The Chilling Black Mirror Episode That Inspired Severance

Anyone who’s watched the hit Apple TV+ series “Severance” knows that it takes inspiration from many, many pop culture juggernauts that came before it. “Lost” is absolutely a reference point for the show’s creator Dan Erickson (and his creative partner, executive producer Ben Stiller), as is the famous anthology series “The Twilight Zone” — and apparently, a very specific installment of another anthology show, “Black Mirror,” helped Erickson come up with the idea for “Severance.”

The episode in question is “White Christmas,” a standalone episode of “Black Mirror” that aired on the British network Channel 4 and was broadcast in the United States just before the entire series moved to Netflix for all future seasons. In an interview with The New York Times in 2022 after the first season of “Severance” concluded, Erickson said that “White Christmas,” which came out in 2014, was such an unsettling episode that it gave him some ideas for “Severance” — specifically thanks to the fact that, in “White Christmas,” the characters are trapped in an eternal loop with no way of leaving (like the “innies” on the severed floor).

“I remember feeling so cold and afraid after seeing that, this devastating idea of having to experience this endless solitude,” Erickson said, also telling the outlet that he directly connects this episode to the season 1 moment in “Severance” when Helly R. (Britt Lower), an “innie,” tries to escape the severed floor. “It’s this nightmare of running out a door and then you’re just running back in, and you realize you’re truly stuck in this liminal space with this kind of nightmare logic,” he concluded.

Let’s back up for a second: what happens in “White Christmas,” and how does it tie into “Severance?” The episode obviously takes place at Christmastime, and right away, we meet two men — Matt Trent (Jon Hamm) and Joe Potter (Rafe Spall) who have been stuck in a remote cabin together for five years, though we’re not told why at first. Despite the close quarters, they haven’t really bonded, and when Matt starts explaining why he’s there, the floodgates open, so to speak. As it turns out, Matt used to work with a technology called “Z-Eyes” where he helped coach shy men without a lot of confidence as they approached women; not only was Matt in the heads of these men, but he also invited audiences to gawk as the guys tried to pick up unsuspecting women. After a horrible incident occurs that leaves one of Matt’s clients dead, he’s punished. Matt, as it happens, also used to work with “cookies” and store digital versions of real people inside of a small, egg-shaped contraption, and to say he was cruel to those clones is an understatement.

That’s when Joe opens up and reveals that he was “blocked” by his former fiancée Beth (Janet Montgomery) while she was pregnant with their child (when I say “blocked” I mean he could only see a gray, fuzzy silhouette of her in public) and ended up killing her father in a fit of rage when he found out that the child was actually the result of an affair Beth had with someone else. The twist at the end of “White Christmas” is honestly too good to spoil here, but all I’ll say is that we find out that both Joe and Matt are being punished for their crimes, and it’s easy to draw a direct line between “White Christmas,” where technology traps two men, and “Severance,” where the severed technology traps “innies” in the bowels of Lumon Industries.

So what other influences does Dan Erickson discuss in that New York Times feature? There are a few, and they probably won’t be that surprising — especially Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman’s surreal 1999 film “Being John Malkovich.” Discussing how the Lumon severed floor feels like a much more sinister office space than anything in the real world, Erickson said, “I think the idea of seeing a familiar space that’s sort of warped and twisted probably came straight from ‘Being John Malkovich.’ They have this extremely low ceiling; we’ve got the wide open M.D.R. space with the central cubicle island looking much too small for the space.” (Notably, in season 2 of “Severance,” Adam Scott’s Mark S. does encounter a too-small door while entering the “goat room,” which definitely has “Being John Malkovich” vibes.)

Erickson also told the outlet that Terry Gilliam’s 1985 movie “Brazil” is one of his favorites thanks in large part to its dystopian vibes, which makes sense; that movie centers around workers controlling machinery under a totalitarian government. “There was that retro-future sense, but Ben [Stiller] was always very adamant that we ground that in a logic and in a psychology where Lumon is trying to disorient the workers in time and space,” Erickson said. “They have no idea where they could be, they’re not sure exactly what year it is. There’s a slight weird sense of timelessness, or a combination of different times, and, to me, that was conveying that we’re not in Lumon, but we’re still in Lumon.”

Beyond that, Erickson cited Kurt Vonnegut’s novel “Cat’s Cradle,” the 1999 cult favorite “Dark City,” and, incredibly, a Sizzler steakhouse ad from 1991 (which is, to Erickson’s point, incredibly freaking weird). In any case, “Severance” is available to stream on Apple TV+, and “White Christmas” is available to stream on Netflix.