Thinking Up Portals

In science fiction, fantasy, and superhero stories, many times a character will need to get somewhere else in a hurry. And obviously, there are few ways faster than Teleportation. But simply appearing can lack a certain... pizzazz that stepping out of a hole in the air can certainly grant, all the more so if you generated it yourself.

This trope involves characters who can create holes connecting places together, AKA "spatial/dimensional portals" using their superpowers or magical powers, or by having personal portal-generating equipment added as part of a Cyborg Upgrade. Note that if the portal isn't the sort that requires you to step or jump into it, it probably isn't this trope, and if it requires any external equipment, it's likely part of a Portal Network instead.

If the character creates portals by physically cutting them open, that's a Dimensional Cutter. People with portal powers can sometimes weaponize them via a Portal Cut. A Dimensional Traveler may have this ability.

Compare Extradimensional Shortcut, where teleportation is achieved by moving through a different "space" (see also Void Between the Worlds), and Cool Gate, where teleportation is via moving through some device, like a standing portal installation. Also see Weaponized Teleportation.

The name is derived from the "Thinking with Portals" tagline of the Portal video games.^note Portal does not fill this trope, however; Our Heroine uses a Teleport Gun instead of any innate abilities. Portals in general, whether created with powers or machinery, tend to conserve momentum — "speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out" at the same angle, as if the portal were a normal door.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Black Cat: Echidna Parass can create gates that allow her to warp from one place to another.
• One of Doraemon's gadgets is the Short-Cutter which, as its name suggests, is a cutter that cuts spacetime, creating a portal linking two locations together. Another of his gadgets is the "Anywhere Door", a door that anyone can use to go to other places; whenever the door is "opened" to another place, the door will physically appear in said other place as well.
• In Digimon, the extremely powerful but rarely-appearing MagnaAngemon has "Gate of Destiny" as his primary attack. It can send enemies through a portal into Another Dimension and trap them there permanently.
• Dragon Ball:
  • Janemba, villain of Dragon Ball Z: Fusion Reborn, has this as part of his overall Reality Warper package. He uses it to send one of Goku's ki attacks right back at him and to fire one of his own point-blank. His "Illusion Smash" is him thinking up a portal and punching the poor sap from a distance. He sometimes combines it with an even weirder trick called "Bunkai Teleport" - turning into jigsaw pieces that blink out of existence and reappear elsewhere.
  • Super Buu and Gotenks' Vice Shout, where they scream so loud it tears holes in dimensions. He uses it to escape the Hyperbolic Time Chamber after the door was destroyed. Buu says if left unchecked, this ability could destroy the universe.
  • Fused Zamasu in Dragon Ball Super can open small portals near his opponents then kicks and punches through them. He later opens several and knocks Goku through most of them.
• Hunter × Hunter: Knov's nen ability is the creation of portals that lead to a Pocket Dimension in which he can create a near infinite amount of rooms to hold things ranging from tools to people. He uses this ability to get the infiltration team to get as close to the Chimera Ant palace without being detected by Pitou's vast En.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind: If there's no empty space on the other side of a surface that Bruno Bucciarati punches with Sticky Fingers, then the zippers he creates opens up a portal to a pocket dimension that can connect with another zipper.
• Tohru from Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid can make portals that lead anywhere, even between worlds, without any apparent limit. It doesn't seem to be a power that all dragons have, since Elma can't make them (she gets stranded on Earth as a result).
• World Trigger has Mira, a Neighbor whose Trigger can create portals, which she uses to rescue allies, but can also be used as spikes to stab enemies.
• Blueno from One Piece ate the Door Door Fruit, which allows him to open doors in anything, including air and people. One of his attacks involves turning someone's face into a revolving door and sending it spinning.
• FLCL: People with certain kinds of brains are capable of channeling something called N.O. to generate portals inside their heads. The series starts with Haruko activating one such portal in Naota's head (linked to the mysterious Medical Mechanica building in the center of town,) out of which comes havoc-wreaking Killer Robots and the occasional electric guitar and eventually the all-powerful, imprisoned pirate king Atomsk, whom Haruko was looking for in the first place.
• My Hero Academia: Kurogiri of the League of Villains has a Quirk called "Warp Gate" that allows him to create portals of shadowy fog.

