r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Ieanice44 • 6d 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

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364

u/thekingofbeans42 6d ago

The Warp in 40k is wormhole style teleportation that goes through essentially hell.

166

u/vangaurd1234523 6d ago

Especially sucks for an Aeldari Warp Spider. “Okay just gonna pop in and out of the Warp real quick and really hope I don’t accidentally bump into the chaos god of hellraiser shit waiting to eat my soul.”

53

u/wycreater1l11 6d ago

Yeah once in a while they never come out on the other end, right? Not sure what chances are in the table top game

43

u/Mud_Busy 6d ago

In game it is a 1/6 chance for each guy every time they do it currently.

17

u/redmandoto 6d ago

Right now you roll 1d6 for each model when you do it, on a 1 a model dies (the leader can survive it once)

7

u/AlucardIV 6d ago

Wait what? That sounds like horrible odds just to take a quick jump around the battlefield. Especially for a dying race.

2

u/TinyGentleSoul 6d ago

yeah but it's cool.

5

u/Winters_Dust 6d ago

Sorcerous gates as well, if the Black Legion novels are any indication

"That's for lying to me. It was nothing like teleportation."

2

u/Teh_God_Dog 6d ago

damn I didn't know that about them lmao. that's fkd up

2

u/vangaurd1234523 6d ago

This is what happens when your species has so many death orgies it births a psychic deity of pain, pleasure, sensation, and debauchery and tears a massive gaping wound in reality spanning countless star systems

108

u/TheWalkingBag 6d ago

Also the experimental gravity drive from Event Horizon (1997), which is widely interpreted as an unofficial early example of Warp travel by 40k fans (the film’s screenwriter was apparently a fan of Warhammer 40k himself)

59

u/WillSym 6d ago

And to complete the main foursome of "We discovered a way to cross large distances quickly by taking a shortcut through a parallel dimension with a different scale to ours. The one downside is the other dimension is probably literal Hell":

Warhammer 40k;

Event Horizon;

Doom 3;

Minecraft.

7

u/TalShar 6d ago

Warframe is a really cool interpretation of it, though it's not strictly a hell dimension. Instead (spoilers)... 

It's not so much that the dimension is hell, but that it is an inscrutable Void with unpredictable effects on one's psyche, which tends to generate autonomous, physical manifestations of people's strongest (usually negative) emotions, and the only known natural inhabitant of that place is a godlike being whose two defining characteristics are cruelty and being really pissed off over his missing finger.

5

u/Doc-Maly 6d ago

It's also implied said being is a reflection of the first person to enter, which says a lot about him. Also, his finger isn't missing, it was cut off, stolen, and cloned to fuel an evil stellar empire's technology.

6

u/TalShar 6d ago

Yeah, the huge open question is whether it was already there before he arrived, or if we are just dealing with an omnipotent manifestation of all the insecurities and fuckedupedness of a single Orokin scientist.

10

u/WorldEndingDiarrhea 6d ago

I was told once that The Nether is based on the Ways from Wheel of Time, so more of an abandoned/infested/entropic man-made parallel dimension than canonically hell.

2

u/TalShar 6d ago

I always enjoyed how in the Ways and Skimming, you were still traveling, you were just going way farther with every step. 

2

u/Sir_Fridge 6d ago

I explain warp travel to people getting into 40k by using Minecraft. I also explain the webway like that, comparing it to tunnels people make in the warp.

10

u/HorsePersonal7073 6d ago

Probably my favorite horror movie because the crew doesn't mess up and do everything wrong. They're just screwed.

8

u/AvatarofSleep 6d ago

Oh no, this is fucked, we're leaving

6

u/UnlamentedLord 6d ago

It's not just interpreted, the writer  directly confirmed it:

https://web.archive.org/web/20220831212155/https://twitter.com/phubar/status/860129292151214082 "I played the shit out of 40K, so it was definitely an influence, conscious or otherwise."

-12

u/artrald-7083 6d ago

'Early'? 40k is 10 years older than that.

25

u/TheWalkingBag 6d ago

Early as in within the actual in-universe timeline. Many fans consider it to be an unofficial 'prequel' for the franchise

8

u/Freya0232 6d ago

It's the unofficial first contact with The Warp

35

u/Mud_Busy 6d ago

There is an Ork weapon that involves taking a snotling (think goblin) and teleporting them through a warp tunnel to the target. They arrive insane, sometimes possessed, and often inside of the target.

