History Main / HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace

* In ''[[Literature/ThePolity Brass Man]]'' by NealAsher, viewscreens are usually blanked out while ships are travelling through underspace, but Ian Cormac suddenly finds that he can see something there. Apparently it's part of his [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence ascension to a higher plane of existence]].

* In ''[[Literature/ThePolity Brass Man]]'' by Creator/NealAsher, viewscreens are usually blanked out while ships are travelling through underspace, but Ian Cormac suddenly finds that he can see something there. Apparently it's part of his [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence ascension to a higher plane of existence]].

* In ''Webcomic/BohemianDrive'', one of the characters talks about the rumors he heard about wormhole technology as he steps into the teleportation booth, describing how it's this twisting, freaky experience. Then he subverts it by admitting that it's actually supposed to be quite smooth, as the welcome guy on the other side greets them with nothing else changing to indicate the change. [[http://www.bohemiandrive.com/comics/npwil/18.html Link]]

* In ''Anime/Interstella5555'', Hyperspace is a very funky and psychedelic place with big shiny objects that can heavily damage your ship. And, during the protaganists' return trip, it's where the BigBad attacks them as an {{Energy Being|s}}.

** In the ''TabletopGame/Spelljammer'' setting, the space between the Crystal Spheres is called the Phlogiston. While not as disturbing as other examples on this page, it's still dangerous. Besides some nasty creatures living in "The Flow", the multicolored "matter" that pervades it is extremely inflammable. Even a candle will cause a small fireball; any form of fire magic is extremely unadvised there. It as also some weird effects on living beings, like putting asphyxiating creatures into a coma rather than dying. Some travellers have tried using this property to spare resources while cruising the Phlogiston's currents, but there's no garanty to subjects would wake up.

--> -- '''Peter Griffin as [[Franchise/StarWars Han Solo]]''', ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuyPresentsLaughItUpFuzzball''

[[folder:{{Anime}} and {{Manga}}]]
* ''CrestOfTheStars'' has a peculiar form of hyperspace which is completely two-dimensional, except for a bubble the ships and missiles generate to travel in. Losing power and having that bubble vanish results in a particularly horrible death; people aren't compatible with two-dimensional topography.
* In ''GunBuster'', this trope is used as joke to scare the younger space cadets by telling them that ghosts appear on ships during hyperspace travel.
* The ''UchuuSenkanYamato''[='=]s first "space warp" jump is portrayed as a psychedelic experience, with afterimages, [[{{Fanservice}} Yuki's (Nova's) clothes jumping about a meter to the right]], and visions of the Yamato passing over prehistoric Earth, among other things.
** Parodied in ''TenchiMuyoGXP'', when WrongGenreSavvy protagonist Seina feels cheated when his first jump into hyperspace features no light show of any kind; he specifically mentions [[ShoutOut some of the weirdness from]] ''Yamato'' when he describes what he expected.
* In ''NarueNoSekai'', hyperspace used to be much scarier but has been somewhat "tamed" in recent centuries. Strange alien creatures known as Serpents live in the hyperspace network, and their mere presence can destroy a ship mid-transit. The Serpents are completely inscrutable, and nobody has ever been able to determine why they let some ships through and destroy others. It wasn't until the Avalonians (and later the United Stars) figured out how to fight the Serpents that hyperspace became safe and reliable.

* Franchise/TheDCU's [[AlternateUniverse Multiverse]], between [[FireAndBrimstoneHell the Fourth World]], the [[EnergyBeings Anti-Monitor]], and [[GiantSpaceFleaFromNowhere Mr. Mind]], is a scary enough place as-is (assuming [[ReplacementArtifact it even exists]]). But then it was officially stated that the ''{{Wildstorm}}'' universe was set there too, which brought in "The Bleed", the red gap between worlds (named for the space outside the panels of a comic book, of course).
** The PhantomZone, also known as the Still Zone or the Ghost Zone. It's complete whiteness in which you can get lost forever. [[JusticeLeagueOfAmerica Zauriel]], an angel, even called it "limbo" once.
** The entire DC Multiverse is basically contained by an enormous wall at the end of everything called the Source Wall. As seen in [[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8d/Source_Wall.jpg this]] panel, the Source Wall is an enormous screaming mass of writhing flesh, possibly composed of everyone who's ever tried and failed to discover the secrets hidden on its other side. Exactly what it looked like at the start is a good question, then.

* The times we've seen the dimension [[ComicBook/{{X-Men}} Nightcrawler]] passes through, it resembles hell.
* In the Marvel ''[[ComicBook/TheTransformers Transformers]]'' comics, there's also at least one instance of monsters living in the void between dimensions used as transport medium. When they got their hands on Ramjet, they tortured, unmade, and remade him until they got bored and tossed him back. The result: a not-all-there Ramjet who is simultaneously CursedWithAwesome and BlessedWithSuck: Being "tormented" at the hands of these creatures resulted in his becoming Unicron-class powerful, and keeping a connection to the void that gives him all kinds of RealityWarper tricks (above and beyond what he had during his time as an agent of Unicron.) Thanks, evil extradimensional god dudes! On the other hand, he ''isn't'' quite sane, and it's all he can do to hold his own atoms together. Not so much fun.

[[folder:Film]]
* Disney's (!) ''TheBlackHole'' features a scene in which using a black hole to travel at right angles to reality sends the characters into Hell. Literally.

* In ''[[BuckarooBanzai Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension]],'' The Oscillation Overthruster allows vehicles to pass through solid matter, through a [[AcidTripDimension bizarre dimension filled with weird creatures]]. One of the first scientists to experiment with it ends up with his head phased into a wall, and gets possessed by an 8th-dimensional nasty, turning him into the [[BigBad main villain of the film]].
* In ''Franchise/StarTrek'' usually the [[FasterThanLightTravel warp drive]] either works or doesn't work, but in ''Film/StarTrekTheMotionPicture'' a malfunctioning drive creates a [[OurWormholesAreDifferent Worm Hole]] that, in addition to being difficult to shut down, also sucks dangerous debris into the ship's path instead of deflecting it away.
* In the film ''{{Supernova}}'' hyperspace travel is visually terrifying. It's easy to imagine the energies involved destroying the ships and everybody in them. And [[BodyHorror what hyperspace does to living tissue]] if your suspension pod is not functioning perfectly [[FateWorseThanDeath is not something you want to think about]].
** A fate worse than death, indeed, when you considering that end of the movie, hyperspace even goes so far as to [[spoiler: take all the fun out of sex.]]
* In ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey'', the "Stargate" sequence after making contact with the Jovian monolith. The montage is interspersed with quick cuts of the astronaut's various horrifying facial contortions, just to drive the point home. When the sequence is done and the astronaut is in the "hotel", his face is covered in wrinkles, and he looks as if he's going insane.
** In the [[AllThereInTheManual novel]], the latter effect is explained as the result of Dave being kept in a kind of alien zoo until he dies of old age, then reverse-aged to become the Starchild. Presumably the film is giving us a very abridged version, or the aliens are just weird.
** Actually, in the novel, Bowman is only kept in the "alien zoo" until he ''falls asleep'', and ''then'' they run his memories backwards while transforming him into the Starchild. It's only in the movie that he goes through the process of aging a couple of decades every time the camera pans around to show him looking at an older version of himself in the next room, then becoming that older self when in the next shot. (Yes, it's just as surreal as it sounds). If anyone was being weird in the movie, it was Kubrick.
* In ''Franchise/StarWars: Film/ANewHope'', [[LoveableRogue Han Solo]] invokes this trope by explaining to [[FarmBoy Luke Skywalker]] why it's impossible to just blast into hyperspace and avoid Imperial ships: it's too dangerous due to the risk of accidentally hitting something or going off course. See [[Quotes/HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace Quotes]] page.
** As described in Literature below, however, the dangers are more mundane and along the lines of "Planets and stars are still in the way, and traveling fast enough to cross the galaxy in hours means that you can easily smash into one and vaporize."

* In the ''LoneWolf'' series, the Shadowgates allow travel between other dimensions and other planets. However, actually traveling through a Shadowgate is completely inimical to mortals ravaging body and soul alike. The two times Lone Wolf travels through a Shadowgate in the Magnakai series rob him of Endurance points. In the Grandmaster series, Lone Wolf can eventually learn how to shield his body from the worst effects of Shadowgate travel.

* LarryNiven's ''[[Literature/KnownSpace Blind Spot]]''. Since hyperspace is non-Euclidian, a human observer's blind spot "enlarges" to blank out views of this non-space outside the ship. This normally means that view ports seem to disappear into the bulkheads, no big deal -- although, in one tale, Beowulf Shaeffer makes the mistake of looking out past his ship's disintegrated hull into it and forgets how to see, even ''forgets he has eyes'', until he can force his gaze back to his control panel.
** The Blind Spot has the unfortunate habit of getting bigger as times goes on in the minds of a sizable chunk of humanity. This eventually drives humans crazy; no commercial starship has windows in the bulkheads for fear that 40% of their passengers will be reduced to permanent, incurable insanity.

