Perfect for getting in touch with someone long-distance.
When a character needs to travel to where another person is calling him on the telephone from, he will just simply get there lickety-split by entering the receiver of the phone he's talking on, then coming out from the other receiver that the other character is calling from. Often played for Rule of Funny.
A common variation in cartoons is where characters making a Split-Screen Phone Call simply walk over to the other side of the screen.
Compare Reaching Between the Lines and Television Portal.
Contrast Supernatural Phone, where a phone is used to use supernatural powers and other impossibly cool abilities. The difference between this trope and Supernatural Phone is that in that trope it is the phone that is magical. In this trope, the phone is an ordinary telephone, it is the traveler who has the special ability.
A character who can Ride the Lightning may use telephone wires as a conductor. Not to be confused with Electric Slide or instances of a certain blue police phone box vanishing into thin air.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In Digimon Ghost Game, Bakumon is able to travel through phone signals as an extension of most Digimon's ability to enter and leave electronic devices at will. He has Hiro text him to Kiyoshiro on the other side of town in one episode to rescue the others from the nightmare they were trapped in.
Comic Books
- The Atom can shrink himself down to a size where he can travel along phone lines, propelled by soundwaves. He leaves a metronome ticking at his end of the phone to provide propulsion. However, he finds out the hard way that phoning using satellite hookups results in a very rough ride for him.
- Doctor Solar is capable of travelling like this.
- E-Man, as an Energy Being, also has this as an ability.
- Superman villainess Livewire can do this. Actually she can use any electrical wiring, but telephone wires count.
- The Venom Symbiote can do this by thinning itself to a "molecular monofilament", though it can't bring its host along for the ride. At one point in the Sinner Takes All storyline, Eddie Brock extends half of the symbiote down a phone line to bond with the person on the other end (while keeping the other half bonded to himself) in order to perform a Mind Meld.
Film — Animation
- In Scooby-Doo Meets the Boo Brothers, this is how the titular Brothers reach Beauregard Manor when Shaggy calls to hire their services. Being ghosts, they aren't confined to physical limitations. Of course, Meeko gets stuck (creating a bulge in the phone line), so Freako has to force him through with a mallet.
Film — Live-Action
- The Matrix has a variation; the rebels use phones to jack their operatives into and out of the eponymous world. The requirement is that it must be a wired connection or "hard line," not the cell phones they use to talk to their operator (and expanded universe material makes it clear that only certain specific wired phones will work, not any random landline telephone). One way the Agents have of trapping them is to cut the hard line. It also goes horribly awry in The Matrix Reloaded when Smith overwrites Bane's Matrix-self then uses the phone line to download himself into Bane in the real world, taking over his body.
- One of the gags in the 1970s comedy short film There Are Aliens Amongst Us.
Literature
- Subverted in Good Omens when the demon in question has already entered Crowley's apartment the conventional way, ready to unleash the wrath of Hell on him. Crowley (also a demon) tricks him by darting into the phone line himself, prompting Hastur, his assailant, to follow him in a high-speed chase through a phone line. Crowley then turns around at the phone on the other end, races back through the line to his own apartment, and re-emerges just in time to hang up the phone, leaving Hastur trapped on an ansaphone tape. Used again when a tele-marketer calls, gets the ansaphone and thereby releases Hastur upon herself. Hilarity Ensues, but is sadly undone at the end of the book.
- Not exactly this trope, but closely related: In Known Space, Gil "The Arm" Hamilton lost an arm in a mining accident, and later developed telekinetic powers that amount to a psychic replacement arm. They're short-range (literally arm's length) and he can't lift much, but he can "reach" through solid objects. Where the trope comes in: as long as his brain is convinced it's within arm's reach, he can lift it, which lets him use the power through a high-quality Video Phone image.
Live-Action TV
- In The Adventures of Superman episode "The Phony Alibi", Bungling Inventor Professor Pepperwinkle creates a system for transporting people through telephone wires. As usual with Pepperwinkle, a gang of crooks befriends the naive professor, then uses his invention for evil; they commit crimes in Metropolis, then phone themselves to distant cities and make sure plenty of people see them to set themselves up with a (seemingly) perfect alibi.
- Done for Rule of Funny in Danger 5 when Khrushchev sends spy gadgets to Ilsa over the phone system.
- Subverted in the Doctor Who episode "Time Heist". After picking up a call, the Doctor and Clara wake up in a dark room with two strangers and a recording, which explains that they haven't teleported through a phone but willingly erased their own memory of what happened after they picked it up.
- In Good Omens (2019), Crowley tricks Hastur into following him into a phone, and then traps him on an answering machine tape. Unfortunately, he leaves the tape in the machine, and Hastur is able to escape through a telemarketer's headset when they call.
- Indigo/Brainiac 8 (a techno-organic being) does this in a Supergirl (2015) season 1 episode, specifically getting into a secure military base via a general's cell phone so she could hack into said base and launch a nuclear missile.
- In VR5 Sidney can transport herself and anyone anyone else into virtual reality by calling them up on the phone and slamming the receiver down on the outside of her modem. The callee has no memory of the event after she hangs up.
