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The Backrooms
The original Backrooms image posted on 4chan, of a HobbyTown under renovation.
Based on4chan creepypasta
Adapted byBackrooms (web series), internet users
GenreAnalog horror, creepypasta
In-universe information
TypeAlternate dimension, liminal space

The Backrooms are a fictional location originating from a 2019 4chan thread. One of the best known examples of the liminal space aesthetic, the Backrooms are usually portrayed as an impossibly large extradimensional expanse of empty rooms, accessed by exiting ("no-clipping out of") reality.

Internet users have expanded on the concept of the Backrooms, introducing concepts such as "levels" and hostile creatures that inhabit the space. In early 2022, American YouTuber Kane Parsons started a series of Backrooms short films on YouTube, which went viral. The videos have been credited with igniting a surge in Backrooms content and taking the concept into the mainstream. Parsons is slated to direct a film adaptation of his series produced by A24.

History

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Original creepypasta

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Between 2011 and 2018, a photograph of a large, carpeted room with fluorescent lights and dividing walls circulated on various message boards, and on May 12, 2019, an anonymous user started a thread on /x/, 4chan's paranormal-themed board, asking users to "post disquieting images that just feel 'off,'" accompanying the thread with the photograph.[1][2][3]

Another user replied to this post, giving the image its name and supplying the first description of the Backrooms:

If you're not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the Backrooms, where it's nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in
God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you

— Anonymous, 4chan (May 13, 2019)[1]

Growth and fandom

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Days after the original creepypasta,[4] users began to share stories about the Backrooms on subreddits such as r/creepypasta and later r/backrooms.[2] A fandom began to develop around the Backrooms and creators expanded upon the original iteration of the creepypasta by creating additional floors or "levels" and entities which populate them.[3][5] Two notable levels include: Level 1, a level with industrial architecture, and Level 2, a darkly lit level with long service tunnels, with the original version named Level 0.[5]

As new levels were devised in r/backrooms, a faction of fans who preferred the original Backrooms split off from the fandom. A Reddit user named Litbeep created another subreddit called r/TrueBackrooms focusing only on the original version. ABC News said that unlike fandoms surrounding existing properties, the lack of a canonical Backrooms made "drawing a line between authentic storytelling and jokes" difficult.[2][3] By March 2022, r/backrooms had over 157,000 members.[2]

The fandom steadily expanded onto other platforms with the upload of videos on Twitter and TikTok.[4] Various wikis hosted on FANDOM and Wikidot dedicated to the lore and worldbuilding of The Backrooms were established.[6] Dan Erickson, creator of the television series Severance (2022), named the Backrooms as one of his many influences while working on the series.[7]

Image origin

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Until 2024, the source of the original Backrooms image was not widely known.[3][8][9] In May 2024, a Twitter user announced in a now-viral post that their friend had discovered the image's origin.[8][9] This was the result of a combined effort in a Backrooms-dedicated Discord community,[10] which traced the image to an archived webpage from March 2003 using the Wayback Machine.[11]

The image was found to have been taken during the renovation of "a former furniture store with plenty of partitions and fake inner walls" in Wisconsin.[12][13] For much of the 20th century, Rohner's Home Furnishings occupied 807 and 811 Oregon Street, Oshkosh, Wisconsin.[14] In 2003, 807 Oregon Street was acquired by a new tenant, a branch of the American hobby shop chain HobbyTown.[9][10][15]

Sometime in 2002, the second story underwent renovations. On June 12, 2002, the progress was photographed with a Sony Cyber-shot camera, and on March 2, 2003, the various interior views were documented on the Oshkosh branch's renovation weblog.[9] One photograph depicts a carpeted, open room with yellow wallpaper and fluorescent lighting on a Dutch angle. Uploaded with the file name "Dsc00161.jpg"; this is the image that would go on to inspire the concept of the Backrooms.[8][9][13] The image was captioned as an original view of "the East (Oval) room", and noted that no windows were visible. The blog entry described extensive water damage that required the area to be cleared.[13][10] HobbyTown has since converted the facility into a radio-controlled car racing track called Revolution Racing, and the room's original layout is now gone.[8][13][10]

Reception

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An example of a liminal space. This is an image of a long, empty hallway.
The Backrooms have been associated with an internet aesthetic known as liminal spaces, which include "images of eerie and uninhabited spaces", such as the above empty hallway.[16]

