Thank you to the Patrons for supporting the channel. [Electronic hum] Welcome back. Today, we’re doing part one of a new series I’m going to be doing, basically going in-depth and analyzing every single aspect of the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” games one at a time. From the gameplay to the fanbase to the theories, everything surrounding the game basically, I’m going in-depth on. Including, for this episode, I have an interview with the first person to ever make a “Five Nights at Freddy’s” let’s-play, so look forward to that. Now, it’s going to be a bit long-winded, so if you only are interested in one part of it or you want to pause and go back, the timestamps to all the different sections are in the description and they should be visible on the progress bar. Without further ado, let’s get into it. [Electronic hum and low ambience] I’ve talked at length before about exactly how “Five Nights at Freddy’s” came about. Scott Cawthon released a game called “Chipper and Sons Lumber Co.,” which was trashed, basically, for looking too creepy and reminding people of Chuck E. Cheese animatronics. And so, with that bit of inspiration, he had one last hurrah at game development, creating “Five Nights at Freddy’s.” After a very short failed Kickstarter attempt, the game was released on Desura and later greenlit on Steam in August of 2014. [Electronic hum and low ambience] The gameplay of “Five Nights at Freddy’s 1,” despite being deceptively simple, was so effective that it has impacted the face of indie horror basically forever. Despite being a survival horror game, if you just looked at the gameplay, it’s a quick-on-your-feet resource management game: saving power, surviving until 6am. It almost reminds me of an earlier Scott Cawthon game, “Sit and Survive,” which has a lot of similarities. Because you can’t fight back or hide, “Five Nights at Freddy’s” is based on a relatively simple gameplay loop: information, action, and wait. Information is when you gather the due information you need to act on, and there are three major places you gather this information from: diegetic visual cues, non-diegetic visual cues, and audio cues. Diegetic visual cues include where the animatronics are in the cameras, or where they aren’t in the cameras, the camera’s static, the status of the doors, the lights outside the doors. Non-diegetic visual cues include the power meter and percentage and timer. And the audio cues are the footsteps, the pots and pans, Foxy’s banging, and Freddy’s laugh. You take in all this information and then decide what to do in the next stage, action. In this phase, you decide to close the doors, open the doors, or gather more information. Once you act on the information in defense or power-saving, you move on to stage three: wait. In this phase, you wait for the next thing. If they’re at your door, you wait for them to leave. If they’re not, you wait for them to come to the door. In some cases, you just wait and hope the timer runs out before they can jumpscare you. After this brief period of waiting, you move all the way back to stage one, gathering your information to act on. The gameplay loop is simple but effective. In fact, at certain points in higher level difficulty, it becomes more muscle memory than consciously thinking about each aspect of the gameplay. And while simplistic on the outside, there are a lot of other aspects to the game that keep it interesting. One of them, the main thing you manage in this resource management game, is the power. Almost everything you do causes power to be drained down faster. You’re trying to manage power while also surviving until 6am. Another aspect is that all of the animatronics have different AI that you have to account for and behave differently. Bonnie and Chica both move slowly from the Stage towards your office on separate sides and appear in your lights on either side. Foxy slowly moves out of his Cove until he gets to his final stage, where he rushes the door on the left side. Freddy works similarly to Bonnie and Chica in that he moves from place to place, approaching on your right side. Most of the time he moves with an audio cue; however, he is much harder to spot in the cameras and does not appear in the light. His final stage before jumpscaring you is in the camera, which informs the technique used in the hardest nights. He’s also the jumpscare you get if the power runs out and it doesn’t turn to 6am fast enough. There’s also Golden Freddy, but I think he fits into a different category, so I’ll talk about him later. After you beat all five nights of increasing difficulty and then the bonus sixth night, you unlock the Custom Night, where you get to set the difficulty of each character individually, going all the way up to difficulty 20. Originally, Scott didn’t think that 4/20 mode was even possible, but after a lot of workshopping from the community, a bunch of people have beaten it now. [In-game 6am chime]
BIGBUG: “Yes! Yes! Ooh—!” The main technique that was created was: close Freddy’s door, check Foxy, open Freddy’s door, check lights, repeat. Since then other effective strategies have been discovered, but this one is the earliest and reflects the core gameplay loop the most. Check Foxy and the lights for information, close Freddy’s door and the other doors if applicable for action, and then a small wait period between each action. If you couldn’t tell by how long-winded that was, I wasn’t lying when I said it was deceptively simple. There’s so many aspects to keep track of, and it was really well thought out. The thought and care that was put behind the simple gameplay loop is what keeps it interesting, but let’s move on. [Electronic hum and low ambience] Now we talked about visual cues already, so I’m not going to get into that. But like I said, gameplay-wise it’s a quick-on-your-feet resource management game. So, what makes it