** In later ''{{Ringworld}}'' books, ''things'' living in hyperspace were also mentioned.
*** [[spoiler:The reason that the things in hyperspace are visible is that it turns out that hyperspace is comprehensible near a large mass. It also appears that what's previously been destroying ships in hyperspace near massive objects is the things in hyperspace are EATING THEM. This makes Beowulf Shaeffer's wacky theory in The Borderland of Sol actually correct, as well as makes it possible to save the Ringworld from Earth.]]
** In ''TheMoteInGodsEye'', the instant travel thing (NOT Known Space hyperspace) confuses people and breaks computers.
* While no spacecraft are involved in Creator/RobertAHeinlein's ''Literature/AndHeBuiltACrookedHouse'', there is a spot in the tesseract home where the protagonists look past a fourth-dimensional corner and see -- nothing. A space where nothing we can understand or perceive exists, not even blackness. The characters decide that permanently covering that particular window is probably a REALLY GOOD decorating idea.
* GordonRDickson's ''ChildeCycle'' stories have passengers and crew taking some sort of tranquillizer before a jump, because of the effect hyperspace has on the human nervous system. When Donal Graeme stages a daring raid against an enemy planet in ''Dorsai!'', he uses multiple swift hyperspace jumps to simulate a huge armada attacking his enemy, even though it drives him and his crew to the edge of collapse, with each jump leaving them more and more in pain and disorientation.
* W. J. Stuart's novelization of ''ForbiddenPlanet'' has a scene where Doctor Ostrow looking out a viewplate into hyperspace, seeing nothing, under which is a suggestion of distorted stars rushing past at incredible speed. He turns off the 'plate ''fast''.
* TimothyZahn's ''Cascade Point'' has a hyperspace which shows you AlternateUniverse versions of yourself. Implied to be very disturbing, as it's essentially showing you all the other paths your life could have taken.
** Up to and including "gaps" in the pattern... where your alternate self is dead. For that reason and many others, it's extremely disturbing to most people, to the point that everyone on a ship except the pilot is sedated through the experience.

** In the novel ''[[{{Foundation}} Foundation and Empire]]'', is shown that traveling in hyperspace while being close to a big gravity source (like a planet) is harmful and possibly lethal.
* RaymondEFeist's ''[[TheRiftwarCycle Riftwar]]'' books have a form of magical hyperspace, which happens to be filled with a race of precursors that even some Gods fear. Opening a rift is a really, really bad idea.
* The Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse has a [[http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hyperspace Hyperspace]] that's rather less dangerous than some of the other examples, but there are risks. A ship in hyperspace doesn't properly exist in realspace, but can be brought out by gravity wells. In the case of planets and asteroids that means appearing in realspace in time to safely change direction and go into hyperspace again; in the case of stars, black holes, and powered-up Imperial Interdictors it doesn't. That's why it's considered dangerous to stray out of established hyperspace routes, and mapping new ones is hazardous. It's also noted that getting ThrownOutTheAirlock is instantly fatal when in hyperspace, unlike in realspace when it might take a bit. One novel describes "Hyper-rapture", a form of madness caused by staring at hyperspace for too long; because of this, starships usually have windows that go opaque while in hyperspace.
** ComicBook/MarvelStarWars introduced "otherspace", a dimension ''beyond'' hyperspace, a weird place with its own inhuman inhabitants; the effect is spoiled when said inhabitants are pretty much just big (read: Wookiee-sized) mean [[InsectoidAliens bugs]], who later turned out to have come from realspace to begin with.
** Staring into hyperspace for an extended period of time, if it doesn't give you "hyper-rapture", is said to make most people increasingly uneasy. It doesn't look "right." ''Literature/DeathStar'' quietly underlines Darth Vader's evil/otherness/disconnect from humanity by noting that he ''likes'' staring into hyperspace, and doesn't feel the usual relief when his ship comes out into realspace again; similarly, ''LukeSkywalkerAndTheShadowsOfMindor'' has Cronal liking it.
** This is mentioned when one of the most evil villains in the ExpandedUniverse is given a FateWorseThanDeath: by being [[AndIMustScream locked in an escape pod and ejected into hyperspace]]. One escape pod has enough food and water to keep him alive for months, non-opaquing windows, and a ''very'' small area; he'd either go stir-crazy, get hyper-rapture, or survive those long enough to die from lack of supplies. Not to mention that rescue is literally impossible. Very, very bad indeed. As the person who inflicts this punishment on the villain puts it:
-->"I don't know how long you will survive there. I do know that you will die there.
-->Die slowly."

** In "Han Solo at Star's End", one of the Han Solo Adventure books by Brian Daley (not to be confused with the Han Solo Trilogy by AC Crispin), [[spoiler: turncoat Torm]] is blown out an airlock into hyperspace. The victim's body is instantly and utterly destroyed.
** In the novelization for ''StarWars: TheForceUnleashed II'', while the ship, The Salvation, is going through hyperspace, the Terror Walker tries to sabotage the ship's navicomp. While Starkiller battles it, he muses in terror that if the navicomp is deactivated mid-jump, the ship could either be blown to atoms or never return to realspace. Eventually, Starkiller defeats the Terror Walker by puncturing the ship's hull, causing the droid to be sucked out into hyperspace. Starkiller takes a moment to pity his foe, horrified by the thought of what it must be experiencing, even if it's a droid.

* Creator/StephenKing's short story ''The Jaunt'' features a family waiting to be instantaneously teleported from Earth to Mars, in a process that first requires them to be gassed unconscious. The father tells his two children a bowdlerized version of how the technique came to be discovered and why the gas is needed, skipping over the gruesome semi-apocryphal account of the first man to make the trip awake. Unfortunately [[spoiler:the son hears enough to be curious about what the trip is like, so holds his breath when the gas is administered. The father wakes up on the other end to witness his cackling white-haired son clawing his own eyes out: The physical trip is indeed instantaneous, but the mental journey... well... "[[DoubleMeaning It's longer than you think]], Dad! Longer than you think!!"]]
** Worse than that, there's a mention of a man who'd set out to murder his wife by sending her through a jaunt gate, and ''not entering a destination''. His lawyers argued at his trial that no one could actually prove the woman was dead, and the court promptly threw the book at him because the thought of her being lost forever in mid-jaunt, ''alive'', was so horrifying.

* Robert Jordan's ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'' has ''four'' different ways to travel long distances by magic. Three of them are basically different kinds of hyperspace (the fourth, simply called "Traveling," is truly instantaneous), and ''all'' of those are scary in different ways.

* The Gray Limbo in JulianMay's ''Literature/GalacticMilieu Trilogy''. A virtually addictive "nothing": there's nothing to see, but it's still hard to look away. Can drive a person mad. To top it off, upsilon field transition (aka jumping to hyperspace) is incredibly painful to intelligent beings, and becomes more so the faster you intend to travel once in the Limbo. So painful, the effective top speed of a craft is determined by how much pain a person can stand without going insane or dying. Humans top out at around 180df (light-years per twelve hours), with two notable exceptions: Jack Remillard, a bodiless brain, who tops out around 400df, and the main antagonist, who figures out a way to enter the Limbo in effectively naked skin just before his HeelFaceTurn, topping out at 18,000df, and then one of the primary causes of his HeelFaceTurn is being given a pain mitigator -- whereupon he travels several '''billion''' light-years to another galaxy in seven hops.
** The Ships are a race of [[SpaceWhale giant interplanetary beings]] who can be convinced to consume a passenger vessel and serve as spaceships through ThePowerOfLove. One of them made the same several-billion-light-year journey in a single hop, albeit dying in the process.

