The Long and Winding Five Nights At Freddy's 2.0*

It’s really time to update my Long and Winding Five Nights at Freddy’s post. Five Nights at Freddy’s: Sister Location and its DLC has…added and changed the way we see the implied story-line in the FNAF games, to say the least. So once again I’ve spent a lot of time on YouTube, Steam, the Five Nights at Freddy’s wikis and now, TV Tropes – which is surprisingly helpful. There will be many unmarked spoilers ahead, you have been warned, I am wearing pants though, so that’s good.

Five Nights At Freddy’s is a franchise based around a chain of family restaurants – Pizzerias to be precise – that use animatronic anthropomorphic animals heavily reminiscent of Nolan Bushnell’s Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre and it’s old rival (and current owner) ShowBiz Pizza Place. The first and second games take place at two separate Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza locations, the third a theme park attraction based on those restaurants, the fifth the storage and showrooms for Circus Baby’s Entertainment and Rental and the fourth in a house of a child who was injured at a restaurant. Each game is a point-and-click indie survival horror game and although the exact methods differ between the four games they all share the same simple gameplay and goal – use what you have to keep yourself from being killed by the animatronics, though from Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 (FNAF2) small bonus mini-games in the style of the Atari 2600 home video game console were added to give more of the backstory of the franchise (and further scare players). All five games were created and developed by Scott Cawthon and are available for PC (via things like Steam) and iOS.

The Animatronics

Freddy Fazbear – Titular mascot and lead singer of the animatronic band in Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, he carries a microphone and wears a top-hat and bowtie and plays the Toredor March from Carmen as a jingle. A ‘Toy’ and ‘Funtime’ version has been made to replace him at various times [ShowBiz Place Pizza had a brown bear mascot called Billy Bob, who was a guitarist]

Fredbear – another bear and original titular mascot of the chain when it was Fredbear’s Family Diner, he looks similar to Freddy but is lighter with a purple hat and bowtie, it seems Fredbear and Freddy were used by the restaurant together [get this, Showbiz Pizza originally had a lighter coloured bear in its original band – Wolf Pack 5 – called Surf Bear, who stayed on after they switched to the more popular Rock-afire Explosion band and characters, which added Billy Bob, a brown bear that did the exact thing in the band as Surf Bear did (in this case, played guitar) who became the main mascot of the chain, not completely identical but very similar to Fredbear and Freddy Fazbear - I’m sure this is all just coincidence as many places introduced a character of the same type as their main mascot but still…]

Bonnie – a blue rabbit who plays guitar, some fans seem to mistake the poor guy for a girl (it’s probably his name) but Crowther says it’s a boy. A ‘Toy’ version was made to replace him but later scrapped [neither Chuck e Cheese nor Showbiz prominently featured a rabbit character]

Chica – the female backing singer, a chicken who wears a bib and carries a cupcake with eyes, a ‘Toy’ version (that is seriously sexyed up) was made to replace her but scrapped  [Chuck E. Cheese’s has had a major chicken girl – Helen Henny - since ’78, who has since become the major female mascot of the chain]

Foxy – a pirate fox who was once operational in his own location, Pirate Cove, by the time of FNAF1 he’s no longer used and out of order. A ‘Toy’ version and ‘Funtime’ version were both made to replace him [Showbiz Pizza had a wolf named Rolfe DeWolfe who also operated off of a side-stage from the main band (as a ventriloquist) and was indeed decommissioned before all the other characters].

Circus Baby – the mascot of Circus Baby Entertainment & Rentals, a clown girl designed to kidnap and kill children unwillingly, she produces ice-cream and is aided by small animatronics called BidyBabs.

