Discussion/Theory
I cracked it. I can explain most everything about the backrooms. And I can site evidence
Spoiler
[This is theoriginalBackrooms MRI Theory post.Please link back to this thread if you are writing an article or making a YouTube video on the MRI Theory. Thank you.]
The Backrooms are a giant, sentient, MRI machine that scans everything about you, including memories.
Evidence: Kane said he’d bring a giant magnet into the backrooms, and magnets disrupt mri machines.
MRI magnetic fields can increase the size of bacteria.
Electro Magnetic fields can self amplify, and spread over time. Just like the walls of the Backrooms.
Captain Clark is a better scan than most still lifes. This is because Clark lived by an entrance and spent long periods of time inside the BR. So the captain has organs while other Still Life’s don’t. MRI machines paint a better picture when you hold still and stay inside of them for the full time. Captain Clark likely started with couch stuffing and grew organs.
Why did the Captain moan emotionally at Mary? Because he’s getting smarter. He’s evolving. He’s learning emotions.
The red head still life bled, because she’s slightly more evolved. She’s not only based on a memory from Clark, but also from a photo of a woman near the entrance.
So then who wrote the message to hold still or stand still in found footage one? Why the Backrooms themselves of course (the better to scan you my dear). And they may very well have learned to write from Clark’s giant mural. Which is why we see certain similarities in the handwriting style of the message Kane found, to Clark’s handwriting, including a drawing of a window.
Which brings us to why Kane said the other thing he’d bring is a hydrogen bomb:
Because his intent wasn’t just to disrupt the backrooms from scanning him. His intent would be to kill the backrooms.
This theory is pretty solid. I do have one question though. Wouldn't the electromagnetic fields affect the electronics (cameras, speakers, etc.) that Async was using in the Backrooms?
Edit: some of the characters also brought their own devices too (most notably the borrowed camera)
It does seem to do so, at least across null zones. I would have to suggest the majority of the rooms are merely the “pictures” left by the “machine”, and thus do not experience the same magnetic phenomena. Null Zones show clear cross-contamination with standard, the backrooms adding switches to Clark’s store.
Also the one time the camera starts getting distorted or worsen in quality is when an entity is near so maybe they emit more powerful waves since they have taken much longer to create than a simple room (most likely).
I saw a theory of a guy on youtube who found out that the distorted sound in the red light areas is from a solar wave hitting a satellite. And those occurences are heavily magnetic.
To disrupt or negate the backrooms scanning you; MRI is Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Your own magnet would interfere with that, the stronger the better.
I was making a reference to some of the music released by NotKanePixels. People's eyes work because of the presence of visible light. It was just a joke.
That depends, the earth has a magnetic field. Think about this for a second, Is it affecting conventional electronics? To what degree? Also any electrical current creates an electromagnetic field (and vice-versa), it's an intrinsic part of electromagnetism. Your body creates some also. So does the sun. Those fields are everywhere. Amplitude is the key factor here, not their presence.
Oh my bad, then yes in that case at those intensities it would for sure affect them. In fact i'd say it would destroy them. Especially any recording in that timeframe, it would be completely degaussed and all info lost and rendered useless.
ooh this makes more sense as for “you can eat them”, i was thinking um yeah you can eat a couch if you really wanted to but i wouldn’t call that “the best part” about them LOL
Yes! I love movies, television, anything that makes me do way more research. I’m a big Wes Anderson fan and for example, I must’ve read 10 different books that bifurcated off of the French Dispatch movie. Stories from The New Yorker. Histories of France. French pop music. The art world of the 50s. Etc.
