SCP Foundation


The SCP Foundation is a fictional organization featured in stories created by contributors on the SCP Wiki, a wiki-based collaborative writing project, launched in 2008. Within the project's shared universe, the SCP Foundation is a secret organization that is responsible for capturing, containing, and studying various paranormal, supernatural, and other mysterious phenomena, while also keeping their existence hidden from the rest of society.
The collaborative writing project includes elements of many genres such as horror, science fiction, and urban fantasy. The majority of works on the SCP Wiki consist of thousands of SCP files: mock confidential scientific reports that document various SCPs and associated containment procedures. The website also contains "Foundation Tales", short stories featuring various characters and settings in the SCP universe. The wiki's literary works have been praised for their ability to convey horror through a quasi-scientific and academic writing style, as well as for their high standards of quality.
The SCP universe has inspired numerous fan-made adaptations in varying forms of media, including literature, music, short films, and video games.

Overview

The fictional setting of the SCP universe revolves around the findings and activities of the SCP Foundation, an international non-governmental secret society consisting of a scientific research institution with a paramilitary intelligence agency to support their goals. The Foundation operates independently of any government, answering only to their own mysterious 13-member leadership body called the, also known as the Overseers. This organization is dedicated to protecting the world by capturing and containing various unexplained paranormal phenomena which display supernatural abilities or other extremely unusual properties that defy conventional scientific laws. They include living beings, objects, places, abstract concepts, and incomprehensible entities. If left uncontained, many of the more dangerous anomalies would pose a serious threat to human beings or even all life on Earth. All information regarding the existence of the Foundation and SCPs are strictly classified and withheld from the general public in order to prevent mass hysteria that would supposedly occur if they were leaked, and allow human civilization to continue functioning under a masquerade of "normalcy".
Whenever an anomaly is discovered, teams of Foundation agents are deployed to either collect and transport the object or entity to one of the organization's many secret facilities, or to contain it at its location of discovery if transportation is not possible. Civilian eyewitnesses are frequently interrogated and then dosed with amnestic drugs to erase their memories of anomalous events. At the Foundation's secret containment and research facilities, SCPs are locked in captivity by armed security guards, and studied by scientists to develop better containment methods for them. The Foundation's laboratory research projects frequently exploit disposable human test subjects acquired from around the world known as "D-class personnel", forcing them into performing slave labor and participating in experiments with potentially dangerous SCPs in order to avoid risking the safety of the Foundation's employees.
Apart from the Foundation itself, there are numerous rival organizations actively involved with the paranormal world. Examples include the, a terrorist splinter group of ex-Foundation defectors who capture and weaponize SCPs; the , a secret paramilitary agency of the United Nations which specializes in destroying supernatural threats instead of containing them; and the, a militant group which advocates for the rights of anomalous beings, resisting both the Foundation's and GOC's efforts to suppress paranormal activity worldwide. Other GOIs seek to exploit anomalies by producing or selling them for profit, or using them to serve their own religious, political, or ideological goals.

Examples of SCPs

  • is a mysterious, memory-erasing "anti-meme" anomaly that causes anyone who examines it to forget its existence, thus making its true nature unknown; its characteristics are indescribable except in terms of what it is.
  • is a staircase that appears to descend infinitely and inhibits any light within its space. It is inhabited by, a disembodied floating face without a mouth, nostrils, or pupils, which chases after anyone walking down the stairs.
  • is a tall thin humanoid creature with intense scopophobia, which causes it great psychological distress. The creature will hunt down and kill anyone who has seen its face, whether directly in person, or even by seeing images of its face from photos or video footage.
  • is a humanoid statue composed of rebar, concrete, and spray paint. It is immobile when directly observed, but it attacks people and breaks their neck when the line of sight with it is broken. It is extremely fast, to the point where it can move multiple meters when the observer blinks. SCP-173 is the first SCP ever written, and it inspired the rest of the SCP Wiki and its fictional universe. The entry was originally illustrated with a picture of an artwork by Izumi Katō, but this was removed due to copyright reasons.
  • is a coffee vending machine that can dispense anything that can exist in liquid form—including certain abstract concepts. Regardless of the physical or chemical properties of the substance chosen, the machine's polystyrene cups appear to suffer no damage from the substances dispensed into them.
  • is a toaster that can only be referred to in the first person.
  • is a gelatinous slime mold–like creature that smells similar to whatever is the most comforting smell to the person it makes contact with. It has a friendly personality and is known to induce positive emotions on contact with humans and other organisms; as such, it is employed as a tool by the SCP Foundation.
  • is a home that has windows covered in condensation; by writing in the condensation on the glass, it is possible to communicate with an extra-dimensional entity whose windows are likewise covered in condensation. This entity bears xenophobic enmity against humans, but does not know that the Foundation members are humans.
  • is a man who perceives all animals he sees as the actor Shia LaBeouf.
  • is a sentient pile of wood chip mulch, fabric scraps, and nails. It teleports into the lungs of individuals displaying aggressive behavior towards it, wearing formal attire or who are otherwise identified by it to be a threat. It was previously a benevolent chair that teleported to nearby individuals who needed to sit down, and was transformed into its current state after being destroyed in a woodchipper by the Global Occult Coalition.
  • is an abandoned IKEA store, with an interior containing a seemingly infinite, labyrinthine pocket dimension designated as. Prospective customers who have become trapped within the endless building make rudimentary fortifications to defend against the store's monstrous inhabitants: tall faceless humanoid creatures wearing IKEA employee uniforms named, which become violently aggressive towards humans when the lights are turned off at "night".

