Thinking about prehistoric life in the Backrooms
Something that I find interesting ever since the Backrooms movie released is the rise of paleoartists depicting prehistoric life in the backrooms. The idea of which really has me thinking about its implications and how it all adds to the horror of the backrooms.
How long has the backrooms existed? Considering its office building aesthetic, its natural to conclude that existed for as long as humans have. But at what point in history specifically? If the backrooms existed since prehistory, would it still look like an office building? Or would it have looked differently? Like, instead of yellow walls and moist carpet, it was previously just an endless forest or maybe an endless cave system. We know the backrooms tries (and fails) at trying to replicate what is in the regular world. So this is a possible explanation.
What would be more interesting and surreal though, is that the backrooms always looked like an empty office building... yet you can still occasionally come across prehistoric life within it.
The implication being that time doesn't exist in the backrooms. The natural law of how our universe works simply no longer applies. As a result, you can be a regular human being in 2026 who fell into the backrooms and come across a human being from 1782, or a T-Rex, or a completely different life form from... somewhere else.
Which brings me to this incredible art piece by 6amsunset_ that I'll be using as an example. A group of dickinsonia's from the Ediacaran Period, around 571 million to 541 million years ago, even before the Cambrian Explosion, just sitting in an empty modern office space.
There's something unsettling about coming across an organism that ceased existence from an unfathomably long time ago. It's a unique type of horror for sure. It feels incredibly wrong, like reality has truly been broken beyond comprehension. Becomes all the more worse when you think about what the still life's would look like. We already saw how much the backrooms completely fucks up when it tries to replicate a human in the movies, now imagine it trying to replicate all of those weird and already pretty alien creatures from the past.
Thinking about this has also made me look back on that last line that was in the original backrooms 4chan post. "God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you."
The way how I see it, the backrooms takes all sorts of creatures from different time period, galaxies, and even universes. Creatures that became trapped just like you. That thing that you heard could be something as simple as a house cat or something you have never laid your eyes upon or knew existed. A lot of these creatures would be harmless. Some maybe less so. But even then, they wouldn't be malicious in their aggression.
Never liked the idea of filling the backrooms with boring and generic horror monsters like the smilers or partygoers or whatever. Instead, the potentially life threatening things that you could run into would be aggressive out of their own fear and confusion. Not too unlike a tiger pouncing on you for entering into what it considers its territory, or a mama bear tearing you limb from limb and mangling your body because she sees you as a threat to her cubs.
Everything in here is just as scared and confused as you are. And so they lash out.
(For more examples of prehistoric lifeforms in the backrooms).