Stranger Things came storming onto our screens in a blaze of glory and Facebook updates. Usually something along the lines of: 'OMG Stranger Things on Netflix is the BEST THING EVAAAAAA'.
Hopefully, if you have anyone on Facebook who actually speaks like that, you're considering deleting them right now.
Anyway, many of us went into the show with high expectations. And it delivered. It was weird, creepy and generally reminiscent of Twin Peaks as well as a tinge of Stephen King horror. It was brilliant.
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As an overnight cult sensation, anticipation for the second season finally reached a climax during the Super Bowl, when the first teaser aired.
It looks amazing too. Watch it below.
Credit: Netflix
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What the fuck is that massive thing in the sky? It looks like we'll have to wait until Halloween to find out!
But what was the inspiration behind the show?
Well it's actually nothing to do with old horrors, Stephen King, E.T. or even Twilight Zone. It was actually based on real-life experiments.
Say whaaaaat?!
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Credit: Netflix
The Guardian has revealed that the real-life inspiration for the show's government research facility was in fact Project MKUltra.
If you've seen the show, you'll know that one of the characters, Eleven, was subjected to experiments to test her mind-control abilities. Well, this wasn't plucked out of nowhere. Back in the 1950s, Project MKUltra was launched. We don't know much about it (as the majority of the project's records were destroyed in 1973 once it was shut down), but back in 1977 there was a Senate elect committee hearing which confirmed that agents 'drugged American citizens without their knowledge'. They even used LSD as a 'truth serum'. If you're interested in that kind of thing, check out the notes here.
The thing is, many people are convinced that they researched mind control, telepathy, ESP, psychic warfare and 'remote viewing'.
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What the fuck is 'remote viewing' when it's at home?! Well, as Eleven so beautifully demonstrates, it's the ability to use your mind to see things happening in a completely different place than where you are.
The writers behind the show, The Duffer Brothers, spoke to Vulture about their inspiration: "When we were first starting to talk about the idea [for the show], we had talked about a paranormal-missing child story line.
"Then we were talking about some of the mysterious government experiments that we felt were happening at the tail end of the Cold War, right when rumoured [projects] like MKUltra were ramping down."
So we'll never know exactly what went on behind closed doors (thanks to some very quick destruction of the project's paperwork) but sometimes the truth can be stranger than fiction, right?
Featured Image Credit: Netflix