Inverted Trope to Body Uploading where physical bodies and objects are sent to cyberspace.
Sister Trope to Taken from a Dream.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Digimon:
- In Digimon Adventure and Digimon Adventure 02, Digimon from the Digital World can only access the real world through dimensional wormholes.
- Digimon Tamers: Blue Cards can make digital things real using The Power of Friendship. When swiped through a card reader, the Blue Card transforms the reader into a D-Power and partners the user with a Digimon, which then appears in the real world.
- Gundam Build Divers Re:RISE: By the end of the events of the first cour, Force BUILD DiVERS comes to understand that Eldora is not part of GBN, but instead an alien world. The ancient temple ruins they arrive in are materializing physical bodies in the shape of their game avatars and transferring their consciousnesses into them(to say nothing of building fully functional weapons out of their plastic model scans). This was first hinted at when Hiroto briefly loses the Earthree Gundam's shield in battle to protect others, but when they return later, the shield is still there. However, Alus takes control of a Diver named Masaki Shido, putting his body in a coma in the real world, thus there is a real threat they might die.
- At least two of the Vaia ships in Infinite Ryvius possess a "Sphix", a physical manifestation of the ship's control system. Unsurprisingly, the titular ship has the Spaceship Girl and in a slight twist, the "final boss" has a Spaceship Bishōnen.
- Mega Man:
- MegaMan NT Warrior (2001): NetNavis manifests in the real world because of Dark Power, one part of the Forces of Darkness' plan to try and take over the world.
- MegaMan NT Warrior (2002): Dimensional Areas can bring anything from the Cyberworld to the real world, from viruses to NetNavis. It can even be used for Cross Fusion if they have a Synchro Chip and have enough Synchro Rate with their NetOp.
- Serial Experiments Lain: Implied where the Wired while is used as an The Alternet but also is ever-changing where it can influence reality to the point beings in the Wired can alter reality and even project a physical body.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS: Data Material is the digital matter in LINK VRAINS that can cause Data Storms. Data Material can be used to make Monster cards, which, when used with the right technology, can be used to create a physical copy.
Comic Books
- Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): A mishap during an experiment causes Sally's sentient computer Nicole to be downloaded into Sally's body, with Sally being uploaded in the opposite direction. The experience of having a physical body elates Nicole to the point that, once the experiment has been reversed, she sets out to create a holographic body of her own.
Fan Works
- Application 29: When given administrative permissions to a computer, Henry and June are able to breach the barrier between the physical world and digital world, and can get into the physical world to do whatever they want.
Films — Animation
- Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase:
- The Phantom Virus is an anthropomorphic computer virus that infected Eric's computer game prototype, then is brought into the real world by Bill, who created the virus in the first place, using Professor Kaufman's experimental digital recreation laser. While it can extract data from electronic devices, as well as control machines and cables, it is weak to magnets.
- The post-movie stinger shows that Shaggy and Scooby have figured out how to use the laser to materialize food from the internet (and by accident, part of a desert — they were aiming for dessert, but misspelled it); this also allows them to materialize their new friend Cyber-Scooby, allowing for a happy reunion.
Films — Live-Action
- TRON: The process of Digitization was invented to transport physical matter into a computer system but can also work in reverse. In TRON: Legacy, Sam Flynn brings the rogue program Quorra with him when he returns to the real world, and CLU's ultimate goal is to invade Earth with his army. TRON: Ares continue this plotline where a company that independently developed digitization technology is trying to materialize programs in the real world permanently.
- Virtuosity: The premise of the film is that a program based on real-life serial killers, intended to be used for training purposes in virtual reality, is uploaded into an artificial body and goes on a killing spree in the real world.
- Weird Science (1985): When the main characters create a Magical Computer simulation of the woman of their dreams, a freak lightning strike somehow makes her appear in the flesh with reality-warping powers.
Literature
- All Tomorrow's Parties: The novel ends with the virtual idol singer Rei Toei being "printed" by nanotech assemblers in "every 7-Eleven in Christendom," resulting in uncountable numbers of her coming into reality throughout the world.
- Snow Crash: Played with. The titular Snow Crash virus is a computer virus that can affect humans due to it being a memetic contagion that can reprogram the brain to speak in tongues and be susceptible to hypnosis.