Comic Books

DC Comics

• Atari Force: Tempest can create portals through which he can travel through different planes of the Multiverse, although he can only carry inanimate objects safely through the portals; living creatures end up destroyed.
• Captain Atom: Nightshade can teleport using existing shadows or cast disks of darkness as Extradimensional Shortcut portals through her realm.
• Legion of Super-Heroes:
  • In The Great Darkness Saga, the Master of Darkness creates space warps to move his minions through the galaxy. They open in midair, and stars and barren planets can be seen on the other side of the rift.
  • Gates from was a bug-like alien with the mutant power to create, well, small portals that he and his teammates could use to travel long distances. His portals also have sharp edges that can destroy anything they open inside of (like Ra's al-Ghul's arm). Because his power could often break the story, Gates was often a victim of The Worf Effect.
• New Gods: Both the New Gods from Apokolips and New Genesis alike can use Boom Tubes to teleport across interstellar distances. This is not an inherent ability, however; they use devices called Mother Boxes to make them.
• Sideways: Derek has the ability to open rifts in the fabric of spacetime at his fingertips and swipe them across the air to make them large enough to walk through to any person or place he can think of.
• The Shade: The Shade's shadow powers allow him to create portals.
• Superman': In the Superman/Masters of the Universe'' crossover "Fate Is The Killer", Zodac can create interdimensional and interespacial portals to travel between galaxies and dimensions.

Marvel Comics

• Great Lakes Avengers: Doorman has portal-based teleportation as his power.
• The New Universe: Sedara Bakut from the Psi-Force series can create door-like portals in space.
• Secret Warriors: Eden Fesi, aka Manifold, can open up tears in space and time, allowing him to teleport to just about anywhere in the universe. Unlike most teleporters, Eden does not have to know where he is going as his powers compensate and prevents him from materializing inside of an object. However, this only works of knows his location, if he gets turned around in a windowless building he needs to reorient with outside landmarks. His portals remain open until he chooses to close them. His one weakness is that his abilities only work in his own native reality.
• The Sensational She-Hulk: Martin Kribbee, aka Black Hole, can open up a black hole in the center of his chest which leads to a pocket dimension. There appears to be no limit to the amount of material that Black Hole can suck in.
• Spider-Man: The D-lister villain Johnathon Ohnn, aka "The Spot", is a living avatar for (or Dimension Lord of) an interstitial dimension that functions like a Portal Network. He has the ability to create an infinite array of black dots that function as Portable Holes, with each "paired" set of portals linking whichever two points in space that the Spot desires. He relies heavily on Weaponized Teleportation and Confusion Fu when fighting.
• X-Men:
  • Magik can create portals as her mutant power. It kind of blurs the line between scientific and mystical since her power is connected to a Hell dimension of which she is Domain Holder and Depending on the Artist her portals are drawn as fiery pentacles.
  • Another portal creating mutant is Blink:
    • The first Blink is the one from Earth-616 who most mutants thought died during an alien invasion by using her "blink wave" but ended up getting stuck in another dimension until Selene freed her. It wasn't known what her true power was at first; she shredded things apart by 'blinking' them to pieces with a visual effect that would only work in a comic book. Eventually revealed that she'd basically done a Portal Cut without knowing it. Eventually we'd meet a version of her that had mastered it, specifically:
    • The second Blink is the one from the famous X-Men story, Age of Apocalypse, who becomes the leader of Exiles. In addition to portals to anywhere, she can create solid-looking javelin-like energy projections that when thrown, will teleport the target to a place of Blink's choosing. She can Portal Cut you if need be, but is The Cape enough to not actually do it.
  • Shatterstar from X-Factor can create X-shaped portals by channeling his powers through his swords.
  • The Fallen Angels series introduced Ariel, an alien with the ability to open a portal through any door to any other door she wants. According to her, her entire planet is capable of doing this, achieving it through knowledge of spatial physics. An accident with an explosion mid-transit gave her the ability to open a flaming doorway in midair at will.
• Young Avengers: Miss America Chavez can kick open star-shaped portals between universes like she's shattering a plane of glass.