Ballora – a ballerina robot at Circus Baby Entertainment & Rentals who was designed to distract so that he other animatronics could kidnap children assisted by smaller animatronics the Minireenas. Because her outer shell has closed eyes she is effectively blind, but she can still hear you…

Other Animatronics

 

Golden Freddy – a bonus enemy in FNAF1, Freddy with golden ‘fur’, looks similar to Fredbear

The Puppet – a strange, possibly paranormal, humanoid puppet who operates the Prize Corner

Balloon Boy – a little boy animatronic who gave out balloons to children

The Mangle - an attempt at redesigning Foxy that got pulled apart by kids

Springtrap – a golden Bonnie animatronic that also doubled as a suit for employees, it contains a dead body

Nightmare – a strange black version of Fredbear

Ennard – the combined bodies of Ballora, Circus Baby, Funtime Freddy and Funtime Foxy

The Timeline

Larger Text in Bold – events implied by the games (mostly)

Smaller italic text – my notes, explanations, fan theories and evidence

-                 The Freddy’s franchise begins as Fredbear’s Family Diner [mentioned by Phone Guy in FNAF2]

-                 The murderer, nicknamed ‘Purple Guy’ by fans, kills a child outside a small Freddy’s establishment [this is from the mini-game ‘Give Cake to Children’ from FNAF2 – the location is very small and only a bear mascot is shown – leading to the assumption that this is Fredbear’s Family Diner in its earliest stages and this is Fredbear – though his hat and bow tie are black. It is now believed that the Purple Guy is the Afton of Afton Robotics from Sister Location, because this is the name given to the killer in the non-cannon book Five Nights at Freddy’s: The Silver Eyes and because of how he’s designed the Sister Location robots but I’ll continue to refer to him as Purple Guy for this post]

-                 In 1983 there is a cartoon called Fredbear and Friends [shown in the FNAF4 mini-games]

-                 Two ‘spring’ suits are introduced, a golden Bonnie (who becomes Springtrap) and a golden version of the bear mascot at the time (either Freddy or Fredbear, we’ll call him Golden Fred from now on though just to keep it ambiguous) [FNAF3’s hidden mini-games include a scene with a golden bonnie and golden bear, implying – fans seem to feel, and I agree – that was the other spring suit mentioned by Phone Guy]

-                 The events of Five Nights At Freddy’s 4’s mini-games happen [a lot of people just take this for granted that these show the ‘Bite of ’87’ but a lot of what we’re shown just doesn’t quite line up with what we’ve seen in other games. The animatronic that bites the child in this game is Fredbear and is on the stage singing – all we know about the bite of ’87 is that it happened in ’87 and resulted in the robots not being able to free-roam in restaurants anymore (implying it was roaming when it bit them). We know that FNAF4’s flash backs take place during or after 1983 (because of the cartoon), during the time the spring suits are in operation, when Purple Guy was working at the restaurant and/or around and during a time when Fredbear and the original animatronics were in operation and Fredbear was the main mascot (he’s painted on the walls). That kind of rules out ’87 but it certainly rules out the revamped location from FNAF2 (only Toy versions were active and there isn’t a Toy Fredbear), though the building from FNAF4’s mini-games looks very different anyway (much smaller).Now everything in FNAF4 points to Fredbear AND Freddy Fazbear being around at the same time (the child has nightmares about both, has plushies of both before being bitten by Fredbear, Freddy appears on the montage of characters in the Fredbear and Friends cartoon show)  so there’s nothing to say that Fredbear’s appearance rules out 1987, there is however a teaser for FNAF4 that says ‘property of Fredbear’s Family Diner’ and the code for viewing the house in Sister Location is ‘1983’, this makes me personally believe that all of these mini-games happen at a Fredbear’s (which has been closed ‘for years’ in FNAF2) and this isn’t the Bite of ’87. Regardless it has to happen before the investigation and the retirement of the spring suits, putting it before the audio tapes from FNAF2 – though not necessarily not in ‘87].  

-                 Purple Guy lures at least five children to a back room in a Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza restaurant by using one of the golden ‘spring’ suits, their bodies are never found [there is nothing in-game to confirm that Purple Guy killed these five children but the mini-games heavily imply this was the case and that he IS a murderer. While the murders probably took place around 1987, it is my belief that this happened at a different location to the one in FNAF2, due to the Go! Go! Go! Mini-game using a different layout to the one in FNAF2 and a regular Foxy, rather than the Toy Foxy aka Mangle. My money’s on the suit Purple Guy used as being Spring Fred (be it Fredbear or Freddy), it just seems unlikely that if it was Springtrap (alias Spring Bonnie or Gold Bonnie) the police would have left it behind for Michael  to find and get into (and die), especially as they couldn’t find the bodies of the children, they’d’ve needed it for evidence/a conviction (which they got), however it is always possible he used both]

