*Heavy breathing* *More breathing* *You know, I recorded those* THE LORE! I HAVE TO SHOW YOU THE LOOOOOORE *screams* Hello Internet! Welcome to Film Theory. The
show that knows that going on to YouTube can be like noclipping into The Backrooms.
You’re minding your own business when suddenly it's days later and you have no idea
how you've watched so many padlock reviews. “A very very beefy, and very robust lock”
Ah, Would you look at the shackle on that baby? Shoutout to LockPickingLawyer, by
the way, for teaching me way more about locks than I thought a human brain could
consume. Anyway, today we're returning to the motto Yellow walls and ceaseless hum
buzzing fluorescence of The Backrooms. In case you need to catch up, Backrooms
is an analog horror series here on YouTube dot com, created by indie filmmaker Kane
Pixels. The initial video Kane uploaded in January of 2022 absolutely exploded in popularity,
gaining over 43 million views and becoming the seventh most watched video on YouTube of the
entire year, all thanks to its unique atmosphere, clever scares and fantastic production quality.
It was also built for theorists like us, filled to the brim with awesome ideas and hidden lore for us
to decode. In fact, towards the end of the year, Steph and I even gave Kane Pixels a Streamy
award to honor him for all his incredible work. This is a box that was delivered to my house.
So, Kane Pixels, here… Did I just noclip into The Backrooms?
Kane, I went to The Backrooms. And I got you this I’m just so honored to be
accepting this. So I guess, really, the only thing I can
say right now is, thank you. But now here we are, one year later
from that initial upload. Now with a story that spans four decades of time and
15 videos, plus a few secret videos mixed in. The community has come up with a
ton of ideas to explain this thing. Everything from alternative realities colliding
to The Backrooms being an incarnation of the ancient Egyptian afterlife. Our running theory
here is that the world that we see in The Backrooms is some sort of simulation,
like a giant video game or the Matrix. What we know of as “the real world” is the
topmost layer of that simulation, but below the surface there's an infinite procedurally
generated world of unused and cut content, stuff that either didn't fit or just wasn't
good enough to make the cut for the real world. And while I still believe that to be the case
today, I wanted to take a step back and reset. The Backrooms is a tricky series to
talk about; nothing is presented in chronological order and things tend to jump
back and forth in time with some earlier videos referencing events from later videos
that haven't technically happened yet. Heck, the very first video that Kane ever uploaded
is currently one of the last ones in the timeline. So today I wanted to do something
a little different. I wanted to sit down and make a definitive timeline of exactly what's
happened and when, so we can get ourselves a clear overview of everything that's going on in
this giant mystery that Kane's crafting. And in doing this and seeing what fits where and more
importantly, what doesn't fit where, we'll be able to learn a lot more about this story. Spoiler
alert, friends, there appears to be a massive time loop we're dealing with and we might just be
witnessing the collapse of an entire universe. Jump into those hazmat suits and
hold on to the red guideline friends, we are going in. The very first event that
we see in the series actually comes from the most recent upload as I'm
writing the script: Overflow. This video takes place on August 7th, 1972, as we
can see, thanks to the signature of a man named Ivan Beck. Over the course of this two minute
video, we also hear a radio broadcast about the Lend-Lease Agreement which happened between the
United States and USSR in, you guessed it, 1972. We watch as an electrical or radio
station is overtaken by a green glow that shakes everything violently before suddenly
cutting to black. Remember that green light, It's going to be important for us later.
The video ends with the night sky now mirror reflected. Something in this
universe has fundamentally changed. From there, we fast forward by about a
decade to the early 1980s, when a central California based company called Async begins
researching electromagnetism. On May 10th, 1982, we see one such test of a strange
electromagnetic device in the video, Prototype. Over the next several years, async would
refine this prototype into Project KV31, otherwise known as the Low Proximity Magnetic
Distortion System. On July 2nd, 1988, Async performs a failed third test of the system,
but it's their sixth test that really matters. On October 17th, 1989, at 5:04 p.m.
pacific, they power up the system one more time and successfully open a portal to The
Backrooms. They have made first contact. However, this move has dire consequences. 5:04 p.m.
was the exact time of a real world magnitude 6.9 earthquake that hit California,
killing 63 and injuring thousands more. All of this is confirmed in archival footage
found in the secret video collateral.mov, and that's not the worst of it. From that
point forward, the world is just glitched; small, unseen portals into and out of
The Backroom start popping up everywhere. People begin noclipping through reality, never to
be seen again. Starting in October of 1989, the number of missing persons reports skyrockets. This
is confirmed in the video titled Missing Persons. Obvious video title is obvious. We soon learn
that some of these portals are even big enough for entire cars to slip through. Like we see in a
secret, undated video that must come from around the same period. Meanwhile, back in the lab, Async
begins to send in research teams. On February 3rd of 1990. They begin their first mission.