History

The SCP Foundation originated in the "paranormal" /x/ forum of 4chan in June 2007, where the very first SCP file, SCP-173, was posted by an anonymous user, accompanied by an image of the sculpture "Untitled 2004" by Japanese artist Izumi Katō. Although displeased with the unlicensed use of his art, Katō allowed the use of the photo explicitly for the noncommercial purposes of the community. Though SCP-173 was initially a stand-alone short story, many additional SCP files were created shortly after; those new SCPs copied SCP-173's style and were set within the same fictional universe.
In July 2008, the SCP Wiki was transferred to its current Wikidot website after the wiki hosting service EditThis switched to a paid model. New Wikidot wikis, by default, made use of the CC BY-SA 3.0 license at the time. The SCP staff therefore "accidentally" adopted this license for SCP media. By 2009, a large number of articles had been written but the quality of those posts was often poor. A mass edit conducted from September to December of that year saw every article reviewed and a large number "decommissioned". A repository of the removed articles is preserved at SCP Classic. The development of evaluation processes, including the sharing of ideas and constructive criticism, has since allowed the community to maintain a high quality level for new articles.
The community continued to grow and opened branches in additional languages from the early 2010s. In particular, a surge of new members arrived in 2012 after the launch of SCP – Containment Breach. The original SCP-173 text was released into the creative commons by its author explicitly in 2013, in an effort to address the uncertain license status of some earlier material. This debate over licensing led to a dispute between the English and Russian language branches in 2017, which briefly shut down the Russian version.
In 2022, an article in American Journalism suggested that the SCP Foundation may have become the largest collaborative writing project in history.

Writing style

On the SCP Wiki, the majority of works are stand-alone articles detailing the "Special Containment Procedures" of a given SCP object. In a typical article, an SCP object is assigned a unique identification number and a "containment class" based on the difficulty of containing it. The documentation then outlines proper containment procedures and safety measures, and a description of the SCP object in question. Addenda may also be attached to the document. The reports are written in a scientific tone and often censor words with black redaction bars and "data expunged" markings, to give the in-universe impression of sensitive information not to be disclosed to lesser-privileged Foundation staff. articles exist for over 9,800 SCP objects; new articles are written and published frequently by contributors.
The SCP Wiki also contains over 6,300 short stories referred to as "Foundation Tales". The stories are set within the larger SCP universe, and often focus on the exploits of various Foundation staff members, SCP entities, and objects, among other recurring characters and settings. Gregory Burkart, writing for Blumhouse Productions, noted that some of the Foundation Tales had a dark and bleak tone, while others were "surprisingly light-hearted".
The SCP universe has neither a central canon nor the ability to establish one due to its community-oriented nature, but stories on the wiki are often linked together to create larger narratives. Contributors have the ability to create "canons", which are clusters of SCPs and Foundation Tales with similar locations, characters, or central plots; many of these canons have hub pages that explain their basic concept and provide information such as timelines and character lists.
The genres of the SCP Wiki have variously been described as science fiction, urban fantasy, horror, and creepypasta.