Other

• Astro City: The Silver Adept can open portals that allow her to travel instantaneously from one point to another, even across dimensional realms. The only exceptions are when mystical phenomena interfere with her travels, which require her assistant to help find alternate routes.
• Invincible: It's Armstrong Levy's power. The downside is it only can teleport him to a different dimension, but the same place and localization, which is why his first plan before becoming evil is to create a big machine and gather as many alternate versions of himself as possible to make that power better. He succeeds but unfortunately, after the explosion he caused by taking off his helmet to save Mark, it majorly changes his appearance, and he becomes one of Invincible's most dangerous enemies.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW): Eggman's new Hypercompetent Sidekick, Dr. Starline, is able to create portals to anywhere thanks to the power of the Warp Topaz in his glove.
• Touch (2004): Levon Carlisle approaches Cooper and tires to get him to fight corporations together in a magical fashion. When Cooper refuses, Levon uses his powers to make a portal in the wall which he steps through, then it vanishes.
• The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye: It's revealed that experiments by Shockwave have turned Megatron's internal mechanisms into a mass of SpaceBridge portals. When Whirl stabs him it results in Whirl losing his arm, and in his final showdown with the Decepticon Justice Division he channels antimatter through his portals to annihilate them.

Fan Works

• Constants and Variables, a BioShock/Harry Potter Crossover fanfic. When Voldemort detaches from Quirrell and goes after Harry, Elizabeth opens a tear in front of him, stranding it in the middle of the ocean.
• Linked in Life and Love: As in canon, Raven can make portals to people she has a bond with, but the fic goes into a bit more detail. She can create portals within a certain range of anyone she's bonded with—so, for example, if she's standing next to someone she's bonded with, she can make lots of portals in the immediate vicinity, which is great in combat. She can have a maximum of five bonds at once. She's bonded with Qrow (her brother), Taiyang (her ex-husband, actually just an old friend), Roman Torchwick (her brother in-law), Yang (her daughter) and Ruby (her other daughter). This limitation becomes a plot point early on, as she doesn't have a bond with anyone from her Bandit Clan, so she can't open a portal to them and summon help. Later, this limitation also means that she doesn't have a bond with Summer anymore, so Raven needs Ozpin's help to find her rather than just opening a portal to her. Assuming Summer is still alive.
• In Of Quirks and Magic, Izuku learns how to open portals at will from Dr. Strange and makes extensive use of them to disorient his foes, warp out of danger, and redirect allied attacks to hit from unexpected angles. By the time he gets to U.A., he can casually open a portal from Japan to New York.
• In Veritas Odit Moras, Taylor's second trigger pings on Vista, allowing her to create point-to-point portals by using circles of bugs as a focus. At one point, she even plays with it by using portals and gravity to throw Lego bricks around.
• The J-WITCH Series:
  • Tarakudo can use his Mark to open gates to the Shadow Realm in order to bypass needing a Veil portal to travel between Earth and Meridian, using the Shadow Realm as stopping point.
  • Jade, as the Guardian of Shadows, can also travel through the Shadow Realm, which they use to reach the kidnapped Tohru in "The Demon Behind".
• A Special Kind of Magic: Naofumi Iwatani can do this thanks to training under the Master of the Mystic Arts prior to being summoned to Melromarc. He not only uses this power to visit Queen Mirellia after running into her Shadows, he's also able to return to Kamar Taj in his home universe.

Films — Animation

• In Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, The Spot has portals all over his body, which he can detach and throw.
• In The Incredibles spin-off short Jack Jack Attack, the titular baby can make portals that he can fly through.
  • Incredibles 2 introduced a superheroine called Voyd, who can do this.
• North can create portals to anywhere by throwing snow globes in Rise of the Guardians.

Films — Live Action

• Blink from X-Men: Days of Future Past, can create portals, which she uses liberally. Tellingly, she was the last frontline defender to die in the final battle, and the Sentinels were only able to beat her through sheer numbers.
• In Warcraft (2016), by far the most common spell used by both Khadgar and Medivh is teleportation.
• How tessering is portrayed in the 2018 A Wrinkle in Time movie.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Sorcerers in Doctor Strange can conjure portals to other parts of the multiverse using their sling rings.
  • In Avengers: Infinity War, Thanos can do this over interstellar distances after he gets the Space Stone.
  • In Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Ghost Rider can open portals to Hell by swinging his chain. Interestingly, the visual effects used are very similar to the aforementioned sorcerers.
• A deleted scene in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has apparition as this with Dumbledore and Harry jumping into a silver portal and emerging from another one at the other end.
• Jumper: When a Jumper teleports, they leave behind an invisible portal called a jumpscar which other jumpers can follow them through. Paladins eventually learn to use technology to open these.
• In Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), the main power of the Rings themselves is to open up doorways to different places and worlds. Longclaw first shows their ability by using one Ring to send young Sonic to Earth.