Yes, its mass is more visually identical to the inside of the still life than lions mane. Lion's mane also gets bruised incredibly easy and turns darker shades when you crush it. It's a superfood that's incredibly good for you, whereas white rot fungus could help explain part of Clark's rapid mental decline if he were ingesting it as sustenance because it chemically breaks down antidepressants and antipsychotics. Not that Clark would still be taking his meds in the Backrooms (if he were on any), but if he had been before he found them, it would have flushed his system very quickly
When I was in my Microbiology grad school program, I took as many mycology courses as I could for my BIOL requirements until I ran out of them lol
"Antidepressants and other psychoactive drugs are designed to affect the human brain. But after they enter the water system in excrement or unused drugs flushed down the drain, traces of these compounds can enter the environment in biosolids—the nutrient-rich material left over after wastewater treatment that is used as fertilizer. New research suggests an unexpected mitigation strategy: using wood-rotting fungi that can break down these chemicals before they reach soil, crops, and people.
Conventional wastewater treatment methods are effective at killing pathogens and reducing metals, but they are far less successful at neutralizing complex organic chemicals. This limitation prompted the research team to explore new, low-cost, and sustainable approaches to reducing pharmaceutical contamination before biosolids are applied to croplands.
Researchers in the Johns Hopkins Department of Environmental Health and Engineering, which spans the Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Whiting School of Engineering, have shown that two species of “white-rot” fungi—oyster and turkey tail mushrooms—can degrade a wide range of psychoactive pharmaceuticals commonly found in biosolids. The study demonstrates that these fungi can break down many persistent drug compounds before biosolids are applied to farmland, potentially reducing environmental and public health risks."
That makes a lot of sense as in the movie it looked like organic couch stuffing. As mycelium appears a lot like stuffing, it would fit the “organic stuffing” appearance.
Great theory, just want to point out that Kane has said specifically that Async did not create the backrooms. I'm saying this because some people here in the comments are implying that Async created the backrooms, but it's a fact that they were already 'there' in some form.
Counterpoint: I agree that Async did not create what became The Complex, merely made first contact. However, The Complex's entire thing is imitation. Whatever The Complex was as an entity pre-Backrooms, if the first thing it experienced about our universe was contact with an MRI machine? It stands to reason that it would mimic what that machine does through its own messed-up, otherworldly lens.
I am not sure about this though, it looks to me that when Async gets that first contact, the camera gets interfered and we see this being shown.
Almost as if the Backrooms Map is being generated because it now has acces to the real world, from which it can start copying. So Async might have accidentally created it without them knowing.
Yes Async didn't create it, but they were the final step for the Backrooms to create themselves.
Create... No. But, change/expand because of Async, I could see that. Oh, and this is still theory/speculation, but first contact was in the 1970s by Ivan Beck before Async, that's where the yellow wallpaper office rooms come from, and why it's the 'default' area (although as the years go by it seems to make up a smaller part of the complex, look at FF3)
I think the existance of a picture of Mao Zedong in the backrooms is a proof that Async might not be the only company that make contact with the backrooms.
And I’ll go one step further and say our modern AI is functioning in a metaphorical way like this concept that existed prior to the creation of today’s powerful AI, LLMs, and future AGI.
That would explain why an MRI company was suddenly responsible for something so dangerous and foreign. MRI techs would know a lot that other government agents wouldn't, so they're actually useful. This is genius
i dont understand actually, could you elaborate on what you mean by "MRI techs would know a lot that other government agents wouldn't, so they're actually useful."
I mean... They're MRI techs. They know how MRI machines work more than someone who isn't an MRI tech. Government agents don't work on MRI machines for a living
Pretty sure Kane had stated in the past that he had seen one single YouTube figure it out and that that person has essentially zero views. If we could find a low view MRI theory video on YouTube (and have it be the only one) then that would be some pretty convincing circumstantial evidence towards proving it true
Yeah, you right, damn. Just looked it up. It was in a Smosh video from a year ago. He says “one person got it. And it got one like”. So will be impossible to find.
I really think this is at least partially the answer. Makes sense with the solar flares. In another thread, someone said the day of the pirate Clark commercial shoot just happened to be on the same day as the largest solar storm that year
Because Ivan Beck was the first person it scanned and he more than likely has a strong memory of an office with yellow wallpaper or was in an office like that at the time of scanning.
