History Main / TeleporterAccident

* Creator/IainMBanks's "Literature/TheCulture" universe features short-range teleport devices known as "Displacers". Except in dire emergency, they are only used to transport inanimate objects because of the risk of this (the risk is in fact vanishingly small from a human perspective, but still unacceptably high from the point of view of the controlling AIs). Ironically, since transporting inanimate objects is not usually very exciting, most of the times we actually see them used they ''are'' transporting living beings (without ill effect).

** This happens to poor Odd ''twice'' in two episodes. The first time, he tries to bring his dog Kiwi to Lyoko with him, but the scanner somehow merges the two of them together. Suffice to say, this causes a ''lot'' of problems.

* In the Kameron Hurley novel ''The Light Brigade'', being teleported into objects is ''extremely'' common.

* In ''Literature/CharlieAndTheChocolateFactory'', Mike Teevee's attempt to become the first person transmitted by television results him being shrunk to a few inches high.

* During episode 8 of ''Machinima/FreemansMind'', Freeman wonders out loud after killing some headcrabs he encounters crawling around in the ceiling ducts:
-->'''Freeman:''' What are aliens doing up here, anyway? I guess they must have teleported in, but how do they know where to go? Oh, maybe they don't. Maybe they're teleporting into the walls. That could be why the building's falling apart. We're turning into the Swiss Cheese of the Damned!

* In ''WebVideo/PotterPuppetPals'', Ron trying to Apparate with Harry turns the two of them into basically a puppet version of Film/TheHumanCentipede. An attempt to separate themselves by apparating again only results in Snape also fusing with them.

[[quoteright:350:[[WesternAnimation/StarTrekLowerDecks https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lower_decks_transporter_accident_5.png]]]]

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[[caption-width-right:217: [[http://www.geekalerts.com/u/spock-tee.jpg I'm dead, Jim.]]]]

->''"''Enterprise'', what we got back didn't live long... fortunately."''
-->-- '''Transporter chief''', ''Film/StarTrekTheMotionPicture''

* ''VideoGame/DayOfTheTentacle: Played with during the ending section. [[spoiler: In their rush to go to yesterday in pursuit of the Tentacles and stop Purple Tentacle from conquering the world, Bernard, Hoagie and Laverne all use the same Chron-o-John at once, despite Dr. Fred's warning not to do so. After the trip, the three find themselves stuck together, apparently transformed into a three-headed monstrosity. After defeating Purple Tentacle and switching off Dr. Fred's pollution machine, the three return to the present and ask Dr. Fred to unmerge them. However, Dr. Fred discovers, via an x-ray, that they haven't actually been merged. They just accidentally became stuck inside one set of clothes. The three embarrassed heroes fortunately manage to pull free of each other without any adverse side effects.]]

* ''VideoGame/DayOfTheTentacle: Played with during the ending section. [[spoiler: In their rush to go to yesterday in pursuit of the Tentacles and stop Purple Tentacle from conquering the world, Bernard, Hoagie and Laverne all use the same Chron-o-John at once, despite Dr. Fred's warning not to do so.[[labelnote:*]]"Haven't you ever seen ''The Fly''?"[[/note]] After the trip, the three find themselves stuck together, apparently transformed into a three-headed monstrosity. After defeating Purple Tentacle and switching off Dr. Fred's pollution machine, the three return to the present and ask Dr. Fred to unmerge them. However, Dr. Fred discovers, via an x-ray, that they haven't actually been merged. They just accidentally became stuck inside one set of clothes. The three embarrassed heroes fortunately manage to pull free of each other without any adverse side effects.]]

* In one ''WebAnimation/{{hololive}}'' skit, Korone, Noel and Pekora discover that Shion got stuck inside of a wall while practicing teleportation. They manage to get her out, but through a convoluted series of events Pekora ends up trapped in her place.