Inside The Backrooms this team of scientists discovered the body of Nicolas Bolton, one of
the people called out as having gone missing. Fun fact: the picture used for Bolton here is
actually the senior photograph of Nathan Barnett, whom you might recognize as Dad from
one of my other favorite creepy YouTube series that we've covered here
on the Channel several times. Go figure. It's almost like subscribing to
this channel is a great way to learn about all the coolest series that you should be watching
right now. Just a random thought that popped into my head. But you know, this subscribe button is
down below this video in case you want to use it. Interestingly, Nicolas’s Body is covered in
what appears to be some sort of black moldy growth. Two days later, on February
5th, in the video Autopsy Report, the medical report on Bolton's body shows that it
contains a mutant strain of Hay Bacillus bacteria, which is slowing decay of some parts
of the body while completely overtaking others. The coroner questions Async
about where they found this thing. Which Async must not have liked. During this
video, a bunch of images flash across a CRT television, including one that states: contract
termination. Originally, I thought that this was a contract termination between Async and the
U.S. government, but I actually found a wider, clearer version of this exact image in a trailer
that Kane uploaded back when The Backrooms was just a school project. And the version of that
document reads: Employment Contract Termination. So I'm guessing that the doctor started asking
too many questions and was let go as a result. Next up on our timeline is February 29th, 1990,
and the upload: Informational video. Here we see Async send in another group of scientists.
This is also the first appearance of actual named living characters. In the group we have
Marvin Leigh and the camera operator Peter Tench. During their mission, Tench gets distracted by
voices coming from an unseen party in a nearby hallway. He separates from the group
briefly to investigate. But almost immediately he's met with a glitch that
makes the rest of the team disappear. Without knowing it. Peter has jumped forward in
time. We're going to rejoin him in a minute. But back to the rest of the team. From Async's
perspective Peter's team didn't disappear, Peter did. He just vanished into thin air. And
so the rest presumably return to headquarters to report his disappearance. We see the fallout
of Peter going missing less than a week later, March 5th, 1990, in the video Motion Detected. Freaked out by an employee disappearing with
no explanation, Async creates a new enclosed control room just on the other side of
The Backrooms portal. They also rig up motion sensing cameras near the entrance to track
everything that's coming and going throughout the space. And it's a good thing they did,
too, because that night at 3:53 a.m., we capture the image of a dark blobby shape
moving across the ceiling. We don't know it yet at this point in the timeline, but later
we're going to learn that this is likely a black, gooey monster made of a mutant strain of
bacteria, the very same bacteria that infected Nicolas Bolton. We know this because Kane has
posted a picture of the creature on his Ko-Fi account labeled bacteria. We are definitely going
to see more from that guy later in the timeline. A little over two months later, on May 6th,
1990 another group of explorers are sent into the back rooms in the video: Pitfalls.
This team consists of an unnamed woman, two men named Mark and George and Marvin
Leigh, now manning the camera. The party comes across a strange room with several
holes in the floor and a door across the gap. One of the men carefully crosses the
expanse, opens the door and discovers a greenish glow. Instead of just saying what he
sees, he calls over to Marvin to record it. But as Marvin tries to cross the room,
he falls into one of the holes into a lower level of The Backrooms. There he
discovers an underground neighborhood, complete with trees and houses and
street lights. But things are just a little bit off here. Houses are built
strangely. Signs are mirror reversed. Deep inside one of the houses, Marvin finds
a room where someone's clearly been living. But whoever was there, they're gone now.