-                 After an ‘incident’ at a Freddy’s restaurant involving the spring suits, they are decommissioned and put into the Safe Room, a room in every Freddy’s in case of emergencies and for storing potentially dangerous items. [the spring suits are in use in FNAF4’s flash backs, but seem to be decommissioned in FNAF2 (presumably because they weren’t created by Scott yet) and Phone Guy describes a yellow suit as ‘spare’ (though they could just have multiples) thus before or during the murders, or before the revamp, seems the most likely placing for this event, I put it here just because it’s roughly the middle of the time-frame just mentioned and if they were still in use during the murders it would make it easier for Purple Guy to get away with what he was doing PLUS I like the fan theory that the victims of this ‘incident’ became Shadow Freddy and Shadow Bonnie  and they show up in FNAF2’s gameplay].

-                 Unable to revive the dead children/their spirits with prizes, the Puppet allows them to possess the old animatronics of Foxy, Freddy, Bonnie and Chica, plus it seems, Golden Freddy [this is all information taken from the implications of the mini-game Give Gifts, Give Life from FNAF2, I see no issue with these interpretations – we see the Puppet give gifts to dead children sprites, and then place the heads of the animatronics on them to ‘give life’, we then see a fifth child appear, then Golden Freddy – I feel the implication is that The Puppet isn’t responsible for this one as he doesn’t physically ‘give life’ to it but that’s just me. We have no way of knowing when this happened exactly, I place it here, before the revamp, out of personal choice but it should at least happen before the investigation: we know from the audio tapes from that time that the old animatronics were already said to be wandering at night thus if you choose to believe the old animatronics move because of the spirits of the dead children, and there’s enough implications in the game to do so, then the Gift Gifts, Give Life mini-game, and thus The Puppet allowing them to possess these animatronics, must have happened before that. It could totally have happened after the revamp, I choose to put it before just because the location is smaller really, I suppose it also depends on whether you believe the puppet was a new ‘Toy’ Animatronic or not, I can’t decide but generally lean towards him not being so due to the murders seemingly happening in a different location and this seemingly happening around the same time as them]

-                 At least one of the FFP restaurants moves to a new location as part of a massive overhaul including replacing Bonnie, Freddy, Chica and Foxy with new ‘Toy’ models with face recognition software. [Phone Guy states that the old animatronics are from ‘the old location’ implying this is a new location, not a refurbed one, in Night 4 of FNAF2; going by their designs and the Give Gifts, Give Life mini-game it is my belief that Balloon Boy was introduced during this refurbishment but the Puppet predates it]

-                 Toy Foxy is put in the Kids Cove room, but the younger children there pulled him apart, he was then changed to a pull-apart and put back together activity, that left the robot a jumble of parts, and was nicknamed The Mangle by staff [Mangle is in the same style as the other ‘Toy’ models, thus I assume he was a Toy version also, it seems that Mangle wasn’t a pirate, thus the ‘logical’ deduction is Kids Cove is Pirate Cove just at another time when it had another name/theme, as Phone Guy refers to Foxy being a pirate in FNAF2 Night 2 and then to management redesigning Foxy in the following night’s audio, I would say it seems they changed the room to not be Pirate themed (probably during the refurb) and then changed it back once the Toy models were discontinued]

-                 There is an investigation into the disappearances of children at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, the media gets hold of it and eventually the restaurant is temporarily shut down, a pre-booked birthday party is held the day after it is, someone from staff is arrested and convicted of the five children’s murders [there is an investigation going on during the audio tapes from FNAF2 with the heavy implication this is the investigation into the child disappearances with the police focussing on staff both present and former – the following dialogue from Phone Guy in FNAF2 (Night 5) leads me to believe the implication is that the person who was arrested for the crimes was a day shift employee “y'know, especially concerning any...previous employees. Um, when we get it all sorted out, we may move you to the day shift, a position just became...available.” and one of the Atari 2600 cutscenes in FNAF4 shows the Purple Guy putting someone else, during the day, into a spring suit and laughing, I think this implies that Purple Guy worked at the restaurant also]

