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What happens when two of the internet's most terrifying dimensions collide. Are the endless yellow hallways of the Backrooms and the inescapable aisles of SCP-3008 actually the exact same place? From aggressive, faceless entities to the mind-bending theory of "God's Developer Space," we uncover the chilling connections between these two realities. Join our investigation into the ultimate liminal nightmare.

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Content relating to the SCP Foundation, including the SCP Foundation logo, is licensed under Creative Commons Sharealike 3.0 and all concepts originate from http://www.scp-wiki.net and its authors.

Is SCP-3008 an extension of the Backrooms? is based on "SCP-3008" by Mortos: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-3008

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Transcript
00:00You're walking through a building that's familiar to you, not really thinking about the world around you.
00:06Maybe you're daydreaming about that startup you'd like to found someday, or what you plan on having for dinner.
00:13But then after a couple of turns, you look up and realize that you don't know where you are.
00:18You're in a strange, unfamiliar hallway.
00:21You try to turn back, to retrace your steps, but nothing is familiar here either.
00:27You're well, and truly, lost.
00:31You try to make a call for help, or go on the internet, but there's no cell signal or wifi
00:37here.
00:38You need to get out of here the old-fashioned way.
00:40But the more you try to find your way out, the more it seems that you get turned around on
00:46yourself.
00:47You're starting to feel hungry and thirsty.
00:50Is there food and water anywhere around here?
00:52Hard to say.
00:53It feels impossible for a building to be this big, like you're walking through the streets of some enclosed city.
01:01You feel frightened and alone, and you're half right.
01:05You have every reason to be excited, but I'm sorry to tell you that you're not alone here.
01:11After hours of wandering empty hallways, you're crushed by the exhaustion and the silence.
01:17It almost stops your heart when you hear the first footstep.
01:21Perhaps someone here to help you, save you from this place.
01:24But when you turn around, your blood runs cold.
01:28You don't know what to call the thing that's standing just a few feet behind you.
01:32But there's one thing you can say with total confidence.
01:36It isn't human.
01:38Now, I have a question for you.
01:41Was this frightening scenario I just guided you through the experience of a person trapped in the horrifying extradimensional space
01:47known as the Backrooms?
01:49Or someone trapped inside SCP-3008, the infinite Ikea?
01:54That is what we here at the SCP Foundation have been thinking about lately, ever since the hit Backrooms movie
02:00from Kane Parsons' hit theaters.
02:02For anyone with a deep enthusiasm in the world of the anomalous, you've likely already used your impressive brain to
02:09put together the similarities here.
02:11But we want to use our knowledge, resources, and classified files to go a little deeper.
02:18Could these places be just two portions of the same hole?
02:23And what could this mean for all of us?
02:26If you're a little confused by this, you need to understand a short tale that is often given to Foundation
02:31trainees in order to help mold their minds into comprehending the anomalous.
02:35It's the parable of the blind man and the elephant.
02:39In this old Buddhist tale, an elephant was brought into a small village that had never encountered such a creature.
02:46A group of blind men who lived in the town were curious and wanted to approach the elephant.
02:51But of course, because the men were blind, they could only understand the elephant through touch.
02:57One blind man touched its trunk and said,
03:00An elephant is a creature, kind of like a large, thick snake.
03:04Another touched the elephant's leg and said,
03:06An elephant is like the trunk of a tree.
03:09Another touched its ear and said,
03:11An elephant has leathery, bat-like wings.
03:14And the one who touched its tusk said,
03:17An elephant is a hard and pointy thing, like a spear.
03:21This is how a person can lose context when dealing with incomplete information.
03:26And with this in mind, you can understand our thinking.
03:29Are the back rooms and the infinite Ikea two different things?
03:33Or just the tusk and trunk of the same huge animal?
03:37By the way, another blind man somehow completely missed the elephant, but he didn't mind.
03:42Because his hands found their way over to the subscribe button of SCP Explained,
03:47which allowed him to have an endless supply of interesting videos
03:50explaining the strange and anomalous world of the SCP Foundation.
03:55We recommend you follow his lead,
03:57because in the end,
03:58he was much happier than all the guys just touching the elephant.
04:02But back to the back rooms and the infinite Ikea.
04:05If you're a scholar of the anomalous,
04:07when you saw the movie,
04:09there was likely a little detail that jumped out to you immediately.
04:12The main entry point into the back rooms
04:14is the basement of Clark's furniture store.
04:17Why might this be?
04:18What's the connection here with the furniture store
04:21and the apertures into nightmarish warped dimensions
04:24like the back rooms and the infinite Ikea?
04:26It makes sense when you look a little closer.
04:30The large commonality between these two locations,
04:33if they even are two different locations,
04:36is the essence of liminality.
04:38The sense of not being in one fixed place,
04:41but the unsettling, reality-altering feeling
04:43of being in a space between spaces.
