Follow TV Tropes

Following

Offscreen Teleportation / Western Animation

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/offscreen-teleportation_loud-kiddington2_1640.png
Loud Kiddington demonstrates some really fancy teleporting.

  • Adventure Time: Lampshaded in the Season 5 premiere when Farmworld Finn runs into Big Destiny torching his family's farm, after confronting him just one short donkey ride ago:
    Big D: How did I even GET here, son?
  • Animaniacs: This is the main forte of the Warners, to the dismay of other characters.
    • A particularly funny one happens when they're antagonizing the Jerry Lewis-like Mr. Director. As part of his angrish fueled rant at witnessing this, he briefly points back to where they were, and for that brief second, they're still there.
    Mr. Director: HOYL! How'd you? With the going? You were there but here now? You are? For me to see? How'd you do?
    Yakko: You understand any of that?
    Wakko: I believe he said, "HOYL! How'd you? With the going? You were there but here now? You are? For me to see? How'd you do?"
    Yakko: Thanks for clearing that up.
  • Aqua Teen Hunger Force: In the episode "Dummy Love", the Aqua Teens make many attempts to get rid of or otherwise destroy the two Demonic Dummy characters that appear in the episode. Of course, no method of destruction prevents their return, eventually leading to a profitable and lucrative magic show career on the part of one of the main characters.
  • Batman Beyond: In the episode "Sneak Peek", Terry does an extended chase scene following Ian Peek down floor after blockaded floor as fast as he can. The instant he falls through the final floor (right after Terry arrived), an elderly Bruce Wayne appears... although he was left hundreds if not thousands of feet away in no rush to chase after them.
  • A lesser example appears in the Ben 10 episode "Ben 10,000". When Ben first meets his older self, he manages to cut him off at every escape attempt to continue the conversation. What makes this odd is that the older Ben is XLR8 at the time.
  • Big Hero 6: The Series: Professor Granville gets to Hiro's class well ahead of him despite having been talking with him in the hall moments before. She claims that it's because of "shortcuts" that she can use and he can't.
  • Bobby's World: "Mason," a character who is a parody of Jason Voorhees, naturally has this ability, and overuses it to comedic effect.
  • Care Bears (1980s): Shreeky once scared Mr. Beastly into rushing downstairs. When he reached his destination, she was there to ask what took him so long and he wondered how she could be there if she was upstairs when he started coming down.
  • In the Columbo parody Mumbly (basically Wacky Races's Muttley in an overcoat and The Alleged Car that literally falls apart when parked) the Droopy example is revisited. The Columbo-esque villian keeps running away from Mumbly, only to have him turn up in places like garbage cans or under a serving plate lid a waitress served to the bad guy.
  • In Coraline, the Beldam pulls this just as Coraline accepts her bet with the devil. Considering what the Beldam actually is, this only serves to amp up the Paranoia Fuel for both Coraline and the viewer.
    • She does this in the book as well, with the same justifications and implications.
  • In the Droopy cartoons, the wolf would get into a plane, boat, and train to get away from Droopy, end up in China, and have Droopy inexplicably waiting for him when he got there.
    • There's at least one in which there are shown to be a very large number of identical Droopys.
    • Sometimes the wolf or any other villain would aknowledge that Droopy are waiting for them, but they guess the wrong place, like instead behind a door he hides under the villain's hat or instead of hiding under a big enough rock he pops out under a smaller pebble.
  • A few times in Ed, Edd n Eddy: In "Wish You Were Ed", Ed got stuck in a mailbox somehow, and Eddy and Edd ask Rolf for help. Rolf goes off on a rant about how much he misses The Old Country and doesn't help them, but then Ed appears right next to Eddy.
    Ed: Rolf's homesick, Eddy.
    Eddy: Where'd you come from?!
    Ed: Blame my parents, Eddy.
    • Also in The Movie, Edd stops in his tracks completely stunned by something Eddy said. The camera follows Eddy and Ed up a hill... and then Edd is shown on the hill right there, stopping them.
  • On The Fairly OddParents!, after Timmy convinces his parents he's too old for a babysitter, Vicky camps out his house to catch him acting out. Whenever she calls, Mr. and Mrs. Turner arrive instantly. Vicky can only marvel.
  • Family Guy: In "Baby Not on Board", Peter is driving and gets distracted by another car's backseat TV. He manages to somehow get into the other car, causing his own car (with his family in it) to careen into a ditch.