scary? Well, it’s a masterful combination of audio and visuals. We can start with the animatronics. Each one has a unique and recognizable design, which is surprisingly difficult to pull off. As someone who made a pretty shitty game with just recognizable characters, I can tell you, at least at the moment in the indie game landscape, the number one way to build a community is having characters that you can make fanart of and are very recognizable. But despite what the fanart might have you think, these designs are legitimately creepy. Now, part of this is boosted if you are at all affected by the uncanny valley or have a fear of any kind of mannequins or animatronics. The character designs embody a lifeless thing having an unnatural amount of life, if that makes sense. It’s almost the inverse of what animatronics are trying to be. As kids, we’re supposed to think of these lifeless robots as alive, that’s their goal. But in the context of this game, we know they’re not. They’re just robots, and at night shouldn’t be doing anything. But instead they wander around, getting closer and closer to you. Their unsmiling faces, dead eyes, and exposed endoskeletons remind us that they’re not supposed to be alive. But sometimes, they pull something like this: they suddenly shoot to life in an uncanny way, eyes unnaturally wide, mouth hanging open. Other aspects of their design reinforce this uncanny valley. Their sunken eye sockets, reflective eyes that remind me of “Blade Runner,” dirty or destroyed fur, and emotionless expressions that we can’t quite get a read on. They’re iconic, unsettling, and very well done. Sort of piggybacking off of that, the cameras are designed in such a way that it is nearly impossible to see what’s going on. Static obscures your view, and it’s hard to see details when the place is so dark. For Freddy, it takes a keen eye to spot him if you don’t know where to look. If you want some good examples of how the cameras are set up to make you scared, let’s look at these three cams: Bonnie in the Hall, Freddy in the Dining Area, and Chica in the Dining Area. Bonnie and Freddy share the fact that they are absurdly hard to see. You can make them out, but it makes you, the player, lean in and focus, increasing the tension and setting you up for a jumpscare. The Chica one for me is just the most unsettling; wide eyes staring across the room at you, mouth agape. Everytime you see something in the cameras, you’re immersing yourself more into the game, setting yourself up to be scared. Now let’s take a look at the claustrophobic office, the main hub. The room is cluttered and dirty. Yellow and black on the doors are a constant reminder of danger, and the old, disabled monitors remind you of how low-tech and vulnerable you are. The doors stay open most of the time, letting the unknown darkness stare right at you. Speaking of staring at you: [Animatronic warning stinger] Now, I have no scientific or research basis for this, but I get the feeling that the pair of eyes constantly staring at you from the desk, even when you’re safe, adds something; some animal instinct that knows it’s being watched. It’s a great way to keep the tension high. [Electronic hum and low ambience] Now, if you want an amazing, in-depth analysis of “Five Nights at Freddy’s” audio, then I would suggest watching Scruffy’s video, it’s amazingly well-done. But here’s my thoughts on it. Let’s talk about the ambience. From the menu to gameplay, the ambience of this game is a deep drone. Starting at the menu, you hear a mix of static, which sets up the main aesthetic of the game, and this ghostly deep ambience. [Low ambience] It sounds almost like an unnatural choir, a ghostly voice underlined by a deep, bassy drone. That ghostly voice feeling is something that actually ties into the lore of the game, so the effect is twofold. And when you get into the game, you’re met with another ambience track: [Metallic ambience] A deep, churning, almost metallic sound. Again, it ties directly into the game’s themes: metallic and ghostly. It’s a great way to build an overall-eerie tone while pushing the narrative in a very subtle way. Along with the main ambience, there are other background sounds that add to the atmosphere. Foxy’s singing, carousel music, and the fan spinning, the camera glitching and turning; this stuff helps build on the atmosphere and give little red herrings and bits of tension while you’re moving through the gameplay loop. Now let’s get into what I call active audio, such as, you know, audio cues, which we talked about a little bit, the jumpscare sounds, and other things that act as a component to the gameplay. When Foxy runs to your door, if you close it in time, a loud banging accompanies his arrival. [Foxy banging on door] Chica’s pots and pans acts as supplements to the Kitchen camera, and can even be heard outside of the cams, making it a very valuable piece of information. The animatronics make obscenely creepy breathy noises, which again tie into the lore, along with this distorted audio clip that plays during hallucinations. In contrast to the deep drones of the rest of the game, the doors and lights bring comfort in their harshness. You close that door and boom, it makes a loud, metallic, sturdy sound. You doubt your safety a lot in this game, but you never doubt that the door will keep them out; the slam signifies it. And the harsh blinking light, however creepy it may make the animatronics, is a loud and instant reminder that things are working. And all of this makes it all the more terrifying when you hit that button and it lets out a feeble: [Clicking]
