October 27, 2023

attempting to learn all of the five nights at freddy's lore before the movie comes out

Eight games. Six spin-offs. Three tie-in novels, each with a graphic novel adaptation. Twenty anthologies of short stories, à la Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Probably like, 79 animatronics at this point. And now, a film adaptation, due out October 27th. Armed with only Wikipedia, TV Tropes, YouTube, and the [REDACTED] Public Library, can one woman outside the franchise’s target age demographic and prone to debilitating motion sickness become a FNAF expert in just two weeks?

PREAMBLE

August 6th, 2014. I am less than two weeks away from starting college. Some random indie game developer named Scott Cawthon is like, “Here lol,” and drops the scariest video game anyone has ever played (until P.T. comes out six days later).

Cawthon’s game, Five Nights at Freddy’s, is set in a Chuck E. Cheese pastiche called Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, where you play as a minimum wage night guard trying to work a six-hour shift (midnight-6:00 A.M.) without being gruesomely murdered by the pizzeria’s resident animatronics. You are stuck to your chair and can only defend yourself by closing the (goddamn) doors to your office. But closing the doors takes power, of which you have a finite amount, so you can’t just leave them closed all the time. In the event of a power outage, the eponymous Freddy will show up, play Bizet’s “Toreador Song” on a music box, and then kill you if the clock doesn’t strike 6:00 in time. You can watch security camera footage of the animatronics to know when they’re close, but that also drains your power. Essentially, you are denied both your fight and flight responses, and can do nothing but sit there and prolong the inevitable.

This style of gameplay is noteworthy for two reasons: one, it differed from other well-known horror franchises like Resident Evil and Silent Hill, and two, it did not make me motion sick. I am not a gamer because I will often straight-up vomit after more than like, ten minutes of just watching someone play something. First or third-person; it doesn’t matter, I’m throwing up. In high school I would power through as much of Amnesia: The Dark Descent Let’s Plays as I physically could, and I never lasted more than half an hour, on average. I still don’t know how that game ends.

Anyway. The point is that the first Five Nights at Freddy’s scared me without making me sick, like the unicorn it was. So to distract myself from the true horror of going to college, I found some guy on YouTube named… Markus… Pliers, (I think?) watched him play all five seven nights, and had a spooky good time.

Because, again, this game did the nigh impossible — it scared me. It scared everyone! There was a glorious, three(ish)-day period where I needed melatonin to fall asleep if I saw this image too close to bedtime.

Like a lot of horror that I have found personally effective, this game did so much with so little. Most of it was just still images of these freaks with a static overlay, and those were scarier (in my opinion) than the actual jumpscares. Of course it went viral. Of course it became a phenomenon. Of course a sequel was immediately greenlit. And then another sequel. And another. And another. And an

“But aren’t those games for children?” you say. “Isn’t the film adaptation for children? It stars Josh Hutcherson, of Every Children’s Movie That Came Out Between 2004 And 2012 fame!” And to that I say: yes. But it wasn’t always this way. I swear to god, the original target audience was adults. The original target audience was adults, and the original game was actually scary. And I think that’s the game the upcoming movie is based on? I guess we’ll find out.

WHAT I ALREADY KNOW…

…ABOUT THE OVERARCHING NARRATIVE

Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza is haunted by a group of murdered children who have possessed the restaurant’s animatronic characters. There are at least six distinct animatronics — Freddy the (Faz)bear, Bonnie the Bunny, Chica the Chicken, Foxy the Fox, Balloon Boy the Human Child, and the Puppet — but each of them has roughly like seven hundred different iterations, such as Golden Freddy, Shadow Bonnie, and Balloon… Girl? Maybe? Seven hundred is a low estimate. Anyway, these children were murdered by a man who is represented by a purple 8-bit sprite and thus known as Purple Guy. Matthew Lillard is playing him in the movie. In most of the games, you also play as a security guard, and your objective is not to let the animatronics kill you for all five seven nights of your tenure.

…ABOUT THE FIRST GAME

(or, the only scary one)

You’re a security guard. You’re JHutch. Your name is Mike Schmidt, which I can’t believe I remember. As I said, all you have at your disposal are the camera system and the ability to close the two doors. There is a limited amount of power in the building, and the cameras and doors drain it. If you run out before 6:00 A.M., the lights will go out and Frederick himself will show up, play Bizet at you, and then kill you, unless your shift ends before he can do so. You can also be killed by Bonnie, Chica, or Foxy. Sometimes a yellow edition of Freddy called “Golden Freddy” will spawn in your office and crash the game. The walls outside the office are decorated with newspaper articles about five children who went missing from the pizzeria and are presumed dead, which coincides with the animatronics beginning to act (and smell) weird. On each of the five original nights, you hear a phone message from a former security guard (voiced by Cawthon) who gives you advice, and is then audibly killed on Night 4. When you die, your head gets crammed inside an empty animatronic head, supposedly because the animatronics think you’re a naked endoskeleton and they’re trying to help.

The only other thing of note is an incident to which the Phone Guy alludes, called the Bite of ’87, when one of the animatronics chomped someone’s frontal lobe.

Total animatronics: 5 (Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, Foxy, and Golden Freddy).

…ABOUT THE SECOND GAME

A prequel! But you don’t find that out until the end! As far as you’re concerned, this is a new location with updated, cuter animatronics, (known as “Toys”) and the retired squad from the first game (known as “Withereds”). There’s also a puppet that you have to placate with a music box, and Balloon Boy, a little guy who will sneak into your office and disable your flashlight, but not kill you. Directly. The flashlight is what repels Withered Foxy, so he can kill you. Against all other animatronics, your defense is an empty bear head, which deters them from fatally putting a non-empty one on you. There are now three angles of attack: two vents and a door. None of these can be closed. 8-bit cutscenes between nights depict the Purple Guy killing children, and the Puppet transferring their souls into the animatronics. The player character in this game, Jeremy, is possibly the victim of the Bite of ’87. Sorry to this man.

New animatronics: 8 (Toy Freddy, Toy Bonnie, Toy Chica, Toy Foxy, aka Mangle, Withered Freddy, Withered Bonnie, Withered Chica, Withered Foxy, Balloon Boy, and the Puppet).

Total animatronics: 13

…ABOUT THE THIRD GAME

I did find this one scary for like, a week. Now you’re guarding a horror attraction based on the pizzeria and its sordid past. Unfortunately, the authentic animatronic (a yellow version of Bonnie known as “Springtrap”) they found is not haunted by a child, but by their murderer, the Purple Guy! How did he die? I’m so glad you asked. The ghost children — let me make sure I’m remembering this correctly — scared him into the empty animatronic suit, triggering a mechanism that somehow released the compressed inner hardware, causing him to violently bleed out. This is depicted in 8-bit after you beat Night 5. If you look closely at Springtrap, there is in fact an entire human corpse in there.

In an inversion of 2, this game has two doors and one vent. You can seal the vent. Your other defense against Springtrap is luring him to other parts of the building by playing audio of Balloon Boy saying hi. That’s not a joke. The ventilation in the building sucks shit, so sometimes you get rapid onset hypoxia and start hallucinating severely burned versions of the non-Bonnie animatronics from 1 and 2 (known as “Phantoms”). They don’t kill you, but they can distract you into letting Springtrap kill you. The game has a good ending and a bad ending. To get the good ending, in which you free the souls of the murdered children from animatronic purgatory, you have to unlock and complete a series of 8-bit minigames. In both endings, you are relieved of your job due to the building burning down. Springtrap somehow survives the fire.

New animatronics: 7 (Springtrap, Phantom Freddy, Phantom Chica, Phantom Foxy, Phantom Mangle, Phantom Balloon Boy, and Phantom Puppet).

Total animatronics: 20

…ABOUT THE FOURTH GAME

This is the one where I started to think, “Okay. Perhaps three was enough.” Like another franchise I could name, the third entry in the series had a very satisfying conclusion that did not merit a fourth installment, but got one anyway because money. And the fourth installment changed up the format, in a futile attempt to justify its own existence.

Instead of a security guard at the pizzeria, you play as a child in their home, having a nightmare about the animatronics. For some reason, getting got by this exceptionally toothy generation of beasts, (known creatively as “Nightmares”) means you die in real life, rather than just like, waking up. There is an eventual reveal that you are in a coma after having been crushed between an animatronic’s jaws. And this is not the Bite of ’87; Markiplier was wrong. This took place at a much earlier iteration of the restaurant called Fredbear’s Family Diner, (what!!! is!!!!! a!!!!!! faz!!!!!!!!!!!) and the animatronic responsible was the eponymous Fredbear.

New animatronics: 12 (Nightmare Freddy, Nightmare Bonnie, Nightmare Chica, Nightmare Foxy, Nightmare Fredbear, Nightmare, Plushtrap, Nightmarionne, Jack-o-Bonnie, Jack-o-Chica, Nightmare Mangle, and Nightmare Balloon Boy).

Total animatronics: 32

…ABOUT SISTER LOCATION

We’re getting into unfamiliar territory; I think I watched exactly one Let’s Play of this one once. The player character can move around now, so motion sickness warning! I think there was a ballerina? And a doll that looked like the Conjuringverse Annabelle? Probably another version of Freddy?

New animatronics: 4?

Total animatronics: 36?

…ABOUT PIZZERIA SIMULATOR, HELP WANTED, AND SECURITY BREACH

Exist.

New animatronics: I’m guessing like, 43.

Total animatronics: 79 probably. Minimum.

OH GOD, AND THEN THERE WERE SPIN-OFFS, RIGHT?

FNAF WORLD

A spin-off RPG where the animatronics are cute.

OTHER SPIN-OFFS

Must exist.

LITERATURE

I know there are books. I haven’t read them. There are probably a lot of books. I’m going to guess the book count is at five or six.

THAT TIME SCOTT CAWTHON GOT CANCELED FOR DONATING TO TRUMP’S RE-ELECTION CAMPAIGN

And I oop.

FILM ADAPTATION

Based on the first game, and possibly the books? But also Springtrap is in the trailer?

THE LORE SO FAR

Fredbear’s Family Diner existed until the Bite of Not ’87 incident with the kid from the fourth game. It reopened as Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, (as seen in the second game) where a (purple) guy murdered some children and hid their bodies in the animatronics, which they possessed. The Puppet is behind the possession part. The Bite of ’87 happened around this time, possibly to a security guard named Jeremy. That place was shut down after the bodies were discovered, and then reopened (as seen in the first game). Sometime later, the Purple Guy returned to destroy the possessed animatronics, but got eviscerated by one, which he now possesses. Then the restaurant shut down, and was reimagined as a haunted attraction (as seen in the third game). The attraction burned down, freeing the souls of the murdered children. However, the murderer, in animatronic form, did not die.

WHAT DID I MISS? (GAME EDITION)

SISTER LOCATION

I bet you thought the titular sister location was also called Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. YOU THOUGHT WRONG. It’s called “Circus Baby’s Entertainment and Rental.” I… what? Is it even a restaurant? I don’t think it can possibly qualify as a sister location to a pizza restaurant if it’s just an animatronic rental place. Having the same owner isn’t enough.

WAIT. Okay, Circus Baby’s Entertainment and Rental isn’t the sister location. The sister location was a pizzeria called Circus Baby’s Pizza World that never opened. Was it really necessary to introduce an animatronic rental shop? I think by this point it should’ve been clear to Cawthon that his audience would play anything with the FNAF name, even if it was just another week in the original pizzeria, with the original animatronics.

Anyway, Circus Baby is the name of that (cinematic) Annabellesque doll girl, and (I’m on TV Tropes now, because even Wikipedia has given up on cataloguing all the animatronics) rounding out the crew are Ballora the Ballerina, Funtime Freddy, (and his handpuppet, BonBon) Funtime Foxy, Ennard, (a Frankenstein’d collection of endoskeletons from other animatronics) Yenndo, (a Funtime Freddy endoskeleton) Lolbit, (a clone of Funtime Foxy) Minireenas, (four smaller ballerinas) and Bidybabs (Circus Baby’s two minions). What the fuck. This article was a mistake. How many new animatronics did I guess were in this game? Four? My bad, it was thirteen.