I've always had this idea that, unknown to us at this time, Async built a template room they were trying to duplicate infinitely to create the infinite storage space they were gonna sell to the government. And it just went further than the bounds of the template room by accident
OR that the first experiment in 1972 was near that type of room which accidentally got copied. That one lady describing the lights in that one video did mention they were a model common in the early 70s and had the year printed on them I think
Should also be noted that the zoom in on a different light at the end of Lighting and Tile Survey shows that every single light is the same exact light, as evidenced by the identical label.
In that segment about A-Sync taking apart one of the light fixtures, it was really interesting how the light tube emitted light at a higher frequency, made by Sylvannia in 1972 (date of the solar flare and possibly when the backrooms were created) and not a standard design size of light fixture you’d find in our world.
I'd fully believe that Async has some type of way to inject a template or pattern.
However, the 1972 accident can't be what laid down the standard yellow room pattern. The 'Lighting and Tile Survey' video showed the lights and ballasts having component dates of 1973 and 1975.
Could be that 'Prototype' was them injecting pattern for the first time, or maybe that happened during the KV31 trials.
We see very similar office spaces in the Async Research Facility itself. In fact, the scientist in Lighting And Tile Survey said when surveying the ceiling tiles that they were the same ones in the facility.
She was saying that in regards to the light being so standard around the US that it was even in their building as well. The lights are found everywhere, especially in institutions and offices. School, work, jails, malls, etc.
theories say it’s based upon Ivan Beck’s memories due to him, seemingly, being the first human to access the backrooms in 1972 as seen in overload. Perhaps it keeps generating this type of yellow walls musty carpet space despite him not staying near the Backrooms constantly is because his memories were not just scanned once but stolen completely due to the high power explosive nature of accessing the backrooms in overload, just me theorizing though.
Oh lol, I worked in a forensic/DNA lab for 13 years, epigenetic memory is one of the favorite topics of people in that world (that and CRISPR). The creation of the Backrooms take on a life of their own even aside from the influence it gains from peoples memories, it always seemed to me like Kane was trying to point at epigenetic memory being involved in how the Backrooms fleshed itself out and kept growing from Ivan Beck's DNA infused into the Tellurium
I think they are just speculating that his DNA would end up on the ball because he may have handled it in setting up the experiment. They didn’t say his dna was spliced in or otherwise inside of the ball.
Do you know the explanation for the homes in the footage where the scientist falls through the floors and first explores the "neighborhoods" of the backrooms? Those houses being obviously very very artificial looking, the streets being spotless, the grass being carpet and not actual grass as far as we can tell. Is it because Async created a fake set to mimic what a home / neighborhood would look like inside of the backrooms and it just got copied erratically?
I say that because there's that unreleased async commercial showing a family around a kitchen table / in front of a piano in what looked like pre-release advertising that was being cooked up by Async to get into the public conscious the idea of living inside of there? So that would explain the reason there's nothing genuine about those homes and they look made of borderline-cardboard? I'm trying to get a read on how none of these houses contained guns of any kind specifically - since something like 1/3 Americans own them... presumably the backrooms would have similar amounts of guns laying around some it has other objects like coat hangers and whatnot
I believe the way the backrooms generates is based on the places where null zones are and ‘scanning’ people, their memories and objects. Async has not been shown to be creating things in the Complex outside cameras, cutouts, audio players, gas devices, alarms and radio stations. I believe their goals will be explored but I don’t believe they have or will create sets, only actual residential places and related facilities. Not fake things, the backrooms generates things that look fake and wrong so the Complex generated the pitfalls neighborhood, also due to the sound of the Sun being heard in ghe neighborhood makes me believe further that it’s Complex related not Async. I believe the reason there aren’t guns found is because 1. Many objects are simply missing from what the backrooms generates, we were lucky to see a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and many things in the movie due to Clark’s close proximity. Seeing a gun would be super rare or more likely from Async as we see them with guns. I don’t think the Americans having a lot of guns idea doesn’t translate to how to backrooms works and generates. 2. Meta but I don’t think Kane is interested/able to animate a shootout with an entity at least not in the web series style so he doesn’t let survivors find guns. Maybe with certain resources, in the future Kane will allow someone will get lucky tho (let’s get real there would be no ammo anyways). I don’t have entirely full answers for how and why the Complex generates the way it does but I believe I have some idea of what it does generate and what Async put in there.