Literature

• In the Russian Borderlands novel, theoretically anyone is capable of opening a portal to a world called Centrum baring the natives of the Centrum themselves. But it's not easy and most people may not even learn of this capability. It requires the person to be in some specific mental state which is unique for each individual. Some people need to become sad, angry or scared. Some need to get drunk or aroused. Some need to sing or meditate. Then there are some who need to feel an urge to urinate. It also only works at certain locations. Even then it might not yield the desired results as the portal may be too small or last too short.
  • On the other hand some people don't have to meet the "certain mental state requirement" but the other drawbacks still do apply. These people are called "universal conductors".
  • And then there's Max Steinhardt a.k.a. "Leaper" who is a superconductor. Not only he can open a portal anytime he wants but also can do it anywhere and even choose a destination.
• Cal Leandros: Cal calls this ability "gating." He opens "gates" between one location or another. The original intention on the inherited ability from his monster father is actually to enter the alternate plane where they the monsters live. As a half-breed, his ability to even "Gate" properly is exactly why they made him.
• In The Mortal Instruments, warlocks can do this, although the spell is fairly advanced. The Clave often hires them to provide portals as necessary. Clary can also do it, thanks to a rune revealed to her by the angel Ithuriel. However, it is not one of the runes from the Gray Book, and other Shadowhunters do not seem to be able to learn it, or at least are unwilling to try.
• Night Watch (Series): This is how powerful Others teleport. They create portals to anywhere in the world. In one book, a villain needed to get to the ISS, so he created a portal into orbit... but probably forgot to carry the 2 in calculating the destination, and ended up floating in space, helpless (the Others need humans nearby in order to use magic), until he burned up on re-entry.
• In the Nightrunner series, the Translocation spell works by creating a portal through which people and objects can pass. It was an evolution of an older spell that created a "window" between remote locations for viewing and communication.
• Oscar Britton from the Shadow Ops books specializes in this.
• The Wheel of Time:
  • The main characters rediscover the lost talent of Traveling, which creates square, razor-sharp portals between two locations. It only works in areas the user knows well, but a related talent, Skimming, gets the same effect a little more slowly with a shortcut through the Void Between the Worlds.
  • Androl, an otherwise talentless Asha'man, has such an incredible talent for creating Traveling portals that he can redirect offensive spells at will, throw the heart of a volcano at an oncoming army, and give his teacup endless refills.
• In The Demonata series of books, Kernel Fleck has this ability to create portals with the lights he can see from birth to all different universes and locations.
• Journey to Chaos: Creating a portal is one of the most difficult forms of magic. The first person shown to be capable of it was Nulso Xialin, a greater mage and a veteran ordercrafter and even then he needed a Background Magic Field created by his patron god through a monument. With this boost, he created a perfectly symmetrical hole between Roalt castle and Southern Ataidar so he could drag Annala through it and towards eternal slavery. For the second portal he tried to drain the required energy from her Seed of Chaos.
• Door in Neverwhere has the power to turn any mundane doorway into a portal to a location of her choice just by opening it. Her entire family has this rare power, but by the time the story begins she's the Last of Her Kind, and being hunted.
• A lot of mages in the Alex Verus series can do it. A lot of elemental mages have it as one of their Combo Platter Powers that isn't one of their Elemental Powers.
  • Alex himself has stones that open portals when he pours Mana into them (each stone opens a portal to a different location) that risk portal cutting him if he loses concentration halfway through.
• Some supers in Hero.com and Villain.net have varying forms of this instead of teleportation.
• How teleportation actually work in Jumper. Millie videos David teleporting and after examining the stills, they notice a "David shaped doorway" appear in the air and move around him.
• In the Whateley Universe, Gateway has found out she has this power. She has been able to summon beings from other dimensions, like Rythax, and also things like fire elementals. And she's learned it's a really fun power to abuse.
• Worm
  • Phir Sē can create portals that send things forwards or backwards in time.
  • Doormaker can also create portals anywhere in the world or between alternate realities.
  • Taylor/Khepri takes this trope quite literally when she starts thinking in portals.
• In Pact, Faysal Anwar can do this, as befitting a Gatekeeper of the First Ring. In a variation, he can also choose what doors are available to others, although he cannot explicitly bar any paths.
• In Saga of Soul, Eriko uses them in impressive ways, such as weaponizing seawater through pressure and the Earth's rotation.
• Uprooted: Sarkan's teleportation spell sends its target through an instantaneous portal. Unusually for the trope, the portal itself is invisible, so people on the arrival side get the horrible sight of him appearing, front to back, out of thin air mid-stride.
• A Piece in the Game of Gods: One of the powers that being a "champion of Emnyle, [...] goddess of memory and gates", provides. Implying they're a manifestation of the power of "gates" in question.
• Wild Cards : Molly Steuenberg aka Tesseract can do this. She has virtually unlimited range and under Horrorshow's influence she can even open more than a single one.