[Jumpscare sound] [Low ambience] Now, let’s talk about the jumpscare. A lot of you may know that even though it just sounds like a robotic screaming, which completely fits, if you listen to the whole thing, it almost sounds like a child crying. [High-pitched scream] But neither of these are actually correct, even though they both fit the lore really well. The audio is originally from a 1981 horror movie called “Inseminoid,” specifically a scene where a woman is giving birth to an alien. [Pained panting and high-pitched scream] Now, it’s very unlikely that this is where Scott actually found it, because that audio clip can be found on a sound effects website, but it’s just weird that that’s the origin. And it’s also weird that it weirdly came back around in the story. [Electronic hum and low ambience] Alright, let’s talk lore. Despite the game series being known for having an absurdly long and convoluted story, the first game was pretty light on lore. It was just the way that this story was told that made it interesting. And along with the main, you know, sort of hidden elements, there were secrets and easter eggs that made the whole thing have a bunch of replayability, and honestly is what makes it a classic still today. The newspaper at the beginning when you first start a new game gives us the basic premise: Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza is looking for a security guard to work the night shift, from 12am to 6am; pretty simple. One secret aspect to this is the blurred newspaper text surrounding the job listing. Essentially, it’s telling you that this job was a poor choice, and you probably won’t make it past Night 3. Just a fun fourth wall break. As soon as you get into the game, you’re met with a phone call from the now-iconic character Phone Guy, who opens up with the classic: PHONE GUY: “Hello, hello!” Throughout these phone calls, he not only reveals hints and red herrings for the gameplay, like closing the doors and how the power works, he also reveals a good chunk of the lore, from the animatronics stuffing you into suits to the—
PHONE GUY: “—Bite of ‘87.” MARKIPLIER: “Was that the Bite of ‘87?!” This is probably the biggest mystery of the first game. I want to talk about it more in a later section, but just wow. With such a small piece of passing information, Scott Cawthon inspired a mystery that would persevere until… …well, I guess today. The main followable narrative is the Phone Guy story. His messages tell you that he used to work the same job, and that he’s somewhat higher rank in the company, but also not a CEO or higher-up; it’s not exactly clear where he is in the company. Either way, he seems to understand quite a bit about the job of a security guard. At the beginning of Night 4, the phone call ends with Phone Guy being attacked and presumably killed by the animatronics. PHONE GUY: “Uh, I—I always wondered what was in all those empty heads. Back there. You know.”
[Circus music and animatronic breathing] PHONE GUY: “Oh no.”
[Door banging and jumpscare sound into static] But in the final Night 5 phone call, you aren’t met with Phone Guy. Instead, you’re met with a garbled robotic voice. [Unintelligible robotic voice] When reversed and cleaned up, it is widely believed to be a reading of an excerpt from the book “Autobiography of a Yogi.” This recording famously inspired the fangame name, “The Joy of Creation.” But like I said, there’s more to this game’s story than just the phone calls. Secrets and hidden lore reveals that you could play through the entire game and never see. There’s the creepy but not necessarily lore-important hidden cams like Bonnie’s rare Backstage camera and rare death screens, the poster in the West Hall Corner changing to Freddy ripping his own head off, and the animatronics and Freddy alone on stage staring at the camera, and the Backstage animatronics staring at the camera. And here’s where we get into the real shit, the stuff that turned this game to the next level. In the East Hall Corner camera, the Rules poster will change to one of four secret newspaper clippings, detailing the disappearance of five children. Lured into a back room by a mysterious man dressed in one of the Fazbear costumes, the five children were never seen again. Meanwhile, the restaurant is facing shutdown after multiple complaints that the animatronics smelled terrible and were leaking what appeared to be blood and mucus. It includes some unsettling quotes like, “The characters will live on in the hearts of the kids,” and, “One parent likened them to reanimated corpses.” I think you can see what’s happening here. Phone Guy’s phony—haha—story about the animatronics stuffing you into suits because they don’t recognize you as an animatronic seems like a complete lie. The general consensus is that after the kids were murdered, they were shoved into the animatronic suits to hide their bodies, where they’re left to decompose. The ghosts of the children now haunt the animatronics, and their own way of being stuffed into the suits is likely what inspired them to stuff you into a suit. And there are more secrets that tie into this story. Posters in the East Hall cam will sometimes change to drawings of crying children, a soon to be recurring theme in this series. Now, I think you can see why the breathy voice, jumpscare sounds, ghostly ambience, and other pieces I mentioned tie in thematically. And then there’s Golden Freddy. [Child’s laughter] In the West Hall Corner camera, rarely, the poster will change to an image of a golden version of Freddy’s face. Golden Freddy will appear sitting in your office, along with glitching faces of animatronics, a little girl’s laugh—which happens to be an unedited version of Freddy’s laugh— —a robotic voice, and the words “it’s me.” If you stare at it for too long without opening your camera, it will jumpscare you with a deeper version of the jumpscare sound, and crash the game. Later, after false rumors that setting the Custom Night difficulty to 1987 unlocked a secret ending, Scott Cawthon added a game-crashing Golden Freddy jumpscare if you tried to play the game on that setting. There’s other examples of easter eggs related to this Golden Freddy “it’s me” message too. After you view the newspaper clipping easter egg, it triggers another change in the East Hall camera, where the term “it’s me” is plastered on the wall. When Foxy leaves his Cove to run after you, sometimes his out-of-order sign will have the message “it’s me” on it. And sometimes, outside of Golden Freddy, the glitchy “it’s me” hallucination animatronic faces will appear randomly. Exactly what “it’s me” means is still hotly debated, and many believe it applies differently throughout the games. Also:
[Honk] [Electronic hum and low ambience] There is no doubt in my mind, and there shouldn’t be in yours either, that the reason “Five Nights at Freddy’s” became so successful was because of how much it blew up in the let’s-play scene. The first let’s-play was released before the game even was, and I’m not just talking about Scott Cawthon’s gameplay video. The channel Ben the Scoopist got a copy early because he had played some of Scott’s previous games, and uploaded his let’s-play on July 26th. Like I said earlier, I have an interview with him coming up at the end, but for now, let’s talk about the video that I think we all know blew the game up. Markiplier, as prompted by fellow let’s-player Yamimash and his whole community, made the most famous “Five Nights at Freddy’s” video of all time. “Warning: Scariest Game in Years; Five Nights at Freddy’s Part 1.” I could literally quote this video by heart. MARKIPLIER AND SAGAN: “Hello everybody, my name is Markiplier,” MARKIPLIER AND SAGAN: “and welcome to let’s play ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s,’” MARKIPLIER AND SAGAN: “an indie horror game that you guys suggested en masse.” MARKIPLIER AND SAGAN: “And I saw that Yamimash played, and he said it was really, really good,” MARKIPLIER AND SAGAN: “so I’m very eager to see what is up, and that is a terrifying animatronic bear—” Now sitting at almost 87 million views, this video shot the game, and in some ways Markiplier, into absurd stardom. With the game’s popularity and mysterious nature, it opened the Pandora’s box of the theory community. From theories that kind of called it all the way back then, to theories that literally don’t make any sense, to outright hoaxes. Compared to the other games in this series, the hoaxes are few and far between, but they’re definitely the most iconic. If you want a really comprehensive look at all the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” hoaxes, check out Gomotion’s video. The fake Sparky the Dog image, which purported to be an easter egg with a new animatronic. There was also the Custom Night rumors: “1987 unlocked a secret ending,” which Scott ended up making kind of true, or “666 makes the Kitchen camera visible.” Now, let’s get into the meat of it. There were so many theories that are just so wild and are now infamous. “Foxy is a good guy” theory, which posited that because Foxy doesn’t jump at you, instead just peeks in through the door, he’s actually just checking up on you, but the night guard just has a heart attack. Somehow, I don’t think that was Scott’s intention. There was also the “Freddy is a girl” theory— YOUNG SAGAN: “‘Laugh underscore giggle underscore girl one.’ GIRL.” Let’s not get into that. And then there was the idea that Chica had Phone Guy’s body inside of her because of the teeth you see, although that was debunked relatively quickly because all of them have the endoskeleton teeth. And of course, the Game Theory video. This is another example of something that boosted the game’s popularity and the creator’s popularity. Now, I remember actually thinking that this could have been real, because let’s be honest, there wasn’t a lot going for the game theory-wise, at the time at least. But I think it’s becoming increasingly clear that “Five Nights at Freddy’s” being based on a real-life mass murder at a Chuck E. Cheese in 1993 was…very incorrect. Then there were some theories that actually sort of made sense at the time, and were pretty widely accepted. Freddy having handprints on his head, Phone Guy being Golden Freddy, Phone Guy being the killer, Golden Freddy being the killer, or the player being the killer. And then there was the rabbit hole of the Bite of ‘87. What was the Bite of ‘87? Who did it? And weirdly enough, it was even up for debate whether or not it took place in 1987. Some people thought Foxy, with his wide jaw— —which some people thought was broken—and sharp teeth did it. Some thought that the handprints on Freddy’s face meant a child got close enough to his mouth for Freddy to have done it. Did Golden Freddy do it? Kinda, actually. There was even a theory that I didn’t even remember existed until I was looking at some old “Five Nights at Freddy’s” subreddit posts that because the animatronics don’t look like they’re from the 90’s and the technology is too advanced, that the game actually takes place in the future, and it was the Bite of 2087. It seems like it was a pretty big joke at the time, but I don’t really see anybody talking about or joking about it anymore. Outside of the YouTube sphere, the Steam community and subreddit were thriving at this time. And Scott Cawthon himself even interacted with people inside the Steam community and the subreddit. Now I wasn’t really a big Steam community user, so I just want to talk about the subreddit a little bit. I found some gems while looking back. Here’s some early cosplay of the characters, a very dated meme, and just some very nice community interaction. All of these posts are before the second game even came out. But now, I want to get to the posts on the first day that the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” subreddit was created. Here we have a gif with the caption “nope.” To me, this encapsulated the entirety of the vibe around the first game at the time, literally blasted me back. And, the first post on the subreddit: a link to Markiplier’s first video. Very fitting. Also before we move on, I want to bring up the songs, or specifically the “Five Nights at Freddy’s 1” Living Tombstone song. Cheesy, stupid, and amazing. This song literally supersonic shoots me back to that time, and it’s synonymous with the game at this point. Just listen to it again if you haven’t in a while; trust me, it’s worth it. Oh, and also the weird creepypasta Bite of ‘87 fan audio, which I never really understood. [Electronic hum and low ambience] Like many, I was introduced to the game through Markiplier’s let’s-play video. I had been watching him for a while, and he was the reason I started YouTube in the first place. And, I had no idea what it was going to do with my life. It started as a “Roblox” let’s-play video, but it ended up starting my whole sub-genre of videos I do analyzing things. “‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’ Unmasked” eventually turned into “The Creepypasta Files,” which turned into the “Creepy Files,” which is basically where we are now. I won’t deny though, there was a little less quality control back then. YOUNG SAGAN: “It is possible Freddy Fazbear is haunted by a female spirit, right?” [Electronic hum and low ambience] Now with these deep dive videos, I want to rank all of the games. And normally I would go into a little bit more detail into why I put each one where, but I mean, this is the first game, of course it’s going to be S-tier, it’s “Five Nights at Freddy’s.” [Electronic hum and low ambience] All right, the thing you’ve all been waiting for: the interview with Ben the Scoopist, the person to make a “Five Nights at Freddy’s” let’s-play before anybody else. But before we get into the questions, I want to quickly go over the story that he shared with me before he answered the questions. “It’s actually kind of a funny story of why I had any success with the game in the first place.” “I’d done a series of Scott’s previous game, ‘The Desolate Hope.’” “During this playthrough he was commenting on my videos,” “offering some advice, and just in general hanging out.” “So when his next game came out, ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s,’” “he gave me a full copy of it as, I believe, part-promotion and part-thank you.” “Now the game took off pretty quickly after that,” “with some much larger let’s-players getting a hold of it,” “Markiplier being the biggest I believe.” “But they all just had the demo, which was the first two nights only.” “Cue up my little channel with the next couple nights,” “so from my perspective, everyone came over and watched my stuff.” “Easily the most exciting time in my humble little channel’s history.” Pretty crazy. Let’s move on to the questions. How did you discover Scott Cawthon’s games? “I was first introduced to Scott’s games for the Steam release of ‘The Desolate Hope,’” “a game which has one of the most over-the-top,” “high-energy combat screens I’ve ever experienced.” “That the game was made by one person is incredible.” “It was fun, it had beautiful artwork, and a very unique storytelling with a lot of varied gameplay.” “He made the first ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’ after, and the rest is history.” Have you stayed up-to-date on the FNaF games? “I’ve not stayed very up-to-date” “because the games are almost the embodiment of pure stress for me.” “I believe I played up to Night 4 on the first game and Night 2 on the second.” “After that, I largely tuned the series out,” “although I did watch a few videos analyzing the incredibly deep easter eggs in the first few games.” “Just looking it up now, I actually had no idea he made a game past FNaF 4;” “clearly, I missed a great deal.” How has the game affected your channel? “I feel like the best way to represent what the game did to my channel” “is to simply show a lifetime graph of my views.” “The enormous peak is largely just two days when the game kicked off.” “It gave me a lot of subscribers,” “and definitely made me feel like being a let’s-player is something I could seriously pursue.” “Clearly I could never replicate that success,” “but it was my five minutes fame, and I really appreciate what it did for me.” What are you up to now? “I’m currently working hard at becoming a game developer myself.” “I graduated from a game programming course in the spring,” “and have been working on my portfolio and applying to whatever positions come up.” “In regards to my channel, I have largely given up on any idea of being successful,” “but I still come out with stuff occasionally, mostly just some casual streams.” “I’ve tried to set and follow a schedule, but it never seems to last very long.” “As a guy in my 30’s, I find it really hard to find the time.” I want to give the sincerest thanks to Ben the Scoopist for answering my questions. You know, for somebody who’s so important to the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” sort of history, I’m surprised at how little followers he has. So here is his stuff, please go follow him. On September 14th, 2014, less than two months after the first game’s release, an image showed up on Scott Cawthon’s website, ScottGames.com. “The Grand Reopening. ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s 2.’ 