Some sources believe the Backrooms to have been the origin of the internet aesthetic of liminal spaces,[4] which depict usually busy locations as unnaturally empty. The #liminalspaces hashtag has amassed nearly 100 million views on TikTok.[16][17] Paste's Phoenix Simms wrote that the Backrooms and games such as the more absurdist The Stanley Parable is "tied to a long tradition of the liminal in horror" and the color yellow as a symbol of caution, deterioration, and existential distress. The Backrooms' is "a fungal, sickly yellow", where both the person and the mind can lose themselves.[18]

PC Gamer compared the Backrooms' various levels to H. P. Lovecraft's R'lyeh and The City in the manga Blame!, describing it as "an uncanny valley of place".[19] ABC News and Le Monde grouped the Backrooms into an "emerging genre of collaborative online horror" which also includes the SCP Foundation.[3][6] Kotaku said that this collaborative aspect, as well as the lack of overt horror or threat, made the Backrooms stand out from other creepypastas.[4] Both Kotaku and Tama Leaver, professor of internet studies at Curtin University, felt that the Backrooms was scary "because [it invites] you to interpret what's not shown". While Leaver believed that the "eerie feeling of familiarity" helped draw fans together, Kotaku said that the horror was in part derived from the subtle "wrongness" present in liminal spaces.[2][4]

In 2022, there was a TikTok trend for videos that zoomed in on Google Earth to reveal an entrance to the Backrooms.[19][20]

Adaptations

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YouTube

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Main article: Backrooms (web series)

In January 2022, a short horror film titled "The Backrooms (Found Footage)" was uploaded to YouTube. Created by then-16-year-old Kane Parsons of Northern California, known online as Kane Pixels, it is presented as a VHS tape recorded by a filmmaker who accidentally enters the Backrooms in the 1990s and is pursued by a monster.[21][22] Parsons used the software Blender and Adobe After Effects to create the environment of the Backrooms, and it took him a month to complete it. He described the Backrooms as a manifestation of a poorly remembered recollection of the late 90s and early 2000s.[2][3] The video has over 68 million views as of October 2025.[23][24]

The short was praised by the fandom[23] and received positive reviews from critics. WPST called it "the scariest video on the Internet".[25] Otaku USA categorized it as analog horror,[26] while Dread Central and Nerdist compared it favorably to the 2019 video game Control.[27][28] Kotaku praised the series for exercising restraint in its horror and mystery.[4] Boing Boing's Rob Beschizza predicted that the Backrooms, like the creepypasta Slender Man and its panned 2018 film adaptation, would eventually be adapted into a "slick but dismal 2-hour Hollywood movie."[29]

Expanding his videos into a series of short films,[30] Parsons introduced plot aspects such as Async, an organization which opened a portal into the Backrooms in the 1980s and conducted research within it.[3][4] The series has collectively garnered over 197 million views.[31] It is also credited with lifting the Backrooms from obscurity into the mainstream internet and causing a surge in Backrooms content,[4][19] particularly on YouTube.[32] For his shorts, Parsons received a Creator Honors at the 2022 Streamy Awards from The Game Theorists.[33]

Film adaptation

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Main article: The Backrooms (film)

On February 6, 2023, A24 announced that they are working on a film adaptation of the Backrooms based on Parsons' videos, with Parsons directing. Roberto Patino is set to write the screenplay, while James Wan, Michael Clear from Atomic Monster, Shawn Levy, Dan Cohen, and Dan Levine of 21 Laps are set to produce.[21][30]

American Horror Stories

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An episode inspired by the Backrooms was included in the third season of American Horror Stories, a direct spin-off to American Horror Story.[34][35][36] The episode stars Michael Imperioli as a grief-stricken screenwriter who falls in and out of the "Backrooms", mundane locations where he is confronted by a manifestation of his missing son.[37] The episode was one in a group of five to be released as a "Huluween event".[38]

Video games

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The Backrooms have been adapted into numerous video games, including on the platforms Steam and Roblox.[19][23][39] An indie game was released by Pie on a Plate Productions two months after the original creepypasta,[40] and was positively reviewed for its atmosphere but received criticism for its short length.[41][42][43] Many others, such as Enter the Backrooms, Noclipped and The Backrooms Project, were released in the following years.[39] Co-op multiplayer Escape the Backrooms by Fancy Games was praised by Bloody Disgusting for its depiction of the extended lore,[30][44] while The Backrooms 1998 (both 2022), a psychological survival horror game independently released by one-person developer Steelkrill Studio, was noted by reviewers for its found footage visuals and limited save system.[45][46] Dreamcore, a 2025 first-person psychological horror video game developed by Argentinian studio Montraluz takes inspiration from the Backrooms.[47]

See also

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References

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Further reading

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[edit]
Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia

