Anchored Teleportation

Scientist: Eureka! Now I can teleport myself anywhere in the world!

Talbo: Wouldn't you have to take one of those teleport things there first? Oh, but then you'd already be there. It kinda renders the whole thing redundant, doesn't it?

Scientist: Do you want me to remove your tongue again, Talbo?

— Phineas and Ferb, "Does This Duckbill Make Me Look Fat?"

Normally, Teleportation is a simple matter of knowing where you want to go. However, some forms of teleportation come with certain caveats.

Anchored Teleportation requires the teleporter to focus on a specific person or object to be transported to their intended destination. Two standard variations of Anchored Teleportation exist:

• The anchor primarily serves as a beacon to direct the teleportation, either by actively sending out some sort of signal that can be seen at an extreme distance or locked onto while in some hyperspace equivalent (especially when taking an Extra-Dimensional Shortcut), or passively having a distinct energy signature, which in magical settings can take the form of an aura/soul/general lifeforce. Some may be designed as teleportation targets, while others simply require the teleporter to be familiar with them, especially when the teleportation is magical in nature. A Blind Jump may still be possible if this type of anchor is missing, but will often be very risky.

• The anchor plays a more active part in the teleportation process, i.e. forming the second end of a portal (a standard feature of Portal Networks), reconstituting someone after Destructive Teleportation, or pulling a ship out of hyperspace (often a property of planets and other large gravitational bodies in sci-fi, but also a common Negative Space Wedgie). In Summon Magic, the caster themselves will typically serve as this anchor.

Works will also frequently add any number of extra miscellaneous clauses about what qualifies as a valid target, such as only working on allies, requiring a strong emotional bond such as The Power of Love or The Power of Friendship, or having some sort of code required to gain access.

If you compare teleportation to how electronic devices such as cell phones and radios send information from one location to another, this particular form of teleportation makes a lot of sense.

What happens if the anchor is damaged or (assuming it is a person) killed will also vary. At best, the user will simply be unable to teleport; at worst, they may be trapped in some kind of limbo.

Super-Trope to Travel to Projectile. Sub-Trope to Teleportation with Drawbacks. Not to be confused with Swap Teleportation, though it is possible for the mechanics to overlap. Also not to be confused with Warp Whistle, which is a trope about an object that grants the power to teleport. Compare Teleporter's Visualization Clause where the teleporter has to know exactly where they are going.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Dragon Ball: Goku's Instant Transmission technique works by focusing on another individual's ki signature and teleporting to their location.
• My Hero Academia: All For One can summon and send individuals to any location, so long as someone he has formed a connection with is at the endpoint.
• Naruto: The Flying Thunder God Technique is a teleportation jutsu invented by Tobirama Senju. It allows the user to instantly teleport to any location marked with the technique's formula. This technique can be utilized in battle by marking several kunai with the formula and throwing them across the battlefield to create teleportation destinations, as demonstrated by Minato Namikaze.
• Rumiko Takahashi Anthology: In a short story titled "Dust Spots", one of the main characters can teleport from one pile of trash to another.

Comic Books

• X-Factor (2006): Shatterstar can create X-shaped portals to any place where someone he has a special connection with is located. This power draws from Shatterstar's own energy and requires him to rest for four hours after use. His 2018 miniseries shows that he can open a portal to a place he has already been to as long he uses memory of sight and smell.

Fan Works

• Dungeon Keeper Ami: The most common type of teleportation summons a cylindrical area with the target inside to the caster's location. The target needs to stay in the cylinder until the teleport spell finishes activating.
• With This Ring: Transportation via zeta-beam can work with a single machine, which is how Martian Manhunter inadvertently ended up on Earth, but using it reliably and safely typically requires a "tube" at both ends. Thaddeus Sivana figured out how to fix the problems with a single-point system, but he isn't sharing. So, for most purposes, such as the Justice League's transportation, the system is limited to the points where they have placed zeta tubes.

Film — Live-Action

• Stargate: In the novelization, the ring teleportation system from Ra's ship into the pyramid only worked if there was something to be swapped on the other side. When Daniel and O'Neill get the idea to send the nuclear bomb rigged by Ra to the ship, the mechanism doesn't work until Ra's child servants are on the pad, swapping the two.