Total animatronics: 45

OKAY. SO. You’re a maintenance worker at Circus Baby’s Entertainment and Rental. It’s inhabited by those guys.

At this point in the writing process, I watched a 71.5-minute Let’s Play.

The player character is named Eggs Benedict. I am obsessed with this. I hope it’s Josh Hutcherson’s name in the movie. Instead of a phone guy, your instructions come from an automated guide system called “Hand Unit.” No comment. Whoever voices it sounds just enough like Kevin from Defunctland to unnerve me. There’s a lot of crawling through vents in this game, as your job mostly entails spying on and antagonizing the animatronics (Circus Baby, Ballora, Funtimes Freddy and Foxy) at Hand Unit’s behest. Between nights, there are first-person cutscenes of Eggs Benedict watching bad TV and loudly eating popcorn, followed by a black screen and an ominous voiceover from some British girl. I believe this is our first confirmation that the United Kingdom exists in the FNAF universe.

Night two! Hand Unit announces that somebody found a dead body in the vents once. The system goes down while you’re trying to shock Circus Baby, (as you do) and a voice (presumably hers) tells you to hide under the desk and avoid eye contact, which is how a previous security guard survived. There’s a decently tense moment where you’re in there, and an unspecified animatronic tries to get you. It gives up, and Circus Baby’s like, “Hand Unit is gonna tell you to crawl through Ballora’s room to manually restart the power. Don’t do this. You’ll die if you do this. Anyway, when you do this, you’ll be able to tell when Ballora is within murdering distance because her theme music will get louder. She can’t see, so she’ll be listening for you. Over her theme music, which you can hear but apparently she is so used to that it will not affect her hearing.” And then Hand Unit comes back and is like, “Time to crawl through Ballora’s room!”

Crawling through Ballora’s room is also pretty nerve-wracking, since it’s dimly lit and you can only see the floor and there’s a faint music box playing the whole time. This game is better than I remembered. Better than 4, anyway. So you arrive in the breaker room and have to manually get eight (8) systems back online without being animatronic’d and/or setting yourself on fire. You can hear them talking to each other — the animatronics, not the systems — about why they should or shouldn’t kill you. If they don’t kill you, you get to crawl back through the Ballora zone and go home for the night. The disembodied British girl says some creepy shit about wanting to play with Circus Baby, who her dad built for her.

Night three! Funtime Freddy is broken, so you have to fix him. BUT FIRST, you have to hide under the desk while Circus Baby tells you about the time she accidentally Bite of ’87’d someone. When that’s over with, you sneak through Funtime Foxy’s room without setting off her motion detector, and do surgery on Frederick. Then you leave and get jumpscared by Funtime Foxy, which is apparently unavoidable. The British girl says more cryptic shit about Circus Baby, and then you wake up inside an animatronic head like in the second game.

Circus Baby is like, “I KIDNAPPED YOU,” and this cues the quirky, upbeat music that starts every new night. So… night four! “You’re inside something that came from my old pizzeria,” she explains, which is the most multifacetedly gross sentence I’ve ever heard in my life. “I don’t think it was ever used. At least, not the way it was meant to be used…” I’m not motion sick, but perhaps I’ll throw up anyway.

She explains that you’re in “the scooping room”, so named because it’s where they use The Scooper. This is Spirit Halloween animatronic dialogue if I’ve ever heard it. There’s all these ominous implications about the function of The Scooper, but what Cawthon evidently failed to realize is that the word scoop simply is not scary. Anyway, then some maintenance guys show up and wreck Ballora’s shit. Circus Baby has another monologue, opens your face, and advises that you wind the spring locks in your animatronic prison so you don’t suffer the same fate as the Purple Guy. While that’s happening, Ballora’s stupid minions keep trying to climb in there with you. I can’t imagine trying to explain this to someone who only knows the first game.

Night five! The company is giving you a free supply of exotic butters for your efforts. Hand Unit mentions that the maintenance guys are still there, and you should ask them to leave if you see them. The reason they are still there, as you learn when turning on the lights in Ballora and Funtime Foxy’s rooms, is because they’ve been hanged!

Circus Baby is broken, so you have to fix her. As you inspect her, her disembodied voice continues its Spirit Halloween audition, all, “I FUCKED UP I’M BEING TAKEN TO THE SCOOPING ROOM I’M SO BROKEN INSIDE HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN TO ME I’VE MADE MY MISTAKES.” She instructs you to remove the microSD card containing… her soul? I guess? and send her to the scooping room. You follow her there… aaaaand you get scooped so Circus Baby can wear your skin and escape! Goodbye, Eggs Benedict. I’m sorry you never got your exotic butters.

Oh god, the British girl is back. At this point, it becomes clear that she’s the kid Circus Baby Bite of ’87’d. You wake up in Eggs Benedict’s apartment as some vaguely human-shaped blob, open your scary animatronic eyes, and get a THE END screen. Except there are still fifteen minutes left in this video.

Minigame alert! You play as Circus Baby, distributing cupcakes to children. Then you pick up an ice cream cone, and try to give it to a blonde girl, but then a claw??? Inside the animatronic???? Reaches out and grabs the girl??????? And pulls her into the animatronic, presumably to her death???? I guess this was the incident Circus Baby described earlier. And now we’re back in the vents.

You end up in a restricted area at midnight, and Hand Unit is like, “Someone will get you out at 6:00.” There are three closable vents, some cameras you can look at, and a finite amount of power. HEY, IT’S THAT FORMAT I RECOGNIZE!

The game continues in classic FNAF fashion, with occasional melodramatic remarks from Circus Baby. The only beast coming after you is a hybrid of like, seven endoskeletons with a (human) baby head, apparently named Ennard. It’s too over-the-top to be scary. As 6:00 A.M. approaches, Circus Baby’s voice turns into that of the British girl.

Eggs Benedict goes home with his gift basket of exotic butters and watches TV. And then the mutant animatronic appears in the house, like, “’Sup?” Fin.

THE LORE SO FAR

Fredbear’s Family Diner existed until the Bite of Not ’87 incident with the kid from the fourth game. It reopened as Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, (as seen in the second game) where a (purple) guy murdered some children and hid their bodies in the animatronics, which they possessed. The Puppet is behind the possession part. The Bite of ’87 happened around this time, possibly to a security guard named Jeremy. That place was shut down after the bodies were discovered, and then reopened (as seen in the first game). Sometime later, the Purple Guy returned to destroy the possessed animatronics, but got eviscerated by one, which he now possesses. Then the restaurant shut down, and was reimagined as a haunted attraction (as seen in the third game). The attraction burned down, freeing the souls of the murdered children. However, the murderer, in animatronic form, did not die. Also at some point, the events of Sister Location happened. The animatronics were built by some British guy with a daughter, who was killed by and subsequently possessed Circus Baby.

PIZZERIA SIMULATOR

What say you, Wikipedia? All right, this game is set after 3, and was praised by critics for “tying up loose ends regarding the franchise's lore.” Thank god. The basic premise here is that you have your own Frederick Fazbear’s franchise now, but apparently you do such a bad job with it that you get menaced by evil animatronics anyway. Is there a curse?

At this point in the writing process, I watched a 106-minute Let’s Play. At 1.5x speed.

The first thing you get to do is design a pizza! (God, I miss the Club Penguin pizza game.) Then you play as 8-bit Freddy and throw the pizzas at some 8-bit children, while a (presumably evil) monochrome Freddy tries to block them. The game glitches out, revealing… CIRCUS BABY’S CORPSE!

You play a cryptic cassette tape of abstract noises for her, and then the scene cuts to an infomercial on starting one’s own Freddy Fazbear’s franchise. I’m pretty sure the voiceover is done by the same actor who played Hand Unit. If you buy a franchise, they give you real estate, tables, and electricity. You are responsible for all other purchases. I wonder how they’re going to force the player character to buy an evil animatronic.

Once you’ve blown your $100 budget on some non-animatronic items, you’re sent to your office to accomplish some petty computer tasks. [I’m just gonna call him] Hand Unit is like, “Ventilation sucks. You won’t be able to hear anything or breathe. There are two vents to your office. Shine your flashlight into them to deter anything.” WHAT IS THERE TO DETER? I would’ve saved this for like, night three.

Apparently, something to deter is a British guy who whispers, “Fascinating…” before a blaring soda advertisement drowns him out. That is scary!

I guess the back alley is full of half-destroyed animatronics that you are salvaging. Scrappers didn’t want them, nor did true crime fans. I guess. Anyway, that’s where Circus Baby came from. A different voiceover guy explains that you can salvage these things and risk actual death, or leave them in the alley. If they act up, you can tase them. Remember when these games were like, subtle? Actually, neither do I.

So you play more harsh noise for a dilapidated Funtime Freddy, and after deeming him salvageable, the lights go out and a goofy cartoon voice is like, “Thanks for letting me join the party.” I’m sorry, but it’s just not scary when these things talk! I preferred the Lovecraftian horror of souls trapped in vessels that they cannot use to speak.

An end-of-day checklist reveals that you have zero pending lawsuits. Now it’s Tuesday! On Tuesday, you can afford some arcade cabinets and play test them for extra cash. Which looks so much more fun than literally anything else in the series. In one of them, you play as a blonde girl (I have to assume the one Circus Baby chomped) collecting pieces of fruit, and avoiding a suspicious yellow rabbit. The other is a racing game where you play as a pink, puzzle piece-shaped car dodging purple cars, and the music in this one rules to a truly unnecessary degree. Who scored this game? Leon Riskin, claims Wikipedia. Thank you, Leon.

We’re back in the office overnight. God dammit. Scary British guy says more scary shit. You’re supposed to evaluate another animatronic, but all you see is an empty chair and a sign that says, “No one is here. (I’m already inside.)” I don’t care, edgelord. I miss when this game was about collecting fruit.

Also, still no lawsuits, but there were 69 new visitors. Nice.

Wednesday! Another day of minigames, now including two weirdly adorable ones where you play as Funtime Freddy: a basketball game, and one where you literally just pick up a balloon and hear an air horn and win the game. And now you have enough money to afford things like animatronics and security doors! For some unimaginable reason, the silent Let’s Player I’m watching elects to purchase two of the former: Rockstar Freddy, who is holding a microphone, and Lefty, a dilapidated monochrome Freddy with a microphone in his left hand. Freddy is $2000, and Lefty is $5. Hey Scott, I don’t appreciate the slander. Guess which hand I’m flipping you off with.

Freddy and Lefty take the stage. Lefty’s movements are considerably more erratic than Freddy’s. Time for another night in the office. I’m so glad I’m not the one playing, because I have forgotten every single procedure in the event of an animatronic invasion. So much of this game is just whipping your head back and forth. I was doing all right on the motion sickness front, but now…

“You may not recognize me at first, but I assure you, it’s still me,” says the British guy. Who the fuck are you? The murderer? Is the murderer British? That makes so much sense.

While attempting to salvage Circus Baby, (who must, I realize, be the murderer’s daughter) she jumpscares you and asks if she caught you off guard. “You lost the salvage,” some onscreen text informs you, “and something is loose in your pizzeria.” Son of a…

Still no lawsuits, and now it’s Thursday! The Let’s Player buys something called a “Fruit Punch Clown” that I’d prefer not to be jumpscared by. Luckily, they finally buy a security door as well.

Fruit Punch Clown’s minigame’s objective is to “surprise as many kids as you can”, and “TOREADOR SONG” IS PLAYING! Fruit Punch Clown lifts his arms and head and startles the shit out of every child in the immediate vicinity. The Let’s Player also buys a Lemonade Clown, but does not play test it.

Night time! “Fascinating, what they have become…” I don’t give a shit, British guy. Although, I guess if Circus Baby is his daughter, then he’s the one who built them. For some reason, we are focusing exclusively on the left vent. I wonder who might pop out of it. Another salvageable animatronic is “already inside”, and the lawsuit count is still at zero.