Live-Action TV

• The Valkyries from Charmed can create portals to travel to and from Valhalla.
• Moya, the living starship in Farscape, has a FTL drive called "Starburst". It essentially consists of the ship generating a large portal, slinging it into its path, and then diving through it.
• In S2E1 of Torchwood, renegade Time Agent John Hart arrives in 21st Century Cardiff this way, perhaps taking advantage of the existing space-time rift that invisibly runs through the city to supplement his usual time travel technology. A glowing portal opens and he just saunters out onto the roof of a carpark.
• Kamen Rider Drive has an odd variation on this with the Dimension Cab Shift Car. Since Drive wears his Shift Cars' tires like a sash across his chest, he can only send his head, part of his chest, and right arm through the portal (he can pull objects through the portal, but only if they fit the fixed radius, which is about the size of a standard automobile tire).
  • Dimension Cab itself can generate portals even when it's not in use, but they're only about an inch and a half wide, big enough to transport tiny objects like Cab itself or a bullet aimed at Drive.
• On The Flash (2014), Cisco can do this, although on the show they call them "breaches" rather than portals. Other breachers are introduced later, such as his Earth-2 Evil Doppelgänger, calling himself Reverb (Cisco normally prefers Vibe). Cisco then meets an interdimensional Bounty Hunter code-named Gypsy, with whom they have a Slap-Slap-Kiss relationship, followed by him meeting her scary Hispanic father Breacher. At least one unnamed breacher is also said to exist on Earth-1, ferrying people between worlds for a price. Earth-X also has a Cisco/Vibe, who is a member of La Résistance. It's shown that, occasionally, other metahumans can use already-open breaches. Speedsters can run fast enough to stabilize an existing (but unstable) breach, and one is kept perpetually open in S.T.A.R. Labs for Jesse and Jay to use. Siren-X (Nazi Laurel Lance from Earth-X) was able to keep one of Cisco's breaches from closing with her Canary Cry, allowing her to step through. No, we don't know why that'd work, either.
• The Gifted (2017) has a version of Blink, who's less experienced than her Bad Future film counterpart. Creating portals is difficult for her, but after coming Back from the Dead in an abandoned Sequel Hook, she uses her powers just as she does in the movie.

Roleplay

• Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues:
  • Marko's superpower is the ability to create portals that can teleport objects from one location to another, directly inspire by Voyd.
  • Harriet has a variation in that she can create miniature portals for her spear to teleport through.

Tabletop Games

• In Scion, characters who learn Boons from the Psychopomp purview can do this: Rainbow Bridge (Psychopomp 7) lets a character teleport anywhere in the World, and Otherworldly Portal (Psychopomp 9) allows a character to teleport between planes of existence.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • 2^nd Edition psions could manifest "Wormholes", creating a large portal for a short time
  • In later years, the short-range teleport spell dimension door was reflavored to fit this trope. (In some D&D-inspired video games, a wizard casting this spell literally steps through a portal.)
  • The top-level spell gate creates a temporary portal between two planes of existence — and, if the caster wants, summons something in from the other side.
• Pathfinder: In addition to the dimension door spell, some classes can gain a short-range teleport as a form of movement (usually described as equivalent to dimension door), such as the monk's Abundant Step and the arcanist's Dimensional Slide.
• Mage: The Awakening: Mages first learn to create portals through time-consuming Ritual Magic. With greater skill in the Space Arcanum, they can summon up a portal instantly or simply will themselves to be elsewhere. In either case, the portal is short-lived and runs on Sympathetic Magic rules.