* In a CordwainerSmith story ''The Game of Rat And Dragon'', ships travel via a kind of Jump drive and hyperspace is a non-issue. On the other hand, there are Horrible Things (humans think of them as dragons, and are terrified - this story was written before OurDragonsAreDifferent got up any steam) lurking in the darkness of space ''between'' the stars. They can be killed with intense light, but human reflexes aren't up to scratch. On the other hand, cats think of them as rats...
** CordwainerSmith also wrote a number of other stories containing hyperspaces which are scary places. "Literature/ScannersLiveInVain" has long travel through normal space induce pain and suicidal urges in unmodified humans; in ''The Colonel Came Back From Nothing At All'' the eponymous Colonel has his mind taken to be a pet for ''something'' during the test of an experimental "planoform" drive; and ''Drunkboat'' has travel through space3 cause temporary insanity and coupled with inexplicable powers.
* AlastairReynolds's ''RevelationSpace'' universe also doesn't use hyperspace per se, but its FTL is still a pretty bad idea. So bad that using it carries an extremely high risk of retroactively erasing its users from time (i.e. they are made to die ''before'' the ship was launched). Even races that have been spacefaring for millions of years stick with slower than light travel.
** It's been said in at least one of his books that the use of FTL has caused entire CIVILIZATIONS to be retroactively erased from the universe.
*** There's also the [[spoiler: shadows]], who exist in a different "brane" of reality. [[spoiler: Releasing them is a very bad idea.]]
* ''Literature/HonorHarrington'': People become violently ill from "crash translations" through layers of hyperspace, a place where it's possible to run into [[NegativeSpaceWedgie sharp gravity gradients]] that will very rapidly shred even the stoutest of ships.
** It is also dangerous to fight in Hyperspace because the ships weren't designed with hyperspace combat in mind, since the vast majority of combat happens in Realspace. Due to how the ships work (they create a super-dense wedge of gravity, open on the sides and ends, making the ships effectively immune to incoming fire from above or below due to the gravity wedge. So, they don't have any armor plating on the top and bottom of the ships, because the armor would be more effectively used on the vulnerable sides and ends of the ship. In a gravity wave, ships can't use wedges (any ship not generating Warshawski Sails inside a grav wave will get dismembered very quickly, and you can't have sails and wedges at the same time), so even the most heavily armored battleship can find itself getting torn to shreds by a more manueverable destroyer if the angles line up just wrong.
** ''Literature/TheApocalypseTroll'', also by DavidWeber has an even straighter example. The higher levels of hyperspace are described using adjectives such as 'tortured', 'twisted', 'alien' and 'inhospitable'. Messing up a transition at such levels has a very high chance of disintegrating the entire ship into random energy.
* ''DragonridersOfPern'': ''Between'', through which dragons and fire-lizards teleport, is "black, blacker, blackest", has no reference points, and is freezing cold. It's also the dragon method of suicide... intentional or otherwise. (Going ''between'' without a clear mental image of your intended destination is a one-way trip.)
** It also has no air. Dragons can hold their breaths for a surprisingly long time, but this is rather inconvenient for their human riders.
** Prolonged and repeated trips through ''between'' also terminate human pregnancies. The Weyrwoman Kylara took advantage of this by using trips through ''between'' as birth control.
** This also can save dragonriders battling Thread. In the first book ''Dragonflight'', F'lar avoids being eaten by a wad of Thread that hit his face by going ''between''. The icy cold of ''between'' immediately kills the Threads. The series implies that this is the original use of ''between'', a method fire-lizards evolved to help them survive threadfall.
* In the novels that describe Creator/CJCherryh's ''Literature/AllianceUnion'' universe, entry into "jumpspace" is psychologically traumatic for most humans, requiring them to drug themselves with tranquillisers for the passage. A few individuals are able to tolerate the transfer and remain conscious "in-jump". They are nicknamed "nightwalkers", a term that suggests the mixed feelings with which they are viewed. On the one hand, they make excellent navigators, and are able to react far faster when the ship comes out of jump than their doped-up crewmates. On the other, the rest of the crew wonder what nightwalkers get up to as they wander round the ship while everyone is asleep...
** Of course, being a nightwalker is no picnic at first either, because time and space don't properly exist in jumpspace, which is why they're so rare: most sentient minds can't cope with the stress, which is why Hani and Mahendo'sat black out, and humans and stsho need tranq.
** It's harder on stsho: without tranq, they just die. Hani don't need precautions; the non-nightwalkers are just useless in jump (and they all shed horribly after). Methane-breathers, who knows. One of the scarier things about the kif is the hints that ''all animal life'' from their world are nightwalkers.
*** Chanur's "pet" kif. And his "dinner".
*** BTW, the kif had no problem doing this to captured humans. Kif don't need tranks, so...

** It's similar, though toned down, in the Hyperspace of her ''Literature/{{Foreigner}}'' universe, where hyperspace causes muzzy-headedness. While this might not seem very bad, hyperspace journeys take a long time in the ''Foreigner'' {{verse}}, so the unpleasantness gets amplified by social interactions and cabin fever.
* In ''[[Literature/ThePolity Brass Man]]'' by NealAsher, viewscreens are usually blanked out while ships are travelling through underspace, but Ian Cormac suddenly finds that he can see something there. Apparently it's part of his [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence ascension to a higher plane of existence]].

* Andalite ships in ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' are capable of traveling through Zero-Space, a horrible, totally blank, N-dimensional void. Ships passing through are usually safe, but in one book, Ax was catapulted into Zero-Space, and discovered the full effects of the void before being rescued. Not only was he swiftly dying from lack of oxygen, but the non-dimensional nature of Zero-Space forced him to see his own body from all directions, including ''inside'', even as his hearts began to slow.
** Ax also mentions at one point that, when morphing into larger or smaller creatures, mass is taken or stored away temporarily as a balloon in Zero-Space to compensate for the size discrepancy. If the characters sharing terrified looks of their mass floating in the middle of nowhere isn't enough, Ax also mentions that there's a one-in-a-billion chance that an Andalite ship traveling through Zero-Space may run into the mass, which would then be incinerated by the ship's energy shields. {{Squick}}.
** Well, that was the theory... until Ax and the rest of the team were pulled into Z-space by a passing Andalite ship and experience what is described in the first bullet. Essentially they were pulled along in its "wake" instead of being incinerated. Both of the above examples are actually the same incident, which would have killed the team if not for Ax using his thought-speak to contact the Andalites on the ship and getting everyone beamed aboard in time.

* In ''PerdidoStreetStation'', the universe that the Weaver travels through is described like a spiders' web with strands going through more than just the three dimensions and connecting every aspect of existence. It is implied that the physical universe the main characters inhabit is only one facet of this meta-reality.
* The British ''SonicTheHedgehog'' novels had the Warps of Confusion (aka the Special Zone from ''Sonic 1'') which Robotnik was able to tap into to teleport his ships around the planet. Anyone who's played the original game knows just how well those areas fit this trope.
** Fleetway's ''SonicTheComic'' treats the Special Zone in a similar manner. It's a weird place where physics don't really apply, and a planet and an asteroid belt and some swirly things can comfortably be the same place. The characters originally considered it to be some kind of insane 'other place' you really didn't want to spend too long in, and are shocked to later discover [[spoiler:it's inhabited. Of course, the locals aren't exactly ''normal'', either.]]
* In the early Creator/TerryPratchett novel ''Literature/TheDarkSideOfTheSun'', ships travel through "interspace" in which all possibilities are true. Most ships are shielded against the trippy hallucinatory results. In another book, ''Literature/{{Strata}}'', an Elsewhere jump can move your body so far that it takes time for your soul to catch up:
--> (a few seconds of vertigo, a brief agony of despair. Soullag, it was called on little evidence. Certainly ''something'' in the human mind refused to travel faster than -- it had been experimentally verified -- 0.7 light-years per second, so that after even a short jump through Elsewhere-space there was a hollow black time before the rushing mental upwellllll--)
* SergeyLukyanenko has different examples of hyperspace:
** In ''TheStarsAreColdToys'' humans have invented the jump drive, which instantaneously transports a spacecraft 12+ light years in a given direction (the distance is always the same). The jump itself gives any human on the ship euphoria like nothing he or she has ever experiences (the main character compared it to death). At the same time, any alien either dies or goes completely insane during such jump (the aliens have their own, slower, means of FTL). However, two alien races are able to survive the jump with their sanity intact: the Counters (biological computers) and the Kualkua (symbiotic shapeshifters). The former manage this by [[spoiler:putting themselves into a coma by mentally dividing by zero and causing an overflow error]], and the latter by [[spoiler:temporarily pulling the Kualkua collective consciousness out of that particular Kualkua]]. The sequel, ''Star Shadow'', reveals that jump drive is [[spoiler:[[YourMindMakesItReal a product of human belief, not actual science. That is why it only works for humans]]]]. There also exists a network of planets connected by Shadow Gates, with the side effect of the Gates reading you and putting you wherever they deem fit.
*** Geometers have managed to combine both types of FTL travel into one: they take the ship into slow FTL hyperspace and then start jumping using the same method as humans. Apparently, this neither produces euphoria in humans nor is fatal to aliens and allows a ship to cross vast interstellar distances in a matter of hours. The protagonist realizes that, as soon as the Conclave finds out about this, Earth is screwed. [[spoiler:He doesn't know yet that the system won't work without a human.]]