Friday! The Let’s Player buys Rockstar Bonnie, which I personally would not have done, but I do like that he has a guitar like his first-game counterpart. I’m so ready for something sinister to happen in the fruit minigame, since it’s haunted by a yellow rabbit, thus implying the presence of Springtrap. But the only sinister happenstance is that it makes the player enough money to buy Rockstar Chica, complete with maracas. As well as some creepy knockoff animatronics called Mr. Hippo and Nedd Bear. I hope they save the day.

Office time. “How can I resist… a promise such as this?” asks the British guy. I don’t care.

“It feels like home,” adds Circus Baby. I continue not to care.

No lawsuits and nothing to salvage! Today is Saturday, which means there’s an important party at the restaurant. Or something. There is no mention of it. Everything proceeds as normal until the salvaging section, when Circus Baby says, “You played right into our hands.” Okay. Apparently what you’ve done is gather all the animatronics together in one place, “just like he asked you to.” The purple bitch??? “All of those little souls in one place. Just for us. A gift.” Ew. “I will make you proud, Daddy.” EW.

Then some non-British monologue dude interrupts her and is like, “Actually, Elizabeth, I gathered everyone here so I could burn the building down with them inside of it. @Player character, you can leave or not, I don’t really care. @Animatronics, relinquish the souls possessing you. They’ll all go to heaven except presumably Springtrap’s. @My daughter, sorry you died.” All of this is overlaid with shots of the first two games, Fazbear Entertainment no longer exists.

So that’s the end, but good news! There are countless other videos of all the in-game secrets! I hope that explains at least 3% of what I just saw.

SOME SECRETS

• There is a minigame where you play as the Puppet and prevent children from leaving the building. This reveals a kid lying dead in the alley.

• Sometimes, instead of the racing game with the baller soundtrack, you end up in a real car, driving through the woods in the rain to reach a place called Jr.’s. The owner of Jr.’s is like, “You shouldn’t be here,” so you drive home and are a dick to your children, one of whom has snuck out.

• If you buy a robot called Candy Cadet, it will give you candy and tell you a story about a boy that fed five kittens to a rattlesnake, felt bad, cut the snake open, retrieved the kittens, and sewed them together.

• Or a story about a kind man who adopted five orphans, who were murdered, and then stitched their bodies together because he could only afford one coffin.

• Or a story about a young woman who was sealed in a room with five keys to five doors, each of which had an imperiled child behind it. She melted all the keys together, which killed everyone.

• As I suspected, there are increasingly sinister versions of the fruit collecting minigame. First, the music is distorted, and you’re collecting kittens. Then, the music is even more distorted, and you’re collecting dead kittens. When you run out of time, the girl looks upset, Springtrap is behind her, and onscreen text says, “He’s not really dead. He is over here. Follow me.”

• A salvageable animatronic that I didn’t see is voiced by the British guy.

• There are cutscenes of each salvageable animatronic sitting outside in the rain.

• After the credits, you see six tombstones, four of which have names on them: Jeremy, Fritz, Susie, and Gabriel. I recognize Jeremy as the protagonists of the second game.

• There are MULTIPLE ENDINGS ARE YOU KIDDING ME

THE OTHER ENDINGS

1. A child gets injured and you go bankrupt fighting the lawsuit.

2. You get fired for being mediocre at your job.

3. You get fired for criminal negligence and blacklisted.

4. You get fired for not completing the objective (gathering all the animatronics together).

5. You hear a monologue about setting things right, and get fired and committed for exposing the restaurant’s secrets.

New animatronics (per TV Tropes): 24

Total animatronics: 69 NICE

THE LORE SO FAR

Fredbear’s Family Diner existed until the Bite of Not ’87 incident with the kid from the fourth game. It reopened as Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, (as seen in the second game) where the (purple, British) guy who built the animatronics murdered some children and hid their bodies in said animatronics, which they possessed. The names of some of these children are Jeremy, Fritz, Susie, and Gabriel. Maybe not Jeremy, though, as he was an adult during the second game. I don’t know. The Puppet is behind the possession part. The Puppet kid was the first victim. The Bite of ’87 happened around this time, possibly to Jeremy the security guard. That place was shut down after the bodies were discovered, and then reopened (as seen in the first game). Sometime later, the Purple Guy returned to destroy the possessed animatronics, but got eviscerated by one, which he now possesses. Then the restaurant shut down, and was reimagined as a haunted attraction (as seen in the third game). The attraction burned down, freeing the souls of the murdered children. However, the murderer, in animatronic form, did not die. At some point, the events of Sister Location happened. Purple Guy’s daughter, Elizaberh, was killed by and subsequently possessed Circus Baby. The Puppet girl’s dad built a fake pizzeria to lure in all the possessed animatronics so that he could burn it down and free their souls, which will be sent to the appropriate afterlife.

HELP WANTED

OH MY GOD THIS ONE IS IN VR. FUCK. You expect me, Motion Sickness Jones, to watch three or four hours of virtual reality gameplay???? I mean, I can try…

So the conceit of this one is that in an attempt to save their reputation, Fazbear Entertainment has created VR simulations of the totally fictitious events of previous games, and hired you to test them. Hang on. Hang on. Why is this one called Help Wanted, then? Why is it not called Pizzeria Simulator? Why is Pizzeria Simulator, the game where you take a job at a restaurant, not called Help Wanted?

The control room, where you can select which game to experience in VR, has a laser version of (probably) Springtrap chilling in the back corner. Hope that’s not an issue.

(As I am now something of a FNAF expert, I’m clicking through this video to get a taste of each game in VR, and then I’ll find a compilation of secrets and whatnot, like I did with Pizzeria Simulator.)

The first game — the one I really appreciated for not making me motion sick — is fairly tolerable in VR. All the audio cues are back, and I’m feeling nostalgic. The security camera feed doesn’t take up your entire field of vision, and the images on it aren’t as scary, plus it’s much easier to hear the (intimidating, I grant you) animatronics approaching now that they have bespoke animations. This is the 1998 Psycho remake of Five Nights at Freddy’s. It’s Five Nights at Freddy’s (Taylor’s Version).

2 and 3 are similar in this regard. 4… almost killed me. The original game lets you run back and forth across the room, but it’s not usually motion sickness-inducing. To me. In VR, however, it’s so unbearable that I had to close my eyes, and even that sucked, because the animatronics terrorizing the player are now voiced! They have silly, goofy voices and say shit like, “I’M GONNA GETCHA!” and it kind of sounds like if Josh Gad was a scare actor at Knott’s Scary Farm. I didn’t love the fourth game to begin with, but at least it wasn’t like this.

Wikipedia claims there are secret cassette tapes you can find throughout the game, so I’m going spend a very reasonable 23 minutes listening to those. Let’s see if they have any useful information for me.

INFORMATION

• There is a problem with the VR game, claims the woman who made these tapes. I have no idea who she is.

• She got menacingly stared at by a mysterious animatronic, in a manner that the other animatronics would not tend to menacingly stare. It’s gotta be Laser Springtrap. If it’s not Laser Springtrap, I give up.

• There is probably a lawsuit regarding whatever is wrong with the game. One of the developers, JEREMY!! tried to alert the dev team that something was wrong, but they just saw it as a challenge.

• While testing the game, Jeremy saw something he shouldn’t, and started freaking out.

• For which he was fired.

• The cassette woman took over for him, and discovered an anomaly (Laser Springtrap?)

• The anomaly is in the logs!! Oh no!!!!

• She didn’t want to destroy the logs.

• Scott Cawthon (described as a “rogue indie game developer”) is a character in the franchise now. SURE. SURE, WHY NOT? I hated looking at that pesky fourth wall. Anyway, Fazbear Entertainment lied to Cassette Woman about the nature of the project, and now she knows that it’s an elaborate coverup, instead of an effort to save the company’s reputation.

• You should try to prevent the game’s release.

• If you can’t, do not reassemble the logs, lest you reassemble the anomaly.

• The way to kill the anomaly is by… oh, Jesus Christ. You have to plug yourself into the game, let the anomaly possess you, and then do a hard restart. Yeah, why not?

So you let Laser Springtrap possess you, and your vision turns purple and glitches out. I think he is dead?

New animatronics: 4

Total animatronics: 73

THE LORE SO FAR

Fredbear’s Family Diner existed until the Bite of Not ’87 incident with the kid from the fourth game. It reopened as Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, (as seen in the second game) where the (purple, British) guy who built the animatronics murdered some children and hid their bodies in said animatronics, which they possessed. The names of some of these children are Jeremy, Fritz, Susie, and Gabriel. Maybe not Jeremy, though, as he was an adult during the second game. I don’t know. The Puppet is behind the possession part. The Puppet kid was the first victim. The Bite of ’87 happened around this time, possibly to Jeremy the security guard. That place was shut down after the bodies were discovered, and then reopened (as seen in the first game). Sometime later, the Purple Guy returned to destroy the possessed animatronics, but got eviscerated by one, which he now possesses. Then the restaurant shut down, and was reimagined as a haunted attraction (as seen in the third game). The attraction burned down, freeing the souls of the murdered children. However, the murderer, in animatronic form, did not die. At some point, the events of Sister Location happened. Purple Guy’s daughter, Elizabeth, was killed by and subsequently possessed Circus Baby. The Puppet girl’s dad built a fake pizzeria to lure in all the possessed animatronics so that he could burn it down and free their souls, which will be sent to the appropriate afterlife. At an unspecified moment in the timeline, Fazbear Entertainment tried to cover all this up via VR game so that the public would write it all off as urban legends and slander. The game had a malicious, Purple Guy-affiliated anomaly that was discovered by a developer named Jeremy.

SECURITY BREACH

The last main game, thank god thank god thank GOD. It’s very long — every Let’s Play on YouTube has a runtime of at least four hours — but fuck it, I’ve come this far.

At this point in the writing process, I watched a 255-minute Let’s Play. At 2x speed.

Security Breach has free roam gameplay, meaning the franchise has officially become the very thing it swore to destroy: motion sickness-inducing. That’s not true, it’s just what’s going to happen to me.

So this game has a new band of extremely ’80s-themed animatronics, who are helpfully named in the opening cutscene as they perform a knockoff of Van Halen’s “Jump”: Glamrock Freddy, (vocals) Glamrock Chica, (guitar) Montgomery Gator, (bass) and Roxanne Wolf (keytar).

We begin. Glamrock Freddy is… an ally? The player character, a kid named Gregory, is hiding from a security guard whomst he does not trust. I should add that this game takes place not in a restaurant, but in a fucking mall. A “mega pizzaplex”, they call it. It’s closing in fifteen minutes. The animatronics are about to undergo a few days of maintenance, and the other three members of Animatronic Van Halen are having mental breakdowns in their enclosures.

I don’t want to describe this to you. Freddy instructs Gregory to climb inside of his chest cavity so he can sneak him out of the mall through a utility tunnel. Freddy gets caught by Vanessa, the untrustworthy security guard, who lectures him for being bad at his job. As a singing robot bear. In fairness, he is running out of power. Which means Gregory must continue alone on foot. Thank god.

The other animatronics are alerted to Gregory’s presence and chase him into a security office. Freddy, via the watch, tells him to use the security camera footage to evade detection as he sneaks around. It’s amazing how these games, no matter how complex, always end up sticking you back in a security office with cameras and doors and shit. They didn’t have to include anything else.

Gregory makes it to the lobby the moment the pizzaplex closes, and he is now trapped here until 6:00 A.M. Same thing happened to my friend Eggs Benedict. Anyway, now we’re essentially doing Chopping Mall, complete with free-roaming security bots. Gregory finds a fridge magnet and complains about it, prompting Freddy to say with grave seriousness, “I’m sorry, Gregory. I am truly sorry.”

Freddy and Gregory are going to rendezvous in the daycare center, but Frederick can’t make it. Typical. Instead, Gregory encounters a terrifying anthropomorphic sun animatronic who warns him not to let the lights go out. When the lights inevitably go out, he turns into an even more terrifying anthropomorphic moon, who chases Gregory and calls him a naughty boy. Freddy radios him on the watch like, “What the fuck???? Turn the lights back on????????” For once, he and I agree.