The Backrooms

View on Grokipedia
from Grokipedia
The Backrooms is a fictional extradimensional space conceptualized as an infinite, non-Euclidean labyrinth of interconnected empty rooms. The most iconic and original depiction is Level 0, commonly known as "The Lobby" or the "Yellow Rooms," an expansive maze resembling the back rooms of a dated retail outlet, featuring worn mono-yellow wallpaper, moist carpet, scattered electrical outlets, and inconsistently placed fluorescent lights that buzz constantly. The layout is highly disorienting due to its altered geometry, where straight paths can loop unpredictably. This level contains no entities and is classified as Class 1 (safe but unstable), though prolonged exposure can lead to psychological hazards such as migraines, hallucinations, and mental deterioration. It serves as the primary entry point for those who "no-clip" out of reality—a term borrowed from video game glitches to describe falling through the fabric of reality. This internet legend originated on May 12, 2019, when an anonymous user on 4chan's /x/ (paranormal) board posted a disquieting image of a dimly lit, abandoned office interior, prompting community responses that fleshed out the eerie narrative of isolation and inescapable wandering. The concept quickly evolved from a single creepypasta into a collaborative fictional universe, with fans expanding it through fan fiction, artwork, and lore detailing hundreds of "levels" varying in danger, from the safe yet disorienting yellow monotony of Level 0 to hostile environments populated by monstrous entities. The Backrooms gained widespread viral traction during the COVID-19 pandemic, resonating with themes of liminality, anxiety, and enforced solitude, amassing over 500,000 related posts on TikTok and inspiring dedicated online communities on platforms like Reddit. Notable adaptations include Kane Pixels' 2022 YouTube horror series, which reimagines the space as a found-footage exploration and has garnered tens of millions of views, as well as video games on Steam and Roblox that simulate navigation through its disorienting corridors, and an upcoming A24 film adaptation announced in June 2025, directed by Kane Parsons.

Concept and Description

Core Premise

The Backrooms is depicted as an extradimensional labyrinthine space that one can inadvertently enter by "noclipping" out of normal reality, typically in everyday environments like buildings. This concept originates from a creepypasta narrative describing Level 0, commonly called "The Lobby" or "Yellow Rooms," as an expansive, non-Euclidean maze resembling the back rooms of a dated retail outlet or old office building. It features yellowed wallpaper with arrow or vertical line patterns, damp and moist carpet, scattered electrical outlets, and inconsistently placed fluorescent lights that buzz constantly, creating an omnipresent low hum. The layout is highly disorienting due to altered geometry, where walking in straight lines can cause looping or unpredictable shifts. The space lacks any discernible purpose or exit, trapping wanderers in perpetual disorientation and solitude. It is classified as Class 1: Safe, Unstable, Devoid of Entities, with no entities present, but prolonged exposure can lead to dehydration, starvation, migraines from the incessant lighting, hallucinations, and mental deterioration. Level 0 is generally regarded as the primary entry point to the Backrooms via noclipping from reality, and some lore, such as the Limina Theory, portrays it as a liminal purgatory-like dimension or metaphysical prison/dumping ground for lost individuals. The foundational text of the creepypasta captures this essence in its vivid portrayal: "If you're not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the Backrooms, where it's nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in. God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you." This entry point emphasizes the accidental nature of discovery, drawing from video game terminology where "noclipping" refers to bypassing physical boundaries, here extended to a metaphysical glitch into an inescapable void. At its core, the horror of the Backrooms stems from psychological terror induced by liminal spaces—transitional areas that evoke unease through their familiarity twisted into the uncanny—amplified by the absence of escape and the lurking threat of hostile entities. These beings, implied as predatory and auditory-sensitive from the outset, heighten the dread of isolation, transforming the mundane repetition of yellow walls and buzzing lights into a nightmarish eternity where survival hinges on silence and evasion. The liminal aesthetic, evoking abandoned or in-between places like unused office corridors, underscores the premise's reliance on subtle, existential fear rather than overt violence.