-                 The Bite of ’87 happens, someone has their frontal lobe bitten out but lives, at least temporarily, animatronics are stopped from free-roaming in the daytime [placement due to the implication the robots are still being allowed to walk around in the day time during the events of the audio tapes from FNAF2 (it’s said by Phone Guy they can even walk around in the day now) and the FNAF2 ending newspaper saying the refurbished FFB was closed down to animatronic malfunctions, not the murders, and the restaurant being closed after the events of those audio tapes – of course there’s nothing to say the bite didn’t happen at another site]

-                 The events of Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 happen around the date of 11^th of November 1987 [the events of FNAF2 are dated via the cheque you receive at the end, the events are generally considered to have taken place after the investigation and other events described in the audio tapes from Phone Guy – he says welcome to your ‘summer’ job and November is clearly not in summer (anywhere in the world, actually), and there is a birthday party set up all nights, while the tapes say there’s going to be a birthday party the day after you finish your shift, there is also no real evidence of the mentioned lock-down still being in effect either]

-                 This revamped Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza restaurant is closed down after only a few weeks, the Toy models are decommissioned due to malfunctioning [there is nothing to suggest that the Toy models had anything majorly supernatural about them, all of the allusions seem to be to them malfunctioning and ‘attacking’ you due to a combination of problems with their programming and problems caused by the murders and investigation – the following dialogue from Phone Guy on Night 6 of FNAF2 I think alludes nicely to it being related to the Purple Guy’s activities “Someone used one of the suits. We had a spare in the back, a yellow one, someone used it...now none of them are acting right.” either as a reaction to him or due to sabotage]

-                 Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza re-opens in a different location, using only the old animatronics who are now forbade from roaming in the daytime, following the Bite of ’87 [the Freddy’s of FNAF2 has a different layout to the one in FNAF1; Balloon Boy and The Puppet are seemingly decommissioned during the switch in locations, this could imply they are Toy animatronics, I think Balloon Boy definitely is, but it could also be part of the downsizing – there is no Prize Corner here for the Puppet to work at, for instance. The Point of View cutscenes in FNAF2 imply that the Puppet was not destroyed along with the Toy Animatronics, as it’s shown to be in the FNAF1 location, though it seems that it is no longer out in the restaurant. Also there is a (pretty good) fan theory that the restaurant actually moved BACK to the location it was at pre-revamp, It’s a little unlikely given that the child disappearances have already happened and probably happened there but this company is cheap as fuck, they may have still owned that old location (and the investigation happened while they were in the new location, so maybe they hoped it would be associated with that one? Who knows) this theory is mostly based on the layout of the Go! Go! Go! mini-game being the same as the layout of FNAF1’s restaurant, some also use that to think that there was another set of murders after the investigation, I’m still iffy on that]

-                 The Safe Rooms are boarded up in all locations and a false wall is put over them, seemingly because of something that might interest insurance people [told to us in the audio recording of Night 6 (‘Nightmare’) in FNAF3, given the mini-games in FNAF3 I’m inclined to believe that the FNAF1’s restaurant has a Safety Room, but as it’s not accessible or even mentioned in FNAF1 (because it wasn’t created then) I’m placing this event here. Something was definitely up with those Safety Rooms; we have no real indications of what it was though] 

-                 Health and safety demands the closure of the FNAF1 Freddy’s due to complaints about the animatronics – their smell, and strange fluids oozing from their heads that resemble mucus and blood and make them look like walking cadavers [no one doubts that these fluids are an implication of something far worse going on with these animatronics – and that includes me – however the fluids of animatronics do resemble bodily fluids, for instance the Pirates of the Caribbean leak fluid that looks like blood, in fact several fans expressed that these leaks have improved the ride, making it look like the pirates are bleeding! What I don’t wholly subscribe to is the ‘fact’ that the children’s bodies were stuffed into them, I think there’s enough evidence to say the kids ghosts are haunting them, but not to say they are physically in them, the fluids and smell could easily be the result of something paranormal (or just lack of maintenance) of course there’s nothing to say they’re not stuffed in there either]   