    • That example is somewhat subverted as its not a true offscreen teleport, as Meg is clearly watching Peter the entire time from the backseat.
  • In The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, Billy not only did this, but also managed to change from his normal wardrobe to fishing gear as he was inching off the screen.
  • Hey Arnold!: Brainy does this as a Running Gag, where Helga recites love poetry to Arnold only to be interrupted by Brainy, who she then punches. Most of the times, it's rather plausible as to how he gets behind Helga, but there are times where he literally shows up out of nowhere, such as on Elk Island and on a haunted train. It's also lampshaded at the end of "Helga on the Couch" where she ducks into an empty alley after making sure it's empty...and sure enough, Brainy comes to interrupt her.
  • Histeria!:
    • Loud Kiddington pulls this on George Bush after he climbs over the gates in front of the White House. Looking closely, you can see the animators drew Loud twice on the same shot.
    • When the Kids' kite gets stuck on Ben Franklin's roof, Toast goes inside the house and comes out dragging a long ladder. He goes offscreen then reappears carrying the other end of the ladder.
  • The Huckleberry Hound Show plays with this in "Rustler Hustler Huck". At the end, it's revealed that Huck recruited five of his identical cousins to confuse the cattle rustler.
  • In an episode of Invader Zim, GIR is sleeping on Zim's head but is forced off. The camera eases in while Zim delivers his Evil Gloating — as soon as the top of his head is Behind the Black, he yells at GIR for sleeping on his head again.
  • Jackie Chan Adventures:
    • Captain Black tells Jackie not to use the phone booth, but Jackie doesn't listen and activates the secret entrance to Section 13. When he reaches the other side seconds later, Captain Black is already waiting for him.
      Jackie: How did you get here so fast?
      Capt. Black: The stairs.
    • Jade frequently appears when Jackie least expects to see her. Even when he's just traveled halfway around the world.
  • Kaeloo: Mr. Cat is insanely capable of doing this. In one episode, Mr. Cat and Stumpy are inside a closed room (and Mr. Cat is tied to a chair). Stumpy exits the room and closes the door to find Kaeloo and Quack Quack outside. By the time Stumpy and Kaeloo have spoken one or two lines, Mr. Cat has not only untied himself, but somehow gotten out of the room and stolen the car.
    • In another episode, Kaeloo is teaching Stumpy how to use a fireman's pole. She puts the pole just next to a cliff, jumps off the cliff and uses the pole to slide down while Stumpy watches from the cliff. Suddenly, she appears behind him and pushes him off.
  • Kim Possible has Ron develop this ability. Kim leaps off a building with her pistol grappling hook, through a window, across laser beams to her target, Ron casually walks into shot seconds later and continues the conversation they had on the roof.
  • The Lion Guard: Subverted in "The Kupatana Celebration". Bunga and Beshte find Dogo sleeping in one of the aardvark dens and tell him to leave, which he does, but when they go the other way, they find what seems to be him sleeping in another den. They tell the jackal pup to go, which he does, but after they go the other way, they find what seems to be Dogo again sleeping in another den. Soon after, the other jackal pups wake up, revealing that it's Dogo's siblings all along who invaded the dens.
  • In Littlest Pet Shop (2012), Whittany and Brittany Biskit repeatedly give a Creepy Twins vibe by appearing in front of Blythe as she walks away from them.
  • Happens a few times in Looney Tunes as well.
    • It's actually parodied the trope also. In Tortoise Beats Hare, Cecil Turtle and Bugs Bunny are in a race, but Cecil gets his (identical) relatives scattered across the route ahead of time to screw with Bugs and make him think this trope is in effect.
    • In The Wacky Wabbit, Bugs buries Elmer in a deep hole, only for him to strut a few steps away and find a dirt-covered Elmer right in front of him.
    • Draftee Daffy could be considered a prototype Droopy cartoon, as Daffy, trying to avoid being given a draft card, is unable to contend with the Little Man from the Draft Board and his ability to get from place to place without anyone seeing.
  • Lucy Loud of The Loud House has a very bad habit of doing this.
  • Megas XLR: As the eponymous mecha has a Cool Car for a head and cockpit but no visible means of climbing up to it, people getting in or out of if tend to teleport from the car to the ground and vice versa between shots.
  • The Phantom Blot performs this in Mickey Foils the Phantom Blot, when Mickey uses tape on his shoes to get to the top of the Blot's blimp, the Blot's already at the top, after he fought Mickey on the ladder on the bottom of the blimp.