Liminal Spaces Influence

Liminal spaces refer to transitional or in-between areas, such as empty hallways, waiting rooms, or corridors, that evoke a sense of unease through their familiarity combined with profound emptiness and ambiguity. This concept originates from anthropological theories of liminality, first outlined by Arnold van Gennep in his 1909 work Rites de Passage, which described the middle stage of rituals as a threshold where normal structures dissolve, and later expanded by Victor Turner in The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (1969) to emphasize disorientation and potential for transformation in these ambiguous zones. In modern internet aesthetics, liminal spaces extend this idea to visual representations of abandoned or underpopulated environments, often stripped of human presence, creating a surreal atmosphere that blurs the boundaries between the known and the unknown. The psychological appeal of liminal spaces in horror stems from their ability to trigger nostalgia intertwined with discomfort, drawing on the uncanny valley effect where familiar settings appear slightly off-kilter, eliciting eeriness rather than outright fear. Turner's framework highlights how these spaces disrupt social norms, fostering a sense of existential limbo that amplifies dread, while contemporary analyses link the unease to disrupted expectations in everyday environments, such as the absence of anticipated activity in transitional areas. Nostalgia plays a key role, as these visuals often evoke memories of late-20th-century architecture—like fluorescent-lit interiors from the 1980s and 1990s—now rendered obsolete, heightening the uncanny through a mix of personal reminiscence and subtle alienation. In The Backrooms, the infinite yellow-walled rooms serve as an extreme manifestation of liminal horror, mimicking the repetitive, disorienting layouts of abandoned commercial or office spaces to intensify feelings of isolation and existential dread. The jaundiced hue and monotonous carpeting replicate the faded aesthetics of neglected mid-century buildings, transforming mundane familiarity into a perpetual threshold that traps perception in endless ambiguity. Prior to the widespread popularization of the liminal aesthetic around 2019, early internet imagery of empty swimming pools and derelict malls captured similar transitional unease, circulating in online discussions of urban decay and nostalgia as far back as the mid-2010s. Photographs of drained pools, evoking off-season abandonment, and vast, shuttered shopping centers with echoing atriums exemplified this pre-digital-age vibe, laying groundwork for the genre by highlighting the haunting quietude of once-vibrant public areas.

Origin and Early History

4chan Creepypasta

The Backrooms originated as a creepypasta on May 12, 2019, when an anonymous user known as "Anon" posted it on 4chan's /x/ board, dedicated to paranormal topics. The post appeared in a thread prompting users to share "disquieting images that just feel 'off,'" where Anon responded with a description of an alternate reality accessed by "noclipping" out of normal space. This marked the birth of the concept as a concise horror narrative evoking existential dread through mundane yet infinite isolation. The full text of the original post reads: "If you're not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the Backrooms, where it's nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in. God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you." Accompanying the text was an image of a dimly lit, yellow-walled office space, which provided a stark visual anchor for the described environment. Immediate reactions in the thread were mixed but engaged, with numerous replies accumulating within days as users expressed unease, confusion over the "noclipping" mechanic, and early meme variations riffing on the isolation theme. Some responders contributed quick sketches of similar liminal interiors, while others debated its plausibility as a real glitch or shared personal anecdotes of disorienting spaces, fostering an initial sense of communal intrigue without extensive elaboration. The concept spread rapidly beyond 4chan, migrating to Reddit's r/creepypasta and related subreddits like r/creepy by late May 2019, where users reposted the text and image to garner upvotes and discussions on its atmospheric horror. By early June 2019, it appeared on Twitter, amplifying viral traction through shares and threads that highlighted its liminal appeal, setting the stage for broader internet phenomenon status.

Iconic Image Source

The iconic image associated with The Backrooms depicts a low-resolution, dimly lit room featuring yellowed walls, moist beige carpet, and scattered debris under fluorescent lighting, evoking an unsettling sense of isolation. This photograph was posted anonymously on 4chan's /x/ board in May 2019 alongside the original creepypasta text describing "noclipping" out of reality into an endless labyrinth. The image's origin traces to March 2, 2003, when it was uploaded to the website of HobbyTown USA in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, as part of a photo series documenting the renovation of a former furniture store at 807 Oregon Street into an RC hobby shop and raceway called Revolution Raceway. The photograph captured the "before" state of one of the building's interior rooms, highlighting water damage and construction clutter from the site's prior use as Rohner's Furniture. The photographer remains unidentified, but the images were shared by the store's proprietors to showcase the transformation project. The anonymous 4chan user who popularized the image in the creepypasta likely sourced it from early internet archives or stock photo repositories, where it had circulated without context since at least 2011. To enhance its eerie aesthetic, the poster appears to have cropped the image to isolate the room and amplified its graininess, transforming a mundane renovation snapshot into a symbol of existential dread. This revelation of the image's prosaic roots—uncovered by online researchers in May 2024 through analysis of the Wayback Machine—heightens the Backrooms' allure by juxtaposing everyday banality against the fictional infinite void, reinforcing the noclipping narrative as a metaphor for slipping into overlooked realities. As of September 2025, the site has closed as HobbyTown USA and transitioned to a new owner operating it as John's Hobbies, continuing its function as a hobby shop and RC track.