-                 The Phone Guy is killed by the four animatronics [it seems generally accepted that the Phone Guy’s audio recordings from FNAF1 are exactly that, recordings from a previous time, and the jingles playing on the recording of his death imply he was killed in The Office, which is where you are in the game, meaning it can’t have happened at the same time as you’re there – because you’re there and there is no man getting horrifically murdered. His body – or a suit that it’s been stuffed into - cannot be found on cam either, implying that it’s been removed. As for ‘who killed the Phone Guy’ I never thought there was any debate in that, we hear evidence of all four animatronics being there at once, I have always assumed they all killed him together though I hear that Chica is top of the list of suspects otherwise]

-                 The events of Five Nights At Freddy’s (1) happens, mostly likely in 1993 [FNAF fans, being incredibly dedicated, found out that by combining the minimum wage you receive in FNAF1 with the dates (both from the cheque you receive at the end) the events of FNAF1 most likely take place in 1993]

-                 Mr Afton builds the new animatronics used in Circus Baby’s

-                 Mr Afton’s daughter is killed by Circus Baby at a party [shown in the death  mini-games and their dialogue in Sister Location, some interpret Ennard using her voice as her spirit being in Baby though the animatronics do have voice recording and mimicking capabilities so it’s possible Baby just recorded it

-                 Circus Baby’s Pizza World’s opening is cancelled, strange things happen at night shorty before it does [mentioned in promo material for Sister Location, I’m of the opinion that this is where Circus Baby killed and it was her (Baby) being removed at night, why? Well Baby’s recollection of the murder has her in a smaller, different location and Ennard refers to the spingtrap suit you end up trapped in as coming from ‘her’ old Pizzeria implying it being a location where the Circus Baby animatronics were active in, as far as we know that rules out all old Freddy locations]

-                 Mr Afton sells his company [the opening cut scene has Mr Afton being quizzed on some of the design choices for his animatronics (specifically Circus Baby) by another party, this is considered him selling off the company by just about everywhere, though I’m not sure why, I’ll go with it for now]

-                 Chica’s Party World exists [Chica’s Party World is only mentioned in the source code for a teaser for Sister Location, so we don’t really know if exists or not but if I don’t include it someone will only moan. I include it here because it appeared in a teaser (so the game wasn’t out and thus hadn’t happened) and because Chica is seemingly missing from Circus Baby’s by the time of Sister Location]

-                 The events of Five Nights at Freddy’s: Sister Location happens [Hand Unit says that Circus Baby’s was designed to fill the gap left by Freddy’s closing, if Freddy’s had any locations still open there wouldn’t be that gap to fill thus I consider all Circus Baby related things to have happened after the events of FNAF 1]  

-                 Ennard escapes Circus Baby's Entertainment and Rental by hiding inside of a maintenance man hired earlier in the week [This is the ‘true’ ending of Sister Location, a lot of fans have latched onto the player character in the game being Mr Afton but Circus Baby doesn’t recognise the character when she first meets them, I’d’ve thought she would have recognised the man who built and bug tested her so I reject this theory at the moment, another fan theory says you play as Afton’s son, either Michael or another, as the ‘spirit’ of Afton’s daughter says "Isn't this why you came here? To be with me again?" as I feel that I’ve ruled out Afton himself, I’m ok with this as an explanation until further information becomes available but it’s still only a fan theory at the moment and that dialogue is from the fake ending, so it’s canonicity is questionable - though Michael, believed to be Mr Afton’s son, does mention finding ‘her’ and ‘putting her back together again’ which some have interpreted as the making of Ennard and thus Michael (Springtrap) is the player character]

-                 Ennard enjoys it’s freedom until the human suit they’re wearing degrades and rots, scaring his neighbours and eventually forcing it to leave the body and hide in the sewers, but it’s promise that scooping would not kill it’s suit seemingly comes true, as a spirit (re?) inhabits the body after Ennard vacates it and it stands, becoming purple [all of this is from the bonus Atari 2600 scenes from Sister Location DLC, some see this as an origin of the/a Purple Guy but it can’t be the original Purple Guy because Sister Location begins after Freddy’s has shut down, and he was killing when it was open, this doesn’t rule out it being the origin of Michael becoming a Purple Guy of course, especially as he is purple in the mini-games in FNAF3)

