Superpowers defy the realm of what is the possible, including the realm of science, and because of this it can be kind of strange to see limitations on certain ones.  One of the most obvious of these is the power of teleportation.  Ever since I was a child reading comics, I remember reading an explanation of the power including the limitation that “teleporters have to be careful when teleporting because if they teleport into a solid object then it is instant death.”  Teleportation is not a very common power across the superhero spectrum, but despite that, this limitation seems to stick.  Is it fair though?

Inherently when it comes to powers nothing is fair when it comes to the violation of the laws of physics.  For instance, jumping over a tall building would likely produce enough of a shockwave that it would destroy the building (the taller the more destructive).  Why then does teleportation have such a limitation when other powers get a pass on the elementary physics?  In a sense, it is not a terribly difficult question, because it is a sensible end state of teleporting into something.  With the body now situated inside of a piece of rock/wall/whatever the basic functions are going to stop to work as blood won’t flow and as the nervous system will stop to send signals throughout the body. 

When looking at teleportation though it is important to note a few additional facts about it.  The first is that teleportation is almost always a one-way trip, and by that I mean that teleporters do not take the matter at their location and replace it with the matter at another location.  So if Nightcrawler were to teleport into a solid piece of rock, there would be no Nightcrawler shaped statue where he left from.  This may not seem to be initially that important of a claim, but it is when you consider what it is that Nightcrawler is teleporting into is where the situation gets muddier.    Or to put that another way, the end result is perfectly safe if the individual is teleporting into air.  At first thought air is not there, because we don’t see it.  In fact, it is there, but as it is a gas we don’t give it as much consideration.  Granted that air is composed of a lot of empty space, but there is still enough stuff there to be problematic.  Air is made up mostly of nitrogen and oxygen with nitrogen in at about 80%.  At standard conditions dissolved nitrogen makes up about 1.5% of our blood.  So it teleporting into air is safe, then it means that the body is incorporating another 4/5 of a body’s worth of nitrogen, which is likely enough to give Nightcrawler the bends.  This occurs when the blood can’t hold all the dissolved nitrogen and nitrogen bubbles form, generally quite painfully around joints.

In the real world of science this is one consideration, but perhaps a less likely one.  One might instead argue that Nightcrawler displaces the air in that location when he teleports.  Displacement is fine as an explanation, but there would also need to be some explanation on that as well.  If he can displace air could he also displace water?  Or could he teleport into a pile of sand?  Into a bowl of Jello?  Or into a giant marshmallow?  There is no real information on this as the subject has never really been explored in depth as the only explanation that we get is “don’t teleport into solid stuff.”  While it might be overthinking it to a degree, at the same time it is not, especially when we consider the Vision.  Part of the intangible powers of this hero is that he can control the degree of his intangibility, becoming partially tangible to provide system shocks to people as he passes through them.  Clearly then, someone at Marvel has already considered the concept of partial displacement, only not when it comes to teleporting.  It is not that this takes away from the fun of the characters, only from a real-world practical sense that sometimes the claims that are made about powers aren’t thought all the way out and that certain conditions about them are assumed.