- A few episodes of Wizards of Waverly Place have the wizards travel this way.
Tabletop Games
- Champions supplement Enemies III. Due to an industrial accident Dr. Howie Reeves' body was changed into electricity. As a result he can teleport long distances along phone lines as the supervillain Thunderbolt.
- d20 Modern has the spell Wire Walk
, which transports you to any telephone you call, as soon as it's answered.
- In Nomine: An angel with the Ofanite of Jean attunement may travel as lightning along any suitable conductor, including telephone lines. They cause damage at their entry and exit points, though....
- Starfinder: The technomancer spell Digital Doorway allows the caster to "jump into" a computer or commlink and then teleport out of any other device on the same network within 3,000 feet, if it's unsecured or they can hack into it.
Video Games
- In the ZX Spectrum game Everyones A Wally, there are a pair of telephone booths which provide a shortcut through town in this manner — provided you can survive the Asteroids-style minigame in the warp space between. In fact, you have to survive the said minigame for a certain length of time in order to win the game overall.
- Ghost Trick has this as a game mechanic. The main character and other ghosts travel to different locales via telephone. In order to learn new locations to visit, Sissel first has to listen to a conversation while the phone is in use. In general, telephones can be used anytime to teleport to any known location... except in the past, which has special rules: 4 minutes before someone's death, Sissel can only use the phone when it has established communication with another phone, and can only travel to said other phone's location. This limits a lot his moves and generates potential Unwinnable by Design scenarios where you'll be stuck in a place with no way to return because no other call will be made in those 4 minutes. Ray, aka Missile, does not have this power, which is part of the reason he had to Chessmaster Sissel into saving Lynne instead of doing it himself.
- The Matrix: Path of Neo has this. Generally, you end up protecting a rebel NPC Captain and yourself until they/you can use the hardline to return to the hovercraft.
- Max gains this ability as a part of his new psychic powers in Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse.
- In the third Simon the Sorcerer game, there are several phone booths placed around the city and the countryside that allow you to travel instantly from one booth to another.
Web Original
- In ASDF Movie 9, the I Like Trains kid says his catchphrase into a cellphone. Cue trains coming straight out of the phone and crushing the guy on the other end.
- At the end of Return of the Cartoon Man, Simon pulls Karen out of Roy's phone, instantly transporting her from an apartment to the street he is standing on.
Western Animation
- In one Aqua Teen Hunger Force opening segment, Dr. Weird gets a telemarketer call and orders his minion Steve to "send the phone spiders", which emerge at the other end of the line to attack the caller.
- The Atom (see above) does this in his first appearance on Batman: The Brave and the Bold. Aquaman is impressed and asks him to do it again.
- In the Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers episode "A Fly in the Ointment", Dr. Nimnul invents a "modemizer" helmet that allows him to travel through telephone lines so he can escape after committing burglaries. It pays Homage to The Fly (1958) when Zipper ends up going along for the ride during one of his escapes, resulting in the pair switching bodies. After they are changed back to normal, Zipper ultimately defeats Nimnuel by dialing 911, therefore transporting him right to the police station.
- The Cow and Chicken episode "Cow Fly" has the Red Guy travel to Cow and Chicken's house through the phone.
- There is a Freakazoid! episode where the eponymous character travels through a power line. Helped that he supposedly has the power of the entire Internet, which at the time the show was made was connected by phone modems.
- In The Impossibles short "The Terrifying Tapper", the Tapper has a device that enables him to travel through telephone lines.
- One plot in Inspector Gadget involved burglaries being committed by teleporting the stolen goods through telephone lines. Since the houses being burgled would be empty, a trained squirrel would be used to knock the receiver off its hook at the right moment.
- Variation in one episode of Jackie Chan Adventures when Uncle casts a spell over his landline to Jade's cell phone. Which Jackie promptly lampshades, wondering how Uncle can do that when, earlier in the episode, Jackie sent him a fax and Uncle thought the fax machine was possessed when it began printing on its own.
Jackie: He can understand sending a spell through the phone, but not a piece of paper?!
- In the Kim Possible episode "Hidden Talents", Professor Dementor invents a telephone teleport device; Dr. Drakken tricks Kim into stealing it and bringing it to him.
- From Miraculous Ladybug, the Akuma Lady Wifi has this ability, but only as long as she has wifi reception.
- In Mr. Bogus, Ratty and Mole both travel to the wilderness where Bogus and Brattus are at, via use of this technique in the episode "Kung Fu Campout".
- In The Perils of Penelope Pitstop episode "The Boardwalk Booby Trap", Zippy went through the telephone lines from Pockets' phone to the phone booth in which Penelope was imprisoned.
- In the Regular Show episode "Fool Me Twice," the phone number that Mordecai and Rigby have to call for their chance to participate in a Japanese game show has to be called from a landline. As it turns out, it's because the "lucky" contestants get transmitted through the phone line straight to the studio.
- X-Men: The Animated Series: In "Time Fugitives", Cable uses his Bodyslide tech to teleport into a courthouse this way, much to the terror of a random guy already there seeing the '90s Anti-Hero pop up and quip.
Cable: Time to reach out... and touch someone.