When he hears a voice that's crying out, he goes to investigate, only to be
met with another bacteria monster. This one chasing Marvin back
to the hole that he fell into. Thankfully Marvin’s team’s able to pull him back
to safety and he escapes. The next video, Report, takes place immediately afterwards, with
the team returning to Acync’s headquarters and sharing what Marvin found. This clearly
concerns the Async staff, but because of the important upcoming presentation with the U.S.
government, they decided to just paper over the issue for the short term. A makeshift wall
is constructed, sealing off the pitfalls area for the time being as they further fortify their
control room. Two days later, on May 8th, 1990, we get the upload, Presentation, where Async hosts
several government officials to pitch them A-Space their vision for The Backooms, an infinite
storage and living solution. And they aren’t just pitching to any old U.S. government
officials. Notice the DOE watermark. These are representatives from the Department
of Energy, including this guy right here, who looks a lot like James Watkins, the real
world secretary of energy from this time period. During a video glitch back in Pitfalls, we see
reverse text that reads “to deceive the fede…” which likely extrapolates out to “deceive the
federal government.” I'm betting that this is text of some sort of internal memo at Async worrying
about deceiving the DOE during these negotiations. Regardless of any concern though, the
presentation goes well. We see Async talking to the DOE about contracts afterwards and one scientist confirms in a secret video
that everything went according to plan. Except there was something that didn't go
quite according to plan that day. Remember Peter Tench? the Async researcher who glitched
out and disappeared? Well after witnessing his squad disappearing into thin air, Peter tried
his best to get back to async headquarters without any sort of guideline. And he finds all
sorts of weird stuff in his little adventure, including a section of wall removed to reveal
a secret area with forest print wallpaper, farm equipment and the facade of a house.
Eventually, Peter is able to make his way back to The Backrooms exit, discovering the new control
room that Async built after his disappearance. He's able to open it with his keycard, but it sets
off a motion sensing alarm inside. At the exact same time that Async is in contract negotiations
with the DOE. We straight up see Peter in the Async control room from a security camera's
perspective in the background, just so we're all clear about what's exactly happening here.
This is over two months after Peter disappeared. When he glitched, he actually traveled
forward in time. This really throws Async’s leadership for a loop. In the hidden video:
_recording014 We hear a phone call between an Async researcher and his supervisor, Ivan
Beck, still on the same day, May 8th, 1990. As this conversation continues, the image of
a newspaper fades on to screen. When reversed, this headline clearly reads “Fiery
wreck beside Viney leaves 1 Dea(d)”. Now “Viney" is cut off and could
refer to either a vineyard where they make wine or the town of Vineyard
near Sacramento in central California. Either way, we can gather from this headline
and the tone of the conversation that Async believed Peter was dead and that after
he disappeared they covered it up by staging a car accident so Peter's
family wouldn't ask any questions. And when Peter realizes what's happened, that
he's traveled into the future and that his family thinks that he's dead, he probably doesn't
react all that well to it. There was likely some conflict with Async’s higher ups, which resulted
in Peter either escaping the facility back into The Backrooms or Async just launched him back into
The Backrooms because he was a security risk. One way or another, Peter winds up trapped back in
The Backrooms, which leads us to the next video: Reunion. It's a few weeks later, May 25th, 1990,
after Marvin's encounter with the bacteria monster Async uses a remote control rover to return to
the Pitfalls room and confirm that it's safe. They send more explorers and
scientists in creating a safe walkway to the door on the other side.
Of course, we still don't get to see what's behind that door. Async instead
decides to send the cameraman Marvin, along with Mark and another researcher to
explore the area around the Pitfalls room. Now, knowing that there's a dangerous
creature that roams through these halls, Mark is armed with a shotgun to protect the group. The trio head into a new area with no ceiling lights and floors made from white
concrete epoxy instead of carpets. It's here that they discover evidence
that someone's been living in this area. Tiles have been knocked off of the
ceiling, seemingly as a trail to follow, and a map has been etched into one of
the walls. However, before the group can really speculate about what's going on, they’re
ambushed by someone who grabs Mark’s Shotgun. It's our old friend Peter Tench once again.
He's been living back here since his escape or banishment from Async. Peter laments that
Async basically took his life from him, asking if they held a funeral for him.
If his family thinks that he's dead. The group confirms that, yes, they did hold a
funeral. Everyone thinks he's dead. Async is clearly keeping the fact that Peter Tench is alive
secret from basically everyone. Despite being held at gunpoint, Mark calls for backup only for
Peter to shoot him and kill him as the video ends. At this point, we hit a pretty significant
time jump with the next video being a secret archive video compiled over a year
later in June of 1991. Nothing really noteworthy happens in it. I'm just
including it for completionist sake. If we want something really interesting though, we jump forward again to Found Footage
#2 taking place on August 19th, 1995. That is over four years after the archive
video and over five since the events of Reunion. In Found Footage #2, a girl in a
suburban home discovers a small portal into The Backrooms hidden in her garage. After experimenting with it for a bit, she's
pulled in. Inside The Backrooms she finds strange, giant furniture, a locked door that she can't
open. And perhaps most strangely, a car crashed into a wall. This is clearly a car that noclipped
in from the real world. Now, I originally thought that this was the car that noclipped off the
freeway that we saw in a secret numbers video. But Kane confirms that it's actually a
different vehicle, given that Kane also confirmed that the numbers car wasn't
Margaret Watson's car like I previously thought. That means that at least three
cars have noclipped into The Backrooms. If I had a nickel for every time that happened.
