4 Theme Restaurants Straight Out of 'The Twilight Zone'

If you're thinking, "Hey, isn't this exactly how our machine overlords will keep us fed once they've taken over the planet?" then you're being foolish, because obviously the machines will garnish our meals with challenging puzzles, which we will complete for their study and then be rewarded with treats. Wait, that happens at this restaurant, too.

BBC
"PleaseDon'tBeUsedPantiesPleaseDon'tBeUsedPantiesPleaseDon'tBeUsedPanties."

Yes, it's a smashing place to dine if you feel like re-enacting Season 3 of Lost. When you're done, you just push the plates down a chute and they get added to your bill and cleaned. Presumably. We don't have any evidence that they collect DNA samples from your leftovers and clone you, but we don't have evidence that they don't do that, either.

The restaurant was inspired by a 1960s Soviet-era film called The Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors, which follows a young girl named Olya into a parallel universe where everyone is evil -- but hopefully not by the part where some capitalist aristocrats get poisoned, because that would be pretty bad for business.

Oddly enough, this place isn't the first to do their hiring in pairs: Twins Restaurant in New York City was open from 1994 to 2000 and made their twin sets of waitresses wear psychotically charming signs like "I'm not Lisa" and "I'm not Debbie." Right, as if twins weren't creepy enough without that crap.

The restaurant has so far sold out all its tables on each "silent night," proving that what every couple really wants to do on date night is find a way to make their significant other shut the hell up for a minute. (And diners who break the rules are exiled to finish their meals on the bench of shame outside.)

But imagine walking into this place without knowing what's going on and being bludgeoned by the deafening silence. You nervously ask why everyone is so quiet, but no one answers. They just stare. Eventually a waiter hands you a card. It says, "Sir, please put on some trousers or leave."

The founders wanted to make a "nice place for their friends to come to," which is why they lined the walls with images of fictional dead teenagers, degenerate killers, and owls watching you as you eat. It's all fairly discomfiting if you're not in on the joke, but the creepiest part is the john:

Jesse Ferreras/HuffPost B.C.
"Niaga PT eht lla desu Bob, wa."

Yes, they modeled the bathroom after a hellish outer-dimensional room where demons and other bizarre entities routinely wander in and out, occasionally possessing people. SPOILERS: They're gonna have to replace that bathroom mirror a lot.

JF Sargent is a Workshop moderator for Cracked who has the greatest Twitter ever and is writing a sci-fi adventure novel that you can read for free.