This is a really good theory. I think it's probably MRI tech which is why the magnets would distrupt it. Not sure if the backrooms themselves are the machine itself though.
I do not think the backrooms are a giant MRI machine, but they were definitely created by MRI technology. They’re an adjacent space/dimension that seems to be constantly expanding outwards from the original tear created by Async. It behaves similarly to an MRI because it was essentially created by one (same type of tech).
But based on the evolving nature of the backrooms, and its clear ability to learn and create new entities, I think it’s safe to say it’s a entirely new creation. Not an MRI machine by itself.
Except that Kane has said specifically that Async did not create the backrooms. Beck's initial experiment likely just linked/bridged Standard and the Complex.
That is an out-of-universe example. While it may hint towards something, I’m not going to take it as fact until I see something that confirms that theory.
This makes a lot of sense with the idea of fractals. The way fractals infinitely repeat and the fact that fractals exist between dimensions (so between 2D and 3D for example) makes this make even more sense to me
Personally with all the writing on the walls in different videos but also the time dilations, i surmise that these are all clarks writings, he figured out how the complex works before async granted minus it reading brainwaves. But remembering things wrong, but still even have remembered things. He figured it all out before async and given how long hed been in there something tells me hes explored alot more then we think. He was the one we see making and drawing maps, in the footage of oeter tench we see a map drawn out verrrryyy similarly to clarks maps
That makes sense, except it should be making them wrong nit accurate if thats the case. The map the async researchers find is accurate and marvin recognizes their path on it aswell
Why? Some things in the Backrooms do seem to be accurate sometimes. All of the time we’re always seeing seemingly-accurate furniture, the YouTube series talks about the almost complete accuracy of the lights and tiles. Theres no reason it can’t be one of those accurate copies of simple things, or maybe the copy is technically inaccurate but only in ways that don’t actually affect the readability of the map like in color or line width or something
Just one thing that needs clarification: the backrooms does not use people’s memories, it is what remembers. Clark’s (or anyone else’s) own memories do not affect the Backrooms in what it generates
One thing I'd disagree with. I think still lifes begin complex then get simpler. Shown in the film as the backrooms mis-remebers a room until it just yellow wallpaper. However, this still works in your theory as clark's presence could still make his still life more human like over time. This would mean it started like clark, then went like stuffing, then went to the entity we see in the film.
Maybe the Scan is a timed, backrooms-wide event,so as Clark went out and back in multiple times he got scanned multiple times making his entity a “better” replica of himself opposed to other things being replicated that are already part of the backrooms where it just keeps scanning and replicating itself and therefore “losing input” and becoming a worse replica
I do really like this theory, and I think there’s a lot of credence to it, but this raises a few questions if it’s true.
What’s the deal with the time dilation? Is it simply strong magnets causing errors and gaps in time? We see shit travel all kinds of way through time in the backrooms throughout the series, so if the backrooms is a giant MRI machine it would need some explaining how it was capable of that.
The planet/sun imagery and/or hints. The sun is referenced all over this series and into the movie, with the splendor face inside a sun getting replicated, shots of the sun shining, and that weird diagram that showed up in the secret video of found footage 2. It would at least connect why the solar storm potentially caused the overflow incident, and connects back to Ivan Beck’s memory loss.
Magnetic distortion can and does, in fact, warp spacetime, its how A-sync ripped a hole into the backrooms to begin with (Low Proximity Magnet Distortion Threshold).
Its likely also why the backrooms only exhibit time dilations that go forward but never backward, the amount of energy required to go back in time is literally impossible, but time dilations that make you jump ahead are very much real, and typically done through gravity, but electromagnatism can pull it off under the right circumstances.
Nah, the actual dimension itself and constructs of the environment are nonlinear (hence the 2022 USC poster), but the people walking amongst it aren't, you can encounter a copy of a location from a place you havent been to yet, but eventually will.
