TV fans spot $200,000,000 show was revealed over a decade before airing

Fans think another Adam Scott character revealed the premise of Severance years ago (Picture: Apple TV+/AP)

Severance has taken Apple TV+ by storm, and eagle eyed fans have spotted an amazing reference in a different show well over a decade earlier.

The sci-fi thriller stars Adam Scott as Lumon Industries biotech employee Mark Scout who, like his colleagues, has to have a device implanted to erase all memories of the outside world during their working day, and vice versa.

They’re then left with two separate personalities, with their ‘Innie’ working at Lumon, and their ‘Outdie’ living their everyday life away from the business.

Adam takes the lead in the show, which is reported to have cost $200million for the second season, and some viewers have spotted that he referenced a very similar premise in an old episode of Parks and Recreation.

In the mockumentary sitcom, his character Ben Wyatt tells Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) they should separate their different lives.

‘Maybe it would be good to keep our home life and our work life separate,’ he says to her in the clip, which aired over a decade ago. ‘Like, we only talk about work stuff when we’re at City Hall, like a firewall system!’

Adam’s character Ben Wyatt had a similar idea in a scene with Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) (Picture: Chris Haston/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images)

She replies: ‘Yeah ok, that’s smart, home is home, and work is work. We can always talk about this tomorrow at the office.’

Fans are going wild over the video on social media, with one Reddit user joking it was clear ‘foreshadowing’.

‘Severance is just Ben Wyatt’s Covid-induced fever dream. This will end like the Bob Newhart show,’ quipped a second fan.

A third person joked: ‘[Ben] would absolutely love Severance. He’d also think the main character looks strangely like him, but no one else in the cast would agree.’

The Apple TV+ series is estimated to have earned the streamer $200million (Picture: Apple TV+/ AP) Could it be an alternate universe to Parks and Rec? (Picture: Colleen Hayes/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images)

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Someone else shared the clip on Instagram, and described the scene as ‘the inception of Severance,’ and others wondered if it played a part in landing Adam his role.

‘This has to be why the severance writers and directors cast him,’ an Instagram user suggested.’Someone one was watching parks and recs and said this guy gets it. (sic)’

Severance was created by Dan Erickson, who first got the idea for the show when he was ‘working a really bad office job and going through a somewhat depressive state’.

The show was actually inspired by Dan Erickson’s ‘really bad office job’ (Picture: Apple TV+)

He later added to The Hollywood Reporter: ‘my job became so mind-numbing that I had the fantasy that would become the premise of the show.

‘What if I could skip the eight hours of the workday, to disassociate and just get it over with?’

He was inspired by the likes of Office Space, The Truman Show, Nineteen Eighty-Four and more, while the United States and wider world also had an influence.

‘Employees are the ones who are expected to give and give and give, with the understanding that this is a family,’ he told TheWrap.

‘You’re doing this out of love, but then that is often not returned by the employers in any kind of a substantive way.’

Severance is available to stream on Apple TV+.

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