Video Games

• In Absorption, though you can't create portals, you need to replace existing ones to solve puzzles.
• In ANNO: Mutationem, one agent of The Consortium, Castor, can open up portals to any location of his choosing. Though, he doesn't engage Ann in battle, he instead sends his partner, Melissa, to fight Ann by opening a portal that sends them both to a suitable fighting area.
• Zander's portal is one of his most important abilities in Battlerite. Any teammate who enters it can choose where to teleport to and are removed from the fight, making them invincible. With the right Battlerites, they also might gain extra effects when exiting the portal, such as a shield or speed boost.
• Elizabeth from BioShock Infinite has the power to open "tears" into other realities. Initially, her control over them is haphazard, but as the game progresses and she gets further from the siphon in her tower, she's able to conjure supplies, cover and allies for the player, or even enter Alternate Universes. By the end of the game this has extended to the point where she's basically a god, moving herself and whatever she wants freely through universes, space, and time.
• In the first Black & White game, the player-controlled deity can learn to create stable portals for their villagers to use. This can be expanded into a full Portal Network, as long as they have the Mana flow to keep them all open.
• Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup has the Passage of Golubria spell, which creates two temporary portals, one at a targeted point and one near the caster. Stepping into one warps you to the other, though each portal collapses as you walk through it. While blinking is a more convenient way to jump to a different spot, this spell is still usable by characters wearing an amulet of stasis.
• Amidatelion of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers has the power of Summon Magic, which manifests this way.
• For the King: Portal Scrolls create a magical gateway between the activating player character's current location and a map tile of their choice within range. Each scroll is single-use, but the resulting portal lasts for ten rounds with no limit on its use.
• G-Darius: The boss "Dimension Diver" uses this, allowing him to attack from the background and the foreground.
• Guild Wars 2: Path of Fire: The Elder Dragon Kralkatorrik gains the ability to open rifts to the Mists after consuming Balthazar's magic. This allows the Branded to attack anywhere on Tyria without warning and for Kralkatorrik himself to begin gorging on the magic of the Mists.
• Injustice 2: Darkseid conjures up a Boom Tube without a Mother Box and uses one in his Limit Break, throwing his full-sized hand to crush the minuscule opponent before tossing them back onto the stage.
• Jitsu Squad: The Emaki ninja can open portals leading them to literally anywhere; more often than not entering an empty area will have circular portals opening in the air, and extra ninja mooks dropping in.
• Kingdom Hearts: Corridors of Darkness can be opened by anybody who gets too close to the Darkness.
• Kirby and the Forgotten Land: The plot is kickstarted by multiple portals opening in the skies of Planet Popstar, transporting Kirby and the Waddle Dees to the titular location. There are also various portals scattered throughout where Kirby can complete challenges to get Rare Stones. The source of the portals is Fecto Forgo, a psychic alien captured and experimented on by the world's Precursors that allowed them to enter a new world. And in their true form as Fecto Elfilis, they use portals to attack with spear blades, meteors, and even attempting to pull through Popstar to destroy both worlds.
• The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: Colgera can conjure up large portals to get away from Link, only to usually manifest them underneath him in a sneak attack.
• The Longest Journey: The Shifters can open portals to Arcadia at will.
• Mega Man Battle Network 3: White and Blue: Alpha and its Alpha Bugs all appear to rise from mysterious holes in the floor. Where these holes lead is unknown. In the manga, Alpha itself was a Cool Gate to the dark world, which was used by the Dark Quartet to infest the world with dark power and from which Forte GS emerged.
• Pokémon:
  • Hoopa is a Pokémon that is capable of using its rings as portals. They apparently link to other dimensions. At least one of these holds a pocket dimension that can fit entire islands. It is even implied to be the one who moves the mirage islands around in Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire.
  • Pokémon Sun and Moon: Solgaleo and Lunala and their pre-evolved forms Cosmog and Cosmoem are capable of opening Ultra Wormholes, which lead to Ultra Space. This ability is actually dangerous for Cosmog.
• Prey (2006)'s Hunters and Harvesters travel around the Sphere via portals that the Mother creates for them; it's very usual for you hear the familiar hissing sound their gates make, and seconds later find yourself ambushed from all sides. The Keepers, being higher up in the hierarchy, can use their cybernetics or Psychic Powers to jump around you mid-battle.
• Skullgirls: Peacock uses her Synthetic Parasite, the Avery Unit, to make portable holes appear. This is how she summons her cornucopia of cartoonish weaponry to use in battle, and how she's able to teleport. The portals are shaped like her eyes—look closely enough at some of her animations, and you'll see that her eyeholes are portals, too. On top of this, she somehow managed to figure out how to use the Avery Unit to bend reality itself as well as space, too.
• The boss Dominion from Sundered can create portals with his eldritch magic, which he uses to attack the player by either summoning crawler minions or throwing punches with giant fists made of tentacles.
• The Touhou Project character Yukari Yakumo is the "youkai of boundaries," which among other things lets her generate "gaps" at will, small portals containing a murky haze filled with unblinking eyes, tied off on either end with neat little bows. She mostly uses them to get around (even riding on one in one character portrait) or spy on people, but in the fighting games Yukari uses her gaps more offensively, by briefly redirecting a train through the battle arena, or finishing an opponent with a Portal Cut.
  • Fellow youkai sage Okina Matara has dominion over "backdoors," which let her do everything from feed power into things to transporting herself and others between realms, and which also appear as literal doors. The protagonists use one such door to enter her lair in Hidden Star In Four Seasons.
• Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider: Darkchaser's main gimmick is creating portals of darkness to either pop out of to attack, or summon fleshy tendrils/arms to strike Moonrider with. Moonrider gets this ability after killing her, allowing him to summon a tendril of darkness from a portal that penetrates shields and deals constant damage.
• Teleportation spells in The Witcher appear to work in this fashion.
• After reaching a certain level, mages in World of Warcraft are able to conjure portals to transport themselves and party members to the major cities of their respective factions.
• The Herrscher of the Void from Honkai Impact 3rd has this as part of her abilities thanks to her ability to manipulate space. She can use them to warp from place to place, redirect fire, store objects, enter imaginary worlds, or even use them to fire barrages of energy down upon her foes.