** In ''LineOfDelirium'' hyperspace is pretty much Sci-Fi normal, except for several daredevil stunts pulled by the protagonists. Those are launching an escape pod from hyperspace into regular space (without any guarantee of entering regular space anywhere near a planet) and later holding an entire battleship hostage by threatening to leave hyperspace at light-speed. [[spoiler: The protagonists leave the ship and drop into regular space; ship and crew manage to survive the light speed space entry, thus being propelled into the future by Einstein's laws.]]
*** The first novel also mentions that there's always a chance your ship could randomly blow up in hyperspace, if its interphaser doesn't hold hyperspace ''outside'' the ship. This is likely more of a risk with privately-owned ships.
* Pavel Shumil takes the Zero-T-systems of the Strugatski's ''NoonUniverse'' and makes them actual 12D ways in our 4D space. At least one inhabitable planet found is actually a shifted Earth. As the coordinates slowly change, a protagonist is left behind.
* WilliamGibson's short story ''Hinterlands'' describes a point in space between Earth and Mars in which space ships radiating energy at "the broadcast frequency of the hydrogen atom" disappear. Sometimes they return, sometimes with some fragment of an alien culture. The alien artefact may be useless or invaluable. But the returning pilots are always dead on arrival or the strongest of them make it through a few weeks of catatonia or drooling madness before committing suicide.
* In DavidDrake's ''Literature/{{RCN}}'' series, ships generate a bubble universe around themselves to travel through the "Matrix" (no relation) of fourth-dimensional space, outside the normal universe where the normal physical laws apply. Too much time spent in the Matrix takes a toll on the human brain, and crews start to see things that aren't there, though it's implied that in some cases they may be seeing into alternate realities rather than hallucinating. Entering and leaving the Matrix is also usually quite unpleasant, and unpleasant in an imaginatively different way each time. Except in ''What Distant Deeps'', where [[spoiler:Adele becomes omniscient]] during one extraction.

* The Gap that Stephen R Donaldson's ''GapCycle'' is named after isn't in itself more dangerous than regular space travel, but it ''does'' have some... unfortunate effects on the brains of a certain small percentage of humans that pass through it. This "Gap sickness" can manifest as just about any sort of mental illness, it is entirely incurable, and there is no way to predict who will contract it without actually sending them through the Gap and seeing who goes insane.
* Anytime ''TheLostFleet'' enters jump space the characters always get uneasy feelings and are only too relieved to get out. Jump space is considered so awful that to be thrown out into it is a fate only consigned to those convicted of treason.
* In ''Speaker for the Dead'' trilogy of the ''EndersGame'' series, a highly advanced AI is able to move things instantly from any point in the universe to any other as long as it has a clear understanding of the objects/people it's moving, as well as their origin and destination points. It does this by moving them outside of the universe. The weirdest part is that if a person spends any noticeable length of time "outside", [[spoiler:they can consciously or sub-consciously manifest anything their brain can imagine and bring it back into the real world with them... including people]].
** Worse, if [[spoiler:Jane]] is unable to keep all the data about the inanimate objects (living things naturally hold themselves together using [[MinovskyParticle philotes]]), the living things make it back among a chunk of matter that used to be a spaceship. God help you if your destination is the vacuum of space. Also, if [[spoiler:Jane]] miscalculates the destination point, you can end up inside a solid object with no way out.

* Literature/TheDresdenFiles has the Nevernever, an alternate dimension/spirit world that exists alongside our reality. The Nevernever's distances are non-linear and often connected to points in the real world, meaning that it's possible to go into it, walk five feet, and emerge a destination thousands of miles away. Unfortunately, the closest parts of the Nevernever to our world are the lands of Fairie, which are populated by all kinds of dangerous beasts and hostile sentient beings. It's also entirely possible that you will open a portal to the Nevernever and emerge beneath a lake of acid or inside a volcano.
* The {{Dune}} universe has hyperspace only being successfully navigated by, well, Navigators, who are creatures so addicted to Spice that its physically transformed them into something totally alien. The addiction gives them the ability to see into the future and plot a course that will bring them to their destination. One wonders how many ships were lost before the figured out the whole "Mutate the volunteer" aspect.
** According to the prequel series of the son (Brian Herbert) of the author (Frank Herbert) of the original trilogies, a lot.
*** Specifically, because of the anti-machine backlash happening during the [[RobotWar Butlerian Jihad]], Norma Cenva, the inventor of this new type of FTL (another, slower, type exists) is forbidden from installing computers into the ships to reduce the risk of CriticalExistenceFailure. Thus, the loss rate is ''20%''. One out of five ships never returns. Considering the armada's ships are mostly crewed by religious fanatics, they don't care.
* {{Dragonlance}} has a very tragic example of this. In the Age of Dreams, the Wizard Conclave created five portals to link the five Towers of High Sorcery. Unfortunately, in creating an extraplanar means of rapid transit between them, they also unknowingly created a link to the Abyss. Takhisis, never one to miss an opportunity to come into the world, gave a black-robed mage a dream in which she told him that she was a beautiful woman trapped in another plane and that he was the only one who could save her. He fell for it completely. Ever wonder how the Third Dragon War that Huma fought in started? Well...

* In ''The Bad Place'' by DeanKoontz, one character has uncontrolled subconscious teleportation abilities. It wouldn't be this trope, except that he frequently visits an alien planet where space lobsters are used to grow red diamonds. Not to mention, every time he jumps, he suffers a small TeleporterAccident.
* While not hyperspace per se the dimension dwelt in by the Hounds of Tindalos (in Frank Belknap Long and later H.P. Lovecraft) is a pretty nasty place to be, as if you travel through it you set the Hound on you, and as they can enter the world through any angle, and will never stop, this is bad to say the least.
* Creator/RandallGarrett's [[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32347/32347-h/32347-h.htm "Time Fuze"]] has the first team to use the hyperdrive jump to Alpha Centauri only to find the star blowing up. When they try to get back to Earth, it turns out [[spoiler:the drive makes suns blow up when it departs as well as when it arrives]]

* In AnneMcCaffrey's [[Literature/TheShipWho Brainship]] series, FTL drive is pretty tame - some people react to it with temporary nausea, and there's always a lingering sense of unreality, but it's perfectly normal and safe. Singularity drive, on the other hand... involves "translating" between two linked, mapped nodes instantaneously by taking a mathematical jaunt through several realities, all of which inflict temporary body horrors on the poor passengers. The usual transit time is on the order of seconds. However, sometimes ships get stuck, at which the horrors can last for ''weeks''. One notable example involved a brainship having to burn out dozens of powerful processors, put down a mutiny, and finish the translation using a handful of known good processors (including the graphics processor for the screens and a processor or two donated from the body of a cyborg), all while looping between two realities that turned your teeth to rotten mush in one and long stabbing needles in another.
* While there is nothing inherently bad about hypersphere in ''TheHistoryOfTheGalaxy'' books, it's essentially an empty dimension (or anomaly, as the author prefers to call it). It's pitch black there. The only navigational tool that works in hypersphere is the mass-detector, which measures the "energy pressure" around the ship to determine what sort of objects lie in normal space. Early human hyperdrive-equipped ships were flying totally blind, and many were never heard from again (either they ended up in empty systems or materialized inside stellar bodies). All others ended up in random star systems with not enough power for a second jump, resulting in a lot of [[LostColony Lost Colonies]]. The first human ship to end up in hypersphere wasn't even equipped with a hyperdrive. It was humanity's first extrasolar vessel, the colony ship ''Alpha'' (also the largest ship ever built). Propelled by three powerful fusion drives, it was supposed to accelerate to .5c on its way to Alpha Centauri. The drives activate... and she sheer power tears a hole in space/time, sucking the ship into hypersphere.
** Additionally, hypersphere is an actual sphere (with the galaxy wrapping around it). At its center, the so-called 10th energy level, there is an energy imprint of the galaxy, around which orbit a number of planets, only one of which is habitable. No electronic device works there due to the "energy pressure" of the entire galaxy converging. However, the same pressure also enables some interesting abilities in living beings, many of these bordering on magical.

[[folder:Live Action TV]]
* Hyperspace in ''Series/BabylonFive'', while less scary than most hyperspaces in this entry, is still rather nasty. It has random currents that can throw you off course rather quickly if you have a navigational failure, no landmarks to navigate by other than the artificial beacons placed by the various races, and there's even some rumors about things living in it. ([[spoiler:They're true, and though some of them are just annoying, there are ''lots'' of things that are [[AlwaysChaoticEvil far from nice]].]]) And then there's the eponymous ''Thirdspace''...
** The First Ones have learned to use hyperspace rather well, with the Vorlons folding a pocket of hyperspace in on itself to hide a frigging enormous armada!
** The Shadows are even worse, being completely at home in the chaotic hyperspace. They never get lost and don't even need to open jump gates, simply phasing between hyperspace and normal space. In essence, the Shadows are true {{Eldritch Abomination}}s who have made hyperspace their plaything.
** You also have to worry about the fact that if your ship is destroyed in the middle of jumping either into realspace or hyperspace, you'll be stuck in that moment [[FateWorseThanDeath eternally.]] Other less nasty but still dangerous problems include freak storms and vortexes that are capable of altering the currents and eddies and throwing ships off course, something that can normally prove fatal. And in the ExpandedUniverse there's the Starshards; weapons from a long-ago war, made up of small pieces of neutronium that literally tear hyperspace apart as they travel through it, leaving a trail of realspace behind it like a comet's tail while at the same time warping the eddies in front of it.
** Hyperspace is in actuality a shadow of Realspace. Gravity wells from normal space create the vortices in Hyperspace, and the drift effect is due to the galaxy being constantly in motion. Hyperspace compresses the space-time continuum so everything is exaggerated while travelling through it. Hyperspace beacons constantly need to be readjusted and hyperspace lanes tend to change over the years. Another unnatural effect of Hyperspace is that it boosts the telepathic abilities of any telepath. Travel beyond the galaxy is said to be the hardest thing any one race can accomplish, and only the ancient First Ones have travelled beyond the galactic rim.
** Also, if you try to open a jump point within an already active gate, this will result in a very large explosion.