  • In one episode of Muppet Babies (1984), one of the Imagine Spots was the kids building a house, with a Running Gag of Animal seemingly working with a double of himself, much to Kermit's confusion.
    Kermit: How does he do that?
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • Pinkie Pie is surprisingly adept at this.
      • In "Over a Barrel", for instance, she's shown in a train car along with the other main ponies prior to a commercial break. At the end of the break, the others reveal they somehow have lost track of Pinkie. Cut to Rainbow Dash by herself sneaking through the desert when Pinkie Pie shows up out of nowhere and startles her.
      • At the beginning of "Griffon the Brush Off", Pinkie keeps pulling this as Rainbow Dash tries to avoid her. Another example occurs in the Season 2 premiere, where Pinkie hops outside to play in the chocolate rain, only to appear back in between her friends in the very next shot.
      • She's able to pop up in improbable spaces (like the inside of a piano without disrupting the song Spike's playing on it, the inside of a large bell that Rainbow Dash hid in to avoid her) or impossible spaces (a bucket of sponges much too small to fit a pony, appearing as a reflection in a mirror). Fanon has stated that because she knows she's a cartoon character, she's able to manipulate cartoon physics.
      • The alternate Pinkie of the human world was even able to exit the screen by the left and appear to the right while Twilight Sparkle was facing left watching the exit, making it unclear just what Twilight saw. Of course, human Pinkie is even more impossible than pony Pinkie (pulling one of the balloon designs off of her dress and blowing it up into a real balloon comes to mind...)
    • Fleur de Lis, a pony with one line, showed this ability in "Sweet and Elite". Whenever the camera was on Rarity for any amount of time, Fleur would move to a different spot in relation to Fancypants far faster than she could physically move there.
    • "The Gift of the Maud Pie" reveals Pinkie's sister Maud also has this ability. She can appear in front of someone trying to walk away from her.
    • This is lampshaded in "Gauntlet of Fire": Twilight and Rarity act as a cheering section for Spike as he and Ember make their way through an extremely dangerous series of obstacles to obtain the Bloodstone Scepter. Despite the fact that the obstacles are dangerous enough that even the dragons have a hard time, Twilight and Rarity manage to keep up without much trouble. Ember even points out how weird it is that they're keeping up so easily. Also a Justified Trope in this case, as Twilight literally has the ability to teleport, and may very well be doing so offscreen.
    • In "Fake It 'Til You Make It", when Rarity starts "firing" Fluttershy's personas, each one leaves and walks away to the left, only for another to immediately show up from the right after a full costume and personality change, until only Fluttershy's original self is left.
  • In the animated adaptation of The Phantom Tollbooth, Officer Shrift moves from one side of Milo's car to the other... while Milo was looking right at him and talking to him. How (and why) he does this is never explained, but it's probably just Rule of Funny.
  • A Robot Chicken skit parodies the use of this in the Friday the 13th films. After scaring off a girl he was stalking, Jason does his typical menacing stroll towards her until he's certain that she can no longer see him, then begins to sprint across a shortcut through the woods in a re-creation of the final scene from Ferris Bueller's Day Off until he finally reaches the point just ahead of where his victim was running to, at which point he returns to his stroll.
  • Ruby Gloom: Mr. Buns is a stuffed rabbit that can do a variety of things, including moving around, but only when he's offscreen.
  • Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo': Sometimes all the gang members would be shown outside a locked building, only for it to unlock and Scrappy (who was last seen with the others) to open the door from the inside, confusing the others.
  • The Simpsons parodied this a few times. In one, Mr. Burns makes it from the top floor of his mansion to his basement, faster than the kids can slide down a laundry chute, apparently only needing secret passages to do so.
    • In the safari in Africa, there's a P.O.V. Cam shot as Marge looks at a cheetah through binoculars. "They don't look so fast to me." Then she lowers the binoculars and the cheetah is right up in her face.
    • Nelson manages to do this trick in "Das Bus."
    • When Edna Krabappel first arrived in town, Moe pretended he wasn't a bartender so she'd date him. To keep up the ruse, he threw all his patrons out his bar and realized how often Barney was thrown. When asked how he managed to get back in so fast, Barney said that, as a drunkard, he doesn't know how he does the things he does.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants:
    • In "Krab Borg", where you can see the whole scene, but you still can't tell what happened.
      Squidward: That's great, SpongeBob. Why don't you work on this problem back in the kitchen? (throws him in the kitchen, but SpongeBob reappears beside him)
      SpongeBob: I'm serious, Squidward! Mr. Krabs is a robot! And I can prove it, too!