Community

The current Wikidot website contains numerous standard wiki features such as keyword searches and article lists. The wiki also contains a news hub, guides for writers and a central discussion forum. The wiki is moderated by staff teams; each team is responsible for a different function such as community outreach and discipline. Wikidot users are required to submit an application before they are allowed to post content. Every article on the wiki is assigned a discussion page, where members can evaluate and provide constructive criticism on submitted stories. The discussion pages are frequently used by authors to improve their stories. Members also have the ability to "upvote" articles they like and to "downvote" articles they dislike; articles that receive too many net downvotes are deleted. Writers from the Daily Dot and Bustle have noted that the website maintains strict quality control standards, and that sub-par content tends to be quickly removed. Authors who have written for the site include Max Landis, qntm, and Adrian Hon.
The Wikidot website routinely holds creative writing contests to encourage submissions. The first of these was held in 2011 to decide which article would be assigned the "SCP-1000" label. There have since been additional competitions; for example, in 2014, the SCP Wiki held a "Dystopia Contest" in which its members were encouraged to submit writings about the Foundation set in a bleak or degraded world.
Apart from the original English wiki, 15 other official language branches exist, and some of their articles have been translated into English. The is a sister site and spin-off of the SCP Wiki. It uses the same setting as the SCP universe, but is made up of fantastical stories rather than scientific reports. The SCP community also maintains a role-playing site, a forum on Reddit, and accounts on, Facebook, Twitter, and Bluesky.

Legal disputes

Trademark dispute

The SCP Foundation website and its contents are under a Creative Commons license, and none of the characters or assets associated with it are trademarked by the Foundation itself. In 2019, a Russian resident named Andrey Duksin filed a trademark for the name and logo of the SCP Foundation. Although the Creative Commons license grants the right to sell merchandise based on the SCP intellectual property, Duksin used his trademark in Russia to suppress competition by stopping others from selling merchandise within Russia. In addition, Duksin threatened to shut down the official Russian website of the SCP Foundation. The SCP Foundation launched a fundraiser to raise funds to combat Duksin legally, with an initial goal of $50,000. In 2020, because of contributions by fans and members of the community, including the YouTuber Markiplier, $140,000 was raised.
In November 2021, the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service ruled against Duksin. It found that he did not commission or create the SCP name or logo, had not been transferred the rights to it, and that his actions may constitute an act of unfair competition. However, his trademark continued to stand in Russia. An article in Case Western Law Review came to the conclusion that the court's actions were broadly in line with Russian indulgence of trademark and patent trolls, as Russia does not usually deregister illegitimately obtained trademarks. The SCP Wiki successfully appealed in April 2022, and Duksin's trademark was ultimately cancelled that October.

SCP-173 image removal

The original SCP-173, posted in 2007, used an image of the sculpture Untitled 2004 by the artist Izumi Katō, which was photographed by Keisuke Yamamoto. The creator of the post, Wesley "Moto42" Williams, did not have the rights to either the sculpture or the photograph that depicted it. Beginning in 2013 both the Japanese and English branches attempted to make contact with Katō to ask permission, but they received no reply. The English staff were eventually able to contact him in September 2014, and he "reluctantly" allowed the community to use the image for non-commercial purposes. He announced that he would take legal action if someone attempted to use it for a commercial purpose.
The image remained on the site with a warning attached until February 2022, when staff made the decision to remove it. The SCP Foundation said on Twitter that the artistic vision of Izumi Katō was "forcibly hijacked" by the statue's association with SCP, and that they could not "fully undo the damage done". At the request of Wesley Williams, a new image was not placed in the article, so that readers would have to imagine it themselves. Many original interpretations of SCP-173 were created by the community in the wake of the decision.

Reception

The SCP Foundation has received largely positive reviews. Michelle Starr of CNET praised the creepy nature of the stories. Gavia Baker-Whitelaw, writing for the Daily Dot, praised the originality of the wiki and described it as the "most uniquely compelling horror writing on the Internet". She noted that the series rarely contained gratuitous gore. Rather, the horror of the series was often established through the reports' "pragmatic" and "deadpan" style, as well as through the inclusion of detail. Lisa Suhay, writing for the Christian Science Monitor, also noted the SCP Wiki's "tongue-in-cheek style".
Alex Eichler, writing for io9, noted that the series had varying levels of quality and that some of the reports were dull or repetitive. However, he praised the SCP stories for not becoming overly dark, and for containing more light-hearted reports. Additionally, he praised the wide variety of concepts covered in the report and said that the wiki contained writings that would appeal to all readers. Leigh Alexander, writing for The Guardian, noted that the wiki's voting system allows readers to easily locate content which "the community thinks are best and most scary."
Winston Cook-Wilson, writing for Inverse, compared the SCP stories to the writings of American author H. P. Lovecraft. Like Lovecraft, SCP casefiles generally lack action sequences and are written in a pseudo-academic tone. Cook-Wilson argued that both Lovecraft's works and those of the SCP Wiki were strengthened by the tensions between their detached scientific tone and the unsettling, horrific nature of the stories being told.
Bryan Alexander, writing in The New Digital Storytelling, stated that the SCP Foundation is possibly "the most advanced achievement of wiki storytelling" due to the large-scale and recurring process through which the wiki's user-base creates literary content.