2015.” [Low music] [Electronic hum] [Audio static] [Electronic hum] Welcome back. Today, thanks to the amazing support of the last one of these videos, we’re doing a retrospective on “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2.” Let’s get started. [Electronic hum and low ambience] Now unlike the first game, which was relatively unknown and made by a relatively unknown developer at the time of release, this game was a hype machine, people dubbing it the scariest game ever. MARKIPLIER: “You guys were practically begging me to play this again,” MARKIPLIER: “and I’m glad you agree” MARKIPLIER: “that this is probably one of the scariest games I have ever played.” And so when that first teaser showed up on ScottGames.com, all hell broke loose. In total there were five teasers for this game, and let’s look at them individually. With the file name “FNaF 2,” it couldn’t be more clear: there was a second game. With the reveal of what I think is the best iteration of Freddy, the community was released into a frenzy. Another thing to note about this is the 2015 release date. That was…inaccurate. Here, we have the reveal of Toy Bonnie and Withered Bonnie. This began the real theorizing. Why are there new animatronics? Who brought them back? Another thing to note is the names “Toy” and “Withered” were not used at this point. From my memory, the new animatronics were called the “2.0 Animatronics;” Bonnie 2.0, Foxy 2.0. Speaking of Foxy, another character reveal: The Mangle, at this point known as either “Foxy 2.0” or…“Miss Foxy.” And so began the “Mangle’s gender” debate; dear god. Here we have the first hint at gameplay in one of these teasers. And even though the main thing everyone was talking about was the mask, this is also the reveal of the flashlight mechanic. And so began the tradition of, “Bro, increase the brightness and contrast on the image!!” And it was also the reveal of one of the most pivotal characters in the entire franchise: The Puppet. And then, there was the trailer. Opening with a chorus of children singing “London Bridge” and a reveal of Withered Bonnie, to the voice of a Phone Guy who, for all intents and purposes, at that point, had been killed in the last game. And for those who, know he was. Every aspect of this trailer was combed through for theories, from the singing actually being reversed message of “might kill all,” to the drawings on the walls, to Foxy’s jumpscare at the end being the words “freedom.” Almost all of these theories were false, except for one concerning the Phone Guy call, which we’ll get into later. Aside from the theories, this is just an excellent, you know, example of how Scott Cawthon uses his 3D modeling experience to create a really good trailer. The lighting, the music, the pacing; everyone was ready for the second installment, even if they would have to wait until next year. But luckily for them, they wouldn’t have to wait that long, because on November 11th, 2014, the second game was released, completely ahead of the original 2015 release date. [Electronic hum and low ambience] So, the gameplay. Where “Five Nights at Freddy’s 1” was built almost exclusively on using the two doors, there was a lot more to keep track of in “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2.” And that’s even aside from the fact that there is literally twice the characters. First off, there’s no doors, nothing to close them out. So instead, you use two new options: putting on the Freddy Fazbear mask to fool the animatronic facial scanners, or the flashlight to disorient or reset the animatronics. So, let’s start with the gameplay loop. In general, you’ll be going through a sequence of four, especially in the later nights. Wind up the music box to keep The Puppet at bay, drop the mask to trick any animatronic near you or in your office, check the hallway and the vent lights, and repeat. It’s a fairly simple gameplay loop, but I think it’s the best in the whole series. Every piece has a purpose, from the light, to the mask, to the camera, and you need to use them quickly and expertly to actually survive. Now, a lot of people have a problem with this game’s, uh, gameplay, because it’s a lot more RNG-based, and I understand that. The skill cap and the random chance that’s thrown into it makes it a lot less accessible and way harder in later nights. I think this is the reason in the “FNaF World” trailer classified the second game as “panic.” It’s harder, it’s faster, and it’s way more random. But let’s talk about the pieces that actually make the gameplay loop work, the characters: for me, there’s two types. There’s vent and hallway characters, and then there’s special characters. These characters include Withered Bonnie, Withered Chica, Withered Freddy, and all the Toys. These characters move through the cameras, getting closer in either your left or right vent or hallway, and then come into your office, either standing in your office for a moment or just jumpscaring you outright. When they appear, either right outside your office or in your office, you use the mask to fend them off. If you’re not fast enough, then too bad. While they differ slightly in animation, like Toy Bonnie, in general these characters act very similarly, just coming from different paths. These characters include The Marionette, Balloon Boy, Withered Foxy, The Mangle, and Golden Freddy. The Marionette, aka The Puppet, a soon to be very important character in the series, hides inside this present box in Camera 11. There’s a button that you must hold down to keep a music box wound up. If it runs out, The Puppet begins its own little chime, and then jumpscares you a few seconds later. You can keep track of the box with this timer circle, or by the blinking warning indicator. Withered Foxy is not fooled by the mask. He’ll appear in the hallway, and you have to flash the light on him to reset him. Balloon Boy moves through the vent, and is fooled by the mask just like the others. However, he doesn’t jumpscare you. When he gets into your office, he disables your light, making him a great, or I suppose terrible, combo with Withered Foxy. There is no way to get rid of him, so make sure you don’t let him in. The Mangle works interestingly because she has many different mechanics. If you see him in the hallway, you use your flashlight, like Foxy. If you see her in the vents, use the mask. And finally, there’s the screen where he’s on the ceiling. Here it’s just up to luck because she can jumpscare you at any point, so like Balloon Boy, it’s best to just keep