What ‘Severance’ Is Made of: ‘Being John Malkovich’ and a Sizzler Steakhouse

For some employees, what happens at Lumon stays at Lumon. In the world of the Apple TV+ series “Severance,” they have agreed to let the company implant them with a chip that splits their personality so that one side remembers only what happens at the office and the other exists only on the outside. Work and life are so perfectly balanced that never the twain shall meet.

Created by Dan Erickson, “Severance” follows the journey of Mark (Adam Scott), an Everyman employed in Lumon’s mysterious Macrodata Refinement (M.D.R.) division who begins to question the greater forces shaping his life. Or rather, his lives.

The critically acclaimed show combines stylish production design, surreal humor and an Orwellian view of office work’s impact on the human psyche, themes not unlike those found in Terry Gilliam’s classic film “Brazil” (1985) — one of Erickson’s favorites.

“There was that retro-future sense, but Ben 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,” he said, referring to Ben Stiller, who directed six out of the first season’s nine episodes. “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.”

In a video chat from his Los Angeles home, Erickson, 38, spoke about some of the other inspirations that helped fuel “Severance.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

‘Being John Malkovich’

“This was a movie that really was formative for me and made me want to be a writer,” Erickson said of Spike Jonze’s mind trip of a film, written by Charlie Kaufman, in which John Cusack’s character works in a cramped office and one day discovers a passage into the actor John Malkovich’s head.

“I feel like my favorite part is actually before they find the portal,” Erickson said. “You have the viscerally strange vision of the seven and a halfth floor where everybody’s having to squat down to walk around.”

Mark’s work area in “Severance” is similarly disorienting and alienating. “I think the idea of seeing a familiar space that’s sort of warped and twisted probably came straight from ‘Being John Malkovich,’ ” Erickson said. “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.”

‘Black Mirror: White Christmas’

Turning our relationship with technology into the stuff of nightmares, the British anthology series “Black Mirror” is a natural reference point for “Severance.” Erickson singled out this feature-length episode from 2014, in particular its ending, in which a character is essentially condemned to an infernal loop. “I remember feeling so cold and afraid after seeing that, this devastating idea of having to experience this endless solitude,” Erickson said. He noted a parallel in the moment when Mark’s colleague Helly (Britt Lower) first tries to escape from Lumon. “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 said.

‘Cat’s Cradle’

Erickson listed Kurt Vonnegut as one of his favorite authors, singling out this 1963 novel. A plot point especially stuck with him: “I think a lot about the development of ice-nine, this world-destroying technology that everybody agrees shouldn’t exist but is almost birthed into existence by the bureaucracy,” Erickson said. “At Lumon, Mark is reading off these silly flow charts as he is giving Helly her orientation. That extreme corporatization of everything, this idea that there’s a process that you have to follow no matter what, and that supersedes even humanity — I feel like that’s kind of a scary Vonnegutesque idea.”

“Severance” also plays off the often cultlike devotion some companies foster, with one influence being the made-up religion called Bokonon in Vonnegut’s book. “I’ve always said if I were to get a tattoo, it would be the words ‘lucky mud’ — a reference to a prayer they say in the Bokonon section,” Erickson said, laughing.

‘Dark City’

Erickson loves this 1999 apocalyptic thriller by the Australian director Alex Proyas, which he deems “the definition of a genius sci-fi-noir thing.”

“You start with this murder mystery and you get bigger and bigger until you reach, like, what is the soul? What are we doing here? What is life?” he said. “These people’s memories are being wiped and they’re being placed in these different scenarios to see how they’ll react, if they will become the people that they’re purported to be. If you’re told that you’re a murderer, do you become a murderer?”

Indeed, issues pertaining to selfhood are integral to “Severance,” but the series also has an off-kilter humor, especially when John Turturro and Christopher Walken’s characters are involved, so it’s not surprising that Erickson appreciates the juxtaposition of silliness and dark themes — an aspect of Proyas’s work he is drawn to. “He’s not afraid to be goofy, but it’s all wrapped in these existential questions that he seems to be continuing to ask over his career.”

Sizzler steakhouse promotional video

If David Lynch had done a promotional video for a steakhouse chain, it might have looked a little bit like this five-minute oddity created for Sizzler in 1991. “Looking at it now, I’m like, ‘Oh, God, were we all in a cult?’” Erickson said. “What makes the video so fascinating to me is that they’re basically equating Sizzler with the idea of freedom and the idea of choice, because you can go to either the grill or the buffet.”

His fictional company creates a similar kind of self-contained corporate world, with its own rules and aesthetics. “I thought about Lumon and the way they are in complete control of what their employees do and don’t see,” Erickson said. “If there are internal documents or videos, they could have this real edge of propaganda to them, and without the benefit of context, the employees wouldn’t really recognize it for what it is. It’s hard to see a cult from the outside, it’s hard to see propaganda when it’s working.”

“When they’re in the belly of the beast,” he added, “they don’t know they’re there.”