Media inspired by the SCP Foundation

The works present on the SCP Foundation website have been the subject of numerous independent adaptations and inspired some original works:

Adaptations of the SCP universe

Literature' is a 120-page graphic novel adaptation of SCP-5000 - Why? written by Tanhony and illustrated by Drdobermann. The novel focuses on technician Pietro Wilson surviving in an alternate universe where, for unknown reasons, the SCP Foundation has declared war against humanity and is releasing SCP objects to ensure human extinction. Funded through Kickstarter, the novel was published by Discordia Publishing in August 2021.
  • ' are a series of one-shot horror graphic novel published by Aloha Comics under their ParaBooks imprint that focus on specific SCPs or Mobile Task Forces. The titles of these oneshots are "We Who Poke With Sticks", "The Plague Doctor", "Red Sea Object", "Old Man", "Expunged Data Released", and "Reluctant Dimension Hopper". These oneshots were released as part of a book set funded through Kickstarter.' is a light novel series written by Akira and illustrated by Sidu. The book focuses on a boy who is kidnapped by the SCP Foundation after he sees a picture of Iris Thompson, a girl designated as SCP-105, in every book he opens; the boy and Iris are forced to cooperate to escape the Foundation. The novel series began publication in Japan in September 2018, and was released by Seven Seas Entertainment in North America in January 2020.
  • ' is a SCP sci-fi horror story written and self-published by Sam "qntm" Hughes. The novel focuses on the concept of "antimemes", ideas and entities that censor themselves through memory loss, data corruption, and other anomalous means, and more specifically the invasion of an antimemetic entity that feeds on information.
Theater' is a stage play that was performed in Dublin at the Smock Alley Theatre in October 2014. The play focused on the SCP Foundation's Ethics Committee, a body that tries to limit unethical containment procedures.
Video gamesSCP-087 is a short horror game about walking down the stairs of SCP-087.SCP – Containment Breach, one of the most popular games based on the SCP Foundation, was released by Finnish developer Joonas Rikkonen in 2012. The game includes a blink function, which makes the player close their eyes and allows SCP-173 to approach.
  • ' is a multiplayer game based on Containment Breach. Players have the option of playing different roles.', formerly named SCP: Pandemic, is a multiplayer co-op first-person shooter in development by Affray Interactive.
  • ' is an episodic horror adventure game in development by GameZoo Studios. The player plays through chapters that each cover different excursions into the SCP Foundation's operations with the bizarre and abnormal.Go Home Annie is a horror adventure game featuring an original narrative set in the SCP Foundation universe developed by Misfit Village. It was released in 2024.' is a first person action adventure game set on Site-113 set on Mars. Funded by a Kickstarter and developed by HST studios, the game launched Chapter 1 in January 2025 with 3 more chapters planned for release later.
  • ' is an upcoming multiplayer survival game set in SCP-3008, an infinite IKEA-like store. The project had a successful Kickstarter in 2022, and entered into a closed alpha test that November. The game faced legal threats from IKEA which led to some graphical changes.
Web videos' is an animated black comedy horror web series on YouTube, created by the animator "Lord Bung". The series focuses on the misadventures of Connor, an immortal human SCP prisoner whose anomalous ability to instantaneously resurrect himself from any cause of death is frequently exploited by the Foundation, who often use him as a D-class test subject to interact with various highly dangerous SCPs.
  • ' is a 35-minute action horror thriller short film on YouTube, directed by Stephen Hancock and written by Evan Muir. The plot involves a team of Foundation agents raiding and investigating a house occupied by a local cult, which performed occult rituals that have resulted in anomalous activity.There Is No Antimemetics Division, based on the sci-fi horror story series of the same name, is a 4-part short series on YouTube, written and directed by Andrea Joshua Asnicar and Jenna Cosgrove.
Podcasts is an audio drama series following a group of Foundation staff members trapped inside of an extra-dimensional Foundation Site. The series was made by SCP Wiki author Raddagher under her audio production company Hodgepodge. The series has become popular among the SCP wiki community and has received several awards for its production quality.

Other original works

Video gamesLobotomy Corporation, a management video game by Project Moon, was released in April 2018. Inspired by the SCP Foundation, the titular Lobotomy Corporation contains and harvests energy from supernatural "Abnormalities", and handling containment breaches is a major aspect of the gameplay.
  • Control, a video game created by Remedy Entertainment, was first revealed at E3 2018 and released in August 2019. The video game was heavily influenced by the SCP Foundation, and is centered on a fictional Federal Bureau of Control that collects mundane objects imbued with paranormal influence to study and keep secure.Lethal Company, a cooperative survival horror video game created by solo developer Zeekerss, was released in October 2023. The developer drew upon existing mythos and monsters from the SCP universe for use in the horror game.

General and cited references

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