Gregory runs into (and then climbs inside of) Freddy. The other Glamrock animatronics are wandering around like zombies. Apparently, the lights are going to go out once an hour until the end of the night, so the Sun/Moon guy will continue being a threat. Gregory sees some sort of rabbit ghost girl, and Freddy is like, “There hasn’t been a rabbit here in… anyway.” He tells Gregory to consider the loading dock under the food court and the third floor fire escape as possible exits. It is now 1:00 A.M.

Gregory tries to get a clearance badge from a security office and triggers a lockdown. He engages in another round of Five Nights at Freddy’s (2014) with the other animatronics. One of them, Roxy the Wolf, is trying to take a sledgehammer to Gregory’s self-esteem. For some reason. She’s stomping around going, “YOU’RE NOTHING,” and “I BET YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE FRIENDS.” Gregory finds the fire escape impassible, and tries to meet Freddy at the prize counter, but he gets caught by Vanessa, who locks him in the lost and found. While he’s in there, the ghost rabbit terrorizes him from outside, and the subtitles give its name as “Vanny.” HMM…

Vanny chases Gregory to the go-kart track, where he finds Freddy in low power mode. Gregory is unable to recharge him before the lights go out and the moon guy shows up and drags Freddy away. In his next appearance, Vanessa has decapitated him and is lecturing him for being in cahoots with Gregory. Gregory is able to reattach Freddy’s head like, really easily. He also destroys Montgomery Gator, and this isn’t a huge deal. Apparently. Gregory steals Monty’s claws and puts them on Freddy, thus creating the scariest possible animal in the entire world. Then he steals Roxy’s eyes for the same purpose! That’s unscrupulous! Eyeless Roxy chases him into a room that is in flames, and no one seems to be concerned about this. I kind of doubt the mall has any sort of fire alert and/or suppression system.

It’s almost 6:00 A.M.! The moon guy will be a threat one more time, and then Gregory can escape. Also, Roxy’s eyes can see through walls.

A suspiciously benevolent Vanessa is like, “Hey Gregory, why are you still here? Do you want a job or something?” There’s a throwaway line about BEARS BEING EXTINCT NOW???? WHAT YEAR IS IT?

Gregory can’t take Freddy outside the mall with him, obviously, so he elects to stay and investigate the pizzaplex further. No one asked you to do this, Gregory!

I know from Wikipedia that there are six possible endings, the most interesting of which reveals that the pizzaplex was built atop the ruins of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. There’s another Frankenstein’d animatronic, as well as “Burntrap”, which is just the fucking murderer in yet another form. Gregory and Freddy manage to escape. Another ending reveals that Vanessa is Vanny, (obviously) and Freddy tackles her off the roof of the burning pizzaplex in a murder-suicide. The other relevant ending involves playing an arcade game that somehow frees Vanessa of the rabbit’s control.

And then there was DLC.

SECURITY BREACH: RUIN

This franchise never ends. The lore is never going to end.

At this point in the writing process, I watched a 146-minute Let’s Play. At 2x speed.

So as implied, the pizzaplex is abandoned and falling apart. I wonder if Dan Bell’s been through it yet. You’re now playing as Gregory’s friend, Cassie, because Gregory is trapped in the sinkhole under the mall where the old pizzeria is, and in need of rescue. Why the fuck did he return??? He almost died in there, and now he wants to a) put himself back in harm’s way, b) subject me to another two and a half hours hour and fifteen minutes of motion sickness.

Cassie finds a walkie-talkie. Gregory, who has the other one, tells her where he’s trapped. Cassie has conveniently entered the mall on the complete opposite side, so she has to fight her away across to find him. Since this is DLC, and the game is set in a mall, I think it would be really fun if there was an animatronic Paul Blart. Just throw him in the mix. I defy you to tell me it would make the lore any more complicated than it already is.

Cassie finds a device called a Faz-Wrench. “Just like my dad’s,” she muses. God fucking dammit. Who is her dad? It could be anyone at this point. It could be Frederick Fazbear himself. Still don’t know what a faz is, by the way. A security bot gives her a mask that looks like Vanny’s. She puts it on and connects to the “Virtual Augmented Neural Network Interrogation unit.” Do you get it? Do you get it? Do you?

When wearing the mask and connected to V.A.N.N.I., Cassie is able to enter restricted areas, but she’s also vulnerable to Vanny. Gregory radios her and tells her to turn off all security nodes. “What the heck are those?” Cassie asks. Gregory is feeling cryptic and doesn’t tell her. His mentor Glamrock Freddy would be so disappointed.

Cassie happens upon the sun/moon guy, who has taken on a somewhat Gollumesque demeanor, and reprograms him into a benevolent eclipse guy. I’ve had to close my eyes so much by now that I’m kind of losing the plot. At one point, Cassie yells, “Ugh, I’m gonna puke!” Girl, same.

Roxy the Wolf, now blind, jumpscares Cassie and yells, “GIVE ME BACK MY EYES!” Gregory tells Cassie to deactivate her, and then she changes modes, all, “Cassie, it’s me, I remember your birthday, do you still like carrot cake?” and Cassie tearfully shoves the Faz-Wrench into Roxy’s eye socket.

Once in the pizzeria ruins, Cassie runs into CANDY CADET OF ALL ANIMATRONICS, and he tells her a story about a woman who locked a monster in her basement. Speaking of monsters in basements, guess what lured Cassie down here? NOT GREGORY! It’s yet another mutant animatronic that’s capable of mimicking voices. Roxy shows up again, somehow, and tells Cassie to run. The real Gregory radios her walkie-talkie and is like, “I’m not in there, stupid, something tricked you.” He guides her through a series of tunnels to the elevator as the mutant animatronic pursues her. Apparently, some security system that Cassie disabled was keeping the mutant trapped. So Gregory, stellar friend that he is, CUTS THE ELEVATOR CABLES AND SENDS CASSIE PLUMMETING TO HER DEATH.

The last thing we hear, over a black screen, is Roxy saying, “Cassie?”

New animatronics: 16

Total animatronics: 89

Hey, remember two decades ago in the opening paragraph, when I guessed that the animatronic count was up to 79? I was joking. I was fucking kidding. I did not actually think that there were more than 50.

THE LORE SO FAR

Fredbear’s Family Diner existed until the Bite of Not ’87 incident with the kid from the fourth game. It reopened as Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, (as seen in the second game) where the (purple, British) guy who built the animatronics murdered some children and hid their bodies in said animatronics, which they possessed. The names of some of these children are Jeremy, Fritz, Susie, and Gabriel. Maybe not Jeremy, though, as he was an adult during the second game. I don’t know. The Puppet is behind the possession part. The Puppet kid was the first victim. The Bite of ’87 happened around this time, possibly to Jeremy the security guard. That place was shut down after the bodies were discovered, and then reopened (as seen in the first game). Sometime later, the Purple Guy returned to destroy the possessed animatronics, but got eviscerated by one, which he now possesses. Then the restaurant shut down, and was reimagined as a haunted attraction (as seen in the third game). The attraction burned down, freeing the souls of the murdered children. However, the murderer, in animatronic form, did not die. A mall called Freddy Fazbear’s Mega Pizzaplex was built on top of its ruins. An iteration of the murderer possessed a security guard named Vanessa and caused the non-Freddy animatronics to become hostile. The pizzaplex shut down soon afterwards. At some point, the events of Sister Location happened. Purple Guy’s daughter, Elizabeth, was killed by and subsequently possessed Circus Baby. The Puppet girl’s dad built a fake pizzeria to lure in all the possessed animatronics so that he could burn it down and free their souls, which will be sent to the appropriate afterlife. At an unspecified moment in the timeline, Fazbear Entertainment tried to cover all this up via VR game so that the public would write it all off as urban legends and slander. The game had a malicious, Purple Guy-affiliated anomaly that was discovered by a developer named Jeremy.

WHAT DID I MISS? (SPIN-OFF GAME EDITION)

FNAF WORLD

RPG where the animatronics are cute.

ULTIMATE CUSTOM NIGHT

A hybrid of the six main games up until that point (i.e. through Pizzeria Simulator) where EVERY SINGLE ANIMATRONIC is present, and you can change their difficulty levels.

SPECIAL DELIVERY

An augmented reality game where the animatronics are in your house, à la Pokémon Go. They’re in your house because Fazbear Entertainment is still trying to get this rental service thing off the ground, so they’ve sent you Frederick. And he’s malfunctioning. He’s also voiced, which I hate. SO. When an animatronic enters your field of vision, you zap them and they die. Sometimes you get emails in this game, which is the scariest concept Cawthon has ever introduced. They’re mostly about flaws in the rental service and the VR game (Help Wanted). An employee named Ness (HMMMMMM…) is scolded for Googling violent, unsavory things. This game, as you’ll see later, introduced approximately five thousand new animatronics.

FREDDY IN SPACE 2

A sequel to a minigame from FNAF World.

FREDDY IN SPACE 3: CHICA IN SPACE

The sequel to Freddy in Space 2.

SECURITY BREACH: FURY’S RAGE

Scott Cawthon released this before Security Breach to apologize for how long it was taking him to release Security Breach.

WHAT DID I MISS? (BOOK EDITION)

This, I imagine, is where the vast majority of the lore originates. Scott Cawthon and co-writer Kira Breed-Wrisley wrote three novels taking place in the FNAF universe: The Silver Eyes, The Twisted Ones, and The Fourth Closet. Each has a graphic novel adaptation, and the graphic novels were what my library had. Let’s get into it.

THE SILVER EYES

(Art by Claudia Schröder and color by Laurie Smith.)

The most shocking reveal of this novel is that Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza is located in Utah. I guess I don’t know where I thought it was, other than just somewhere in the continental United States, but I don’t think I would’ve guessed Utah. Specifically, it’s in Hurricane, Utah — a real city in the southwest corner of the state, near Zion National Park. This isn’t like, a problem, but if I were the authors, I would’ve invented a town in an unspecified state. That’s just a personal preference.

I lied earlier, sort of. The former site of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza is in Hurricane, Utah, because it closed after the murder of a kid named Michael, and then some sort of industrial warehouse was built on top of it. The warehouse was never used, and now it sits abandoned.

Our protagonist, Charlie, is the daughter of the former owner of Freddy’s. She’s been out of Hurricane for years, but she and her friends have all reunited there for the ten-year anniversary of Michael’s death. Ohhh no. Oh my god. This feels familiar.

Charlie’s friends: Jessica, (lives in New York) John, (writer) Carlton, (never left Hurricane) Marla, (perpetually babysitting her younger brother, Jason) and Lamar (going to Cornell). And Michael (dead).

I am unclear re: these characters’ ages. Carlton still lives in their hometown, and can’t wait until he turns eighteen, but the others have all left to pursue careers and shit, and also Jessica is old enough to rent a motel room.

Anyway, they all reminisce about Freddy’s (pre-murder) and decide to check out its remains. Charlie recalls the Freddy animatronic being yellow, and the others are like, “He was brown, stupid,” which means Golden Freddy is here.

They break into the abandoned warehouse, which kind of looks like Security Breach: Ruin. Evading a night guard, they find the surprisingly intact pizzeria behind a bookcase, look at the animatronics, and leave.

The next day, they attend a ceremony where Michael’s parents introduce a scholarship opportunity they’ve developed in his name. Michael was “not the only child lost during those terrible few months.”

Charlie and John go off on their own, because I think they’re in love. John mentions that he saw a mysterious yellow bear animatronic with cold, dead (SILVER?) eyes at the pizzeria the night Michael disappeared.

At 10:00 P.M., the gang meets up to break into the pizzeria again. They mess with the animatronic control panel, which somehow still works, and Charlie’s arm gets slashed by Foxy’s hook hand. Lamar thinks it’s because of a button he accidentally pushed. I am not convinced.

The whole squad crashes in Jessica’s motel room, and the next morning, Charlie and John go off on their own again to have another exposition dump discussion. She tells him about Fredbear’s Family Diner, which existed “before [her] mom left,” and had the Golden Freddy animatronic she mentioned earlier, as well as a Golden Bonnie (who will eventually be Springtrap, I assume). The robots moved inconsistently, because these were the wearable deathtrap suits with the faulty spring locks keeping the hardware at bay. If they failed, you’d be mincemeat, which is how the murderer met his mortal end, as seen in the third game.

