Portal Slam: Difference between revisions

Whichever reason, the [['''Portal Slam]]''' is normally a sign that the fantasy world the portal gave access to is irrevocably inaccessible. This is a common method employed at the end of a fantasy/science fiction series to [[Status Quo Is God|bring things back down to normal]]. If the character manages to get back to the world by alternate means, he'll usually discover that the world has drastically changed for the worse with black magic brewing.

Less commonly, the [['''Portal Slam]]''' is used near the ''beginning'' of the story, as the protagonists figure out how to work the portal by trial and error.

* Harry and Ron rebound painfully from the sealed gateway to Platform 9-and-Three-Quarters in ''[[Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Franchisenovel)/|Harry Potter and Thethe Chamber of Secrets|Harry Potter]]''.

* In ''[[The Phantom Tollbooth]],'' Milo finds the morning after that the tollbooth has vanished, with a note in its place that explains that the tollbooth will find its way to the next needed child that needs it.

* The doorway in the wardrobe into ''[[Narnia]]'' vanishes when Lucy tries to show it to her siblings the first time. A portal to Narnia only seems to appear when you're not looking for it, according to Professor Kirke -- andKirke—and indeed, in [[C. S. Lewis|CS Lewis]]'s other Narnia books, every portal only works once, as opposed to the three times the wardrobe does.

* Vortices disappearing when people try to jump through them happens an awful lot in ''[[Sliders]]''. If it's a good guy, they'll always find another vortex. If it's a bad guy, they're usually trapped until the good guys can deal with them. Rickman, the [[Big Bad]] of season three, meets his end this way when a portal is just over a cliff. When it shuts down just as he's leaping for it, the [[Portal Slam]] is soon followed by [[Killed Off for Real|a standard slam]].

* In the ''[[Dungeons and& Dragons]]'' ''[[Planescape]]'' setting, this is a frequently mentioned hazard of plane-walking. Many portals sometimes work only under extremely specific circumstances ("Thou must be accompanied by a flame-haired tiefling whilst holding a lily and only on the third day of the second week of the month on a year with a solar eclipse on Aber-Toril"), and portals can be destroyed or closed by various beings, so it's recommended players provide their own means of transportation.

** In Riven, The Fissure was {{spoiler|the instability in the world that eventually destroyed it}}. However, in and of itself it was a Portal, as the linking book that initiated the Myst franchise falls into the player's hands {{spoiler|when Atrus jumps into The Fissure and uses the book to link back to Myst, allowing the book to fall into the fissure so Gehn would not be able to get it, trapping him in Riven.}} The book then falls through the fissure and onto the surface of {{spoiler|D'ni, "New Start", or as we call it, Earth,}} where the player found it. Later, in Myst: Uru, you also find the telescope that fell into the fissure, also on the surface. So the player comes into the story due to {{spoiler|Atrus}} pulling a [[Portal Slam]] on {{spoiler|his father, Gehn}}.

*** More conventionally, {{spoiler|destroying a Descriptive Book will seal off access to an Age permanently. Certain drastic changes to a Descriptive Book will also change which Age it links to, as opposed to effecting changes in the Age itself - not a [[Portal Slam]] in the traditional sense, but the original link is still severed all the same}}.

* In one episode of ''[[The Grim Adventures of Billy and& Mandy]]'', Billy's kiddie pool becomes a portal to another dimension. Whenever [[The Bully|Sperg]] tries to use it, he just hits the bottom of the pool.

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