04:47Bus stops, hotels, airports, hallways, alleys,
04:50gas stations, all-night laundromats.
04:53Junk data that your memory deletes
04:55for its irrelevancy to your life.
04:58And what could be a better bridge
05:00between the liminal and the intimate
05:02than the furniture store?
05:04It's all the fixtures of home,
05:06from tables to beds to couches,
05:08things that might one day become a part of your life
05:11if you decide to splash some cash on it.
05:13But taken out of context,
05:15placed in an eerie, desolate warehouse
05:17that's too large to ever feel comfortable,
05:20a furniture store is like a parody of a home,
05:23with all the proper pieces,
05:25but too many of them,
05:26arranged in configurations
05:28that would be baffling
05:29if you actually had to live in it.
05:32It's like a little piece of the other side
05:35spilling over into our world.
05:37Nothing about that even feels unusual to us
05:40as we walk through the fractalized honeycomb
05:42of bedrooms that will never be slept in,
05:45kitchens that will never play host to a meal,
05:47and bathrooms that will never cleanse.
05:50There's an internet phenomenon
05:51connected to liminality
05:53that some people refer to as
05:54places where reality feels altered,
05:57locations where you don't feel quite moored
06:00to our reality.
06:01It's what we at the Foundation
06:03would refer to as a place
06:04with unusual Hume levels,
06:06and furniture stores often fit the bill
06:09perfectly here.
06:10The furniture store in the backroom's movie,
06:12Captain Clark's Ottoman Empire,
06:14is a seat of liminality and reality distortion
06:18in a number of ways.
06:20Even if its name,
06:21as Clark's employees point out to him,
06:23is a liminal construct,
06:25it can't decide whether its theme is pirates
06:27or the Ottomans.
06:29It's a place between places.
06:31The same is true of IKEA as a concept.
06:34It's a furniture store that tries to create a sense of
06:37coziness, with its Swedish meatballs and charming displays,
06:41but it's a giant Swedish multinational corporation
06:44that flat-packs its furniture into boxes,
06:46places where this membrane of oneness splits,
06:49and creates portals to even darker places.
06:52Is it possible that similar entry points
06:55imply a connection somewhere within?
06:57The same is true of the terrifying monsters
07:00inside both of these anomalous places,
07:02and how they seem like they might be coming
07:05from the same place.
07:06The entities we see in the backroom's movie
07:09are known as still-lifes,
07:11and each one is a kind of corrupted reflection
07:13of human beings who exist in our world.
07:16They have distorted faces,
07:18like rudimentary AI generations of the human form,
07:21or the way that a human face might look
07:23in a cracked mirror.
07:24To some degree, the still-lifes appear to contain
07:27some of the essence of their corresponding
07:29real human counterpart in the world.
07:31While most of them seem extremely passive,
07:34to the point of not even resisting
07:36when humans or other still-lifes actively injure them,
07:39others can be extremely aggressive
07:41and dangerous when provoked.
07:43The most obvious example of this
07:45is the entity known by some as Pirate Clark,
07:48a large and terrifying figure
07:50that appears to be a stretched-out
07:52and disfigured version of Clark
07:54in his Captain Clark pirate mascot costume.
07:57As Clark himself discovered the hard way,
07:59Pirate Clark was capable of not only autonomous thought,
08:03but of horrific violence.
08:05While in this rage state,
08:07not unlike the notorious SCP-096,
08:10aggressive still-lifes like Clark
08:12will relentlessly pursue any humans
08:14or even weaker still-lifes
08:15that could make appropriate prey.
08:17For people familiar with the SCP-3008 file,
08:21this would definitely ring alarm bells.
08:23One of the greatest threats
08:25for people trapped inside the infinite Ikea
08:27is SCP-3008-2,
08:29also known as the Staff.
08:31These are monsters that appear to be dark copies
08:34of the Staff at a regular Ikea,
08:36complete with the bright, garish uniforms
08:38that might remind you of the colorful pigmentation
08:41that animals use to warn you of poison in the wild.
08:44These creatures are faceless with unusual body plans.
08:48Some unnaturally tall,
08:50some unusually short,
08:52misshapen body parts,
08:54limbs that are short and useless,
08:56or so long they drag along the ground when they walk.
08:59Of course,
08:59if you encounter these creatures
09:01during the day cycle of the infinite Ikea,
09:03they would be frightening to look at,
09:05but would mean you no harm.
09:07They might not even know that you're there
09:09when you're standing right in front of them.
09:11They are liable to become aggressive
09:13if you begin attacking them,
09:15but hey,
09:16that can be said for all of us, couldn't it?
09:18At night,
09:19it's a very different story.
09:21Much like Pirate Clark,
09:23when the lights of the infinite Ikea go off,
09:25the Staff enter a highly aggressive hunting mode,
09:28where they will engage with any trapped humans
09:30they find in groups or alone.
09:32The monsters repeat the words,
09:34The store is now closed.