Also, Charlie mentions having a twin brother, Sammy. John’s like, “I didn’t know you had a brother!” and this does not merit further discussion. They drive to the neighboring town of New Harmony (also real) to find the diner remains. Upon encountering a closet, Charlie has a flashback to hiding in it with Sammy. The yellow rabbit animatronic showed up and took Sammy away. She tells John it’s probably connected to the yellow bear she saw the day Michael disappeared. The last line of the chapter: “Lightning strikes twice, but not murder.” Huh??? Excuse me, what????? Murder strikes twice all the time. Has Charlie never heard of a serial killer? Can she trade brains with me??

Back in Hurricane, the gang breaks into Freddy’s again, this time running into the creepy night guard, Dave. Charlie invites him to explore with them, and he… accepts? And then he tells them that the surrounding mall is abandoned simply because it had bad vibes and no businesses wanted to rent out space in it. Dave is also way better at controlling the animatronics than any of our heroes. He’s able to make them dance so aggressively that they start breaking the stage. While everyone’s distracted, he sneaks off into a supply closet and puts on a yellow rabbit suit.

Jason sees Rabbit Dave’s shadow, and is like, “Hey Carlton, I saw a weird version of Bonnie,” and Carlton’s like, “No, you didn’t,” and then Rabbit Dave sneaks up behind Carlton and drags him behind a curtain.

The gang has no idea what to do, so they go to see the police chief, who is Carlton’s dad. And Carlton’s dad is like, “He’s pranking you. Come to our house; I’ll prove it.” So they go to his house, and Carlton’s not there. The chief is still convinced it’s a prank. He talks about being a detective circa the murders, and how they totally caught the guy who did it, but there were no bodies, so a jury wouldn’t convict him. And then he invites the kids to sleep over at his house. Is this just what Utah is like?

The next morning, Carlton still isn’t home, and his mom is like, “Fucking obviously it’s not a prank??? Go find him????????” So they send another cop into the pizzeria to look, and Rabbit Dave guts him.

Charlie and John visit her childhood home. Her bedroom had three closets, which must be tied into the title of the third book. She’s like, “Do you know how my dad killed himself?” I did not know that her dad killed himself! In Charlie’s flashback, she gets home from school that day and sees an animatronic endoskeleton in her living room, holding a bloody knife. I don’t think that was a suicide, Charlie.

They look through a scrapbook and find a picture of Charlie’s dad wearing the Golden Freddy suit minus the head, with his arm around someone wearing the Golden Bonnie suit. There’s also a newspaper clipping that says “TODDLER SNATCHED”, which isn’t supposed to be funny, but it is. Charlie’s like, “My dad had a business partner???” and then Marla bursts in and informs them that her little brother has gone back to Freddy’s to look for Carlton.

Carlton wakes up in an animatronic suit, also minus the head. Rabbit Dave shows up and unmasks himself. Carlton’s like, “What kind of name for a serial killer is Dave?” That’s quite a conclusion he’s jumped to. I mean, he’s right, but still.

Dave explains that he has put Carlton in one of the spring locked deathtrap suits. It’s “one of the first ones Henry made,” Henry being Charlie’s dad. Here’s how Carlton will die if the locks fail: “First, the locks themselves will snap right into you, making deep cuts all over your body. And a split second later, all the animatronic parts, all that sharp steel and hard plastic, will be instantly driven into your body. You will die, but it will be slow.” Why? “You’ll feel your organs punctured. The suit will grow wet with your blood. And you will know you are dying for a long, long time. You’ll try to scream, but you’ll be unable to; your vocal cords will be severed, and your lungs will fill with your own blood until you drown in it.” PRESS X TO DOUBT. I call bullshit. He’s definitely going instantaneously from a severed spinal cord, or something. Internal decapitation. I don’t know. Certainly not drowning in his own blood.

Carlton asks how Dave knows this, and Dave takes off the top of the suit, revealing a bunch of scarring, and goes, “HOW DO YOU THINK?” And now I really call bullshit.

The rest of the group breaks into the pizzeria yet again, and finds Jason immediately. They see Human Dave on the security cameras, but don’t know where he is. Carlton sees Golden Freddy, who says, “IT’S ME,” a bunch of times. The normal Bonnie animatronic disappears from the stage and chases Charlie into the room where Carlton is. She’s able to free him, and he tells her he thinks Michael’s body is inside the Golden Freddy suit. Dave shows up and is like, “Now you’ve done it.” I just remembered he’s supposed to be British. What possessed (ha) this guy to move his family to Utah? Does he have a sordid, murderous past in his home country that he’s running from?

Charlie knocks him out with a baseball bat, and she and Carlton reunite with John and Jessica. Lamar, Marla, and Jason have been dragged away by Foxy. Jessica finds the body of the cop that Dave just killed.

When Dave wakes up, he can’t speak without the rabbit head, for some reason. They put it on him, and he confesses to the murders, and to putting the corpses inside of the animatronics. The spirits are about to awaken and kill Charlie and her friends, but not Dave, because they think he’s one of them. They don’t remember that he killed them.

Meanwhile, Carlton’s dad is going through some files, and finds a background check on Dave from when he worked on the mall construction site.

Normal Freddy is about to kill Lamar, Marla, and Jason, when John body-slams him out of the way. That’s probably several hundred pounds of metal; I’m impressed. Freddy gets up, unscathed, and soon the gang is surrounded by all four animatronics. John is about to confess his love to Charlie, and we learn that her name is short for Charlotte, but she’s like, “NOT NOW, JOHN.” Then Golden Freddy, haunted by Michael, lumbers onto the scene, and they all realize that the animatronics and the ghost children therein have been trying to protect them from the real evil, Dave.

Carlton’s dad busts in just as Rabbit Dave grabs Charlie. She reaches back and undoes the spring locks in his suit, killing him. The animatronics casually drag his body away, and the humans peace out. Carlton’s dad asks Charlie what she thinks they should do now, and she wants to leave the pizzeria as is, now that Dave’s dead. No need to free the dead children’s souls, I GUESS. Charlie and John visit Charlie’s dad’s grave. The end.

New animatronics: 3 (all toys that Charlie made for her as a child).

Total animatronics: 92

THE LORE SO FAR

Fredbear’s Family Diner, established by robotic engineer Henry and his possibly British business partner, Dave, existed until the Bite of Not ’87 incident with the kid from the fourth game. It reopened as Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, (as seen in the second game) where Dave murdered some children, including Henry’s son, Sammy. Dave hid the bodies in said animatronics, which they possessed. The names of some of these children are Jeremy, Fritz, Susie, Gabriel, and Michael. Maybe not Jeremy, though, as he was an adult during the second game. I don’t know. The Puppet is behind the possession part. The Puppet kid was the first victim. The Bite of ’87 happened around this time, possibly to Jeremy the security guard. That place was shut down after the bodies were discovered, and then reopened (as seen in the first game). Then, that location also shut down. Henry either committed suicide or was killed by an animatronic endoskeleton that made it look like a suicide. Developers attempted to build a mall where the restaurant was, but it didn’t pan out due to the site’s bad vibes. Sometime later, Dave returned to destroy the possessed animatronics, but got eviscerated by one, which he now possesses. Henry’s daughter, Charlie, is responsible for the evisceration. The abandoned restaurant was reimagined as a haunted attraction (as seen in the third game). The attraction burned down, freeing the souls of the murdered children. However, the murderer, in animatronic form, did not die. A mall called Freddy Fazbear’s Mega Pizzaplex was built on top of its ruins. An iteration of Dave possessed a security guard named Vanessa and caused the non-Freddy animatronics to become hostile. The pizzaplex shut down soon afterwards. At some point, the events of Sister Location happened. Dave’s daughter, Elizabeth, was killed by and subsequently possessed Circus Baby. The Puppet girl’s dad built a fake pizzeria to lure in all the possessed animatronics so that he could burn it down and free their souls, which will be sent to the appropriate afterlife. At an unspecified moment in the timeline, Fazbear Entertainment tried to cover all this up via VR game so that the public would write it all off as urban legends and slander. The game had a malicious, Dave-affiliated anomaly that was discovered by a developer named Jeremy.

THE TWISTED ONES

At this point in the writing process, I finally got the new COVID booster, and I feel kind of like total shit. The last thing I want to do is bombard my brain with more Frederick, but the grind, as they say, never stops.

This graphic novel has art by Claudia Aguirre, color by Laurie Smith again, and Christopher Hastings gets an “adapted by” credit.

It’s been a year since The Silver Eyes. Charlie is in college now, and John is about to visit her. She can’t stop thinking about her dead twin, Sammy, and how he might be alive. Also, she’s been building two animatronic endoskeleton heads, (endoskulls?) and hiding them from Jessica, who is her roommate.

John shows up and tells Charlie he dropped out of school for financial reasons, and now he’s back in Hurricane, doing construction. Some unspecified storm damaged Charlie’s dad’s house. John finally asks her out, and they agree to go on a date later that night.

Charlie runs into Carlton’s dad, who wants her to look at a body he found in the desert. This person has the same wounds as Dave, which means they were also killed by an animatronic suit. Speaking of Dave, and his death, a demolition team was sent to destroy the restaurant, but they couldn’t find Dave’s body. They did find blood, though, but not organic blood. “Movie blood.” Oh my god, Dave is Billy from Scream. And also alive.

Charlie and John go to see a zombie movie, and Charlie ponders how Dave could’ve survived. That night, she has a nightmare about the stupid animatronic heads that she’s willingly building of her own accord, on purpose, gaining sentience. John shows up to ask her to breakfast, and she shows him the heads. She’s rigged a hearing aid so that they’ll recognize its wearer as “one of them” for communication purposes. How safe!

Charlie declines breakfast with John, and makes Jessica go back to Freddy’s with her. They find the yellow rabbit suit with Dave’s corpse in it, (henceforth referred to as Springtrap, per the third game) and Charlie theorizes that his body and consciousness have fused with the suit, somehow.

Back at school, Charlie has a panic attack during a study session, and goes back to the desert. A circling wake of vultures alerts her to the presence of another corpse with the same wounds, and she looks just like Charlie! “She could be your twin!” says Carlton’s dad, when she shows him. SAMMY IS TRANS.

Charlie wants to go to this dead girl’s house, and Carlton’s dad just lets her??? There are three open graves in the backyard. Charlie wants to go to her own, storm-damaged house, so John accompanies her. She extrapolates that the three open graves must be representative of the three closet doors in her childhood bedroom. Downstairs, they find three more open graves where the living room was. Charlie uncovers a Foxy animatronic in one of them, and is like, “This isn’t my dad’s handiwork.” It comes alive like a zombie and attacks her. They manage to subdue it and find a microchip inside.

Back at Charlie’s dorm room, they investigate the chip. It says “Afton Robotics”, and Charlie’s like, “That must be William Afton, my dad’s old business partner! That was Dave’s real name!” WHY ARE WE JUST LEARNING THIS NOW? It feels like it should either be a twist at the end of either this book, or the previous one. Can I keep calling him Dave? What kind of name for a serial killer is William Afton?

Charlie, John, and Jessica puzzle out that these William Afton-brand animatronics are walking to the college by night to kill her. Those open graves are really just holes they’ve been digging to hide in during the day. Charlie psychically divines that there must be one buried in a nearby field, so they go there and dig up a light blue Freddy.

John and Jessica call Carlton’s dad, and he shows up just as the Freddy turns brown and starts to come alive. They evacuate a nearby apartment building under the pretense of a gas leak, and drive away. Charlie figures out that the chip is emitting high-pitched sound waves that have overstimulated them and convinced them that the animatronic was more lifelike than it was. I- sure. Okay, Scott. Whatever.

A few hours later, a wolf animatronic attacks a girl that looks like Charlie, but the gang is able to save her. This guy wasn’t in any of the games, to my knowledge, so I’m going to have to update the animatronic count. Again.