** ''[[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration The Next Generation]]'' had an episode about "transporter psychosis", in which perpetual hypochondriac Barclay sees things moving while he's in the beam. Creepy and effective, up until one of them gets close enough to see that they're ''sock puppets'' (well, not really, but equally silly-looking wormlike {{Muppet}}s), turning it into a {{Narm}} moment. It's also not entirely clear how Barclay can see ''anything'' inside the beam, given that he doesn't exist at that moment due to the way ''Star Trek'' teleporters work.

* Wormholes in ''Series/{{Farscape}}'' are treacherous and difficult to navigate, and cause all sorts of tricky problems with time and space and turning into liquid when you don't quite understand them, and are inhabited by bizarre and dangerous creatures- ranging from gigantic phase-shifting serpents to sentient "Pathfinders" of dubious morality. On the other hand, one episode dealt with the dangers of Starburst, which is a short-range emergency FTL technology that works by temporarily slipping into another dimension and coming out pretty quickly. Somehow, the ship Moya gets stuck and splayed out in other dimensions - one of which causes mind-splitting noise, another which causes visual pain, and a third which causes elation and euphoria, in addition to the normal one - and has to be reassembled by moving all four ships in unison through the dimension while avoiding the interdimensional gatekeeper monster... thing.
** The problem with that particular starburst involved Moya's pregnancy cumulated with other labor complications. As of some time after [[spoiler:Talyn's birth]], it is still said him starbursting would be dangerous. [[spoiler:He does it even before properly learning to fly, though.]]

* The [[TimeTravel Time Vortex]] in ''Series/DoctorWho'' and the [[TheVerse Whoniverse]] has been shown to be hazardous to objects that travel through it without proper transport, even killing companion Jack Harkness. It also hosts a few creatures, such as the Chronovores and other [[EldritchAbomination beings]], and, as of New Who, [[ClockRoaches Reapers]].
** The vortex is viewable directly from a special window on the Doctor's homeworld called the "[[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast untempered schism]]" where one could actually stare at the raw power of time and space, as the Doctor described it. He said that all Time Lord children were instructed to stare at it until they either became inspired, went insane or ran away. The Doctor of course, ran away. (Although there's an argument to be made for all three.) TheMaster, [[AxCrazy on the]] [[WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds other hand . . .]]

* Played with in the pilot of ''Series/StargateAtlantis'': Lt. Ford hazes the New Guy (Sheppard) by telling him that Gate travel is horribly painful... then drops the act, admits it's actually a lot of fun, and throws himself backward through the event horizon like it's a carnival ride.
** Played straighter in the [[Film/{{Stargate}} original ''Stargate'' movie]] and the first episode of ''Series/StargateSG1'', where travel through the Stargate was disorientating, made some people feel sick and everyone came through the other side freezing cold, no matter what the temperature on either side of the gate was. Oh, and it threw you out the receiving gate, no matter how fast you entered it. After the pilot of [=SG1=], ''Children of the Gods'', this was all dropped.
*** This was later explained as being due to Earth's lack of a Dial Home Device, or DHD. Normally, these regularly "update" the Stargates in the Gate Network to compensate for stellar drift. Since Earth's Stargate didn't have one, it was slightly out of sync with the rest of the network until they learned to compensate for it.
* ''Series/{{Andromeda}}'s'' Slip Stream network isn't particularly scary but it's like an ever-shifting maze that requires insane amounts of intuition to take the right path and incredible reflexes to steer in. Which is why computer systems cannot fly in it; they have no intuition, so they always only have a 50:50 chance of picking the right path at each branch (and your average trip through Slip Stream involves a lot of these branches, so the odds slip with each turn), while lifeforms have between 70% and 99% success rate. [[LostForever We don't want to imagine what happens if they ever take a wrong turn]].
** Well, an early episode showed what happens when you put a being who can predict probable futures into the pilot's seat. Trance ends up screwing up so bad, that it throws the ship 300 years back in time. Later on, though, she can be seen piloting without problems. Given what is revealed about Trance's nature later on, it's entirely possible she meant for the time jump to happen.
** An episode involves a probe sent centuries before in order to prowl slipstream and map it out. Supposedly, a complete map of the network would allow efficient, safe passage to any ship, whether piloted by a living being or not.
* An episode of the new ''TheOuterLimits'' featured explorers on a spaceship trapped in "trans-space," a hyperspace-like dimension that turns out to be the literal bloodstream of the universe, which is actually a living being.
** The "scary" part comes from the universe's defense mechanisms being similar to those of humans and actively seeking to destroy foreign bodies.

* VanDerGraafGenerator goes with the NothingIsScarier version in "Pioneers Over C.". A group of astronauts attempt to use FasterThanLightTravel to explore the cosmos, and when they finally break the light barrier, they enter infinite nothingness, losing all sense of time and awareness, unable to return to reality as we know it.

[[folder:Plays]]
* Subverted hilariously in Qui Nguyen's play ''Fight Girl Battle World'', in which [[spoiler:the Human is told to brace for hyperspace, which then turns out to be funky hip-hop music. Everyone bobs their head in time. The human eventually catches on.]]
[[/folder]]

* In ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'', faster-than-light travel is achieved by jumping into a parallel dimension called the Warp or the Immaterium, which is essentially the Afterlife. A [[YourMindMakesItReal manifestation]] of the [[TheHeartless thoughts and emotions of all conscious life]], also the location of [[OurSoulsAreDifferent everyone's souls]] and the origin, power source and curse of all PsychicPowers, but also a {{Hell}} brimming with [[TheLegionsOfHell soul-eating daemons]] and [[EldritchAbomination dark Gods]]. Ships need special Gellar Fields to keep the entities that swarm through the Immaterium from passing right through the hull and feasting on the minds and souls of all within. Even with the Geller Field, the ship needs to be covered in holy baroque symbols to prevent daemons from blowing it up, or worse. The normal passage of time is also completely irrelevant; it's impossible to know the exact age of people who do a lot of Warp travel, it's possible (though rare) for a vessel to disappear within the Warp for centuries or even ''millennia'' despite the crew only experiencing a few months of difference, and there is at least one documented case of someone entering the Warp and exiting at the same location ''before they left''.

** Even staying out of the Warp doesn't mean escaping this trope. Sometimes, [[NegativeSpaceWedgie Warp/realspace overlaps]] (known as Warp Storms or Warp Rifts) are generated that can swallow planets, star systems, or even entire sectors of space; the largest, the Eye of Terror, is ''thousands of light years'' in diameter. It's never a good idea to be on any planet caught anywhere near one of these, as not only does [[RealityIsOutToLunch physics take an extended vacation]], creating a lovely little WorldOfChaos, but the denizens of the Warp can freely manifest in an overlap, leaving them with plenty of time for Fun.
*** As luck would have it, warp storms sometimes have beneficial effects as well. At one point the Imperium of Man found a Stone Age alien species on an uncharted world, and as per normal procedure tasked forces to exterminate them. A warp storm blew up and rendered the star system off limits for about 6,000 years. Then the storm dissipated and the Imperium tried again, only to discover that in the interim the aliens in question, the previously mentioned Tau, had become a spacefaring culture more technologically advanced than the Imperium and fended off the incursion quite handily.

** The immediate consequences of (almost[[hottip:*:There is still the localized Geller Field, indispensable]]) unprotected teleportation are shown in the ''Literature/CiaphasCain'' novel ''The Emperor's Finest'': Cain is teleported what looks like a few kilometers, something people normally do while wearing [[PoweredArmor Terminator armor]], and spends a week in sick bay to recover from about three milliseconds of Warp exposure (while [[AntiMagic Jurgen]] shrugs it off in a day).