09:36Please exit the building,
09:38and will relentlessly chase anyone unlucky enough
09:41to get in their way.
09:42They'll beat and maul their victims relentlessly,
09:45often to the point of death.
09:47And while you might be able to hold
09:48one of the smaller or human-sized ones,
09:51if you have a weapon
09:52and a degree of competency in using it,
09:54you'll still likely be overwhelmed and killed
09:57if you're caught by a roving horde.
09:59The similarities here are obvious.
10:02The monsters in both cases
10:03are these warped beings
10:05that seem to correlate to real-life people
10:07who have in some way interacted with the location.
10:10Ikea staff or people whose faded memories
10:13make up the patchwork of the backroom's physical space.
10:16The behavior also feels eerily consistent
10:19with the specific differences
10:20informed by their habits
10:22within the wider extra-dimensional space.
10:24Some still-lifes will act out domestic scenarios
10:27if those are the locations they're spawned into,
10:30in the same way that the staff perform
10:32a violent pantomime of the duties
10:34of real Ikea staff.
10:36Is it really that out of the question
10:38to ponder whether these are different
10:40regional variations of the same fundamental species?
10:43Like the portion of the backrooms
10:45connected to Captain Clark's Ottoman Empire
10:47and the portion connected to a certain Ikea
10:49in Denver, Colorado,
10:51are just different neighborhoods
10:52of the same vast and terrifying nightmare cityscape.
10:57But would it be beneath us
10:59to just point to a few superficial similarities here,
11:02like characters in some kind of Wojak cartoon?
11:05We're SCP Foundation researchers,
11:07and if we want to really understand
11:09what's happening here,
11:10we need to ask a deeper and more frightening question.
11:14How and why?
11:16What shared soil might these two flowers
11:19have grown out of?
11:20Because if we understand that,
11:22we might be able to actually get a sense of control
11:25over this situation.
11:26The interesting thing about the backrooms
11:29is that the best we have
11:30are ultimately just suggestions.
11:32In the movie, Clark posits the idea
11:34that the backrooms are just the product
11:36of faded human rememberings.
11:38The junk recollections thrown out
11:40and forgotten
11:41that linger and seem to get moldy in the dark.
11:44And there certainly seems to be plenty of evidence
11:47for this interpretation.
11:48But I think it goes a little deeper
11:50than Clark's musings,
11:52when he was clearly already beginning
11:53wanting to lose his mind
11:54under the pressure of backrooms' habitation.
11:57In science, a question we always need to ask
12:00is whether we're looking at correlation or causation.
12:04And when we've established causation,
12:07the task becomes to figure out
12:08which direction causality is flowing in.
12:11In other words,
12:12did our universe come first?
12:14Or did the backrooms and SCP-3008?
12:16Yeah, buckle up.
12:18Here's where it gets really mind-blowing.
12:21One of the theories our scientists have posited
12:24is one that I like to call
12:25God's developer space.
12:27Avid gamers and game design enthusiasts
12:30and fans of the amazing digital circus
12:32might already know
12:33where we're going with this one.
12:35It's the idea that this impossible place,
12:38encompassing the backrooms and the infinite IKEA,
12:41is a zone where the creative forces
12:43behind our universe work on
12:45and establish the character,
12:47asset, and location models
12:49for everything that we experience out here.
12:51This might sound like a realization
12:53that some ardent gamers would come to
12:55after Mountain Dew started releasing
12:57an ayahuasca flavor,
12:58but it's actually an idea
12:59with thousands of years
13:00of philosophical precedent.
13:02Plato himself,
13:03one of the greatest philosophers of all time,
13:06described his idea
13:07of the world of forms,
13:09a universe on a higher plane of reality
13:11than our own,
13:12which contains the ideal,
13:14immortal essence of everything
13:16that appears on our world.
13:17This is known as the Platonic Ideal.
13:21According to this idea,
13:23everything in our own world
13:24is really just a shadow of light
13:26cast through this ideal world of forms.
13:28In other words,
13:30when you see a chair in the backrooms,
13:32you're seeing the perfect idea of a chair,
13:35an object divorced from its human context,
13:37projected as a shallow image
13:39into our own world
13:41and simply dubbed
13:42chair by us.
13:43We never made any of these things.
13:46The ideas were just given back to us
13:48across a dimensional plane.
13:50Every Ikea in the world
13:51isn't just a flat-packed Swedish furniture store.
13:54It's the very tip of the elephant's trunk
13:57of the infinite Ikea.
13:59So with all this in mind,
14:01perhaps SCP-3008 and the backrooms
14:03are just one big, beautiful construction.
14:06And we are the disfigured copy.
14:09It'd explain a lot, wouldn't it?
14:11Now check out
14:12What Did the SCP Foundation Find in the Backrooms?
14:15And What If SCP-682
14:17Has Finally Met His Match in the Backrooms?
14:19For more.
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