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. Within the project's shared fictional universe, the SCP Foundation is a secret organization that is responsible for capturing, containing, and studying various paranormal, supernatural, and other mysterious phenomena (known as "anomalies" or "SCPs"), 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.
The fictional setting centers around the findings and activities of the SCP Foundation: an international secret society consisting of a scientific research institution with a paramilitary intelligence agency to support their goals. The SCP Foundation is privately operated, and is not reliant on governments for funding or directives. Most of said governments are unaware of their existence, and those that are aware know very little. The Foundation itself is dedicated to protecting the world by capturing and containing various unexplained anomalous phenomena that defy the known laws of nature (referred to as "anomalies", "SCP objects", "SCPs", or informally as "skips"). They include living beings and creatures, artifacts and objects, locations and places, abstract concepts, and incomprehensible entities which display supernatural abilities or other extremely unusual properties. If left uncontained, many of the more dangerous anomalies will pose a serious threat to humans or even all life on Earth. All information regarding the existence of the Foundation and SCPs are strictly 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", often referred to as "The Veil".
Whenever an SCP anomaly is discovered, teams of undercover Foundation agents (often called Mobile Task Forces, or MTFs) are deployed to either collect and transport the object to one of the organization's many secret facilities, or to contain it at its location of discovery if transportation is not possible. If an anomaly is too widespread, elusive, or otherwise inaccessible, containment usually consists of suppressing all knowledge of the SCP from the public. This is accomplished through censorship of mass media, and by dosing all eyewitnesses with amnestic drugs which erase their memories of anomalous events.
At the Foundation's secret containment facilities, SCPs are locked in captivity by armed security guards, and studied by scientists to develop better containment methods for them. The Foundation also acquires disposable human test subjects (usually unwitting convict prisoners) from around the world called 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 Foundation employees themselves. The Foundation maintains documentation for all SCPs of which they are aware, which can include or link to related reports and files. These documents describe the SCPs and include instructions for keeping them safely contained, as well as supplementary incident reports or experimentation logs.
Apart from the Foundation itself, there are numerous rival organizations (called Groups of Interest, or GOIs) actively involved with the paranormal world. Notable examples include the Chaos Insurgency, a terrorist splinter group of ex-Foundation defectors who capture and weaponize SCPs; the Global Occult Coalition (GOC), a secret paramilitary agency of the United Nations which specializes in destroying supernatural threats instead of containing them; and the Serpent's Hand, 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.
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 (later identified as Wesley "Moto42" Williams), accompanied by an image of the sculpture "Untitled 2004" by Japanese artist Izumi Kato. Although displeased with the unlicensed use of his art, Kato allowed the use of the photo explicitly for the noncommercial purposes of the community. 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. A stand-alone wiki was created in January 2008 on the EditThis wiki hosting service to display the SCP articles. The EditThis website did not have moderators, or the ability to delete articles. Members communicated through individual article talk pages and the /x/ board; the website lacked a central discussion forum.
In July 2008, the SCP Wiki was transferred to its current Wikidot website after 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 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.
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 (e.g. "SCP-173") and a "containment class" (e.g. Euclid) 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 (such as images, research data, interviews, history, or status updates) 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. As of August 2024, articles exist for over 8,900 SCP objects; new articles are written and published frequently by contributors.
The SCP Wiki also contains over 4,200 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.
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 each increment of 1,000 articles. For example, in November 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 Wanderer's Library 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 and Twitter.
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.
The original SCP-173 post in 2007, used an image of the sculpture Untitled 2004 by the artist Izumi Kato, which was photographed by Keisuke Yamamoto. The creator of the post, Wesley "Moto42" Williams, did not have the rights to either the sculpture, nor the photograph that depicted it. Beginning in 2013 both the Japanese and English branches attempted to make contact with Kato to ask permission, but received no reply. The English staff were eventually able to contact him in September 2014, and he "reluctantly" allowed the community to use it 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 Kato 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.
The SCP-3008 article, first written in 2017, is about a fictional former IKEA store populated by strange creatures dressed like IKEA employees. The survival horror video game The Store is Closed was developed by Jacob Shaw and is set in SCP-3008. Shaw opted not to use the IKEA name and instead called the store "STYR" (Swedish for "CONTROL") but retained the overall aesthetic of IKEA. In October 2022, IKEA threatened Shaw with legal action, arguing that the staff uniforms among other details in the game were identical to IKEA branding. Shaw indicated that he would "desperately revamp the entire look of the game" to avoid a lawsuit. Given that the original story for SCP-3008 overtly features the IKEA name and has been online for years without dispute, tech journalism site Notebookcheck speculated that the distinction may be that SCP-3008 is noncommercialised satire, whereas The Store is Closed is a commercial product.
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.
The works present on the SCP Foundation website have been the subject of numerous independent adaptations and inspired some original works: