#14 Stage 16

Age: 40 Years

Hidden or Lost?: Condemned and Forgotten

History: Remember that one sitcom that used to come on all the time? You might not remember the name, or have trouble recalling the characters, but that vague recollection of a mid-80s television set remains. Of a living room? Or was it a bar? You might even convince yourself that you're making it up. Yet it feels so real…

You didn't make it up. You're probably trying to remember the show that was filmed on Stage 16. The show that broke the Fourth Wall.

Stage 16 was once the filming location for the most popular sitcom of all time, but incredibly, the name and subject of the vintage show itself have been forgotten by the entire world. In its day the show became so popular that it hooked every segment of the TV watching populace, and like so many shows of the era, it was filmed from behind a never-shown fourth wall. The show became so ubiquitous in the popular imagination that the curiosity about the unseen wall began to build and build. Fan art and theories about the nonexistent quarter of the set were shared among die-hard fanatics, and soon this mysterious aspect of an otherwise well-explored television universe felt like a real location to most viewers.

All of this speculation and imagination welled up in the collective unconscious throughout the show’s run, until finally, during the series finale, the Fourth Wall broke. In an incredible psychic implosion, a tear in reality itself appeared on Stage 16 in that never-shown angle. In the instant of its inception, the tear pulled all memory of the show from the global consciousness, leaving behind a nagging memory hole in people’s minds.

This new Fourth Wall, a gaping psychic wound hovering where the cameras once stood, turned Stage 16 into a maze of nightmares and illusions. The lighting controls and curtains became a thicket of odd shadows that are said to chase people through an endless maze of fabric backdrops. The make-up stations became a hall of mirrors that reflect only your flaws, inner and outer, driving those who look into them to madness or suicide. And there's the main set itself, which has been warped into a shifting storm that looks different depending on the observer, a nostalgia trap luring them into the roiling psychic crush that is the Fourth Wall.

Incredibly, the few who have survived a visit to Studio 16 have reported being assisted by some kind of feral figure who helped them break out of their reverie. He never gives his name, but all who see him report that he looks like a grown-up version of a character named J.D., from a beloved show they can’t remember the name of.

Today, most people can't even perceive Studio 16, as the Fourth Wall has a property that makes observers look right past it, or forget it upon seeing it. Those who do manage to perceive the psychic calamity run the risk of being sucked into the warm, familiar pull of a half-remembered reality that will consume their mind and soul.

1. Stage Doors

2. Gorging Heap

3. The Uncanny Props

4. The Flashback

5. The Office Cage

6. Imperfect Reflections

7. Curtains-Beyond-Curtains

8. The Maddening Laughs

9. Blind Cameras

10. The Ever-Set

11. The Fourth Wall Broken

12. J.D.’s Burrow