- Sonic the Hedgehog and the Silicon Warriors, being heavily a TRON homage, naturally features this in addition to Body Uploading. Robotnik's WYSIWYG Output Device allows him to bring digital characters from his computer network into the real world, and in the prologue, he tests it with a blond guy in a red karate suit, though he quickly learns there are still a few bugs to work out when the man promptly attacks him before shorting out from the rain and exploding. Later, though, he is not only bringing out video-game characters loyal to him to battle the heroes, but also computer-generated Badniks which can't be destroyed. Fortunately, though, the system also has some good-guy characters, including a digital recreation of Sonic himself, and they too find their way out and are able to assist.
Live-Action TV
- Heroes Reborn (2015): Hachiro Otomo's power can bring any object from electronic devices into reality and vice versa. His daughter, Miko, inherited the ability but can only use it when using her Kensei Sword.
- Star Trek: Holodecks have a unique form of matter in them that combines elements of replicator and transporter technology in order to wrap photons in force fields that can give the illusion of actual mass. Quite a few episodes deal with the consequences of the creations of a holodeck becoming self-aware, attempting to escape, successfully escaping, or otherwise going haywire, such as safety features turning off abruptly.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation:
- "The Big Goodbye" is the first "holodeck gone wrong" episode, and has Picard, Data, and Crusher stuck in a holodeck simulation of Gangster-era earth after the holodeck malfunctions. Because it's the first Holodeck episode, there's a bit of Early-Installment Weirdness with the holograms— they can survive for a few seconds off of the holodeck before fading for reasons that amount to a bit of Technobabble.
- The episode "Elementary, Dear Data" has Data and La Forge play a Sherlock Holmes holonovel, only to have the holographic version of Moriarty become self-aware and attempt to escape.
- Star Trek: Voyager: The Doctor was an Emergency Medical Hologram that served as the chief medical officer aboard the Voyager, due to their actual medical officer dying in an accident when they were warped to the Delta Quadrant. The Doctor was originally confined to the medical bay, but after some time-travel shenanigans, he acquired a piece of futuristic technology called a mobile emitter that allowed him to exist anywhere he wanted, on the Voyager or otherwise.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation:
- In VR Troopers, Big Bad Grimlore uses inter-reality travel technology to materialize his virtual reality mutant-like robots into the real world.
Video Games
- Azure Striker Gunvolt 2: Teseo, "The Serial Experiment," is an Adept with the Hack The Planet Septima, where he can transform physical matter into computer data and vice versa. He can use this ability to bring various virtual things into reality.
- Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth: Digital Shifts are when digital spaces bleed into the Real World, which is caused by Eaters. Digimon can manifest in the Real World in these spaces.
- Doki Doki Takeover!: Given how Boyfriend and Girlfriend can freely enter and exit their game world by the end of the conflict, Monika asks if there's a way for them to bring herself and her friends along to the real world, as the world they live in is rather limiting with what they can do, and that they'd likely love to see beyond their school and homes rather than live in ignorance of the world they live in or suffer the same fate as Monika herself — Monika in particular hopes to also see the one she's longing for and meet them face to face. Following the ending in the Plus update, that becomes a reality when BF and GF appear from a portal that they goad the Doki Doki group into entering, letting them exist outside of the game.
- Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach: Inverted in a very weird way in the Ruin [DLC]: occasionally Cassie will come across obstacles in the real world which she can only pass through while wearing a mask that provides augmented reality vision, implying that the obstacles are only in the real world, not the virtual world.
- inFAMOUS: Second Son: Eugene Sims is a Conduit able to absorb and manipulate digital projections like those from video games like Heaven's Hellfire. This allows him to create digital weapons and even summon angels and demons from the game.
- Rockman X2: Chop Registers are digital enemies that haunt the Central Computer stage as its mid-boss, materialising in the physical world in the form of a wireframe sword. In the Rockman X2 manga, their physical form mimics an actual sword, rather than a wireframe.
- Pokémon:
- Porygon and its evolutions, Porygon-2 and Porygon-Z, are explicitly digital constructs that have been brought into reality through advanced technology in the Pokémon universe.
- Pokémon as a whole are capable of being converted into data and back through the use of a PC storage system.