I mean, I'd have three nickels. It's not a lot, but it is weird that it's happened at least three
times. Anyway, the girl follows the trail of blood from the driver of the car into an area of
The Backrooms that looks more residential. But she doesn't find a body. Instead, she
finds a room overtaken by black vines. These aren't just any old creepy plants. It's the
bacteria monster who comes to life and starts chasing the girls. She runs back through
everything that she's explored thus far. Jumping down into a lower level that
resembles indoor swimming pools. Eventually, she winds up at a dead end. But
before the monster can get her, the room is engulfed in a strange green
light that causes the camera to black out. All of this leads us back to the very first
video that Kane uploaded in the series, Found Footage. #1. In this video recovered by
Async on September 23rd, 1996, we see an indie movie director named Kane filming with his friends
before he trips the no clips into The Backrooms. After exploring around for a bit, finding weird
architecture, items that are completely out of place and markings left by previous people who
noclipped in, Kane encounters another bacteria monster. He runs away, chased by the creature
before being cornered and presumably killed. As the monster takes him, his camera falls
down a hole, noclipping back out of The Backrooms and into the real world. And
while that's the end of the main uploads of the series. There is one final one
that I should include in the timeline. The secret upload: home27647.mov, which likely
takes place during the early 2000s. This is just a home video with some glitchy sections and
strange imagery, which I'm going to touch on in a moment. How do I know that it takes place
in the aughts? thanks to this frame right here. See that TV over on the right? This
sort of flat screen CRT television with a silver casing was popular
back in the early to mid 2000s, meaning that at least part of the
video was filmed around that time. So stepping back and looking at everything
laid out here, the main story follows Asyncs experiments, its employees and its impact
on the world. That much is obvious. But the more important story here seems to be
the one that's hidden under the surface. Remember the green light that's popped up a few
times over the series? It appears most prominently towards the end of the timeline in Found Footage
#2. But remember, it was also the first thing that we see in the series chronologically right
now. In Overflow, a near identical looking green light fills whatever station we're in in the
early seventies, considering that the building from Overflow shakes pretty darn violently,
similar to what we see happening in Async’s headquarters during First Contact. I believe
that this was some sort of portal opening, at least briefly, into The Backrooms. And not
just any type of portal either, a time portal. And given how similar it looks to what we
see surrounding the girl in Found Footage #2, I wouldn't be surprised if she or her camera were
sent back in time to the early seventies. I know this sounds crazy, but we already are aware
that time acts strangely in The Backrooms. One of the major events of the series is Peter
slipping forward in time by several months. So we know that things can be physically
transported in time in this universe. We also know that things from the future can
intrude in the past. In previous theories, we've discussed how one of the secret videos
showed us a cough medicine commercial from the early 2000s, interrupting a Simpsons
episode that aired in the early nineties. We can also hear a news broadcast
from 2015 during the Pitfalls video, a video that happened 25 years
before that broadcast ever aired. Taking that to its logical conclusion,
something physically entering the Backrooms and then exiting at some point in the
past is entirely possible. Additionally, remember the name on that document from Overflow?
Ivan Beck. Kane zooms in real close to make sure that we remember that one real good. Ivan
Beck. Now, why’s that name sound so familiar? Yep. Ivan Beck is a high ranking Async official. I think that this girl from Found
Footage #2. Or at the very least, her camera made it back to the 1970s and into
the hands of Ivan Beck at an early Async. That could be the whole inciting incident of
the series, creating some sort of time loop paradox. Async gets a hold of this footage of The
Backrooms, which then makes them want to explore it. They open the gateway, which breaks reality
and eventually this girl noclips in winding up back in time, starting the loop over. This might
even explain the name of the video “Overflow”. Time is literally overflowing and running over
the edge. What's more, during their exploration, Async may have just found themselves another
time portal. The only other time that we see a greenish glow in the series is behind
the door, across the room in Pitfalls. And get a load of this as Marvin is
falling down the hole in that video, we see a camera glitch and text hidden
within that reads, quote, “While data could be inferred from the readings. Nobody knew
what would actually be found on the other side.” What if what they found was a
portal to another time and place, that would certainly fit our description.