-                  Michael comes to a run down, abandoned and rat infested Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, dispatches the original four animatronics one by one outside the Safe Room, accidentally freeing the spirits within, in the arcade he is chased into the Springtrap suit by the ghosts of his victims and is killed, his body is not found until the time of Fazbear’s Fright [this is all taken from the implications of the mini-games from FNAF3 (not the hidden ones, the regular ones) it’s placing in the timeline and my reasoning for it being the same location as FNAF1 is as follows – the restaurant is clearly derelict, in far worse repair than FNAF1’s location; it has to take place in a location where the spirits are, the spirits are clearly not haunting a single location as they move from at least one to another (the FNAF2 location to the FNAF1 location), the only implications we have to what they are haunting is the old animatronics; the Foxy animatronic is an original (he’s clearly a pirate, he has a hook) and thus not a Toy animatronic, nor Mangle (who has his own sprite);  thus I conclude this is the FNAF1 location sometime after the closure (so after FNAF1’s gameplay), it can’t be the FNAF2 location as there would only be Toy animatronics there – as the ‘haunted’ original animatronics were taken to FNAF1’s location in order for the story to make sense (it could of course be a third location where the animatronics were taken to after FNAF1). The ending of Sister Location contains a monologue by ‘Michael’ believed to be Michael Afton, son of Mr Afton, played over Springtrap rising from the rubble of Fazbear’s Fright, In the monologue he mentions what seems to be the events of the mini-games from FNAF 3, implying that he is the Purple Guy who appears in the ones recapped here and that he becomes Springtrap]

-                Fazbear’s Fright is built, it is a walk-through horror attraction based on the stories about the old food chain, they have none of the animatronics though [again this is just my theory about what the regular FNAF3 Atari 2600 mini-games show but I think the reason they don’t have any of the old animatronics is because Purple Guy destroyed them all. The official description on Steam says FNAF 3 happens thirty years after ‘Freddy Fazbear's Pizza closed its doors’, meaning this would be set in 2023 or 2017 depending on which restaurant that’s referring to, in game it just says everything happened ‘decades’ ago]

-                Five Nights at Freddy’s 3’s events begin, the attraction will open the following week but it still has no original animatronic on display [told to you by Phone Dude on Night 1’s phone call in FNAF3]

-                On night 2 of FNAF 3’s gameplay Springtrap (the spring suit Bonnie) is brought to Fazbear’s Fright, it has been found in a Safe Room and still has (most of) the body of Michael in it [you can see a head in the suit in some images, it’s generally accepted it’s Purple Guy which is heavily implied in Sister Location to be Michael from its ending cutscene, mention is made on Night 1’s phone call about looking into the Safe Room implying that’s where they found the suit, still with body in it – that raises the question: how did the suit get from the old arcade (as shown in the mini-games) to the Safe Room, which was presumably behind the boarded up door shown in those mini-games? I have no idea, but as a theory – could the ghosts of the children have moved it there so like theirs, Purple Guy’s body would never be found?] 

-                Fazbear’s Fright burns down, police have not ruled out foul play [from the newspaper clipping at the end, the possibility of the place catching fire without foul play is mentioned in the first night’s Phone Dude call, some fans speculate it was the player character who burned it down, it’s likely but I couldn’t find anything to confirm it, or even really imply it]

-                Springtrap rises from the rubble of Fazbear’s Fright, coming for his father [shown in the ending given by completing the V. Hard Golden Freddy Mode in Sister Location, it is generally accepted that Springtrap is inhabited by the Michael who gives the monologue and that his father is the Mr Afton who built the Circus Baby robots. It is theorised, and quite likely that Michael may also be the player character in Sister Location, because he mentions finding ‘her’ (likely Afton’s daughter who was ‘in’ Circus Baby) and ‘putting her back together’ i.e. making her into Ennard but I’m still a little unsure]   

Misc.

There’s a couple of things I haven’t touched upon or touched upon properly in the timeline that I’ll just waffle about here:

“How can the Puppet do what the Puppet is implied to do?”

