Dimensional Traveler

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A Dimensional Traveler is any character who can (more or less) freely travel between various planes of existence, like parallel universes, etc. Their ability to travel is usually powered by some form magic, Applied Phlebotinum or Teleporters and Transporters (like a Portal Network), but it can also happen that a character was inherently born with such power.

This is also a common explaination for Crossovers, as occasionally the characters will arrive in the universe of another hero.

Distinct from Time Travel because, although Time is considered the "fourth dimension", time travellers otherwise remain in the same plane while hopping between its different time periods.

See also Planar Champion.

Examples of Dimensional Traveler include:

Fan Works

Film

Literature

  • Robert A. Heinlein's Glory Road. Anyone who understands the metaphysical geometry involved can pass through the Gates and explore the Twenty Universes, and many do so on a regular basis.
    • Also in another of his stories, The Number of the Beast. The protagonists use a dimension-hopping device to explore a series of very odd dimensions, including some based on Earth literature.
  • Keith Laumer's Lafayette O'Leary novels. The protagonist has the ability to travel to feudal/magical alternate Earths.
  • In the Myth Adventures series, the term "Demon" is short for this.
  • Philip Jose Farmer's World of Tiers series. Paul Janus Finnegan (AKA Kikaha the Trickster) and Robert Wolff spend much of the novels traveling through artificially created universes.

Live-Action TV

  • Kamen Rider Decade has this as a major plot point. The previous seasons are revealed as parallel worlds that are merging into one, thus leading everyone of them to destruction, so it's up to the titular hero to journey to each one and destroy them. He even arrived in the World Of Shinkenger on one occasion. The reason being Decade normally travels to RIDER Worlds, and there aren't any Kamen Riders normally in that world until Diend went there, implying there's even more universes than just the Rider Worlds, but only the Rider Worlds are at risk.
  • Sliders is a series based on this trope, although in the beginning the characters were travelling uncontrollably.

Tabletop Games

Video Games

Western Animation

  • The Road to the Multiverse Episode of Family Guy has Brian and Stewie being one.
  • In the Transformers Multiverse, many of the "multiversal singularities" are mentioned as having this ability—particularly |The Fallen, Vector Prime, Unicron, and Nexus Prime, as well as the non-singularity Sideways. There's also city of Axiom Nexus, which is roughly analogous to Planescape‍'‍s Sigil mentioned above, and where the inhabitants all have travelling between dimensions down to a literal science.