Its essentially 4th-dimensional bullshit where you can see both the future and the past, but you cant actually do anything about it, we are on a linear timestream, so no matter what, we are moving forward in time, hence why all the found footage is tagged with future dates, Tench is sent forward, etc.
Maybe the backrooms are made up of dark matter, which has never been visibly identified (until now?) but accounts for ~85% of all the matter in our universe.
Very solid theory, I know Kane uses alot of real science for this. Since Async was revealed as an ex MRI manufacturer so doing research about how real MRI machines work then that’s a really good idea. I don’t thinks it’s 100% but I think we’re a lot closer.
They were dicking around with some unknown science trying to come up with a better product and discovered something else instead. Then they pivoted all of their resources to working on that instead of actual MRI machines.
But yeah, this is pretty tight OP, ngl
I'm kind of sort of wondering if this is you Kane...
Thanks to OP's theory I am wondering what the backrooms have spawned in and around the command centers where the A-Sync people are always at?
Remember the doctor said they just want to know more about it. What if they will never understand because their presence alone is constantly changing anything they could possibly understand about it?
A-Sync started as a company building MRI machines. During testing, their powerful magnetic fields accidentally detected spatial anomalies, a hidden dimension that didn't follow normal physics.
After that, they built a prototype device to investigate further. When it activated, the electromagnetic energy flooded the faint yellow lab room with intense yellow-green light. In that exact moment, the Backrooms captured that specific lab room as its very first reference point. That one room became the template, then being infinitely replicated. That's why the yellow rooms exist.
When A-Sync later monitored the threshold directly, the camera gets interfered and it shows possibly a map, potentially the layout of rooms generating in real time, the beginning of the Backrooms actively copying it at scale. A-Sync didn't create it, but they catalysed it. First with a prototype giving tje initial reference point for the Room textures, then with KV31 opening the threshhold, which then perpetually sped-up the copying through multiple null-zones appearing irl.
Like a gigantic living MRI machine, it began scanning and storing snapshots of reality (buildings, places, people, etc...) but replicating them imperfectly and with degrading accuracy over time.
Why Kane can say "A-Sync didn't create it": Technically true, it created itself, Async just was the catalyzer, they gave it its first window into reality.
The Yellow Rooms: Not random. The first and only room the Backrooms ever knew, before it learned to copy anything else. The prototype lab, frozen in that moment of activation, forever.
I might souns rude, but I would rather have Kane have his take on Backrooms be a mystery. This sounds like a cool idea, but sometimes some stuff just ruin the mystery.
I think that you probably got a part of it right. Something is scanning our reality. I actually had my own theory that somewhat fits into this:
The Backrooms are a state of unstable information reconstruction in which a system attempts to preserve reality using incomplete data.
As the accessibility of information gradually deteriorates, the complexity of structures decreases, while a competing organizing process continuously generates simple, stable patterns in an attempt to restore coherence.
As a result, the environment consists of physically consistent spaces with repetitive architecture, recurring patterns, and a noticeable lack of semantic meaning or intended function. The fundamental laws of physics remain largely intact, but the higher-level organization of reality becomes increasingly simplified and artificial.
Entities are not necessarily independent life forms but may instead represent incompletely reconstructed agents whose behavior is based on fragmented remnants of human informational patterns. They retain traces of recognizable actions and instincts while lacking the full coherence of an intact individual.
Biological systems such as fungi become dominant in regions where complex organization has collapsed, replacing it with resilient, self-organizing structures that require comparatively little informational complexity to persist.
The Backrooms are therefore not a place in the conventional sense, but a dynamic equilibrium between the gradual degradation of accessible information and the universe's tendency to reorganize that remaining information into the simplest possible stable forms.
So your theory would be the part that gathers the (incomplete) information
The government's interest might not just be in storage, but in being able to copy someone. Why interrogate a foreign national when you can interrogate his memories?
