The Twilight Zone

The Twilight Zone walked so Severance could spiral—it’s the OG of taking familiar experiences and shifting them ever-so-slightly to explore the dread and existential horror under the surface of everyday life. It’s an anthology series, yeah, but so many episodes tap into the unsettling experience of characters realizing their lives are being scripted by someone else. In the episode “Five Characters in Search of an Exit,” a group of strangers wakes up in a strange cylinder with no memory, trying to make sense of where they are or who they were—basically the severed floor with circus music.

They fight to escape, only to learn they’re just toys in a donation bin, a revelation which hits with the same gut-punch as Innie Helly discovering her Outie sees her as a thing, not a person. And then there’s “The Obsolete Man,” in which a librarian is put on trial in a society that’s erased books and individuality—the same sterile dread as Severance, the same confrontation with systems erasing people’s worth. Severance might wear a sleeker suit, but it’s still circling the idea that when someone else controls your story, your identity becomes just another tool shaped to serve their design.