Telefrag

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A telefrag, also known as a teleportation frag, occurs in many first-person shooter games featuring teleporters, when one entity teleports into space already occupied by another; the latter is instantly fragged (often gibbed) and the former is said to have telefragged it. The first FPS game to feature telefrags was Doom (1993), which was also one of the first to feature teleporters. This kind of frag does not require any weapons at all. The first non-FPS game to feature telefrags is Gauntlet (1985), in which teleporting onto a monster would cause that monster to cease to exist, although this was not accompanied by gibs.

A similar phenomenon sometimes occurs when an entity spawns into space occupied by another; the effects are usually the same, though some programmers have taken steps to avoid this in some games, such as placing spawn points several feet in the air.

Though telefragging may occur deliberately from players entering a teleport immediately after the other, it most frequently occurs during spawning, particularly at the start of a match if there are fewer spawn points than players. In this case at least two players will spawn at the same spawn point, resulting in an immediate telefragging. In the case of Gauntlet, telefragging was often deliberately used to kill Death, who could only be killed by expending a potion otherwise.

In some cases, the player that teleports into the other player survives, whilst the target is fragged. In other occasions, the teleporter dies and the player at the other end of the teleporter is unharmed. Sometimes, both perish. In some games, what would normally constitute a telefrag will only result in the two players becoming stuck together and being immobile, often, other players are oblivious to the blockage until they go through, and get stuck too. The players are forced to shoot whatever enemy they can see that's blocking them to reduce the entities inside the teleport and become mobile again.

The telefrag effect, one or both dying, is a pre-programmed response to prevent such glitches occurring. The utilization of teleport kills as an actual weapon was originally unintended, but was picked up as part of FPS metagaming. It has since been adopted as an actual gameplay device: in the Unreal Tournament series, players are provided with a "Translocator" — a personal teleportation device. It is possible, with careful aim, to use this to deliberately telefrag opponents. The Translocator launches a disc; when the player clicks the secondary fire button, they will teleport to wherever the disc is positioned.

In Quake III Arena it is possible to frag a player by teleporting onto the same coordinates as he or she is, either by the use of the personal teleporter, a gate or a stagnant teleporter. This is usually done accidentally, though with precise timing, it is possible to rack up frags with this. The victim will be splattered, leaving no corpse and the telefragger will receive a frag. A message will also appear, saying "[victim's name] tried to invade [telefragger's name]'s personal space." If two people teleport onto the same location at the same time (e.g., in the map "proving grounds" where a teleporter can be used by two people simultaneously), they will frag each other and a "double-splatter" effect will occur in the area where both parties were supposed to have arrived.

In the end map of Doom II, it is possible for a skull cube (the Icon of Sin, the final boss of the game, launches these) to spawn a monster into the player, killing the player with a telefrag, also bypassing the effects of the God mode cheat. Final DOOM (Evilution) also takes advantage of this effect to force a more fair play on the final level. It is possible for the player themselves to telefrag monsters in certain Doom II maps, saving valuable ammunition.

In the end map of Quake, the final boss (Shub-Niggurath of the Cthulhu Mythos) is killed with a telefrag. Earlier in the game, the player can telefrag several major monsters during the mission called "The Dismal Oubliette", "The Vaults of Zin" and "The Haunted Halls".

In the end map of Unreal, the final boss often kills the player character with a telefrag.

In Halo: Combat Evolved, the screen of a player standing at the opposite end of a teleporter when a person tries to use the teleporter will slowly turn white, warning the former that if he does not move, he will be telefragged. However, using a vehicle to block the teleporter will block it off completely until the vehicle is moved.