him out of the office. And Golden Freddy. Unlike in FNaF 1, Golden Freddy isn’t just an easter egg, although there are plenty of those in this game. In this game, Golden Freddy even has a setting in Custom Night. He doesn’t appear until Night 6 or Custom Night, and his gameplay is pretty simple. If you see him either lying in your office or his ghostly head in the hallway, put on your mask right away until he disappears. Despite being a lot more complex than the first game and a lot more RNG-based, to me, I think it’s the most effective and best one in the whole series. Everything just feels snappy, and all of the mechanics have a purpose. [Electronic hum and low ambience] [Labored breathing] The audio in FNAF 2 is probably the most iconic part about it. From the jumpscare, to the ambience, to the buzzing that plays when an animatronic enters your office, to the horror sting that plays whenever something is in your hallway. [Cat meowing] [Hallway animatronic stinger] Now much like the first game, there are a lot of audio cues that are important to the actual gameplay. But unlike the first game, there aren’t as many red herrings or fake-out audio pieces. Everything in the second game is connected directly to gameplay. For instance, whenever an animatronic is in your hallway or is getting close, that little horror music loop plays. [Hallway animatronic stinger] In early game, it’s a great way to keep track of where the animatronics are in relation to you, or if they’ve moved up; however, in later nights the sound is pretty much going on continuously. Mangle, Balloon Boy, and The Marionette all have sounds tied directly to them. Whenever time is run out, The Marionette plays music letting you know that the music box is over, and you only have a few more seconds before you get jumpscared. Mangle’s distorted radio sound does act as an interesting uniqueness to the character, but it also gives you an auditory cue as to what character they’re in and when they enter your office. Balloon Boy’s classic “Hello, hi” tells you when he’s moved closer, and you definitely know when he’s in your office. [Child’s laughter] And the other characters, like the first game, have quiet footsteps and rustling sounds in the vents that give you a general idea of where they are or if they’ve just moved. And on that buzzing I mentioned earlier: while the giant animatronic standing right in front of you should be enough to get your attention, it also is accompanied by a sort of creepy ambience to drive that point home. Again, the audio is all tied to some gameplay aspect. And we can’t forget the jumpscare: completely different from the first game, and it sounds a lot more human. [Terrified yell] Now, unlike the first game’s jumpscare sound, there’s not a lot to note here; that I know of, at least, besides the center of the whole “freedom” theory I discussed earlier. It’s effective and serves its purpose, but that’s about it. Okay, let’s talk about the ambience for a second. Because it doesn’t have as many weird red herrings, it feels a lot less dense and a lot less deep, also. It sounds less droney, and is a little bit quieter. To me, it seems a little more grounded, it sounds like actual office ambience, like a loud air conditioner or some plumbing in the background. It’s a lot more high-pitched. [White noise ambience] While FNaF 1’s ambience felt like a fear fest, FNaF 2, because there’s so much more going on, it would make sense that it would offset that by, when things aren’t going on, having a lot calmer and quieter ambience. It’s still creepy, just less packed. [Electronic hum and low ambience] Now, compared to the first game, I think this game just looks a lot less scary. That doesn’t mean the game isn’t scary, but it just means it packs a lot less of a punch. So instead, I just want to talk about some standout sequences and some cool designs. Your office feels a lot less claustrophobic in this game. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s less scary. I mentioned in the first game that the doors feel very protective, they feel like a good line of defense. However, despite looking more high-tech than the first game, the flimsy flashlight and mask do not make you feel safe at all. Instead, you feel completely exposed the entire time, which makes it really scary. The fear of the second game feels less like being stuck in a small space, and more like the fear of being in the middle of the ocean with nothing around. At any moment, something can come for you from the depths. The characters in this game are just not scary, to me at least. They still capture that uncanny valley feeling, but they just don’t creep me out as much. The Toys, while still definitely feeling very off, still feel like their namesake: toys. I will say though, Toy Bonnie sliding across the screen you put your mask on is really creepy. And then there’s the Withereds and Mangle; now instead of feeling too sleek or clean, they feel too destroyed. I know a lot of people were really scared by Withered Bonnie, but he felt like he was just trying too hard to me. I still think the designs are cool— —I think Withered Freddy is my favorite iteration of Freddy, and Withered Bonnie is pretty badass— —but they’re just a little too over-the-top for me to find them scary. With one exception: Withered Chica. I don’t know why, I don’t know what it is, but Withered Chica is fucking terrifying to me. Literally probably the scariest animatronic in the whole series, for me at least. She’s reminiscent of a fucked-up scarecrow, and is legitimately scary to me after all these years. The missing hands, unhinged jaw, and terrifying eyes; it’s amazing. The renders in this game are actually really interesting because they’re a lot more packed, with different characters showing up in the same room a lot more. But aside from some cool imagery, there’s not a lot there. Unlike in FNaF 1, where