Fandom Expansion

Lore Development

Following the original 2019 creepypasta post on 4chan, fans began expanding the Backrooms concept in late 2019 and throughout 2020 through threads on 4chan's /x/ board and subreddits like r/creepypasta and r/greentext, where users introduced a multi-level structure to the infinite maze. The Backrooms consists of numerous numbered levels, each featuring unique environments, levels of danger, and anomalous properties. Entry into the Backrooms typically occurs by "noclipping" out of reality, often accidentally in liminal places. Exits and transitions to other levels vary by level and include further noclipping, doors, specific actions, or objects. These early additions formalized "Level 0" as the classic yellow-walled, moisture-carpeted rooms from the original narrative, while "Level 1" emerged as a darker, more industrial variant featuring concrete corridors and dim lighting, establishing a progression of increasingly hazardous environments. Later levels expanded this diversity in a community-driven manner without a central canon, including Level 11, known as "The Infinite City," an endless urban landscape filled with streets, buildings, and occasional safe zones; and Level 37, commonly known as The Poolrooms, an expansive complex of interconnected rooms and corridors submerged in undulating, lukewarm water, often regarded as one of the safer levels with minimal entity presence. Fan-created entities further enriched the lore during this period, transforming the Backrooms from a solitary liminal horror into a survival narrative with predatory inhabitants. Notable examples include Partygoers (Entity 67), deceptive humanoid creatures that lure wanderers with cheerful invitations before attacking, often found in themed party-like sublevels; Skin-Stealers (Entity 10), tall, skinless humanoids capable of donning human skins as disguises to ambush victims, exhibiting behaviors like mimicking voices to approach prey; and Bacteria (Entity 0), a collective microbial lifeform that infects and corrupts organic matter, spreading through contact and causing rapid decay in encountered wanderers. The Backrooms Wiki on Wikidot, launched in April 2020 as a dedicated repository, became the primary hub for organizing this growing lore, distinguishing canonical elements—those collaboratively vetted for consistency, such as core levels and entity behaviors—from non-canonical fan submissions that deviated into experimental or humorous interpretations. As of early 2025, the wiki documented over 600 levels, including main entries up to Level 999, numerous sublevels, and unnumbered anomalous spaces, reflecting the lore's expansive, community-curated nature. While primary wikis document levels up to around 999, fan communities on other wikis like the Backrooms Freewriting Wiki have created additional non-canonical levels extending into much higher numbers. For example, Level 2025 ("Backrooms Arena") is a habitable arena hosting games and the Backrooms Olympics; it is entered via arena signs or doors from other levels and exited via elevators, doors, or subways to levels such as 0, 2, and 11. Level 2026 is an infinite airport terminal with variable danger; it is entered by sleeping on abandoned planes in levels like 10 and exited by boarding planes and sleeping to reach levels such as 3155 or !. These are non-canonical fan creations, with no official levels reaching 2025 or 2026 on primary wikis as of 2026. A key milestone occurred in 2021, when interest surged alongside the creepypasta's broader online traction, leading to widespread creation of detailed level mappings—diagrammatic layouts visualizing spatial anomalies and no-clip points—and ASCII art representations that depicted rooms, entities, and environmental hazards in text-based formats for easy sharing in forums. This period solidified the collaborative framework, with online communities briefly referenced as facilitators for such iterative contributions without centralizing control.