* The game ''FadingSuns'' uses an inversion: hyperspace (what is between the Stargates) actually is the ''safe'' way. The real problem is that interstellar space (the traditional boundary is the orbit of system's Stargate) is filled with shapeless Cthulhoid monstrosities going by the lovely name of [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Void]] [[SpaceIsAnOcean Kraken]]. (Something about the star, at least for some part of the star's life cycle repels the Void Krakens. The size of this safe zone varies with each system.) Still, spaceships jumping through hyperspace need to be protected by special shields, because otherwise people experience a strongly addictive quasi-religious epiphany. And fun stuff: before the discovery of Sol System's gate, there were several [[HumanPopsicle sleeper ships]] sent out. One of them was referenced in canon. The rest... Well, the general assumption is [[FridgeHorror it's better not to think of what could have happened to the passengers]].
* While not used for space travel, Porté sorcery in the RPG ''[[SeventhSea 7th Sea]]'' involves tearing a bleeding hole in reality, stepping through into an hyperspace-like dimension, and tearing open another hole to get back. No one knows what this dimension is like, because Porté sorcerers keep their eyes closed while inside it. Within this dimension, voices try to persuade or trick the sorcerer into opening their eyes. It's assumed that the sorcerers who never came back made the mistake of opening their eyes.
** It's not at all related that the country where most Porté sorcerers live also has [[spoiler:ghosts without eyes or hands that appear in its mirrors]]. No, surely not.
** In later supplemental material, it is revealed that [[spoiler:nearly all magic in the world of Theah weakens a barrier in a shadowy world that keeps an army of eldritch abominations at bay, and that every use of Porte magic to rip a hole in reality also rips a corresponding hole in the barrier.]]
* In the cosmology of ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'', the space between planes (sometimes called the Blind Eternities) will instantly kill anyone other than a Planeswalker or without serious magical protection (either fundamentally transforming the nature of the traveler, or bringing along a pocket or tunnel of normal space to ride in or pass through). The constantly-shifting currents of metaphysical energy look pretty bizarre, but at least they don't drive people insane... of course, that could only be because even Planeswalkers will be killed by it before they have a chance to go nuts.
** And then Wizards introduced the Eldrazi, Lovecraftian horrors with the best of them, the Big Three of which originated in the Blind Eternities before they were locked away in Zendikar. And ''then'' [[BigBad Nicol Bolas]] had to go and [[EvilPlan get Jace, Chandra, and Sarkhan all together in the same room as the prison lock...]] Nice job releasing Cthulhu and his two cousins, hero.
* In ''TabletopGame/{{Traveller}}'' different cultures have different customs and/or superstitions about it. Among them, Vilani dim their lights (from when having enough power to go into jump was an issue), Aslan clans light a sacramental candle, Vargr, as the [[ChaoticNeutral violent types]], beat up one of their crewmates chosen for the honor, and the Droyne use special coins. Jump space is not so much feared as it is weird. If a jump works wrong one could be misjumped to a random point, which could mean anywhere. If it works really wrong, one stays in jumpspace, and no one knows what happens.
** Technically, one only stays in Jumpspace for a few trillion (subjective) years. Long enough for protons, stable as they are, to decay and, 168 objective hours or so later, all that emerges is a flash of hard radiation.
* And the utterly forgotten 80's RPG ''Space Quest'' had N-Space filled to the bursting with Voidsharks, 'Temblons' (think kraken with tractor-beam tentacles) and other horrors that all seemed to find carbon based life a tasty treat.

* Given a nod in ''BattleTech'', where the Kearny-Fuchida jump drive is occasionally poorly looked upon. This is, of course, thanks to a long track record of damn near epic foul-ups that have happened. Time-lost ships, ships that have emerged with massive holes that look like they've been bitten, ships emerging without crew, ships that jumped too close to another ship and were fused, ships where the same happened and the still-living crew were found literally embedded in the bulkheads, and some ships just plain disappearing. Never mind the fact that the [[ChurchMilitant Word of Blake]] apparently figured out a way to keep a ship in hyperspace so their recruits have a more [[EverythingTryingToKillYou interesting]] environment to learn in. And it has already been established that looking out a porthole during a jump is just plain stupid...
** The things listed above are the exceptions to the rule - K-F Drives are 98% safe, as long as the capacitors don't blow. However, the understood mechanics of jump travel are almost as bad as the parts that aren't understood - Every single time a ship jumps, heat is manifested at the destination prior to the ship showing up. The more mass being jumped, the longer and hotter. But K-F Drives are instantaneous. This means that every time you jump, you're shunting waste heat into the past. For stupendously huge ships, that means your jump effectively starts before you even decide its necessary, and that Doctor Kearny and Doctor Fuchida not only made space travel possible, but snapped the space time continuum (And possibly Thermal Dynamics) over their collective knees.
*** Also it's said there are two type of Jump Scientists. One who can recite the theory backwards and forth but make little headway in it... And those who are completely insane but in-between their ramblings they make discoveries.
** One of the most dangerous things about the KF drive is what happens when a ship jumps: Any other ship within a radius of about one hundred kilometers will be shredded, at various levels of completeness from "kind of intact" to "on a molecular level" with the higher end being the norm. Though the process is instant, it's been noted that on occasion a destroyed ship will continue to transmit for several seconds after the jump flash ends.

* TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}} features the Paths of the Old Ones, a series of pocket dimension "hubs" connected to each other and to real-world gates by "tunnels" through the realm of magic. Since the Old Ones disappeared, the Paths have been tainted by Chaos. The tunnels are even worse, containing "reality bubbles" that travelers can be trapped in. These may vary from alternate timelines to a daemon's personal playroom.
** And if you take a wrong turn in the Paths, you may just end up in the Realms of Chaos. Or worse, the Warp.
* ''EldritchSkies'' lives and breaths this trope. As it turns out, the reason why people tend to go mad in the future of the CthulhuMythos is ''not'' because of [[GoMadFromTheRevelation secrets man was not meant to know]]-rather, its due to exposure to the [[EldritchAbomination hyperspatial entities]], and hyperspace itself is TheCorruption. As per [[LovecraftLite Eldritch Skies]], however, the [[CosmicHorrorStory expected role]] this would play is averted-the mental effects don't get really bad until Level 4 exposure and Level 1 gives you PsychicPowers-and anything lower than [[WasOnceAMan Level 5]] is treatable.
* The canal network in Heaven's Reach, one of the alternate ''{{Exalted}}'' settings in ''Shards'', is a sufficiently nasty place that it contains TheFairFolk, who dwell in the crazy-world that is the Wyld in the core setting, and all ships come with anima circuits to keep them from meeting horrific and bizarre fates. While most of the heavily travelled routes have had the evil kicked out of them over the years, the routes that were forgotten after the Malfean War have not.
* In the ''TabletopGame/TombOfHorrors'', going astral or ethereal while in the title tomb is not advisable. At all. [[spoiler:It's an excellent way to get set upon and flayed alive by Type I-IV Demons]].

* Although not technically hyperspace, the plot of the ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' series revolves around teleporters that work by routing the teleported matter through Hell itself -- the demons eventually notice the unexpected entry and even less expected exits and come through the teleporters themselves. In ''[[VideoGame/{{Doom}} Doom 3]]'', it's specifically stated that the Martian civilization's use of this technology nearly drove them into extinction, and it took a HeroicSacrifice on the part of their entire species to send the demons back and close up the portals again before they could conquer the universe. And then humans came along and [[SealedEvilInACan Unsealed the Can]].
** As with ''Film/EventHorizon'', ''Doom'' is itself often jokingly cited as an example of ancient history within the ''Warhammer 40k'' universe... which would mean the Doomguy has to be The Emperor... Oh hells yeah!
** If the demonic invasion wasn't bad enough even travelling though a portal to another place on Mars can cause paranoia and insanity.
*** Makes sense, since the hyperspace tunnel appears to be a bloody tunnel filled with screaming.
* ''Videogame/{{Half-Life|1}}'' has a similar premise: Xen is a parallel dimension that looks as if bits of planet and atmosphere, as well as predatory xenofauna, were transported there at random. Teleporters need to pass their signal through a Xen relay in order to return their loads to normal space. The relay is initially (when the technology was first created) a big machine attached to a crystal on Xen, but is subsequently "compressed" all the way to nothing; ''Videogame/{{Half-Life 2}}'' tells us that rag-tag Resistance teleporters simply swing around Xen like a dimensional sligshot, making teleportation cheaper and a bit safer.