* ''WesternAnimation/SheRaAndThePrincessesOfPower'': Taken UpToEleven . [[spoiler:Long ago, Mara learned her people had turned Etheria into a superweapon with her as the key. Horrified, she created a portal and hid the planet in a completely empty dimension, destroying all the First Ones' tech she could to prevent it from re-opening. In the present time, Hordak and Entrapta made a new portal, to return Etheria to the wider universe. However, with the portal capabilities still offline, the machine was unstable. Adora convinced Entrapta not to go through with it, though unfortunately Catra, suffering from SanitySlippage, turned on the portal. The result was the entirety of Etheria being stuck in a collapsing reality that took the form of a LotusEaterMachine with people, objects, and time sporadically disappearing. Queen Angella was forced to pull a HeroicSacrifice in order to prevent the ''destruction of reality'']].

* ''Literature/{{Bounders}}'': A year before Jasper was born, an entire crew of aeronauts was killed during a routine bound when they failed to materialize on the other side. Their atoms were scattered across the universe. The Bounder Baby Breeding Program that produced Jasper and his friends is supposed to prevent something like that from ever happening again. [[spoiler:In ''The Tundra Trials'', Lian, one of the bounders, suffers the same fate when she tries to bound away from the Youli's attack on the Gulagan space dock.]]

* ''Literature/{{Bounders}}'': A year before Jasper was born, an entire crew of aeronauts was killed during a routine bound when they failed to materialize on the other side. Their atoms were scattered across the universe. The Bounder Baby Breeding Program that produced Jasper and his friends is supposed to prevent something like that from ever happening again.

* In book 2 of ''Jade Blonde'': The heroine and her friend travel by satellite like TV signals would, Split into a thousand pieces and put back together at their destination. While they knew it was experimental they did not expect to switch voices and right arms.

* {{Lampshaded}}, but not used, in ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy''. In ''Literature/TheRestaurantAtTheEndOfTheUniverse'' there's an anti-teleporter ProtestSong that goes:

* A minor gag in ''Series/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy''. Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect end up in the right place, but wearing each other's clothes.

* In ''Radio/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy: The Hexagonal Phase'', this is how one of Zaphod's heads ended up detached, before being hooked up to the Heart of Gold as Left Brain. This is not the case in ''Literature/AndAnotherThing'', where it was separated intentionally, and may have been added largely so Left Brain, played by Music/MitchBenn, has an excuse to sing the anti-teleporter ProtestSong from ''Literature/TheRestaurantAtTheEndOfTheUniverse''.

* If you forget to eat your peanuts in the brutally unforgiving Infocom game of ''VideoGame/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'', being teleported off the Earth winds up killing you. Since the text directing mentions this, it was probably the easiest puzzle in the game to solve.

Compare and contrast with TeleportationSickness, where the process is merely uncomfortable... or at least whatever effects it has, even if bad, are not caused by it malfunctioning. (And yes, there is an overlap in a minority of cases.)

** The Floo network requires stating your destination while stepping into a fireplace. If you don't pronounce your destination clearly, like Harry did the first time, you'll end up somewhere else.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}'': Tintavex is a [[HybridMonster half-dragon griffon]] created when a wizard who was collecting the eggs of rare, mountain-dwelling creatures decided to complete his collection with those of a cloud dragon. He succeeded in pilfering an egg, but when the mother returned ahead of schedule he teleported away in a hurry... enough so to fatally bungle the complex teleportation spell. The wizard and most of his collection were never seen again, but the dragon egg was fused with a griffon egg the wizard had previously obtained and deposited in a distant corner of the mountains, eventually hatching into Tintavex.

* In ''Film/StarTrekTheMotionPicture'', quoted atop the page, the ''Enterprise'''s new science officer and one other crewmember are killed in a transporter accident; their bodies had begun to materialize in a disfigured manner, with the other officer shrieking in pain, before their signals were pulled back to the Starfleet Command transporter. Bizarrely, [=McCoy's=] famous distaste for the transporter is then played for laughs mere minutes later, though hours have passed within the film, by which time the faulty module that caused the accident had been replaced, and others had already beamed up successfully. In the {{novelization}}, the other unfortunate was [[spoiler:''Kirk's ex-wife'' (not [[Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan Carol Marcus]], though).]]