Gamebooks

• Legend of Zagor: Players who chose Sallazar the Wizard as their character can gain access to the wizard-exclusive Teleport Spell, which works only in the presence of specific magic portals (usually disguised as mirrors, paintings, etc) and transports them to a fixed location within Castle Argent. However, its results are usually impractical — Sallazar can perform a Dungeon Bypass and skip some dangerous bosses, but he will also miss out on specific items necessary for his quest.

Literature

• Ascendance of a Bookworm: Teleporation of both objects and people requires the presence of both a sending magic circle and receiving one. There needs to be a person who can give some sort of approval on the receiving side to avoid dangerous objects or people getting sent through those channels without anyone being the wiser.
• Baptism of Fire: While standard teleportation does not appear to require a physical component, in order to escape an area under an active teleport interdiction spell, Yennefer uses a random oyster shell to teleport to its place of origin. Since this is essentially a nigh-suicidal Blind Jump (and she does indeed end up in the middle of a sea and only survives by a stroke of luck), the interdiction spell was not set up to cover such a possibility.
• The Kane Chronicles: Portals can be opened between Egyptian monuments or works that are based on these monuments (e.g. the Louvre pyramid, the Washington Monument). Afterwards, a monument requires some time to "cool off".
• Mother of Learning: Under ideal conditions, the teleport spell lets the user travel to anywhere they have been before, with the mana costs being determined by distance. However, travelling down into the Dungeon results in magical interference that prevents regular teleportation from working. Zorian eventually finds a way around the interference by embedding a "spell of recall" onto an anchor object on the surface, allowing him to teleport back to it even from deep underground. The spell also allows the user to teleport to the anchor object even if it's taken to somewhere they have never been before.
• Princesses of the Pizza Parlor: Wayhouses are implied to be stone constructions that connect together in a Portal Network.
• Torture Princess: Fremd Torturchen: In order to teleport to a destination, Elisabeth le Fanu either needs to be familiar with her destination or have a teleportation circle drawn in her own blood at the endpoint. This is exploited by Kaito Sena in volume 1: he has her carve the design of her teleportation circle into his stomach (his golem body was animated using her blood), and since he remembers any information carved into his flesh, this lets him get her places she's never been.

Live-Action TV

• Heroes: The expanded universe introduces twins Victor and Valerie, who have the ability to teleport people from one twin to the other, acting as each other's teleportation anchor. Their power helped a lot of Evos evade Building 26, but normally the twins don't like being far apart from each other.

Tabletop Games

• Porté magic in 7th Sea's second edition works like this. A sorcier can place a drop of their blood on an object and concentrate, placing a Mark on it. A Major Mark allows the sorcier to open a portal and Walk to that object. Sorciers generally prefer placing a Major Mark only on large or immovable objects because placing it on a smaller one runs the risk of that object being moved when you're not looking. First-degree relatives are considered to always have a Major Mark on them.
• Ars Magica: Long-distance magic must be cast through an object with a Sympathetic Magic connection to the target. Teleportation customarily targets a location but can just as easily use a connection to a person, creature, or object, and a mage can always target their Familiar because their spirits are permanently linked.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • In 5th edition the Teleportation Circle spell opens a brief portal to a permanent teleportation circle that the caster knows and has permission to use. One can create a new permanent circle by casting the spell in the same location every day for a year.
  • The reverse version of the Succor spell works like this. When the material component of the spell is broken by the spell recipient, the spellcaster is teleported to the component's location.
  • The Shandaril's Tracer spell places a symbol on a solid, non-living object. At any later time, the spellcaster can know exactly where the object is, allowing them to teleport themselves or some other creature to the object's location.
• Monster of the Week: The Divine playbook has the Angel Wings special move, which lets the player teleport for free whenever they want. The only limitation is that they can only teleport to places they know well and to people they are close with. However, these restrictions are vague enough that any player can circumvent them, making Angels Wings easily the most overpowered special ability in the game.

