Long before it was soon to be an A24 production, the “Backrooms” was just a nameless image floating through the digital space. Its origin story is a masterclass in how modern myths are born—not through a board of writers, but through the collective anxiety of the internet.
The Origins
The origins for the entire phenomenon was a single photo that began circulating on message boards as early as 2011. It was a shot of an empty, expansive room with sickly yellow wallpaper, stained industrial carpet, and an aggressive grid of fluorescent lights. The photo was taken at a strange, uneven angle, making the viewer feel slightly off.
For nearly a decade, the image existed without context, often appearing in threads about “liminal spaces”—meaning empty or abandoned places that appear eerie, forlorn, and often surreal, at least in terms of internet lingo.
It wasn’t until 12th May 2019, that the image found its purpose. An anonymous user on 4chan’s /x/ (Paranormal) board started a thread asking users to post “disquieting images that just feel ‘off’.” The yellow room was posted once again, but this time, it was met with a response that would change internet history.
On the 13th May 2019, a second anonymous user replied to the image with a short paragraph that provided the terrifying “rules” of this space:
“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.”
This post introduced the concept of noclipping, a term coined from video game culture where a player passes through a solid wall or object into the out of bounds area of a map. A space where deleted levels, unused assets and even non playable characters end up outside of cutscenes. By applying this glitch-logic to the real world, the author suggested that reality itself was a buggy simulation, and the Backrooms was the basement where the surplus data was stored.
What made the original 4chan post so effective was its simplicity. It didn’t describe some creature with blood-red eyes; it described a mundane space that could become a sensory nightmare. It leaned into the quiet buzzing of lights and the smell of an “old moist carpet”—universal experiences of miserable office life turned into an eternal prison. The only hint of a threat was the final chilling sentence: “God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you.”
For years, people online debated whether the room was a real place or just a very clever 3D render. The mystery wasn’t solved until May 2024, when internet sleuths finally tracked down the original source of the photo. It wasn’t a digital creation; it was a real picture taken all the way back in 2002 during the renovation of a former furniture store in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, as it was being converted into a “HobbyTown” remote-control car race track.
By the time the location was found, the physical room had long been demolished and remodelled, meaning the “original” Backrooms only exists now as a digital ghost—a fitting end for a legend that started with a glitch in reality.
But this is only the beginning of what the Backroom would turn into thanks to the world of the internet.
Kane Parsons enters the discussion
The 4chan page provided the blueprints for The Backrooms but it was a 16-year-old named Kane Parsons who actually brought The Backrooms to the general public. On January 7, 2022, Parsons—known online as Kane Pixels—uploaded a short film titled “The Backrooms (Found Footage).” In just over nine minutes, he single-handedly dragged the concept out of the niche corners of the internet and into the mainstream spotlight.
The video presented itself as a lost VHS tape from the 1990s, featuring a young filmmaker who accidentally “nocips” through the pavement while filming a amateur movie with his friends. What followed was a masterclass in tension building: the grainy, low-frame-rate movement, the deafening hum of the lights, and then the terrifying realization that this endless yellow labyrinth was physically real. Unlike the community wikis that had become cluttered with hundreds of “levels” and cartoonish monsters, Parsons’ vision was stripped-back and visceral.
Parsons didn’t just animate the rooms; he gave them a history, he built lore and gave the internet enough plot threads to build it up. He introduced the ASYNC Foundation, a fictional research institute that, in his lore, opened a hole to this dimension in the late 1980s. This pivoted the story from a supernatural fluke to this scientific disaster. By framing the Backrooms as a corporate or government project gone wrong, he added a layer of Cold War-era horror that resonated with a generation obsessed with nostalgia and “found footage” media.
The impact was huge. The original video amassed currently sits at over 76 million views, spawning a multi episode web series that explored the politics and history of ASYNC, the biological mutations of the environment, and the tragic “missing persons” cases caused by the rift. It was this specific, polished narrative that the internet took and built upon. Spawning countless found footage video spin offs, indie horror games and even new ‘creepypasta’ stories in the same vein as The Backrooms such as .
Modern Media Attention
The Backrooms is arguably one of the most influential concepts in indie horror gaming of the last decade. It effectively birthed the “Liminal Horror” subgenre, moving away from jump-scares and toward “atmospheric dread.” Games like Escape the Backrooms and The Backrooms 1998 became viral hits on Twitch, but the influence goes deeper.
The mechanics and vibe of the Backrooms (looping hallways and nonsensical geometry) can be seen in mainstream gaming titles like The Stanley Parable and the surreal horror of Control. Most recently, the viral success of The Exit 8, a “spot the difference” simulator set in a looping Japanese subway station, which itself got the big screen treated has proven that the “liminal space” aesthetic is now a horror genre of its own.
Television shows have increasingly leaned into the “liminal spaces” concept as a main source of horror. Apple TV+’s hit series Severance most certainly takes its cues from the lore of the Backrooms, particularly in its imagery of infinite, sterile corridors and office layouts that make little architectural sense. This design choice amps the show’s unsettling vibe, trapping its characters in a bureaucratic labyrinth that feels as infinite and inescapable as the original yellow rooms themselves.
Hell, even American Horror Stories included the Backrooms in an episode rightly titled “Backrooms.” Starring Michael Imperioli, the episode didn’t just borrow the aesthetic; it brought in the lore. It followed a grieving father who “noclipped” into a purgatory-like dimension of yellow walls and fluorescent lights while searching for his missing son. By incorporating the concept originated from the 4chan post—the show signalled that the Backrooms had moved past simply being this “internet thing” and into the front of modern pop culture.
Upcoming A24 Film
The finally brings us to 2026 and A24 not only bringing the lore of the Backrooms to the big screen, but doing so with the directing debut of Kane Parsons himself. In a bold move for A24, Kane is the youngest director for A24 but based off the first trailer for the film, we are in good hands.
The story follows a man named Clark (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor), a furniture store owner whose life unravels when a strange doorway appears in his basement. A great nod to the photos original origins of being a furniture store.
Opposite him we have the talented Renate Reinsve playing Dr. Mary Kline, a therapist who must also go into the yellow hue abyss to retrieve a patient who has accidentally noclipped out of reality.
With recent news that they legitimately built over 30,000 square feet of Backrooms were built, which led to people getting lost on set. This adaptation is looking to really lock in and hopefully become one of the standout horrors of 2026 and even one of the most uncomfortable watches in a while.
A24’s Backrooms is due to release into cinemas on the May 29, 2026, and expect a full review of the film here at Get Your Comic On.