Charlie holes up in an abandoned house that she knows the animatronics will show up at, and lets them take her away. John and Jessica want to ask the Freddy’s animatronics from the first novel how to find her. Carlton’s dad reveals that he still has them in his basement. And that his wife left him. These two things are related, I’m sure.

They tell the animatronics what’s going on, and upon hearing the name William Afton, they all start going beast mode. Meanwhile, Charlie wakes up in an animatronic suit. Some of the spring locks have already failed, and are digging into her torso. She manages to escape both the suit and the hole it’s buried in. She finds herself in Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, circa the second game! Balloon Boy is here! Several Balloon Boys are here, in fact! The other animatronics, as well as the building itself, come alive and try to kill her. I think. It might just be those microchips that make you perceive animatronics as more aggressive than they actually are. John, Jessica, and Carlton’s dad show up and save her. Carlton’s dad shoots Evil Freddy with a gun, and it hits his chip, reducing him to a lifeless hunk of metal. Charlie’s all, “WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME, WHAT DID YOU DO WITH MY BROTHER?”

Enter Springtrap. Charlie has something that belongs to him, and he wants it back. Charlie’s like, “Dave?” and he’s like, “DON’T CALL ME DAVE, I HAVEN’T BEEN DAVE FOR A LONG TIME.” He doesn’t answer to William Afton, either; he’s Springtrap now. By killing him, Charlie allowed him to fuse with the rabbit suit, and now he’s ultra-powerful. Charlie asks him why he took Sammy, and he’s like, “I took you.” This will not be explained!

The OG animatronics show up and kill the other ones. Springtrap escapes. The gang flees, and finds themselves in the living room of Charlie’s old house. She still thinks Sammy is trapped inside somewhere. John tries to convince her to leave, even telling her he loves her in the process, but she only cares about finding Sammy.

And then she gets eaten by the big, scary version of Freddy! What the fuck?

The cops show up and escort everyone else out just before the whole house collapses. Later, at a diner, John and Jessica and Marla are all like, “It sure is too bad our friend Charlie died.” Cue a woman in a red dress who looks like Charlie. Jessica rushes outside to hug her. John says, “That’s not Charlie.” The end. Sammy! Is! Trans!

New animatronics: 6 (the eponymous Twisted Ones, and Charlie’s two endoskulls).

Total animatronics: 98

THE LORE SO FAR

Fredbear’s Family Diner, established by robotic engineer Henry and his possibly British business partner and fellow engineer, William “Dave” Afton, existed until the Bite of Not ’87 incident with the kid from the fourth game. It reopened as Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, (as seen in the second game) where Afton murdered some children, seemingly including Henry’s son, Sammy. Afton hid the bodies in said animatronics, which they possessed. The names of some of these children are Jeremy, Fritz, Susie, Gabriel, and Michael. Maybe not Jeremy, though, as he was an adult during the second game. I don’t know. The Puppet is behind the possession part. The Puppet kid was the first victim. The Bite of ’87 happened around this time, possibly to Jeremy the security guard. That place was shut down after the bodies were discovered, and then reopened (as seen in the first game). Then, that location also shut down. Henry either committed suicide or was killed by an animatronic endoskeleton that made it look like a suicide. Developers attempted to build a mall where the restaurant was, but it didn’t pan out due to the site’s bad vibes. Sometime later, Afton returned to destroy the possessed animatronics, but got eviscerated by one, which he now possesses. Henry’s daughter, Charlie, is responsible for the evisceration. The abandoned restaurant was reimagined as a haunted attraction (as seen in the third game). The attraction burned down, freeing the souls of the murdered children. However, Afton, in animatronic form, did not die. A mall called Freddy Fazbear’s Mega Pizzaplex was built on top of its ruins. An iteration of the murderer possessed a security guard named Vanessa and caused the non-Freddy animatronics to become hostile. The pizzaplex shut down soon afterwards. At some point, the events of Sister Location happened. Afton’s daughter, Elizabeth, was killed by and subsequently possessed Circus Baby. The Puppet girl’s dad built a fake pizzeria to lure in all the possessed animatronics so that he could burn it down and free their souls, which will be sent to the appropriate afterlife. At an unspecified moment in the timeline, Fazbear Entertainment tried to cover all this up via VR game so that the public would write it all off as urban legends and slander. The game had a malicious, Afton-affiliated anomaly that was discovered by a developer named Jeremy.

THE FOURTH CLOSET

So help me god, Sammy will come out of it.

More new credits: Art by Diane Camero, colors by Eva de la Cruz, and letters by Mike Fiorentino.

It’s been six months since the events of The Twisted Ones. John is our protagonist now, since Charlie is dead and/or evil. He keeps having flashbacks to her death at his construction job, which gets him fired for inattention. He has no reason to stay in the town of Hurricane UNTIL! Jessica almost hits him with her car. As that’s happening, he’s like, “Oh my god, it’s William Afton. He’s dealing in vehicular homicide now.”

Jessica wants to hang out because Carlton’s coming back from New York for spring break. John’s like, “Not if Evil Fake Charlie is going to be there.”

He ends up at the party anyway. The whole gang’s there except Lamar, who swore he’d never set foot in Hurricane ever again. But he says hi. Wow, Scott. You kicked your only character of color out of the narrative.

John is as affronted by this as I am, so he tries to leave the party, but runs into Evil Fake Charlie, still wearing that red dress. She doesn’t remember that John told her he loved her right before he died, so John still doesn’t believe it’s her. In Evil Fake Charlie’s defense, she had a lot going on at the time. They agree to meet for dinner the next night, but John is skeptical. Those weren’t her eyes, he thinks. Are they perhaps… silver eyes?

Carlton tells Charlie that the rubble from her destroyed house was taken to the scrapyard. Cut to said scrapyard, where a mysterious brunette woman in a red dress asks the resident office guy about finding scrap metal from a specific date. It turns out that the office guy had to pull a screaming child out of that very scrap pile, and Mysterious Red Dress Woman wants to see it.

John has a theory: Sammy is short for Samantha. I fucking told you guys. He thinks Sammy was raised by Springtrap to be a murderer, and has taken Charlie’s place. Carlton’s dad shows up and is like, “Have you seen Charlie’s aunt who raised her? Also, I cannot legally declare William Afton dead.”

John shows up early for his date with Evil Fake Charlie, and notices CIRCUS BABY’S PIZZA across the street! Meanwhile, Evil Fake Charlie goes to Jessica’s, scares the shit out of her with her menacing silhouette, and is like, “Can you help me pick out an outfit? John hates this dress.” Jessica tells her to wear the dress anyway.

They go on their date. Evil Fake Charlie still doesn’t remember that John loves her, but she does remember the name of the movie they saw together in the previous book. John asks if she’s Sammy, and Charlie asks if John has seen her aunt. On his way home, John gets ambushed by clowns, who give him a flyer for a free pizza event at Circus Baby’s.

Instead of going home, John goes to see Carlton’s dad. This twentysomething’s best friend is a middle-aged cop. They are such best friends, in fact, that Carlton’s dad tells John about some child abduction cases he’s working on, asks for his help, and then OFFERS JOHN HIS GUN. John leaves without the gun and sees Circus Baby. He gets into his car and drives away, and someone breaks into Carlton’s dad’s house and knocks him out. The next day, John gets a call from the hospital. Carlton’s dad is there, and he’s been asking for John. What a weird relationship they have.

Meanwhile, (the text literally says “meanwhile”) at Circus Baby’s, the animatronic in question and her mysterious companion perform some kind of surgery on Funtime Freddy that makes him evil.

John makes Jessica go to the hospital with her. Carlton’s dad is barely conscious, and muttering some shit about “maximum range.” They find an envelope in his jacket full of pictures of them with Evil Fake Charlie. At this point, Marla AND CARLTON show up. “Is he okay? What happened?” Carlton asks. IT’S YOUR DAD, CARLTON.

Okay, I turned the page and Carlton is in fact as mad about this as I am. Charlie materializes in the doorway and is like, “Yeah, why did the hospital call John first?” No one thinks this is weird. Some random woman shows up and is upset that the only cop who was taking the case of her missing son seriously is injured.

John has a robot head Charlie’s dad made in his possession, and it has been gradually learning to speak. It keeps repeating “Silver Reef”, which is another (real) nearby town. John and Jessica travel there and wind up at Charlie’s aunt’s house. There’s a sudden knock on the door, and Evil Fake Charlie shows up. John and Jessica hide in a closet and find a trunk containing… THE ACTUAL CHARLIE! They sneak her out a back door while Evil Fake Charlie strangles her aunt to death.

John and Jessica take Charlie to John’s place to hide out. John is suspicious of a doll Charlie had as a child, so he runs off to investigate that. Meanwhile, Circus Baby is mad at her mysterious partner in crime for not being as much of a genius as Charlie’s dad.

Jessica goes through Carlton’s dads photos, which I guess she just stole, and realizes that Evil Fake Charlie is blurry in all of them. John comes back and they deduce that Evil Fake Charlie is actually Circus Baby, and she has one of those microchips that makes them perceive her as Charlie. SURE. SURE, WHATEVER. Evil Fake Charlie stops by and they invite her to dinner as a diversion, then invite Marla over to babysit the real Charlie.

John brings a walkie-talkie to the date so that he can communicate with Jessica and Carlton, who is also involved now. John can’t bring himself to confront Evil Fake Charlie, so when she leaves, Jessica follows her to Circus Baby’s and gets captured. Circus Baby does this evil monologue about how she’s simultaneously an evil sentient robot, and possessed by the spirit of the human girl we saw her kill in Sister Location. This girl was jealous of how much attention her engineer father gave to the Circus Baby animatronic, so I think her father is William Afton. She says it isn’t Henry, anyway. Jessica tries to escape, but Springtrap shows up.

Charlie has a dream about being reuinted with her dad. When she wakes up, Marla, Carlton, and John are there with her old doll that John was suspicious of. And guess what! It has one of those stupid chips!

So does Springtrap, it turns out. He deactivates it and lets Jessica see his true, Return of the Jedi Darth Vaderesque self. Jessica’s like, “You’re the one kidnapping people!” Fucking obviously, Jessica. Who did you think it was? He does deny that the fake blood Carlton’s dad found was his, though.

Circus Baby and Afton reveal what they’ve been working on: yet another fucking hybrid animatronic. This one has a generic body with the heads of the original Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy. Circus Baby has been slowly transferring parts of Afton’s body to the hybrid so that his consciousness can merge with it. Or something. They make Jessica watch CB extract Afton’s kidney and haphazardly shove it inside, and she tries to distract herself by thinking about shoes. Oh, Jessica.

John asks Charlie if she can alter that hearing aid thing she was working on in the second book so that it will camouflage the wearer to animatronics. She’s like, “I don’t know, maybe?” and falls asleep. Carlton breaks into Jessica’s apartment to look for Charlie’s old robotics stuff. He finds those two endoskulls, and they’re like, “You, me.” “We, she.” “You guys really love pronouns, huh?” Carlton says.

Evil Fake Charlie shows up and starts hitting on him for information. Carlton’s like, “You’re not really my type, you know?” Oh, for real? She turns back into Circus Baby, and Carlton hacks the hearing device to make himself invisible to her and escapes.

Charlie wakes up and tells John she does remember that he loves her! But much more importantly, she was definitely about to find Sammy before she died.

Jessica wakes up to find four children staring at her — the ones who have been kidnapped. John and Charlie travel back to her aunt’s house and find her dad’s suicide note, which warns the reader never to look in the fourth closet. But that’s where Charlie saw Sammy! They’re pondering this when Evil Fake Charlie shows up and confronts them.

Meanwhile, Carlton and Marla break into Circus Baby’s and meet three terrible, child-sized clown animatronics. Jessica is trying to free the actual children, but they’re intercepted by Toy Foxy from the second game, or “Mangle”, as he’s known, because he is that. Mangled, I mean. I’ve never seen him intact in any iteration of the game. He grabs one of the kids, and the others scatter. Funtime Freddy attacks Carlton and Marla in the Mirror Maze. I don’t know why they thought it was wise to go into the Mirror Maze. They use the earpieces to escape, then run into Jessica and the other three children. Carlton goes to look for the fourth kid, and the others leave the restaurant.