* In the ''StarControl'' universe, Hyperspace is quite nice. Quasispace (Hyperspace's Hyperspace) is even nicer! But God help you if you use "Dimensional Fatigue" technology wrongly. The Androsynth tried it, and they all disappeared overnight. There are no more Androsynth, only Orz. Strange creatures who are difficult to understand, implied to be merely projections of some greater being from Hyperspace's or Quasispace's MirrorUniverse, and will happily kill you if you persist in asking about the Androsynth. Merely trying to research the fate of the Androsynth is enough to attract the attentions of {{Eldritch Abomination}}s.
** Meddle not in the affairs of Orz, for you are *many bubbles* and filled with *special sauce*. Also, you make them *squeeze the juice*.
*** Orz is not *many bubbles*, Orz is [[FridgeHorror one with many *fingers*]].
** Also of note is the fact that Hyperspace isn't a total walk in the park; according to the [[AllThereInTheManual backstory]], the shift between dimensions causes intense nausea, much like a hyperactive [[SpaceIsAnOcean space seasickness]].
** The eerie background music playing while your ship travels through Quasispace really helps get the "scary place" feeling across. Some of it sounds like the screams or yells of... [[EldritchAbomination something]].
** As some of the aliens describe it, Hyperspace is "above" regular space, and Quasi-space is "above" Hyperspace. The Orz come from "below".
* In the sequel (of disputed canonicity) to the RTS ''VideoGame/{{Homeworld}}'', ''Homeworld: Cataclysm'', the central enemy came from Hyperspace. This was a little disturbing for everyone, as until then Hyperspace has been thought to be perfectly safe (assuming you had a safe way of getting in and out of it). The Naggarok, an alien exploration vessel using an experimental form of hyperdrive, essentially went 'too deep', or something similar, resulting in it picking up a passenger in the form of a sentient biomatter [[TheVirus virus]].
** Interestingly, in an early script for ''Homeworld 2'', the radiation clouds from a damaged hyperspace core were instead written as an area of space in which ships would be sucked into fiery tentacled hyperspace gates. The script describes them as "looking like they lead straight into hell". This interpretation would fit well with all the other religious symbolism in the game, but you can see why they dropped it; The radiation shields the Hiigarans eventually implement are much more believable than "portal into hell" shields.
* In ''{{Elite}}'', a trip into hyperspace (or witch-space, as the game calls it) puts you at risk from ambush from Thargoids, who have a technology which allows them to lurk there. In some versions of the game you can force a hyperdrive failure by holding full pitch and roll while jumping, but you'd have to be either suicidal or very well armed to attempt it.

* In ''VideoGame/SwordOfTheStars'', the humans and the Zuul use a specific dimension called 'nodespace' to allow their ships to ignore the rules of physics. Unfortunately, nodespace is inhabited by EnergyBeings known as 'specters', who do ''not'' appreciate the intrusion and will occasionally cross over into real space and eat the population of one of your colonies to display their displeasure. The Zuul are especially at risk because of their manner of accessing nodespace: For an analogy, the spectres' annoyance at humanity would be like if you were sitting at home and someone came streaking through your living room, entering and leaving through your front door -- the Zuul would be the guy who entered your living room by drilling his way through the walls with a pneumatic drill, and exiting by drilling through the wall at the opposite end. [[{{Metaphorgotten}} In the nude.]]
** In addition, looking directly into Node Space turns out to have really bad psychological side effects, and after a few unfortunate murder-suicides all human ships now shut all external views of their ships while performing node jumps. WordOfGod [[http://www.kerberos-productions.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=17929&view=unread#p279177 has said that Zuul find node travel]] ''delicious and deeply comforting'', like ''burrowing into live flesh''.
** The one and only time a Liir tried to enter nodespace on a human vessel, the second it felt the psychic emanations from nodespace it tore open the ship from the inside to avoid going through. Thankfully everyone onboard was fully suited.
** The novel ''The Deacon's Tale'' reveals that traveling through Hiver gates is harmful to other races. The side effects can range from simple nausea to death by miocardial infarction. It's possible they're simply not calibrated for non-Hivers or that the Hivers have genetically modified themselves to survive the process.
* The Shadow Shard in ''CityOfHeroes'' is like this, if only because almost all the monsters found in the place are DemonicSpiders. Of course, the land scape is trippy as hell, and that does a lot to turn it into one of the most unused zones in the game.
* ''ToeJamAndEarl 2''[='=]s Hyperfunk Zone is a most totally ''jammin''' version of this.
* The scariness of subspace in the ''FreeSpace'' series has less to do with subspace itself than the insinuation that using it for FTL travel will cause a horde of enraged StarfishAliens, who may or may not actually live in subspace, with NighInvulnerable spacecraft to come and wipe your species out for their "sin".
* The ''Videogame/{{Halo}}'' universe's hyperspace is known as slipspace. In the early days of FTL travel, technicians sometimes had to repair the drives while in mid-jump, exposing themselves to the "slipstream" and risking injury, death, or even being [[RetGone completely erased from existence]] in the process. Even when the engine isn't operating, there's still a tendency for tools and technicians to turn up missing after a shift. Sometimes ships entering hyperspace will simply never reappear. Time dilation effects are present, which can cause unpredictable delays.
** It's also implied that slipspace travel has adverse effects on your health, thus the cryopods present on all UNSC vessels.
** Being ThrownOutTheAirlock simply kicks you back into realspace, though you do get bathed in radiation in the process.
** Opening a slipspace rift while in an atmosphere creates a massive {{EMP}} pulse and shockwave that can knock down a SpaceElevator.
** Trying to transition from realspace to slipspace when the slipspace drive isn't fully charged (at least on human ships) causes the ship to be blown into atomized bits.
* The ''EveOnline'' expansion ''Apocrypha'' added star systems that are only accessible by wormholes and full of strange, sentient and AlwaysChaoticEvil machines called the Sleepers. This turned out to be a case of GameplayAndStorySegregation: the players found these systems less scary than intended, mapped them, colonized them and deciphered the Sleeper AI to safely farm them.
** {{Canon}}ically, just warping and jumping through stargates are mentally traumatic experiences, to the point where ship crews are either permanently juicing anti-psychotic medication to keep them sane, or else are kept sedated when they're not actually needed for anything. A capsuleer's control pod does grant them immunity to this phenomenon, but considering that it tends to drive the user insane anyway, this could be considered a mixed blessing.

* The Halloween update of ''Videogame/{{Minecraft}}'' allows players to build a portal to "The Nether", a hellish underworld where every step you take translates to eight steps in the normal world. Where the terrain isn't covered by lava it consists of either a red rock that readily catches on fire or a quicksand textured with ''screaming faces''. The entire dimension is inhabited by herds of zombie pigmen and flying jellyfish who spit exploding fireballs that tear up the landscape and set the rock on fire.

* In ''[[VideoGame/SamAndMaxFreelancePolice Sam And Max]]: The Penal Zone'', when Sam and Max first use the power of Teleportation (outside the tutorial flashback at the beginning), the two travel through a mysterious multicolored void where Max is a talking skeleton.
-->'''Max:''' ''Enjoying the ride, Sam?''
-->'''Sam:''' Note to self: when traveling through Max's brain, ''keep your eyes shut.''

* In ''BatenKaitos'' the Trail of Souls that links [[{{Cloudcuckooland}} Mira]] to the rest of the world. The "wavey" black void is liable to get you lost forever in a monster filed dimension if you get lost, and it even freaks out characters who regularly travel it. MotoiSakuraba's [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKe8k8P2FNw music]] sets the tune perfectly.

* In ''Videogame/MassEffect'', the Mass Effect Relays are not entirely mapped out by the species of the galaxy, since they were supposedly designed by the Protheans ([[spoiler: "supposedly" because they were actually created by the [[EldritchAbomination Reapers]]]]) who did not really leave any complete maps as to where they all go, and an explorer has no idea what is really on the other side. Used to be, when a new Mass Relay was discovered the Citadel Council would immediately send out an explorer team to leap to the other side and map out the Relay's destination. This came to a stop however when one exploration team discovered the [[InsectoidAliens rachni]]. The ensuing [[BugWar war]] lasted a century, which was only won when the Council employed the use of the [[ProudWarriorRace krogan]], which in turn lead to Krogan Rebellions. When the Turians came accross Mankind tinkering with an unexplored Relay, it started a small war. On top of hostile unknown races being at the other side of a Mass Relay, there is also a chance you could run into other nasty things, like black holes or massive fields of space-junk.
** Actually an inversion; using the relays by themselves is perfectly safe. Using the FTL drives on the ship is perfectly safe (provided you remembered to discharge the static buildup so it doesn't fry everyone on board). The REAL dangers come from the ''other'' people using these technologies, such as the aforementioned rachni or the [[spoiler: Reapers]].

* ''ShinMegamiTenseiIIINocturne'' has the Amala Network, a series of Magatsuhi-flowing veins that stretch over the Vortex World that can be traversed via Terminals. Occasionally, travel through the network can get one trapped inside of it; as a result, you'll find the network infested with demons trying to gorge on the Magatsuhi in the network. It is also dangerous for humans to stay in the network for too long, lest they be subjected to BodyHorror, or worse.

* In the web comic ''Bohemian Drive'', one of the characters talks about the rumors he heard about wormhole technology as he steps into the teleportation booth, describing how it's this twisting, freaky experience. Then he subverts it by admitting that it's actually supposed to be quite smooth, as the welcome guy on the other side greets them with nothing else changing to indicate the change. [[http://www.bohemiandrive.com/comics/npwil/18.html Link]]
* Parodied (but of course) in [[http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=113#comic this]] ''Webcomic/SaturdayMorningBreakfastCereal'' strip.
* In the webcomic ''{{Outsider}}'', faster-than-light travel involves jumping between solar system's gravity wells. Miscalculating the jump can result in colliding with the star whose system you're targeting, bouncing off of real space until you eventually re-embed, being stranded in hyperspace, or being liberated into negative hyperspace. There's also the side effect (in non-Soia-Liron organisms, such as humans) of [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking bad dreams and nausea]] after a jump.