The Puppet is mentioned as being a very smart animatronic (“it’s always thinking” says Phone Guy, it’s also clever enough to see through your terrible disguise of putting on a Freddy head) but on the supernatural side: in FNAF3 the Phantom Puppet has a reflection while the others do not, implying that it may be real (or more real than the imaginary phantom versions of the previous games’ animatronics) and it’s face resembles the crying child sprite used in the Atari 2600 style mini-games. Fan theory is that it’s possessed by the child killed outside the restaurant in Bring Cake to Children, I like that – the Puppet is the jump scare character for that mini-game and appears after the child is murdered, and the Happiest Day mini-game from FNAF3 it is seemingly implied that he IS a spirit as his mask falls to the ground with the others (this is considered by fans to be the spirits of the children being freed, the children certainly appear dead anyway).

 “What is Golden Freddy?” and “Is Golden Freddy ‘real’”

Ug, this seemed to be the biggest debate in the fandom for a while. Golden Freddy is a bonus enemy in FNAF1, it sometimes just appears on camera, then game overs your ass with a jump scare, it doesn’t move around the restaurant and appears to be ghostly or a hallucination; I feel that in that game this was the case, it wasn’t physically there. I also think it didn’t really have any story significance in the first game. But because “What is Golden Freddy’ became such a repeatedly asked question it seems Scott began addressing it in FNAF2 onwards – Phone Guy makes reference to a yellow suit as the one used by Purple Guy in FNAF2 this is almost certainly a reference to the mysterious Gold Freddy from ol’ Scotty. In the Give Cake, Give Life mini-game in that very same title, only four children are shown on screen until the very end, just before the jumpscare that ends all of these mini-games the fifth child appears, then the jump scare – which is Gold Freddy, furthermore  in the Happiest Day mini-game of FNAF3 The Puppet meets up with the ghost kids who are all wearing masks of the animatronics, the fifth child is maskless until he puts on a yellow mask (then they disappear and their masks fall to the ground, including the Puppet), this has all been interpreted as implying that the fifth child is Golden Freddy in FNAF1, I have no problem with that theory at all and can see no reason or evidence to disprove it. In FNAF3 we are introduced to the spring-lock suits, we are told that there are two and we deduce that one is Springtrap (Bonnie) and it is a yellow-gold colour, it’s pretty much common sense to assume the other suit would be Fredbear/Freddy as he’s the titular mascot of the franchise but we are shown a hidden mini-game with two gold-coloured suits greeting children – one is Fred/Freddy and one is Bonnie – a good enough implication for me to say that the two spring-trap suits were Freddy and Bonnie (or Fredbear and Bonnie). As such my conclusion from all the evidence is that, in-cannon Golden Freddy was a spring suit that appears as a phantom in the FNAF1 location and may well be the fifth Purple Guy victim’s spirit.    

The Picture of Freddy taking his own head off in FNAF1

Didn’t even notice this until a YouTube video pointed it out as an ‘unsolved mystery’, I couldn’t give a toss personally, it’s way too small for me to care about, tell me what happened to make the Safety Rooms need to be sealed off, that’s a real unsolved mystery. BUT I can give you a nice little theory if you like – I think it’s a reference to the popularity of Out of Character photos amidst Disney World employees (in the character department), pictures of them simulating sex, mix-n-matching outfits, smoking through the suits etc - yes that is a real thing, Disney World staff are depraved.

“Who is the Purple Guy’s true identity?”

For a while fans had latched onto Phone Guy but now it seems that it’s considered all but confirmed that there are two Purple Guys, the original (who murdered kids) and his son Michael (who became Springtrap). Mr Afton, the designer of Circus Baby’s animatronics, is now generally considered to be the first Purple Guy, because William Afton was the name of the killer and the man who built the animatronics in the non-cannon book The Silver Eyes and Michael is generally considered to be his son. It seems that Mr Afton clearly built the Circus Baby animatronics to lure and kill children (as shown by their functions on their blueprints). I think all of this is a set of very logical deductions and have no problems with them. 

“What IS up with the FNAF2 Endoskeleton?”