These stories unfold simultaneously, but to make things less confusing, I will relay them one at a time. First, Carlton decapitates Funtime Freddy, then he finds the kid in Afton’s lair. Afton stabs Carlton in the heart with some kind of serum, which allows Carlton to communicate with the dead kids, including his friend Michael. The others are named Fritz, Susie, Cassidy, and Gabriel, so I think Jeremy is the protagonist of the second game/victim of the Bite of ’87. Carlton convinces the dead kids to turn on Afton, and the hybrid animatronic they’re collectively possessing picks Afton up and throws him into a furnace, which I assume will not permanently kill him. The kids maybe go to heaven, and Carlton goes to the hospital. All four kidnapping victims are returned to their families.

I’m not even sure I fully understand what’s happening with Charlie, but I’ll do my best. She and John have found all these drawings of doll prototypes done by her father, when Evil Fake Charlie — Circus Baby — shows up. She knocks John out and mind-melds with Charlie, showing her a childhood memory. Circus Baby was William Afton’s daughter, Elizabeth, and she was so jealous of the attention Afton paid to his creations that she let the Circus Baby animatronic kill and fuse with her. Or something.

It turns out that Charlie, not Sammy, was killed by Afton, and her father Henry went absolutely out of his mind trying to make lifelike Charlie animatronics of different ages to cope with the loss. The Charlie we know is the third iteration, Teenage Charlie. Evil Fake Charlie was supposed to be the adult iteration, but Henry abandoned her because he didn’t like how she was turning out. He locked her in the titular fourth closet for years, and never turned her off, so she was conscious the entire time. She was the voice calling out to our Charlie, not Sammy. But she’s also Circus Baby/Elizabeth Afton, somehow? I think once she merged with the animatronic, she was so jealous of Henry’s dead daughter that she had a breakdown, and decided to help her actual father be evil? I don’t know. I thought this was stupid in Sister Location, and it’s even stupider now.

Charlie rigs the knife-wielding endoskeleton that her dad used to for his suicide to shish kebab herself and Elizabeth/Circus Baby/Evil Fake Charlie. Charlie’s dying words are, “I love you too, John.”

Sometime later, John visits Charlie’s grave and sees her ghost. The headstone reads “CHARLOTTE EMILY, 1980-1983.” I thought she was way older when she died. Also, is Emily her last name? I’ve never heard it as a last name before.

New animatronics: 6, I guess? The three clown kids, the Freddy/Bonnie/Chica/Foxy hybrid, Charlie, and one unaccounted-for, younger version of Charlie.

Total animatronics: 104

THE LORE SO FAR

Fredbear’s Family Diner, established by robotic engineer Henry Emily and his business partner and fellow engineer, William “Dave” Afton, (who I guess is not British, because someone in the books definitely would’ve commented on it by now) existed until the Bite of Not ’87 incident with the kid from the fourth game. It reopened as Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, (as seen in the second game) where Dave murdered some children, including Henry’s three-year-old daughter, Charlie. Afton hid the bodies in said animatronics, which they possessed. The names of the other children are Fritz, Susie, Gabriel, and Michael. The Puppet is behind the possession part. The Puppet kid was the first victim. The Bite of ’87 happened around this time, possibly to a security guard named Jeremy. That place was shut down after the bodies were discovered, and then reopened (as seen in the first game). Then, that location also shut down. Henry either committed suicide or was killed by an animatronic endoskeleton that made it look like a suicide. Developers attempted to build a mall where the restaurant was, but it didn’t pan out due to the site’s bad vibes. Sometime later, Afton returned to destroy the possessed animatronics, but got eviscerated by one, which he now possesses. An animatronic version of Charlie, is responsible for the evisceration. At some point, Afton created a generation of animatronics equipped with sound-emitting microchips that make them seem more lifelike than they actually are. The chip technology was actually invented by Henry, who used it to make lifelike animatronic versions of his dead daughter. The abandoned restaurant was reimagined as a haunted attraction (as seen in the third game). The attraction burned down, freeing the souls of the murdered children. However, Afton, in animatronic form, did not die. A mall called Freddy Fazbear’s Mega Pizzaplex was built on top of its ruins. An iteration of Afton possessed a security guard named Vanessa and caused the non-Freddy animatronics to become hostile. The pizzaplex shut down soon afterwards. At some point, the events of Sister Location happened. Circus Baby was originally created to be a Charlie animatronic, but Henry never finished her, so Afton stole her and turned her into Circus Baby. Afton’s daughter, Elizabeth, was killed by and subsequently possessed Circus Baby. The Puppet girl’s dad built a fake pizzeria to lure in all the possessed animatronics so that he could burn it down and free their souls, which will be sent to the appropriate afterlife. At an unspecified moment in the timeline, Fazbear Entertainment tried to cover all this up via VR game so that the public would write it all off as urban legends and slander. The game had a malicious, Afton-affiliated anomaly that was discovered by a developer named Jeremy.

FAZBEAR FRIGHTS AND TALES FROM THE PIZZAPLEX

Novellas that Scott Cawthon apparently does not consider canon. Neither will I, then! I’m locking in that lore summary as my final answer.

OKAY, HOW ACCURATE WAS I?

Two other books my library had were The Freddy Files: The Official, Ultimate Guide to the Bestselling Video Game Series and Security Breach Files, both written by Scott Cawthon. I will be using them to check my work.

Even though these books were written by Cawthon, whose word should be gospel, all lore is presented as fan theories. Why? Just commit, man! Tell me which animatronic did the Bite of ’87! You have the power! I can’t believe I can’t rely on THE OFFICIAL ULTIMATE GUIDE TO THE BESTSELLING VIDEO GAME SERIES to tell me official ultimate information about the bestselling video game series.

The Puppet from the second game is referred to with he/him pronouns, which does not lend credence to Pizzeria Simulator’s implication that it’s possessed by Charlie. Why would it be, anyway? I thought Charlie was possessing the Charlie animatronic.

Apparently, the second game insinuates that the Purple Guy (Afton) murdered three sets of five children, plus one additional child (Charlie?). He also might be the Phone Guy who leaves you instructional messages during the first and second games, (and is audibly killed by Freddy during the former). I have to assume that this has been retconned. It’s been pretty clearly established that Afton/Springtrap cannot fucking die.

As of the second game, there are three iterations of Freddy’s: the one you work at, a “sister location”, (I assume not Circus Baby’s Rental, though) and the former Fredbear’s Family Diner.

The third game is “set thirty years after the horrific events that took place at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza (though which specific events we’re not sure).” Scott. Scott Braden Cawthon. You are in charge of determining this. Why are you asking me?

The Bite of Not ’87 at Fredbear’s Family Diner depicted in the fourth game is officially-unofficially called The Bite of ’83. My favorite piece of evidence that it’s a separate incident: “The Bite of ’87 victim lost their frontal lobe. When you remove the frontal lobe from the brain, it no longer feels fear. This seems inconsistent with our apparent gameplay as the bitten child.” Yeah, hi, I looked that up and it’s bullshit. The amygdala, which is located in the middle of the brain, and not the frontal lobe, is responsible for fear. The frontal lobe is home to dopaminergic pathways, which control “movement, cognition, executive functions, reward, [and] motivation.” The real evidence that the protagonist didn’t lose his frontal lobe is that he’s capable of playing Five Nights at Freddy’s 4.

He’s also possibly possessing Golden Freddy. Is he Charlie’s friend Michael? I thought Michael was lured away and then killed by Afton. Is this kid possessing Fredbear? Is Fredbear not Golden Freddy?

Of Ennard, the mutant animatronic from Sister Location, Cawthon says, “Try explaining this character to your grandma.” Buddy, I doubt I could even explain it to my parents without eliciting a, “What? That’s so stupid. That’s not even scary.” Obviously, they raised a hater.

Cawthon refers to the setting of Sister Location as “Circus Baby’s Pizza World.” NO, IT’S NOT! IT’S CIRCUS BABY’S ENTERTAINMENT AND RENTAL! Why am I getting so heated about this? Sister Location is easily my least favorite game in terms of lore contribution. For example, the Scooper infuses animatronics with a “soul energy, or Remnant. Remnant can be destroyed by overheating.” Sure. Yeah. Of course.

“None of the Custom Night gameplay [in Sister Location] is considered canon,” notes Cawthon. “Sorry to the Lolbit fans.”

I guess the four main animatronics from Sister Location were designed by Afton specifically for kidnapping purposes, which is why they each have a child-sized internal compartment. So why did Elizabeth die when she got pulled inside of Circus Baby?

There is a secret message you can unlock at the end of the game, which reads: “Father, it’s me, Michael. I did it. I found it — it was right where you said it would be. They were all there. They didn’t recognize me at first, but then they thought I was you. And I found her. I put her back together, just like you asked me to. She’s free now. But something is wrong with me. I should be dead, but I’m not. I’ve been living in shadows. There is only one thing left for me to do now. I’m going to come find you.” So this Michael is an Afton. I really hope he’s unrelated to the first game’s protagonist, Mike Schmidt, because it would be pretty stupid and nonsensical if they were the same pers-

“One strain of theories posits that Michael is the player character across FNAF, FNAF 2, FNAF 3, and Sister Location.” No! No he is not! You can pry Eggs Benedict from my cold, dead hands. If my dad were a child murderer, I would not take a dangerous minimum wage job to help him cover up his crimes. And I certainly wouldn’t use the names of some of his victims as aliases. Why can’t there just be two Michaels? These games are set across the 1980s. Michael was the most popular boys’ name of the twentieth century.

Here’s an equally stupid and nonsensical theory about Michael Afton, posited by “fans”: He’s the older brother of the fourth game’s protagonist (the Bite of ’83 victim). WHY? Why would that kid be an Afton? I thought the kid possessing Golden Freddy was Charlie’s friend Michael. DID WILLIAM AFTON NAME BOTH OF HIS SONS MICHAEL? Did I trigger some monkey’s paw shit when I said it was the most popular boys’ name of the twentieth century?

And in that case, where was Elizabeth during the fourth game? She can’t be dead, because Circus Baby doesn’t exist yet. Is she significantly younger than the Bite of ’83 kid? Or Charlie, (1980-1983) for that matter?

Speaking of Charlie, her dad, Henry, is the Cassette Man from Pizzeria Simulator who gathered all the animatronics together to destroy them. “Henry’s daughter, the first victim, is the Puppet.” Also, apparently the Puppet is inhabiting Lefty, the cheap, left-handed version of Freddy. It’s really an acronym for “Lure Encapsulate Fuse Transport & Extract.” I’m too tired to argue at this point. Gee, Charlie. How come your dad lets you possess three animatronics?

That fruit-collecting minigame is called “Fruity Maze.” No comment. I was wrong about it starring Elizabeth; it stars Susie, a murder victim. Mangle may or may not be possessed by Susie’s dog. SURE, WHY NOT?

“You asked for it,” says Cawthon, of Ultimate Custom Night’s existence. I assure you, I did not. I asked for absolutely nothing post-3. There are more animatronics in this game than I thought there were, but luckily, the book has an animatronic inventory, so stay tuned for that. Anyway, William Afton is possibly the player character, trapped in hell for his murders. I disagree, because hell is not Ultimate Custom Night. Hell is WRITING THIS ARTICLE.

Okay, I went for a walk, and now I’m less mad. The chapter on Help Wanted vaguely confirms that Jeremy from the dev team and Jeremy from the second game are two different guys. Thank fuck.

“Is Scott Cawthon canon?” asks the book, written by Scott Cawthon. Apparently the rogue indie developer is not supposed to be him. Am I allowed to disregard this information?

Help Wanted has Halloween DLC that I forgot to investigate called The Curse of Dreadbear. “The games, Easter eggs, and new ending have the potential to change the course of future FNAF games, with huge implications for the lore.” SON OF A BITCH. This had better make everything make perfect sense or I swear to god.

It’s Fallfest 1983. “Does it have something to tell us about the Bite of ’83?” Spoiler alert: not concretely. The most interesting thing this update does is introduce the rabbit mask that turns Vanessa into Vanny. Where were the huge lore implications????

