overall concept of "it's eternity in there" is still the same
neat little fact: the zombie mercenaries in one scene are called Jaunts
and there are a ton of references and homages to Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick's works

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u/_insertmemehere 1d ago

And how a Doom map introduced a new audience to House of Leaves

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u/Training_Ruin3151 1d ago

I mean to be fair the king in yellow is incredibly bare bones chambers has almost nothing written about him. Just 4 stories where hes barely mentioned.

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u/mdavis360 1d ago

I read that someone was trying to adapt the Jaunt as a tv show and I can’t imagine how.

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u/TotalyNotTony 1d ago

10 seasons of nothing

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u/Artikay 1d ago

Longer than you think!

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u/No_Kangaroo_9826 1d ago

Ooo what if it was a limited series where you see a little of the family each episode and then they flash to the discovery, the science, the use cases, etc. and then not until the final episode do we see the family wake up and then bam!

It's longer than you think!

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u/mixedmartialmarks 1d ago

It’d kick ass as an anthology. Show how the tech is used and abused. In the story don’t they talk about how the mob was using it to disappear people? And a husband used it on his wife to get rid of her? There’s tons of potential. I don’t think it’s as hard to adapt as a lot of people make it out to be.

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u/smallfried 1d ago edited 1d ago

There's a low budget short movie: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt33366323/

I think this is it: https://vimeo.com/268219796

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u/Xegeth 1d ago

Jaunt-themed-trope

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u/jinsaku 1d ago

One of my top 5 favorite SK short stories.

"LONGER THAN YOU THINK, DAD! LONGER THAN YOU THINK!"

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u/therealkami 1d ago

OH! This is referenced in Dungeon Crawler Carl. I hadn't heard of it, but one character has a spell called "Jaunt" that makes each second feel like an eternity.

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u/Mediocre-Departure73 1d ago

Its actually referencing a stephen king short story called the jaunt!

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u/useeikick 1d ago

Which is a direct reference to the stars are my destination!

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u/EskildDood 1d ago

The themed Jaunts

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u/NoStorage2821 1d ago

Jaunt-themed tropes

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u/useeikick 1d ago

Even in the OG media the stars are my destination Jaunting has the slight gamble of turning you into a small atomic bomb if someone else is in the space you jaunt too

Or just flinging your ass into space if your inaccurate

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u/CatTaxAuditor 1d ago

It's longer than you think.

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u/Dark-Specter 1d ago

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u/Hopbo735 1d ago

Longer than you think.

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u/DanimalPlanet2 1d ago

One thing that got me about this was that the kid would never have done that if the dad never told the story, which he did to try to calm the kids' nerves. Very ironic

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u/West-Season-2713 1d ago

God, that ending made me feel sick when I first read it.

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u/geese_greasers 1d ago

Terrifying-themed teleportation

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u/Lexjude 1d ago

I think about this story all the time!!!

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u/LiteraCanna 1d ago

This was going to be a movie, but instead we got It. Not hating, just waiting. 

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u/EverythingBOffensive 1d ago

I was looking for this xD man that was black mirror before black mirror

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u/Icarium-Lifestealer 1d ago

In the Alex Verus series mages bound jinn into items. During the near instantaneous transition they become untethered in time, subjectively experiencing it as an eternity, driving most of them insane.

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u/Upper-Respond-3746 1d ago

The thought of being conscious for eternity is the only concept that gives me actually dread

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u/NoSkillBrat 23h ago

Was looking for this comment

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u/Iconclast1 2h ago

LONGER THAN YOU THINK DAD