No conclusive evidence. There is an Endoskeleton that pops out of the prize box in FNAF2 once the Puppet moves away (if the music box that keeps him there isn’t rewound) it comes out, and sometimes crawls through the vents. It seems to be Freddy’s endoskeleton (it has his ears) but other than that I haven’t found anything that hints towards why it’s there or what its connection to the overall plot is. Fan theories include it being Golden Freddy’s endoskeleton though if he’s a spring animatronic I doubt his endoskeleton can be taken out and anyway you can see parts of endoskeleton on Golden Freddy; or that the endoskeleton was intended for a possible Toy Golden Freddy (a theory of mine building on that: given that Golden Freddy could actually be Spring Fredbear, maybe this endoskeleton was for a Toy Fredbear (though I dunno why it’s in a prize box) - Fredbear and Freddy were active concurrently it seems (as shown in FNAF4), so maybe Fredbear wasn’t fully retired until the revamp? Though I’m leaning towards Fredbear being dumped after the events of FNAF4, which closed Fredbear’s Family Diner with Freddy being given his slot for the new Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza restaurants – again that’s just my mad little theories).

“Why can we see the FNAF 4 house in the Private Room in Sister Location?” and The Unused Rooms on the Sister Location Blueprints

This one is weird. You can find a hidden bonus room, named the Private Room, in Sister Location and if you put 1983 into a nearby keypad the monitors will show you rooms from FNAF 4, which was set in a little boy’s house. There’s also a Fredbear plush with a walkie talkie by it, in FNAF 4 the Fredbear plush inexplicably talked to the child protagonist. This has called everything about FNAF 4 into question with even the previously considered ‘fact’ that it all took place in the mind of a comatose child being up for debate; in fact I’ve removed this being stated as fact from this post. Further, blueprints you get to view in game of Circus Baby’s Entertainment and Rental show areas you cannot access but whose layouts correspond to those of the house from FNAF 4, the Plushtrap mini-game from FNAF 4 and the restaurant from the mini-games in FNAF 4 (which I firmly believe to be Fredbear’s Family Diner). Fans have theorised that the FNAF 4 house is Mr Afton’s and thus his son was the victim/protagonist of that game and that’s a pretty sensible reason for a ‘private room’ to have a link to cameras in a house (it’s his room and his house) and Sister Location’s wiki states it as fact that this means that the Sister Location…location is built under the FNAF 4 house and Fredbear’s which is also fairly sensible (though as far as I can tell not confirmed the way the wiki says it is). What do I think? I think that Circus Baby’s Entertainment and Rental is connected to the former location of a Frebear’s Family Pizza, a third area and what appears from the inside to be a neighbourhood house (and probably is), that the events of Five Nights At Freddy’s 4 happened in 1983 and concurrent to the mini-games (i.e. over five nightmares over five actual nights leading up to the birthday party) and the sixth and final night (‘Nightmare’) happened to the child before he died, after being injured by an animatronic because his brother’s a twat, all of that is my theories though. Fun bit of baseless speculation? The former Fredbear’s became the site for the never-opened Circus Baby’s Pizza World.    

Shadow Freddy and Bonnie

I’ll wrap up with these shall I? These are bonus enemies in FNAF2, that game’s equivalents of Golden Freddy, now Golden Freddy I feel had no story significance in FNAF1, that was added later, but apparently just about everything of note in FNAF2 does have some significance so…well fun fact – the Phantoms have a different number of fingers (five) and the same number of fingers as the Spring suits, specifically Springtrap, given that Shadow Bonnie looks very similar to Springtrap head-wise I wonder if these weren’t some sort of clever foreshadowing and ol’ Scott either had the idea for FNAF3 during FNAF2’s development or the spring suits idea was meant for FNAF2. Anyway there’s a cool fan theory that in-universe these are the ghosts of the victims of the spring suits from the ‘incident’, I initially thought I could disprove this theory by pointing out that Phone Guy says the accident happened at a ‘sister site’ but it’s said in a tape in FNAF3, which is set in a theme park attraction and thus the ‘sister site’ could be any Freddy’s restaurant.

Now go play Five Nights at Freddy’s; especially 1 and 3, I like those the best.