Online Communities and Wikis

The online communities surrounding The Backrooms have proliferated since its inception, serving as hubs for discussion, creative collaboration, and preservation of the concept's evolving narrative. Major platforms include Reddit's r/backrooms subreddit, established in December 2019 as a dedicated space for discourse on the fictional phenomenon, alongside active Discord servers linked to fan wikis and general fandom channels that facilitate real-time interactions among thousands of users. Ongoing 4chan threads, particularly in the /x/ paranormal board, continue to host sporadic discussions and image shares that echo the original creepypasta style, maintaining a raw, anonymous edge to the community's roots. These platforms have fostered a vibrant social ecosystem, with Discord servers often hosting voice chats, lore-sharing sessions, and collaborative projects that extend the Backrooms' participatory appeal. The evolution of Backrooms wikis reflects the fandom's growth and internal debates over structure and quality. The primary Fandom-hosted wiki at backrooms.fandom.com was founded on June 2, 2019, by user Cicicity, initially enduring an "Age of Anarchy" marked by unchecked vandalism until Fandom staff intervention in April 2021 prompted a cleanup phase with appointed moderators and stricter content standards. In contrast, the dedicated Wikidot site (backrooms-wiki.wikidot.com), launched later as an alternative, emphasizes rigorous curation with greenlighting processes for new pages, resulting in a more streamlined but less expansive archive compared to Fandom's open-editing model. Editing guidelines across both include prohibitions on self-insertions unless historically relevant, restrictions on pages beyond Level 999 until lower levels are saturated, and bans on AI-generated content, aiming to preserve originality and maturity in submissions. Controversies have arisen from these approaches, including the Fandom wiki's "Great Purge" in 2023 that deleted over 1,700 low-quality pages, sparking backlash over lost fan works, and ongoing debates between the two wikis regarding "canon" interpretations, with Fandom favoring broader inclusivity and Wikidot prioritizing high standards that some view as overly restrictive. Fan activities within these communities emphasize interactive engagement, such as role-playing events in dedicated Discord channels and Roblox experiences that simulate noclipping into liminal spaces, allowing users to embody survivors or explorers. Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions with early creators and content producers occasionally occur on Discord and Reddit, providing insights into the concept's development. Annual celebrations on May 12, marking the 2019 4chan origin, include wiki-hosted trivia nights, fan art contests, and reflective posts, as seen in the fifth anniversary events in 2024 that highlighted community milestones. These spaces have briefly contributed to lore building through collective editing and shared ideas, though primary focus remains on social organization. Demographically, the Backrooms fandom skews toward Generation Z and young millennials, drawn to its nostalgic yet unsettling aesthetics amid pandemic-era isolation. Global reach is evident in international wiki branches, including Spanish and Russian-language communities that adapt and translate content for non-English speakers, expanding participation beyond English-dominant platforms.

Media Adaptations

Web Series

The web series adaptation of The Backrooms has primarily been popularized through analog horror content on YouTube, with Kane Pixels' ongoing series serving as the most influential example. Launched on January 7, 2022, by filmmaker Kane Parsons (known online as Kane Pixels), the series employs a found-footage style to depict teams of explorers and researchers navigating the endless, monotonous rooms while encountering hostile entities such as bacterial colonies and shadowy figures. By November 2025, the series comprises 25 episodes, including unlisted shorts, with the inaugural episode "The Backrooms (Found Footage)" amassing over 69 million views. Subsequent installments, such as "Backrooms - Missing Persons" (16 million views) and "Backrooms - Informational Video" (14 million views), build a semi-anthological narrative centered on the fictional Async Research Institute's expeditions into the Backrooms via "noclipping" events—glitches that pull individuals from reality into the liminal space. Key episodes highlight escalating threats and discoveries, including "Backrooms - First Contact" (2022), which introduces entity interactions during early tests, and the 2025 release "Static Dead End," featuring distorted audio logs and environmental hazards in deeper levels. The production relies heavily on visual effects (VFX) to simulate the infinite, yellow-tinted rooms, using procedural generation techniques in software like Blender to create disorienting, non-Euclidean geometry that evokes isolation and dread. Parsons' channel has grown to 2.75 million subscribers by November 2025, with the series collectively surpassing 286 million total views, underscoring its role in mainstreaming the Backrooms concept beyond its creepypasta origins. Innovations in the series include multi-episode narrative arcs that weave corporate conspiracies, portraying the Async Institute as a secretive entity covering up noclipping incidents and exploiting the Backrooms for experimental purposes, such as resource extraction or dimensional research. This lore expands the original meme's ambiguity into structured storytelling, incorporating real-world elements like 1990s-era VHS footage to blend historical fiction with horror. Smaller creators have contributed to the genre, such as the 2024 short "Backrooms - Stalker" by Spectre, which uses similar VFX for entity pursuits in Level 0, and animated series like "ENTERING the Backrooms," which follows a scientist's portal experiments in a more stylized format. These works emphasize atmospheric tension through sound design and editing, though they remain niche compared to Parsons' production scale. Additional examples include found-footage style videos like "The Pool Rooms (Found Footage)" by Jared Pike, uploaded on March 3, 2022, which depicts exploration of the flooded Poolrooms level in a style inspired by Kane Pixels.