Web Animation

• RWBY: Raven Branwen can create portals to people she has a bond with. How exactly "bonds" are formed is not examined in depth. As of the end of Volume 5, three people have been confirmed to share such a bond with her: Her brother Qrow, her ex-husband Tai, and her daughter Yang, who she abandoned as a baby despite being perfectly capable of using her portals to visit her at any time.
• DSBT InsaniT:
  • Killer's Dimension Claw move, which he can use to emerge out of anything, including other people.
  • Killer Monster can create a fiery wall that leads to his realm.
  • Psycho Man can create a pink and orange portal.
• Dreamscape:
  • Vladmare can create dark-red portals, and he specializes in weaponizing them.
  • Drake can create portals to alternate locations and even alternate universes!
  • Seleenara can create slash-shaped portals with her sword.
• Helluva Boss: I.M.P. uses a spell from Stolas' grimoire to create portals from Hell to the mortal world, though as seen in episode 6 they need to read the book every time they cast it while Stolas doesn't.

Web Comics

• Evil, Inc.: Desdemona can manifest portals for traveling through - completely or partly, or simply for slipping other things through (and even holding them open while ropes pushed through are manipulated on the other side).
• Gold Coin Comics: Drake conjure a teleportation portal.
• The Order of the Stick:
  • Some Fiends are Dimensional Travelers who can conjure portals to travel between the Planes. Or to deliver mail through.
  • Tarquin's psion associate Laurin can conjure up Wormholes large enough to march an army through.
• Godslave: Anpu can teleport himself and Edith over short distances when the need arises.
• The Free Willies: Mysterious Monocle Man is able to create portals from his realm to the human realm (usually, with a snap of his fingers or a clap). The Jamnitor can also do this, but he does it with less pizzazz.
• El Goonish Shive:
  • The multiversal teleportation method Nioi uses involves this generated by what appears to be a crystal ball.
  • This is also the method of teleportation used by Arthur and the agents of the paranormal division of the FBI to travel to a magical storage facility presumably from their offices.
• Grrl Power: Opal has the power to create portals, her post-arrest Tailor-Made Prison is pressurized so that she'd cause Explosive Decompression if she tried using her power to escape.
• Scoob and Shag: Garf's Ballyhoo, "Picture in Picture", allows him to create portals out of thin air and to any location he pleases, as to close them at will. He demonstrates this by stranding a secret service agent in the desert, and later by using another to drop out of the White House once he's finished there.
• In the NSFW Questden adventure Moot Point, the Sender order specializes in portal magic. They can open gates not only between two points in space but also to the afterlife.