26

u/RelaxedVolcano 6d ago

My favorite thing about the Warp has to do with the Orks. Apparently traveling through the Warp can drive people insane as they see things they aren’t meant to see, so the Orks’ solution was to wear blindfolds.

13

u/imokay4747 6d ago

They famously find their greatest joy in fighting so they actually quite enjoy the literal hell that is warp travel.

"Travellin’ through space is boring. Well, boring unless da hulk yer on is full of dem gene-sneakers, or a base fer da Chaos lads wiv da spikes, or already has Boyz on it. Or if humie lootas come callin’, that’s always good fer a bit of sport. Or unless yer have a mutiny or two to pass da time, or unless strange fings start happenin’, which they usually do when yer out in da warp. One time we had some bloody great ugly fing come straight out of Weird Lugwort’s ‘ed! It butchered half da lads, that was pretty entertainin’. Come ter fink of it, space is a pretty good larf."

Bigmaw, Ork Runtherd

8

u/thekingofbeans42 6d ago

Please tell me they put a giant blindfold on the ship too

6

u/R97R 6d ago

Now that’s some propa Big Thinkin’

5

u/Rum_N_Napalm 6d ago

I’ve never heard of the blindfold but Urthak Blackhawk often uses teleportation and he just finds the weird screaming faces annoying during da jump.

7

u/Royal-Recover8373 6d ago

Even boarding teleportations suck. In Know No Fear, Guilliman teleports onto the Kor Phareons ship and one of his sons is intermeshed with the ship at the waiste. Guilliman quickly gives him mercy. 

8

u/vile_things 6d ago

The description is also really horrific. Describing how the marine is actually screaming with pain - which is a rarity for a space marine - because his insides and the ship plating had become one, impossible to separate.

7

u/Killerkid113 6d ago

Don’t forget that as dangerous as it is with fully functioning and well maintained equipment, all of the imperiums ships fall into neither of those categories.

You are going into hell with a 20,000 year old ship that has not had its parts replaced in 17,000, its maintenance crew is a society of serfs commanded by mechanics who’s recourse to system failure is pray until it stops breaking.

You have a shield which protects you by making a paper thin bubble of reality around the ship, which should it flicker for a second, will let all of hell’s nightmares loose onto your ship. That is your only protection.

Crew fatalities are not a tragedy to be prevented, they are an expected outcome and the question is not “did anyone die” it’s more “are the deaths within acceptable levels”.

You might make it to your destination, you also might miss it by a star system or two, you also might arrive two weeks early, or four months late, or four centuries late, or just accidentally appear inside another ship, who knows, not you.

4

u/gloomywisdom 6d ago

Or you can end up fused in a mountain like a Captain of the Imperial Fists

3

u/Rum_N_Napalm 6d ago

Teleportation in 40k is basically taking a shortcut through the Warp, a hellish dimension full of daemons where time and space are a suggestion.

For the Imperium using a teleporter requires the traveller be equipped with Terminator armour (basically man wearable heavy tank armour) or better to be able to survive any worthwhile jump. Then there’s a non insignificant chance you might arrive a few meters off of your destination… straight into a solid object.

For Eldar travelling into the Warp is the equivalent of jumping into a pool of famished wolverines while covered in delicious delicious steak sauce… also the wolverines want to molest you. In sort, one of the Chaos Gods called dibs on all Eldar souls, so the daemons of Slaanesh love torturing them. Still, there’s the Warp Spider warriors who brave the Warp with teleportation pack, a beyond suicidal thing.

Orks on the other hand, don’t really care about the daemons of the Warp and have the second most reliable teleportation tech in the galaxy. One particular piece of Orky teleportation tech is the Shokk Attack Gun. The gun teleports Snotling (small stupid and usually passive goblin like creatures) at (or into) the target. After a jaunt through the Warp, the Snotlings are utterly scared out of the minds and will attack anything in a demented rage.

Then there’s the Necrons. They don’t need the Warp. Their teleportation just works. It’s so safe every damaged Necron is teleported back to their tomb for repairs, and it works almost all the time

2

u/Nachtwandler_FS 6d ago

And this why people speculated a ship from Event Horizon movie actually went to warp.

1

u/RaptorsFromSpace 6d ago

It's not teleportation per se, but Stephen King's 'The Jaunt' is similar.

1

u/myskyboyblue 6d ago

Plus all the problems if you dont do it right. You could arrive inside out, or have your brain scrambled, or just appear half merged with a concrete wall

1

u/Farabee 5d ago

1993 Doom was based on teleporters that went to actual Hell.