* In ''WesternAnimation/{{X-Men Evolution}},'' the dimension Nightcrawler teleports through is shown to be a [[FireAndBrimstoneHell hell-like place]] with lots of lava and monsterous red velociraptors dwell.....Despite all this Nightcrawler comments it was "Not a place I'd vacation, but still wild."
** This plot was also used in the original comics with Illyana Rasputin's "stepping-discs", which moved the users through the demon-filled Limbo.

* In {{Futurama}}, the Planet Express crew ended up in a strange level of reality that a space whale used to travel. It caused everyone to duplicate and say what they just said backwards. [[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Narcissist The one positive was that there were an infinite number of Benders]].

[[folder:Other]]
* Appears in the [[http://www.cracked.com/video_16581_greatest-medication-side-effect-ever.html Herpex]] spoof ad.
[[/folder]]

** ''Film/StarTrekTheMotionPicture'' had a sequence where the ''Enterprise'''s transporter isn't set up properly and the results are really rather unpleasant.
--->'''[=Transporter Chief=]:''' ''Enterprise'', what we got back didn't live long... [[BodyHorror fortunately]].

* In ''WesternAnimation/{{X-Men Evolution}},'' the dimension Nightcrawler teleports through is shown to be a [[FireAndBrimstoneHell hell-like place]] where monsters dwell... or ''did'', until they got out.
** However, this use of hell isn't "A place of endless torture and horror" but more like "Lots of lava." And the monsters are just red velociraptors. Nightcrawler even comments it was "Not a place I'd vacation, but still wild."

* LarryNiven's ''Blind Spot''. Since hyperspace is non-Euclidian, a human observer's blind spot "enlarges" to blank out views of this non-space outside the ship. This normally means that view ports seem to disappear into the bulkheads, no big deal -- although, in one tale, Beowulf Shaeffer makes the mistake of looking out past his ship's disintegrated hull into it and forgets how to see, even ''forgets he has eyes'', until he can force his gaze back to his control panel.

** In ''The Mote in God's Eye'', the instant travel thing (NOT Known Space hyperspace) confuses people and breaks computers.

* Continua-craft in Creator/RobertAHeinlein's ''The Number of the Beast'' don't directly show any scariness as travel is instantaneous. However there is a slight downside in that inventing one or even just working on the math required to invent one will get you murdered by demons. Well, actually hermaphroditic lobster-aliens who just happen to look like demons.

** In one of the Han Solo Adventure books by Brian Daley (not to be confused with the Han Solo Trilogy by AC Crispin), Han kills someone by dumping them into hyperspace.

*** The second book states that the Geometers have managed to combine both types of FTL travel into one: they take the ship into standard FTL and then start jumping using the same method as humans. Apparently, jumping while already at FTL neither produces euphoria in humans nor is fatal to aliens and allows a ship to cross vast interstellar distances in a matter of hours. The protagonist realizes that, as soon as the Conclave finds out about this, Earth is screwed.

* Vonda N. McIntyre's short story Aztecs (later incorporated into Superluminal) had a variation where the subjective measurement of time was affected; people conscious through the trip tended to die of old age. Passengers were thus kept in SuspendedAnimation for the trip to keep them safe. For the captain, however, the trick is to ensure the captain has no method of marking the passage of time. No clocks, and the captain has to have his [[BodyHorror heart removed and replaced with a quiet rotary pump]], ensuring they have no heartbeat they can use to measure time with. Most captains keep the ashes of their own hearts to remind them of the permanency of this... hence the title of the original short story.

* In AnneMcCaffrey's [[TheShipWho Brainship]] series, FTL drive is pretty tame - some people react to it with temporary nausea, and there's always a lingering sense of unreality, but it's perfectly normal and safe. Singularity drive, on the other hand... involves "translating" between two linked, mapped nodes instantaneously by taking a mathematical jaunt through several realities, all of which inflict temporary body horrors on the poor passengers. The usual transit time is on the order of seconds. However, sometimes ships get stuck, at which the horrors can last for ''weeks''. One notable example involved a brainship having to burn out dozens of powerful processors, put down a mutiny, and finish the translation using a handful of known good processors (including the graphics processor for the screens and a processor or two donated from the body of a cyborg), all while looping between two realities that turned your teeth to rotten mush in one and long stabbing needles in another.

* Wormholes in ''Series/{{Farscape}}'' are treacherous and difficult to navigate, and cause all sorts of tricky problems with time and space and turning into liquid when you don't quite understand them, and are inhabited by bizzarre and dangerous creatures- ranging from gigantic phase-shifting serpents to sentient "Pathfinders" of dubious morality. On the other hand, one episode dealt with the dangers of Starburst, which is a short-range emergency FTL technology that works by temporarily slipping into another dimension and coming out pretty quickly. Somehow, the ship Moya gets stuck and splayed out in other dimensions - one of which causes mind-splitting noise, another which causes visual pain, and a third which causes elation and euphoria, in addition to the normal one - and has to be reassembled by moving all four ships in unison through the dimension while avoiding the interdimensional gatekeeper monster... thing.

--> -- '''Peter Griffin as Han Solo''', ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuyPresentsLaughItUpFuzzball''

[[quoteright:301:[[{{Futurama}} http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mezmo-bender_8763.png]]]]

** The Eldar webway tunnels are passages through what is essentially another dimension between the Materium and the Immaterium, and though nicer than the Warp they're still quite nasty. Whereas the Warp is pure chaos, the Webway is more akin to AlienGeometries; rational and internally consistent, yet utterly alien. One of the Primarchs were lost trying to navigate it, and Commorragh, capital city of the Dark Eldar hidden deep within the webway, is an EldritchLocation with architecture that makes ''Film/{{Inception}}'' look reasonable.

** The things listed above are the exceptions to the rule - K-F Drives are 98% safe, as long as the capacitors don't blow. However, the understood mechanics of jump travel are almost as bad as the parts that aren't understood - Every single time a ship jumps, heat is manifested at the destination prior to the ship showing up. The more mass being jumped, the longer and hotter. But K-F Drives are instantaneous. This means that every time you jump, your shunting waste heat into the past. For stupendously huge ships, that means your jump effectively starts before you even decide its necessary, and that Doctor Kearny and Doctor Fuchida not only made space travel possible, but snapped the space time continuum (And possibly Thermal Dynamics) over their collective knees.

* Disney's (!) ''TheBlackHole'' features a scene in which using a black hole to travel at right angles to reality sends into Hell. Literally.

* Last but not least, the Necrons utilize impossibly advanced technology so they can simply ignore the warp. Their take on FTL actually works by going faster than light rather than taking a short-cut, plus as a civilisation whose people are made of living metal, they have much less problems related to warp sickness. Of note are their attempts to get the warp to influence their bodies and flawlessly combine metal and flesh (something only Chaos has managed yet) which go seldomly lucky.

* Creator/StephenKing's short story ''The Jaunt'' features a family waiting to be instantaneously teleported from Earth to Mars, in a process that first requires them to be gassed unconscious. The father tells his two children a bowdlerized version of how the technique came to be discovered and why the gas is needed, skipping over the gruesome semi-apocryphal account of the first man to make the trip awake. Unfortunately [[spoiler:the son hears enough to be curious about what the trip is like, so holds his breath when the gas is administered. The father wakes up on the other end to witness his cackling white-haired son clawing his own eyes out: The physical trip is indeed instantaneous, but the mental journey... well... "It's longer than you think, Dad! Longer than you think!!"]]

*** There are other, less mundane dangers attached to Hyperspace jumps. Spending too much time in Hyperspace may a negative effect to one's sanity, and a malfunctioning hyperdive is pretty bad news, since you are basically dead since it's impossible to jump out without a drive, and to locate a ship in hyperspace. Also, a faulty hyperdrive when makingthe jump in or out may end up in weirdness for all the involved.

* In DavidDrake's ''Literature/{{RCN}}'' series, ships generate a bubble universe around themselves to travel through the "Matrix" (no relation) of fourth-dimensional space, outside the normal universe where the normal physical laws apply. Too much time spent in the Matrix takes a toll on the human brain, and crews start to see things that aren't there, though it's implied that in some cases they may be seeing into alternate realities rather than hallucinating. Entering and leaving the Matrix is also usually quite unpleasant, and ''[[NightmareFuel unpleasant in an imaginatively different way each time]]''. Except in ''What Distant Deeps'', where [[spoiler:Adele becomes omniscient]] during one extraction.

* In ''[[VideoGame/SamAndMaxFreelancePolice Sam And Max]]: The Penal Zone'', when Sam and Max first use the power of Teleportation (outside the tutorial flashback at the beginning), the two travel through a mysterious multicolored void where [[NightmareFuel Max is a talking skeleton]].

** One of the most dangerous things about the KF drive is what happens when a ship jumps: Any other ship within a radius of about one hundred kilometers will, at best, go poof. Though the process is instant, it's been noted that on occasion a destroyed ship will continue to transmit for several seconds after the jump flash ends.