- Star Ocean: Till the End of Time: When the party goes to Fourth Dimensional Space through their Symbology and the use of the Time Gate, it's revealed that their reality is really a virtual one called the Eternal Sphere where the 4-D beings are just regular people who use it as a virtual reality simulator they can appear as avatars.
- Xenosaga: The UDO is an intergalactic information network that proves necessary for humanity to communicate between worlds, establish travel paths, and send materials between destinations, among other important tasks. Materials are often converted from digital information into physical tangibility in a few seconds.
Western Animation
- The Batman (2004): Downplayed in "The Metal Face of Comedy", where a virtual version of the Joker is brought into the real world by uploading him into a nanite cloud that can form itself into any shape.
- Code Lyoko
- The heroes' goal throughout the first season was to bring Aelita out of Lyoko, which succeeds in the season finale. The next season reveals that this was an inversion as she originated on Earth in the first place.
- On the villain side, some of XANA's plan-of-the-week involve materializing its virtual monsters in the real world, such as the Kankrelats in "False Start" and the Krabs in "A Bad Turn".
- Futurama: In Kif Gets Knocked Up A Notch, the show parodies the constant holodeck mishaps in Star Trek by having the Inciting Incident being multiple hostile holograms on the Nimbus's "Holo-Shed" becoming hostile at once, which results in Kif accidentally getting pregnant.
- Hazbin Hotel: This is the powerset of Velvette, the Demon Overlord of social media. She can weaponize emojis, online polls and other social media elements by manifesting them outside her phone.
- Glitch Techs: Glitches are physical manifestations caused by malfunctions from Hinobi Technology video game consoles. A Glitch manifests in forms related to a video game that runs on the tech, where it can range from a character to an entire area changing to that of the game.
- Gravity Falls:
- Rumble McSkirmish is a 16-bit arcade game character who is inadvertently brought into the real world by Dipper using the "ultimate power code". Because Dipper was his last player, he is dedicated to protecting Dipper in the real world. He is limited in his movements by his game-programmed animations (such as not being able to look up) and often defaults to his game catchphrases, but can still cause a lot of real-world damage.
- Downplayed with .GIFfany, the main character from the dating simulator game Romance Academy 7 who somehow attained sentience (and killed her creators when they tried to delete her). While she is initially confined to screen-based devices, she manages to possess one of the animatronics from Hoo-Ha Owl's Pizzamatronic Jamboree in order to try to kill Soos' date Melody, blending this trope with Hostile Animatronics. Soos is able to kill her by destroying her game, in spite of her being in the animatronic body at the time.
- Ninjago:
- Played With. The Overlord starts out as a physical being in the real world, but is destroyed. Season 3 sees him reborn as a sentient computer virus, but his goal throughout the season is to make himself a new physical body to exist normally in the real world again. He manages to succeed by the end.
- Season 12's Arc Villian, Unagami, is an A.I. who planned on luring players into his video game, Prime Empire, to convert them into energy cubes so that he can manifest into reality to confront his creator on his existence.
- Star Trek: Lower Decks: Like its live-action counterparts, the crew of the Cerritos gets up to some holodeck shenanigans as well.
- A recurring presence in the series is Badgey, an AI that went homicidal after a power surge on the Holodeck of the Cerritos. In its first appearance, "Terminal Provocations", it is confined to the Holodeck as it tries to murder Rutherford and Tendi. When he returns in "A Few Badgeys More", the Drookmani have holo-emitters installed that allow him to function within the ship and allow for two others to appear and gain sentience: Goodgey and Logic-y.
- In Season 2's "I, Excretus", the Cerritos has to undergo training simulations based on previous Star Trek episodes; Boilmer gets trapped in a Borg Encounter which is realistic enough that he believes he's been assimilated before he gets let out.
- In Season 4's "Twovix", the Voyager has been converted into a museum ship, and holographic emitters have been put throughout— and several characters from Voyager's past wreak havoc after a macrovirus is released, causing the ship's systems to go haywire.
- In Season 5's "Fissure Quest", it's revealed that Julian Bashir has an Emergency Medical Hologram modeled after him in another Quantum Reality, and has a mobile emitter that allows him to traverse the Anaximander that's investigating the fissures in reality.