I guess in Special Delivery you’re collecting Remnant. If you have too much “Shadowy Remnant”, Shadow Bonnie will attack you. Also, Shadow Bonnie has another name: RWQFSFASXC. I will Venmo Scott Cawthon $100 to legally change his own name to that. “Remnant was further expanded on in The Fourth Closet novel, where William Afton is shown combining the Remnant from the five original animatronics into one.” NEWS TO ME. Why wasn’t that in the graphic novel? Did I just read it too fast?

Some more Remnant info from the supposedly noncanonical Fazbear Frights series: “In nonscientific terms, it’s like the metal is haunted. It’s more complicated than that, of course, but it’s similar to the way that water conducts electricity. Remnant is the mixing of the tangible with the intangible, of memory with the present. The people and things that are lost — it makes them almost real again.” Also, “the Aftons seem to believe that Remnant is the key to power and eternal life, and they want as much of it as they can get.” Can’t relate.

The game (in-universe) has a virus that results in a cease work order from the Fazbear Entertainment Office of Legal Affairs. The virus is what’s behind Vanny’s evil. Or something. Ness from the emails is definitely Vanny, but Security Breach hadn’t come out when this was written, so Cawthon’s just like, “Isn’t it crazy that both names are short for Vanessa?”

At this point, I took a brief moment to dip into Security Breach Files, which turned out to be fundamentally useless, because it’s just a summary of the game. There are no theories I haven’t heard (or posited) before.

Let’s talk about the books! “Debates have raged among fans about how the books tie into the games, but, one thing isn’t in question: the books introduced many elements that later appeared in the game, from minor technology up to the name of the universe’s central villain.” I like how that’s phrased as though William Afton is the overarching villain of real life.

I forgot there was another Michael in the series: Charlie’s childhood friend who was murdered. Apparently, his last name was Brooks, so he’d better not somehow be Michael Afton. Or Mike Schmidt. Who are separate entities, goddammit. Again, most popular boys’ name of the twentieth century.

Cawthon finally confirms my worst fear: the books and games have separate continuities. Pack it in, guys. Sorry for wasting your time. Please don’t unsubscribe.

Time to learn about Fazbear Frights! “As the series went on, a meta story emerged in the post-story stingers, centering around one determined detective, a child trapped between worlds, and an evil that just won’t die.” Can I guess what the evil that just won’t die is? Is it perhaps named William Afton?

SOME HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE FAZBEAR FRIGHTS SUMMARIES:

• The very first story of the series introduces time travel. I’m out, I’m out. How does one travel through time? “By diving into the [ball] pit and staying under for one hundred seconds.” CORRECT. I never want to hear about DeLoreans or TARDISes again. We’re using ball pits forever. Scientists, get on this.

• There’s a story about Susie the murder victim trying to communicate with her family via the Chica animatronic she possesses.

• One where an angry, divorced VR developer named Matt programs AI Springtrap to torture itself indefinitely.

• One where a guy has an uncle named Michael, so of course we have to entertain the theory that it’s Michael Afton. MOST POPULAR BOYS’ NAME OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.

• The protagonist of 3 is possibly named Hudson. Not Michael. Hallelujah. But if I ever see any other Hudsons in this franchise, (excluding the river) it’s on sight.

• Someone in another story has a goldfish named Fritz, and I’d love to be convinced that this is somehow Fritz the dead kid, or Fritz the second night guard from 2.

• Here’s a sentence: “The Fazbear Frights series contains several references to mystery substances, such as Faz-Goo, the Gumdrop Nose, and Sea Bonnies.” No further questions, your honor.

• We meet an indie game developer named Jeremiah, whose name is misspelled as “Jeremy” on his birthday cake. Matt is a coworker of his.

• In one story, a burn victim (presumably William Afton) is possessed by two souls at once.

• There’s some recurring entity called the Stitchwraith. Please, Scott. I am exhausted. You cannot put a Stitchwraith in the narrative this late in the game and tell me it’s important.

• The Stitchwraith is a guy named Jake. Jake the Stitchwraith. He’s destroying Remnant-infused objects.

• A potential Afton victim named Andrew is keeping Afton’s soul tethered to this world. I KNOW WHO I NEED TO FIGHT. HE HAS A NAME.

Finally, we come to the animatronic inventory. At last, I can count them all.

THE COMPLETE LIST OF ANIMATRONICS, IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

8-Bit Baby, Arctic Ballora, Balloon Boy, Ballora, Bidybabs, Black Heart Bonnie, Black Ice Freddy Frostbear, Blizzard Balloon Boy, Bonnet, Bonnie, Boulder Toy Bonnie, Broiler Baby, Burntrap, Candy Cadet, Captain Foxy, Catrina Toy Chica, Charlie, Chica, Chocolate Bonnie, Circus Baby, Clown Springtrap, Coils the Birthday Clown, The Curse, Deedee, DJ Music Man, Dreadbear, Easter Bonnie, Egg Baby, El Chip, Eleanor, Electrobab, Ella, Endo-01, Endo-02, Ennard, The Entity, Fetch, Firework Freddy, Flamethrower Bare Endo, Flaming Springtrap, Foxy, Fredbear, Freddles, Freddy Fazbear, Frost Plushtrap, Funtime Chica, Funtime Foxy, Funtime Freddy, Glamrock Bonnie, Glamrock Chica, Glamrock Endos, Glamrock Freddy, Glamrock Mr. Hippo, Glitchtrap/The Anomaly, Golden Freddy, Grimm Foxy, Hand Unit, Happy Frog, Heartsick Baby, High Score Toy Chica, Jack-O-Bonnie, Jack-O-Chica, JJ/Balloon Girl, Lefty, Liberty Chica, Lil Music Man, Little Joe, Lolbit, Lonely Freddy, Lucky Boy, Magician, Magician Mangle, Mangle, Melted Chocolate Bonnie, The Mimic, Minireenas, Molten Freddy, Montgomery Gator, Mr. Hippo, Music Man, Nedd Bear, Nightmare, Nightmare Balloon Boy, Nightmare Bonnie, Nightmare Chica, Nightmare Endo, Nightmare Foxy, Nightmare Fredbear, Nightmare Freddy, Nightmare Mangle, Nightmarionne, Old Man Consequences, Orville Elephant, Phantom Balloon Boy, Phantom Chica, Phantom Foxy, Phantom Freddy, Phantom Mangle, Phantom Puppet, Phone Guy apparently, Pigpatch, Plushbabies, Plushtrap, Prototype Glamrock Freddy, The Puppet, Radioactive Foxy, Ralpho, Ringmaster Foxy, Rockstar Bonnie, Rockstar Chica, Rockstar Foxy, Rockstar Freddy, Roxanne Wolf, RWQFSFASXC/Shadow Bonnie, Scorching Chica, Scrap Baby, Scraptrap, Security Puppet, Serpent Mangle, Shadow Freddy, Shadow Mangle, Shamrock Freddy, Spring Bonnie, Springtrap, S.T.A.F.F. Bots, Stanley, Stitchwraith, Sun/Moon/Eclipse the Daycare Attendant, Swamp Balloon Boy, System Error Toy Bonnie, Tag-Along Freddy, Tangle, Theodore, Toy Bonnie, Toy Chica, Toy Freddy, Toxic Springtrap, Trash & The Gang, Twisted Bonnie, Twisted Chica, Twisted Foxy, Twisted Freddy, Twisted Wolf, VR Toy Freddy, Withered Bonnie, Withered Chica, Withered Foxy, Withered Freddy, Withered Golden Freddy, Woodland Toy Freddy, XOR/Shadow Deedee, Yarg Foxy, Yenndo

OFFICIAL TOTAL: 153

THE COMPLETE LORE, AS I UNDERSTAND IT

Fredbear’s Family Diner, established in Hurricane, Utah by robotic engineer Henry Emily and his business partner and fellow engineer, William “Dave” Afton, existed until an incident called the Bite of ’83, when a child (Afton’s son, some inexplicably claim) was crushed by an animatronic’s jaws. This child is the player character in Five Nights at Freddy’s 4. The restaurant reopened as Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, where Afton murdered some children, including Henry’s three-year-old daughter, Charlie. Charlie’s soul possessed a puppet animatronic. Afton hid the bodies in said animatronics, which they possessed. The names of the other children are Fritz, Susie, Gabriel, and Michael. The Puppet (Charlie) is the one who transferred their souls into the animatronics. The Bite of ’87 happened around this time. This restaurant is the setting of Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, and the player character, Jeremy, is possibly the bite victim. That place was shut down after the bodies were discovered, and then reopened, as seen in the original Five Nights at Freddy’s. The player character in that name is named MIKE SCHMIDT. NOT AFTON, SCHMIDT. Then, after five more murders by Afton, that location also shut down. At some point, Afton created a generation of animatronics equipped with sound-emitting microchips that make them seem more lifelike than they actually are. The chip technology was actually invented by Henry Emily, who used it to make lifelike animatronic versions of his dead daughter. Similarly, a substance called Remnant can bring the animatronics to life. Henry either committed suicide or was killed by an animatronic endoskeleton that made it look like a suicide. Developers attempted to build a mall where the restaurant was, but it didn’t pan out due to the site’s bad vibes. Sometime later, Afton returned to destroy the possessed animatronics, but got eviscerated by a wearable animatronic suit, which he now possesses. An animatronic version of Charlie is responsible for the evisceration. The abandoned restaurant was reimagined as a haunted attraction, which is the setting of Five Nights at Freddy’s 3. The player character is a security guard named Hudson. The attraction burned down, freeing the souls of the murdered children. However, Afton, in animatronic form, did not die. At an unspecified moment in the timeline, Fazbear Entertainment tried to cover all this up via VR game so that the public would write it all off as urban legends and slander. Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted is that game. It had a malicious, Afton-affiliated anomaly that was discovered by a developer named Jeremy (unrelated to the Bite of ’87 Jeremy). This anomaly possessed another developer, Vanessa. A mall called Freddy Fazbear’s Mega Pizzaplex was built on top of its ruins. Vanessa’s possessed form, called Vanny, got as a job there as a security guard and caused the non-Freddy animatronics to become hostile. She was defeated by a kid named Gregory in the events of Five Nights at Freddy’s: Security Breach. The pizzaplex shut down soon afterwards. However, the animatronics were left behind, including one that can mimic voices. The mimic, impersonating Gregory, lured Gregory’s best friend, Cassie, to the ruins so that she could free it. The real Gregory was forced to kill them both. At some point, an equipment rental shop called Circus Baby’s was opened by Fazbear Entertainment. Circus Baby was originally created to be a Charlie animatronic, but Henry never finished her, so Afton stole her and turned her into Circus Baby. Afton’s daughter, Elizabeth, was killed by and subsequently possessed Circus Baby. Five Nights at Freddy’s: Sister Location takes place at this location. The security guard, “Eggs Benedict”, was manipulated by Circus Baby into releasing a hybrid animatronic, Ennard, into the world. Finally, prior to his death, Henry Emily built a fake pizzeria to lure in all the possessed animatronics so that he could burn it down and free their souls, which will be sent to the appropriate afterlife, as depicted in Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria Simulator.

CONCLUSION

I’m worried I’ve made it sound like I hate Five Nights at Freddy’s. I do not hate Five Nights at Freddy’s. In fact, I’m probably like, soul-bonded to it now. I have to keep up with the lore for the rest of eternity — I put way too much time and effort inro this to let it fall out of date. And I’m very excited for the movie to fuck it all up.

That said, did these games need lore this extensive? The first one blew up for two reasons: the “less is more” factor, and the general consensus that pizzeria animatronics (e.g. Charles Entertainment Cheese) are just objectively scary. Consider the fan-made knockoffs about being terrorized by extant, nostalgic IP — Five Nights at the Chum Bucket, Five Nights at Wario’s, Five Nights at Sonic’s. The people simply want to be jumpscared by corrupted animatronics at Corrupted Animatronics Bar and Grill. That’s what I want from this franchise, anyway.

This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the actors currently striking, this upcoming film would not exist. (Also, congratulations to the WGA on getting a fair deal!)