Liminal space (aesthetic)

[4] Liminal space imagery often depicts this sense of "in-between", capturing transitional places (such as stairwells, roads, corridors, or hotels) unsettlingly devoid of people.

[6] Research by Alexander Diel and Michael Lewis of Cardiff University has attributed the unsettling nature of liminal spaces to the phenomenon of the uncanny valley.

[8] The creepypasta showed an image exemplifying a liminal space—a hallway with yellow carpets and wallpaper—with a caption purporting that by "noclipping out of bounds in real life", one may enter the Backrooms, an empty wasteland of corridors with 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".

[12] The game The Stanley Parable has also been retroactively noted to utilize liminal imagery, particularly the recurring visual motif of "mono-yellow" also present in Kubrick's The Shining.

[13] David Lynch's Twin Peaks and the Apple TV+ series Severance also draw from liminal imagery, with the creator of the latter, Dan Erickson, specifically citing the Backrooms as a visual influence.

Photo of liminal space
An empty hotel hallway, an example of a liminal space
Image of empty playground
This image depicting an empty playground may elicit unease by being stripped of its expected context (that is, the presence of children).
An image of the Backrooms. A large, open room with carpet, fluorescent lights and yellow wallpaper. A gap in the wall shows similar rooms extending without limits.
A typical depiction of the Backrooms , digitally rendered