Either way, whatever Async is doing, it is bad for the rest of us. One of the stranger
moments of the series up until now has been this extended shot from the very beginning of Reunion,
focusing on a coffee cup with the letters MLML and some coordinates on the front. Now, at first
I thought this might be some Roman numeral, but it's not actually a valid Roman numeral. You
can't have MLM as a sequence in Roman numerals. So I opened up our trusty old Google maps
and typed in the coordinates. Giving us the rough location of the real world
Moss Landing Marine Laboratories. So that solves the MLML mystery. And a
bit more digging shows us that this logo is actually a riff on a real one
that Moss Landing has used in the past. But the ocean messaging doesn't end with MLML. In
fact, I believe that we can actually decode the biggest theme of the series based on a video just
drowning in ocean metaphors. You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned one of the main line
videos of The Backrooms canon yet, I Remember. Well, that's largely because we don't
know where this one slots into the timeline. There's no date associated with it,
so there's really no place to put it. In fact, not really sure that the quote unquote events
that take place in this video are literal. The whole thing is just renderings of important
places and people to Async and Backrooms lore, angled and reflected like
Inception or Doctor Strange, all as a voiceover narration reads a poetic
passage. It's more of an artistic piece, really, but it is considered
part of The Backrooms canon. And here's the thing, the voiceover
also has an ocean theme. Just like that MLML reference. Just listen to what it says. All spoken as we see images of the
ocean, but also really take in what this video is saying. The speaker
had a home that sat beside the sea, but it collapsed into it and sank to
the bottom, forgotten. This is clearly a metaphor. We're not talking about houses
and oceans. We're talking about the world and The Backrooms and Asyncs experiments
making the world more and more unstable. Remember when I called out the last shot of
Overflow? After the green light flares up and something from The Backrooms is sent back in
time to here, we see the sky reflected. At the earliest possible point in our timeline without
any other Async experiments that we know of. But afterwards we get more and more of
that reflected imagery in I Remember, as Async continues their experiments. This is
even reflected in another line from I Remember. The reflections? Those are the seams along the
sky, the tears in reality as everything starts to fall apart. This might have even happened
before in a previous reality or simulation of our world. In Found Footage #2 we see parts of
a home inside The Backrooms as the girl explores the area, including this part here with a strange
banister and railway in front of an empty room. And here's the thing, this is almost
identical to a room that we see in the secret home27647 video. Notice
the unique bars on the railing, the way there's an open air entrance in the
room behind it and a door off the right wall. This is the same architecture,
but one is in The Backrooms and one is in our real world. Want more
proof? The girl takes a prolonged look at this painting before the bacteria
monster wakes up and starts chasing her. And in the secret video, we again get a
prolonged look at that very same painting in the home. And remember, based on the TV we see
here, this video was likely taken in the 2000s, several years before Found Footage #2 takes place. So how could these details be in The
Backrooms now? Is it another time loop situation? Maybe. Or maybe it's because these
are from previous iterations of our world, of the simulation that was destabilized
and collapsed into The Backrooms. In other words, the house that fell
into the sea. There's a map shown in the home27647 video of the Ptolemaic
system, a geocentric model of the universe that suggests that the earth
is the unmoving center of everything. And isn't it interesting that this very
specific map that Kane chose to include in this video is very yellow?
The last line in I Remember is… You have always been here. Everything
revolves around The Backrooms, whether it be in a time loop
or a simulation or both. It's the center of everything in the
world. And Asyncs meddling has doomed the world to collapse into The Backrooms
once again, the house to fall back into the sea once again. You have always been
here, in the series, in this world. The Backrooms has always been a
part of it. We're just the layer on top waiting to collapse down
into it and laying out the story Kane's trying to tell here doesn't feel
like our world has that much time left. But hey, that's just a theory,
A FILM THEORY! Aaaaand CUT!. And hey, remember when I mentioned the Dad Channel
earlier in this episode? If you want to check out us decoding the mysteries of the Dadfeels Channel
here on YouTube, that video is on the left. If you enjoy the Backrooms, you'll probably enjoy
that one too. Or you just click the subscribe button on the right. Pretty soon, YouTube might
have to get rid of its recommendation algorithm because of some lawsuit that's going on. So
if you ever want to find this channel again, subscribe now or you know, we'll just
disappear into The Backrooms with the billions of other videos. That's a big change
that may happen at some point later this year. So go subscribe to a channel that is
going to enjoy most of the content from.