Video Games

• ANNO: Mutationem: Throughout every major location, there are stationary teleportation devices that can be used to immediately travel between each one, as activating the teleportation device automatically connects them to the ones previously activated, allowing instant transport to visited areas.
• Divinity: Original Sin and Original Sin II have portable magic teleportation pyramids to simplify travel — activating one transports the user and their companions to where another pyramid is located. You find a pair early in the game and can find two more pyramids later.
• The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind:
  • The player character can teleport to a location by casting a "Mark" spell on a location and using a "Recall" spell to transport them to the place that was marked.
  • The player can also use the Divine/Almsivi intervention spells to teleport to the nearest temple of the Divines/Almsivi, even if they've never been there before. The Mages guild also offers a teleportation service between mages guilds.
• EVE Online: Ships equipped with a jump drive (capital ships and titans) need a friendly vessel to create a Cynosural Field at the target location before they can jump there. Since an active Cynosural Field is extremely visible, this will alert anyone within the system that something big is inbound.
• EverQuest:
  • The Combine Empire established a teleportation network across Norrath by erecting four curved spires pointing inward to act as a portal stabilizer while tapping into the energies of the Nexus located up on Luclin. Despite the empire having fallen many ages ago, wizards and other mages still use them to teleport around Norrath.
  • The Plane of Knowledge cannot be physically accessed from Norrath, instead requiring players to interact with mystical books on marble pedestals located outside of each major city around Norrath. This teleports them to the Plane of Knowledge, where they can step through other portals deeper into the Celestial Planes or travel to various cities on Norrath.
  • EverQuest II: In the 500 years that have passed since EverQuest's timeline, access to Luclin was cut off and eventually destroyed, and with it the Nexus that the Combine teleport network was connected to. The Quellethulian Erudites took it upon themselves to create a new teleportation network just to help reconnect the various continents of Norrath that had been cut off from travel by the cataclysms. They erected teleportation anchors in the form of a trio of spires that pointed outward. The first network failed, but the Quellethulians were eventually successful in reestablishing their network, and even established anchors at old Combine spires as well.
• Final Fantasy XIV: Teleportation spells work by converting one's body into aether and moving through The Lifestream towards an anchoring point in the physical world — in almost all cases, a mass of Aetheryte — and rematerializing at the desired destination. There is a special teleportation spell known as "Flow" that, in theory, would allow the user to rematerialize anywhere in the physical world without the need for an Aetheryte. In practice, however, the lack of an Aetheryte to anchor oneself at a desired destination means that the risk of becoming lost in the Lifestream with no way to return makes this spell too dangerous to use. And even if you manage to emerge from the Lifestream after using Flow, you run the risk of being permanently adversely affected, such as being unable to use magic or going blind.
• Half-Life:
  • Half-Life: Half-Life: Blue Shift establishes that Black Mesa's initial teleportation trips to Xen were aided by a focal relay device placed there by the first Survey Teams, though their newer teleporter technology doesn't rely on it.
  • Half-Life 2: The teleporter relay built by the Resistance is exclusively made to transport people between devices at two fixed points. The Combine, who never managed to figure out intradimensional teleportation on their own, end up copying this design to create a relay between Nova Prospekt and the Citadel.
• Heroes of Might and Magic: The Town Portal spell allows your hero to teleport to the garrison of an unoccupied allied town. In some games, it can only take you to the nearest town, while others will let you pick which town you want to visit. The Flavor Text for the spell in the fourth game explains that making a Blind Jump is incredibly dangerous and unpredictable, so casters need to have something familiar to anchor their teleport to.
• Landstalker: If you rid Tibor of the monsters that have infested him, you can use his trees to get around Mercator more quickly. Each tree has a mate, and only by finding both trees can you open the portals between them.
• Lost Ruins: Circular "Portal" installations can warp the protagonist to others that she finds.
• Outcast: The gadgets known as "F-Links" allow you to place a marker on the ground anywhere on the map and then instantly teleport back to it from wherever you are later. The limitations are that you can only set up no more than three markers simultaneously and that you can only teleport within the same world segment, not across worlds (you have to use the daoka for that).
• Shantae: Risky's Revenge: Shantae can travel between any two Warp Squids that she has awakened.
• Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne: The Amala Drums are the main means of quick-travel throughout the Vortex World as each of them are connected automatically to travel between once activated.
• Starship Troopers Terran Ascendancy: A series of latter missions involve devices referred to "Ambrose Teleporters", a series of alien teleportation pads discovered at a distant world that can transport users between the pads, as the Terran leadership believes can help them win the war against the bugs. The final mission does indeed feature an Ambrose teleporter, which the player will need to evacuate themselves from the bug hive after planting nukes on the Arachnid Queen. This also causes the exact issue referenced in the page quote: The briefing explicitly mentions that a team went ahead to set the teleporter but never explains why that team did not place the nukes, given that the teleporter is right next to the Arachnid Queen.
• Terraria: The Magic Mirror will instantly teleport you away from wherever you are back to your respawn point. You can also set up teleportation networks throughout your world that will teleport you to various fixed points.
• Toontown Online: Getting the ability to teleport straight to a playground requires a ToonTask within the playground you are currently progressing towards. Likewise, getting the ability to teleport directly to a Cog Headquarters requires you to progress far enough into the cog disguise levels to unlock. Averted for Goofy's Speedway, Chip and Dale's Acorn Acres, and the Estates, which immediately allow you to teleport there once you visit for the first time.
• Valheim: Portals only work in pairs, so each portal can be given a different name tag. Most players keep an unnamed portal at their main base for the purposes of travelling back there in case of an emergency.
• A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky: Teleportation facilities connect two such constructions to each other.
• X: The playable Jump Drive in the series must target a jumpgate in the destination sector, to which it teleports the ship instantaneously. Gateless jump drives do exist; however, the first one in X: Beyond the Frontier fails catastrophically at the end of the Justified Tutorial, while the Unfocused Jumpdrive in X3: Terran Conflict and Albion Prelude can normally^note One questline in Terran Conflict specifically targets it to a particular location in a sector containing a terraformer CPU ship that is destroying anything that comes through the gates. only make Blind Jumps to randomly chosen, uninhabited sectors that are unconnected to the rest of the Portal Network.