Video Games

The Backrooms has inspired several indie video game adaptations that emphasize survival horror mechanics within procedurally generated, infinite-like environments. These games typically feature exploration of monotonous, yellow-tinted rooms, evasion of hostile entities, and resource management to find temporary "exits," drawing from the creepypasta's core concept of inescapable liminality. Prominent titles include Escape the Backrooms, developed by Fancy Games and released in early access in August 2022 for PC, with a full release on October 23, 2025, and planned console ports in 2026; no mobile version is available. This co-op horror game supports 1-4 players navigating over 30 levels, incorporating procedural room generation to simulate endless backrooms and AI-driven entity pursuits. The game exited early access and launched its full version on October 23, 2025, adding new levels and improvements. A key mechanic is the sanity meter, which depletes in prolonged exposure to the uniform yellow environments, leading to hallucinations or increased entity aggression if not mitigated through items like Almond Water. Another major release is Inside the Backrooms, a 2022 co-op horror title developed by MrFatcat (under MRMV Edition branding in some updates) for PC, focusing on puzzle-solving and multiplayer escape sequences across themed levels. Gameplay highlights include collaborative entity avoidance and sanity-draining effects from isolation or visual monotony, with procedural elements varying room layouts for replayability. The Backrooms: Survival, a 2023 VR-compatible indie game by Monad Studio, introduces roguelike survival with randomized procedural levels, where players manage hunger, thirst, and sanity meters while scavenging for supplies amid entity chases. These games originated from small indie teams, with Fancy Games iterating on Escape the Backrooms through community feedback; for instance, the January 2024 update (Part 4) incorporated over 50 fan-inspired level designs and balancing tweaks, expanding content based on player submissions. Similarly, Inside the Backrooms received patches integrating co-op enhancements drawn from online discussions. Dedicated titles focusing on specific levels include The Pool Rooms, Backrooms level 37, a 2024 singleplayer simulation and maze game developed by an indie team, where players navigate a gigantic complex of interconnected rooms submerged in water to find an exit, emphasizing exploration without hostile entities. By 2025, these titles have collectively sold over 5 million units across platforms, with Escape the Backrooms alone achieving approximately 3.5 million units and $43 million in gross revenue, primarily via Steam and mobile distribution. Reception has been generally positive for their immersive atmospheric tension and faithful recreation of Backrooms dread, earning 89% positive Steam reviews for Escape the Backrooms, though critics note repetitive scare patterns and limited narrative depth as common drawbacks. Mobile adaptations such as Poolrooms: The Hidden Exit, released in 2024 for Android and iOS, offer similar liminal exploration experiences with puzzle elements in flooded environments.

Film and Television

The primary scripted adaptation of The Backrooms in film is an upcoming science fiction horror feature produced by A24, directed by 19-year-old Kane Parsons in his directorial debut. Development began in early 2023 as a collaboration between A24, James Wan's Atomic Monster, and Chernin Entertainment, with the project receiving official greenlight status in June 2025. Parsons, known online as Kane Pixels for creating the viral YouTube found-footage series that popularized the concept, will helm the film from a screenplay by Roberto Patino. The story draws from the original creepypasta lore of "noclipping" into an endless, liminal maze of yellow-walled rooms, though specific plot details remain under wraps; production emphasizes the unsettling, infinite nature of the dimension through practical sets augmented by visual effects. Principal photography commenced in summer 2025 and wrapped by August, with a theatrical release slated for 2026. The cast includes Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Avan Jogia, Finn Bennett, and Lukita Maxwell, marking a shift from the amateur found-footage style of the source material to a more polished ensemble narrative. In television, The Backrooms received its first major scripted treatment in the anthology series American Horror Stories, with the episode titled "Backrooms" airing on October 15, 2024, as part of the show's third season Huluween event. Directed by Axelle Carolyn and written by Jon Robin Baitz and Joe Baken, the 45-minute installment follows a desperate father, played by Michael Imperioli, who enters the Backrooms dimension in search of his missing son, blending themes of grief and metaphysical horror with liminal space visuals. The episode incorporates core elements like the buzzing fluorescent lights and monotonous yellow rooms but deviates from fan-established lore by framing the space as a purgatorial manifestation of personal guilt, earning mixed reception for its emotional focus over atmospheric dread. Critics and viewers noted a 5.2/10 IMDb rating, praising Imperioli's performance while critiquing the narrative as a missed opportunity to fully capture the creepypasta's infinite terror. Beyond these, several unproduced pitches and fan-led projects highlight ongoing interest in cinematic expansions. In 2022, Warner Bros. explored an early adaptation pitch, though it stalled without advancing to production amid competing studio interests. Fan films, such as the 2025 YouTube trailer for "The Backrooms Movie - 2026 FAN FILM," have emerged as low-budget homages, reimagining the lore through amateur found-footage techniques and garnering millions of views for their DIY fidelity to the original meme. Producing The Backrooms for screen presents unique challenges, particularly in visualizing its conceptually infinite, non-Euclidean environments on constrained budgets. Adaptations like the A24 film rely heavily on CGI to replicate the disorienting scale of endless levels, as seen in Parsons' original series where realistic digital effects created the illusion of vast, empty spaces without extensive physical sets. Estimated budgets for such projects range from $9 million to $15 million, balancing practical locations with VFX to evoke the creepypasta's sense of isolation while avoiding overreliance on exposition.