      Squidward: (looking around confused) How did you...?
    • Also occurred in "One Krab's Trash". Mr. Krabs tries to get SpongeBob to give up a valuable soda drink hat by standing outside his window and holding up a fishing rod with a fake ghost attached to scare him in his bedroom; the "ghost" warns SpongeBob that he will be cursed unless he returns the hat to its original owner, one "Smitty Warbenjagermanjensen". While Krabs does his act, SpongeBob suddenly appears right next to him, fresh from the cemetery.
      Mr. Krabs: (working the ghost from outside) Yes, yes, it must be returned to its owner riiiiight nooooow!
      SpongeBob: (walks in, covered in dirt and carrying a shovel) Hey, Mr. Krabs.
      Mr. Krabs: SpongeBob! (hides the rod behind his back) Er, uh...what are you doing here?
      SpongeBob: Oh, I was just returning the cursed soda drink hat to its original owner, Smitty Warbenjagermanjensen.
    • SpongeBob and Sandy manage to pull this on each other in quick succession in "Pressure". First, Sandy challenges SpongeBob to a race up a nearby mountain, and after she gets a clear head start, Spongebob rockets past her using an umbrella. As the camera follows SpongeBob up the mountain with no sign of Sandy passing him, he reaches the top... only to meet Sandy sitting in an armchair reading a newspaper asking what took him so long. SpongeBob then challenges Sandy to a footrace to the Krusty Krab, where he gets a similar head start, only for Sandy to pass him when he gets stuck behind a brick wall. As the camera follows Sandy to the Krusty Krab with no sign of SpongeBob passing her, she reaches the restaurant... only to meet an elderly-looking SpongeBob complete with beard and walking stick complaining about Sandy keeping him waiting (It's just a costume, but the point still stands).
  • Stanley: Harry and Elsie always appear to sing the song about the Great Big Book o' Everything, to the annoyance of Dennis. In some cases though, they literally appear out of nowhere (a pool restroom, a beach, an aquarium, etc.). Even Dennis lampshades it.
    Dennis: Don't you think it's rather fishy how they pop up everywhere?!
  • Star vs. the Forces of Evil: Used in a season four episode when Janna suddenly appears next to Marco in the middle of a conversation. While she does this often, he's incredibly confused in this instance because the character shouldn't have the means to travel to Mewni from Earth (or dimension hop in general). Janna shrugs off his questions, Star says that no one cares, and everyone moves on... until several episodes later, when the usual means of inter-dimensional travel is rendered impossible, which has all the characters remembering this incident and now caring very deeply about how she got to Mewni. Janna does have an answer this time: she doesn't know. It takes a while for the others to actually believe her.
  • Played straight in the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Thing is, the person being fled from is Raphael. He even says "You can't sneak away from a Ninja, kid."
  • How exactly all the Teen Titans get around town between scenes is a little vague. While Raven, Beast Boy, and Starfire can fly, Cyborg and Robin manage to get everywhere at the same time without any consistent means of transportation.
  • The rabbit in the Van Beuren Studios Tom & Jerry short "Rabid Hunters" uses this when Tom and Jerry are chasing it on a tree branch.
  • The Transformers: With a few exceptions, Autobots can't fly. When an emergency would crop in Bali or India or Japan, Optimus would yell, "Autobots, roll out!" and the heroes would drive out of their H.Q. into the desert. The scene transition bumper would appear on screen for a second, and then we'd cut to Bali or India or Japan, where our heroes have just arrived. How'd they get there? Who knows? In fairness, the Autobots in the original TV series were on good terms with most of Earth's governments, and could probably get a lift in a hurry when needed, but this is never shown happening.
  • Winx Club: Amentia does this when chasing around Brandon in her bedroom, though since she's a nimble fighter she probably just moved really fast.
  • It's Robin's shtick in Young Justice (2010). It starts to bug Kid Flash.
    • Even Batman gets in on the act, using it in the Season 1 finale against Robin.
    • He also clearly taught it to Tim Drake.
    • Barbara Gordon seems to have picked it up, too.
  • Zig & Sharko: Repeatedly used, with no explanation whatsoever, by both Zig and Sharko. It's something of a Running Gag that Zig is running carrying Marina, laughing at Sharko who's lagging behind, only to run straight into Sharko who was waiting for him, and Zig to (temporarily) escape punishment by suddenly not being where Sharko saw him two seconds ago.

Top