Web Animation

• RWBY: Raven's Semblance, called "Kindred Link", allows her to create a portal that will take her to someone she has emotionally bonded with in the past. Raven retains the ability to teleport to this person even if she does not have a good relationship with them in present, as demonstrated when she creates portals to her brother, her ex-husband, and her daughter despite being estranged from all three of them. Raven can also allow other people through her portals without going through herself or requiring them to be bonded to her, provided they are traveling to someone she is bonded with.

Web Novels

• Mother of Learning: Under ideal conditions, the teleport spell lets the user travel to anywhere they have been before, with the mana costs being determined by distance. However, travelling down into the Dungeon results in magical interference that prevents regular teleportation from working. Zorian eventually finds a way around the interference by embedding a "spell of recall" onto an anchor object on the surface, allowing him to teleport back to it even from deep underground. The spell also allows the user to teleport to the anchor object even if it's taken to somewhere they have never been before.

Western Animation

• Green Lantern: The Animated Series: The Star Sapphire rings run on The Power of Love. One of their unique abilities is creating a portal between their location and that of the wearer's true love. This is how Carol Ferris is twice able to reach Hal while he is in space.
• Numberjacks: Once launched out of the sofa, a Numberjack is turned into dust and can only materialize on a number that equals them (for instance, Four would have to land on a 4.) This must be done quickly, or else — as shown in "Seaside Adventure" — they will materialize somewhere completely arbitrary and find themselves unable to return home without assistance.
• Phineas and Ferb: In "Does This Duckbill Make Me Look Fat?", Phineas and Ferb watch a movie about a mad scientist creating teleportation portals that work between each other (inspiring the boys to make real ones). The scientist's Igor lampshades the pointlessness of the invention.
• Rick and Morty: In "The Rickchurian Mortydate", the US Government reveals that they possess their own portal technology. Said technology is a Cool Gate that needs to be physically deployed in the destination location first before it can be activated. Rick understandably mocks this limitation which his own portal tech does not have.

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