Web Original

• One of the magics a Seldnac'Rae can learn is Portal magic, allowing them to create portals to move to a different spot in their world, or even cross over into other worlds.

Western Animation

• In Adventure Time, the Door Lords can throw magical keys at any spot they choose, and it will create a door between that spot and wherever they choose to go. The doors can apparently be in any position or angle they want.
• In Danny Phantom, Wulf can create portals to the Ghost Zone at will. Danny's evil alternate-future self can do the same.
• Breach from Generator Rex can create portals to and from anywhere she wants as long as she can move her giant second set of arms. Though, she can apparently do it by instinct without them.
• As an Eliatrope, Yugo from Wakfu can create teleportation portals. Shushu king Rushu is particularly interested in acquiring Yugo since Eliatrope portals are the only means of travel off the Shushu world. Adult Eliatropes such as Qilby are even better at this, being able to generate multiple pairs of portals at once, and Anathar uses his Power Copying abilities for outright Portal Spam.
• Masters of the Universe;
  • In He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983), sparkling, round portals were popular for traveling to distant locations and other dimensions. Individual characters like Skeletor were shown to be able to teleport normally, but portals were favored, especially when bringing multiple people from place to place.
  • As well as using for travel in Masters of the Universe: Revelation, Skeletor puts his fist through a small portal then punching He-Man with a giant fist emerging from a bigger portal.
• The Hollow: The Weird Guy can generate portals to any location he pleases, which he does upon request. Players only get three, though, and he refuses to teleport them to the exit.
• This is a favorite technique of the Enchantress from The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. Using her magic, she can create portals that transport herself and her allies out of the way of attacks, from place to place, or even between the realms. She is the only Asgardian shown in the series who can create portals using her own innate abilities. Thor and the Executioner use their hammer and axe, respectively, if they need to move between the realms.
• Rick and Morty: In "Star-Mort: Rickturn of the Jerry", Rick wipes out an entire armada of enemy space fighters by shooting the pilots through tiny portals opening up inside their cabins, even killing a pilot and co-pilot with just one bullet.
• Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has Leonardo wielding a mystic odachi sword capable of opening portals in anywhere from across the room to redirect attacks or all the way to Tahiti.
• Soundwave of Transformers: Prime Zig Zags the trope by being directly connected to the Decepticon systems, which includes the space bridge, which enables him to open space bridge portals anywhere he wants at a moment's notice with nothing but his mind. Summoning a portal to remove threats rapidly becomes his Signature Move as the series goes on. And eventually proves his undoing when the heroes anticipate this tactic and open their own portal next to it, the interaction sending Soundwave to the Shadowzone. Despite this, it's not an innate power of his, and if the space bridge is destroyed or disabled, this ability is likewise disabled.
• Steven Universe's magical pet Lion can create portals with his roars.
• The Owl House: Eda conjures portals wisely during her fight with Warden Wrath to redirect his fire breath.
• In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Chancellor Neighsay is capable of creating glowing blue-and-black portals to appear where he wants at a moment's notice, instead of employing the direct teleportation that other unicorns use. Turns out there's a lot of power in the badges used by the Equestria Education Association, or EEA.
• In Teen Titans Go!, Raven can generate portals to any feasible location. This becomes a running gag in the movie where Raven uses her portals to solve nearly every obstacle.
• W.I.T.C.H.:
  • Originally, Will could only use the Heart of Kandrakar to close portals. After the Heart absorbed the Seal of Phobos, a key that could unlock anything, the Heart gained the ability to open portals as well as seal them.
  • Opening portals or folds was an ability the Council of Kandrakar possessed. They refrained from using it in season 1 to limit Phobos' movement across the worlds.
  • Nerissa, the Big Bad of season 2, could also open up portals.
  • In season 2, Blunk was given the Tooth of the Tonga, a magical item that allowed the user to open up portals. It once belonged to a creature that could move freely from one world to another. Later it is revealed that Nerissa placed a tracking spell on the Tooth.
• Miraculous Ladybug:
  • The special power of the Horse Miraculous, "Voyage", allows the user to create a portal that leads wherever they please.
  • The Rabbit Miraculous's "Burrow" also conjures a portal, except through time rather than space.
• Kid Cosmic: The purple ring that Jo receives allows her to conjure up portals.

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