Cultural Impact

Critical Reception

The initial creepypasta depicting The Backrooms, posted on 4chan in May 2019, quickly garnered acclaim for its originality in capturing the unease of liminal spaces, with the concept spreading rapidly to Reddit's r/LiminalSpace and r/backrooms communities by late 2019 and into 2020, where users praised its evocative simplicity as a fresh take on internet horror folklore. However, some early feedback criticized the brevity of the original post, arguing it invited excessive fan expansions that diluted its minimalist terror into convoluted lore. Media adaptations received mixed but generally positive reviews, particularly for revitalizing analog horror tropes. Kane Pixels' YouTube series (2022–2025), starting with "The Backrooms (Found Footage)," was lauded by Kotaku for its restrained approach to horror and mystery, building tension through subtle world-building rather than overt scares, contributing to its viral success with millions of views. In contrast, video games like Escape the Backrooms (2022) earned praise on Steam for its immersive atmosphere and realistic graphics evoking dread in endless, monotonous environments, achieving a "Very Positive" user rating of 90% from over 114,000 reviews, though critics noted low replayability due to linear level designs and repetitive mechanics. GameSpot awarded it a 6/10, highlighting its effectiveness in co-op streaming sessions but faulting bugs and lack of depth. Academic analyses from 2023 to 2025 have framed The Backrooms as a key example of internet folklore, exploring its psychological resonance with liminal spaces as metaphors for existential alienation and societal anomie in late capitalism. In a 2025 essay in Electronic Book Review, Mez Breeze discusses how the concept evokes "in-between" states of disorientation, drawing on theories of liminality to link personal ennui to cultural decay, while citing collaborative online expansions as modern digital urban legends. Earlier works, such as Samantha J. Stephen's 2022 analysis, emphasize its role in collective meaning-making, and Bradley Earl Wiggins' 2023–2024 studies examine narrative construction in liminal aesthetics as reflective of communal anxieties. Controversies surrounding The Backrooms have centered on canon debates and fears of commercialization eroding its core horror. Online communities, particularly on Reddit and wikis, engaged in heated discussions about "official" lore, with a 2024 Canon Contest on the Backrooms Wiki highlighting interpretive conflicts over themes and entities, leading to fragmented canons across platforms. Critics argued that mainstream adaptations, including games and A24's film—which completed filming in August 2025 and is scheduled for theatrical release in 2026—risked diluting the original's subtle dread through over-commercialization and meme saturation, transforming existential terror into accessible entertainment.

Broader Influence

The Backrooms has contributed to the revival of creepypasta culture following the peak popularity of Slender Man in the early 2010s, with Kane Pixels' 2022 YouTube series garnering hundreds of millions of views across its episodes as of 2025 and expanding the collaborative narrative tradition through viral found-footage storytelling. This resurgence aligns with broader internet horror trends, positioning The Backrooms as a key example in the 2023-2025 analog horror wave, where its use of liminal, glitch-infused dread echoes earlier works like Local 58's simulated TV broadcasts while inspiring subsequent creators to explore technological unease and isolation. The concept has permeated popular culture through memes and social media, with over 500,000 TikTok posts dedicated to Backrooms-themed content by mid-2023, evolving into millions of engagements that blend horror with humor and parody. Merchandise, including apparel such as graphic t-shirts featuring liminal space motifs and entity designs, has become widely available through official game stores and platforms like Redbubble and Amazon, allowing fans to incorporate the aesthetic into everyday wear. Despite the widespread online consumption of Backrooms and related Poolrooms or liminal spaces videos, there is no scientific evidence that viewing such content causes neurological damage, brain structure changes, or permanent psychological harm. These atmospheric videos may evoke temporary effects such as unease, anxiety, nostalgia, or derealization in some viewers due to their eerie, uncanny aesthetic. Claims of "brain rot" generally refer to the potential cognitive and mental health impacts of excessive short-form video consumption on platforms like TikTok, rather than to these specific liminal horror videos. Academic and artistic discussions have extended The Backrooms' influence to architecture and liminal aesthetics, prompting analyses of how its endless, monotonous office-like voids evoke unease in modern built environments, often described as "haunted" due to their functional yet disorienting designs. A 2024 scholarly exploration frames it as a digital urban legend that critiques the inhuman scale of contemporary spaces, influencing conversations on subliminal dread in everyday infrastructure. Globally, The Backrooms has inspired non-English adaptations, including the 2024 Japanese manga The Backrooms: Labyrinth of Despair on MANGA Plus Creators, which reinterprets the no-clipping premise through a father's grief-driven descent into infinite rooms.

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