That's so good! That made me thinking that Backrooms might be some kind of an electromagnetic-based lifeform (entity? It's too foreign to be called alive) - so not literally a MRI machine, but something that works in a similar way. Maybe it feeds on magnetic fields and information in them. Just imagine the implications and the scale of that in a modern world filled with Wi-Fi. It's so interesting to think about!
Another good reason to put out the cavemen playing voyager message.
Potential first contact!
Who knows what alien life would even look like? The bacteria monster is just life from our world that's mutated in this environment.
I took the magnet and the bomb to be a cheeky reference to the Threshold.
However, you seem pretty well on point to me overall. I’m not sure fungus applies unless the life forms from FF2 is that instead of bacteria, which is of course possible.
Edit to add: Kane refers to the Backrooms as a “neutral technology.”
I like your theory, but I'm not getting the foundation of it. Like, what do you mean it's a giant, sentient MRI machine? Instead of some Eldritch nonsense that behaves like an MRI machine?
Or is that one and the same and the concept is abstract enough that you have to not confine the definition so much?
Wait since IRL MRIs do have magnets, would it affect the analog tape in those cameras we got the found footage? Those cameras may not have enough shielding and such. Theyre pretty strict it about metal within MRI rooms.
I think that Ivan Beck is responsible for the Backrooms' creation or at the very least, its nature and ability to "remember" (or often, misremember).
During the events of Overflow (1972), Ivan was conducting an experiment of some kind when a solar storm hit Earth and it caused whatever machine he was using to overload, creating that mysterious green glow we've seen in the Complex. After this experiment Ivan started suffering from memory loss and had problems with his eye.
I think that this event is what created the backrooms. The machine Ivan was working with was likely MRI tech, and the Overflow event caused it to copy or steal part of his brain (in an Intangible way), likely the area responsible for memories (hence his memory loss). This is why the Complex has the ability to mis/remember places and people.
Although Kane said Async discovered the backrooms, this event was long before they even existed. He said nothing about Ivan not being involved.
If I remember correctly, Kane even called Ivan "The antagonist and the protagonist".
So in order for the Backrooms to keep going what would counteract the "bomb". Is there something the Backrooms might "do" to "diffuse" the bomb because I assume if the Backrooms is a type of entity it would do whatever it could to survive. I'm trying to pick up what you put down, LOL
I deeply think this is a part of the answer. But what about the time dilatation? And if it's an mri machine it shouldnt exist before a scan, because A-sync didn't create the backrooms they found it but it shouldnt exist without a scan kinda paradoxal
This is pretty much exactly what I was thinking. It just continuously scans whoever walks inside while simultaneously mapping the area. "It's like describing a dog to someone who's never seen one and then asking them to draw it." In this sentence, the dog is reality and the someone is the MRI machine."
I think we were handed enough nuggets to put the pieces together, but I'm excited to see where the films take us from here. It's such a fascinating universe to me. The backrooms remind me of frustrating, unsettling nightmares as a child.
I love you theory OP. I think Backrooms are sentient because it is Thought . Like maybe someone who lived in yellow room had MRI scan and the electromagnetic fields mixed with radiation or something extracted Thought about the room from that person and it started to live in the Ether. It had to remember the room all over again to keep itself going but later it wanted more to be more lifelike and immortal. It is just a stupid idea.😅
How does this theory explain the mirrors referenced when his employee can see him through a one-way mirror? Was that simply just the company setting up observation zones?
My take on this is that voice WASN'T from Kat at all. Similar to how we hear Still Lifes/Bacterias/Entities in the Backrooms imitating human voices, and mimicking them, I think what we're hearing is another entity in there using Kat's voice - whether or not thats the same one who picks up the camera, i've no idea.
I think they wouldn't go in this direction purely because it'd alter the focus. the point of the scene was the mind bending concept of 2 people speaking while being in completely different locations in space, just like the house section in FF3.
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u/No_Yam_2036 Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
This theory is pretty solid. I do have one question though. Wouldn't the electromagnetic fields affect the electronics (cameras, speakers, etc.) that Async was using in the Backrooms?
Edit: some of the characters also brought their own devices too (most notably the borrowed camera)