Portable hole

In various works of fiction, a portable hole is a two-dimensional device that can be used to contravene the laws of physics by creating a passage through a solid surface, through which characters can move. It generally resembles a circular cloth which is placed on a surface to create a hole. If placed on a wall, the user could crawl through the hole and come out on the other side of the surface. Placed on the ground, the user might be able to insert objects into it or allow others to fall in, as if he or she had dug a hole. The exact method in which the device works is dependent on the work of fiction.

Early uses
The earliest known use was a 1933 description of John Williamson's underwater photography apparatus. A 1949 newspaper column by Truman Twill speculates on the use of a portable hole as a storage device.

The 1955 Looney Tunes cartoon, The Hole Idea, presents a fictional account in which Calvin Q. Calculus invents the device. The theme was repeated in the Beatles' 1968 movie, Yellow Submarine, where Ringo picks up a hole from the Sea of Holes, stores it in his pocket, and uses it later to release Sgt. Pepper's Band from captivity. In 1988, Who Framed Roger Rabbit again used a portable hole as a plot device.  Detective Eddie Valiant is able to escape being crushed by a steamroller by using one, echoing the 1955 Looney Tunes gag.

Contemporary literature
In Rajiv Joseph's play, Guards at the Taj, one of the characters, Humayun, invents a transportable hole. Humayun describes it:

"It's literally a hole you could take anywhere with you. And you could attach it to anything. And anything you attached it to would suddenly have a hole in it. Say you wanted to go through a wall? You could. Or say you are trapped in a dungeon. Or you are in the desert and it is so hot! Hole in the ground, now you can sleep in some shade. Also there would be things to eat in the hole."

Non-fiction
The term has also been used in non-fiction settings. Gramicidin A has been described as a portable hole; it is a polypeptide with a helical shape. When it forms a dimer, it can embed itself in cellular bilayer membranes and form a hole through which water molecules can pass. The Museum of Modern Art has a work by Ben Vautier titled, The First Portable Hole (Le Premier trou portatif).

There are a number of magic tricks named The Portable Hole. In Shari Lewis presents 101 magic tricks for kids to do, a trick by that name is described. A card trick titled Acme Portable Hole is available commercially.

Animated cartoons
One Road Runner cartoon involved the use of "liquid hole" a black tar-like substance that came in a bottle. When poured on a surface, it dried into a portable hole with the consistency of a circle of cloth. Another episode ("The Black Hole") has the Coyote using a portable hole, which is picked up and reused by the Road Runner.

In the Morph episode "Portable Hole," a portable hole is used to access cakes which are hidden in the hole. A pair of holes are also used to construct a portal, allowing a character's hand, and several inanimate objects, to pass from one to the other.

One of Terry Gilliam's cartoons in Monty Python's Flying Circus has the police using a large portable hole in the road to catch criminals, they fall in, then the hole is taken to the lockup and thrown upon the ceiling causing the criminals to fall out. Another cartoon involves the pepperpot Mrs. Cutout being deposited in front of a laundromat by a large portable doorway.

In an episode of Ed, Edd n Eddy entitled One + One = Ed, Eddy falls through a hole in the ground which causes him to appear in the sky off-camera, where he then falls through the hole in a recursive loop. This continues until Ed picks up the hole, leaving Eddy to crash onto the now-solid ground. Ed uses the hole for a couple gags then eventually rolls it up and keeps it. Later in the cartoon, Edd and Eddy fall into a manhole, and Ed, believing it to be another portable hole, says, ''Don't worry guys! I'll just pick up the hole again!'' and proceeds to excavate the entire manhole entrance tube from the ground.

The cartoon series Channel Umptee-3 features a character named Holey Moley, who carries several portable holes and uses at least one in every episode.

In the Disney series The New Adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh, Gopher searches for a hole blown off on an overly windy day.

Novels
In the novelization of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Elliott uses a portable hole when the lead characters are playing Dungeons & Dragons.

A portable hole is used in Jack Vance's Liane the Wayfarer, published in The Dying Earth in 1950.

Comics
There is a comic character called Horrible Hole which is a living portable hole. Similar characters include The Spot (a Spider-Man villain) and Doorman, a mutant member of the Great Lakes Avengers.

In episode 695 of the Final Fantasy-based comic 8-Bit Theater, Fighter, after buying some items and a portable hole with Red Mage, decides to work smarter, not harder, and put all the items into the portable hole. He then proceeds to fold the portable hole into itself.

In the anime and manga series One Piece, a villain known as Blueno has the ability to create doors on any surface, including the air.

Games
In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, a portable hole is a circle of cloth made from phase spider webs, strands of ether and beams of starlight. When deployed, it creates an extradimensional space six feet in diameter by ten feet deep. Folding the cloth causes the entrance to this space to disappear, but items placed inside the hole remain there. Sufficient air is contained in the hole to support life for up to ten minutes.

Video games
In Alan Cox's AberMUD, a portable hole could be used to carry equipment.

In the Disney computer game Toontown Online, players can move, or teleport to a new location by pulling holes from their pockets and jumping into them.

Portable holes are one of the hazard weapons in the game Cel Damage.

In King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow, Prince Alexander solves many problems with the use of a hole in the wall he finds on the Isle of Wonder.

In Kingdom of Loathing, a combat item called a plot hole is captured from probability giants, a portable hole which is used as a land mine, reducing an enemy's health by twenty, and confusing one.

The video game Portal features a gun that shoots portals whose behavior is similar to holes. In this case, two holes are created, and if someone walks or falls through, they arrive at the other with the same speed but turned in the direction the portal is facing. One use of this is to fling oneself.

In many of The Sims games, if a person trying to leave your property is trapped in a room with no doors, one will take out a portable hole and use it to teleport out.

In the game World of Warcraft, Portable Hole, a bag with 24 slots (one of the largest in the game), was introduced in the patch 3.3.

In the game Toonstruck the player can collect a portable hole which is used to quickly travel between lands.

Unicode
The Unicode symbol for HOLE, U+1F573, with alias "portable hole" was approved in 2014 as part of the Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs chart in Unicode 7.0, and was part of Emoji 1.0, published in 2015. As pictorial representations for emoji are platform-dependent, Emojipedia shows images of the (portable) hole symbol as depicted on various platforms.