it was very difficult to make out who was where, as long as you use the flashlight and the camera, it’s pretty easy to keep track of everyone. Not that you’ll be doing much of that in later nights, instead just using the camera to wind up the music box. [Electronic hum and low ambience] Holy Mary mother of God. This is when the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” story and secrets went off the deep end. But before we get into that, let’s talk about some less-important easter eggs and secrets, starting with some hidden characters. Very rarely, you can see this bare endoskeleton either in the Prize Corner or in your vent. He can’t actually attack you, but apparently he can block other characters from entering the vent, meaning he’s actually an asset to the player. Exactly his lore relevance or meaning is not entirely known, and it’s possible he’s just a fun easter egg. There’s also a couple hallucination characters: Shadow Freddy and Shadow Bonnie. Shadow Freddy rarely appears in the Parts and Service room, and will crash your game if you look at him for too long. I also want to point out that I believe I was one of the first people on YouTube to have encountered this, uploading my video with the encounter literally one day after the game’s release. Shadow Bonnie, later known as “RWQFSFASXC,” will appear in the office at times, and I believe it will crash your game as well, but I’m not 100% sure. And then there’s the more minor easter eggs: the Puppet hallucination in the hall, and the paper plate doll from Party Room 4 disappearing and then reappearing in your office. Oh, and JJ. I don’t know what’s up with her, she’s down there. There’s also the rare death screens and opening screens much like the first game, with just sort of dark, eyeless versions of the characters. And then, in between nights, you get this sort of cutscene where you’re from Freddy’s perspective looking back and forth. First it’s the other animatronics looking at you, then Golden Freddy, then The Puppet. Again, I’m not gonna get super deep into the lore relevance of this, but I have to say, when you first boot up that game, it was shocking. But let’s talk about the part you’ve all been waiting for: the death mini-games. Now, this sort of Atari mini-game-style storytelling has basically become inseparable from FNaF at this point, but at the time, we had never seen anything of the sort. So when you died and this happened, it was mind-blowing. Rarely after dying, instead of being taken back to the menu, you will be transported into an Atari-style mini-game. Each mini-game reveals some aspect of the lore and introduces the all-important Purple Guy. Now, exactly how all of these fit into the lore in modern FNaF is not entirely clear, so I’m going to be taking them at face value as they appeared at the time. In this game, you play as Freddy, giving cake to various children at a party. The children get more angry the longer they’ve gone without cake, so it’s sort of a simplified restaurant game. However, the important part is what’s happening outside of the restaurant: a child stands outside crying. After a while a car pulls up, and the Purple Man steps out, and seemingly kills the child and drives away. While all of this is happening, Freddy is getting slower, and a creepy voice spells out the words “save him.” Finally, the game ends with The Marionette jumpscaring the player. In this game, you play as Foxy, running from Pirate’s Cove into a room of children who all celebrate your arrival. The third time you do this, you can see the Purple Man smiling in the corner, and when you reach the room of children, they’re all dead. The game ends with Withered Foxy’s jumpscare. Here, you play as The Marionette. You give out gifts to four dead children’s bodies, and then you give them life by putting animatronic heads on them. A creepy voice reads out the text, “help them,” and when you finish giving the animatronics heads, Golden Freddy jumpscares the camera and the game ends. However, there is one thing to note: on the last frame before Golden Freddy attacks, you can see a fifth child appear in the middle of the room. Here is where things get a little crazier. In this final mini-game, the player, as Freddy, follows The Marionette around the pizzeria with dead bodies lying in different rooms. Again, a voice spells out “save them.” There are a couple of different ways for this to end, by either following The Marionette, wandering off, or touching the dead bodies. Rarely, there is a chance you will encounter the Purple Man, who attacks Freddy and shuts off the game, but not before the words “you can’t” appear. There is an absurd amount to unpack here, and I’m not going to get into it until we get to the more theory section of this video, but let’s just say this. The death mini-games were so insane, so packed with speculation and uncertainty that with such a minimalist style, it’s legitimately impressive how Scott Cawthon was able to tell such a dense story. [Electronic hum and low ambience] Like I brought up in the beginning when going over the teasers, there was an absurd amount of hype around this game at the time. The teasers just had a way of getting into people’s minds, and this is also when the theory-crafting section of YouTube really started exploding. 8-BitGaming, Dawko, Smike all started making videos about “Five Nights at Freddy’s” around this time. And although this side of the community did exist before “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2,” this is when it exploded. And this is when Game Theory started making theories that made any sort of sense. But before we get into that, I just want to highlight some community stuff from back then. The song that recently had a meme resurgence, “It’s Been So Long,” is a legitimate banger, like that instrumental break is fucking amazing. This is also the time where more FNaF fan music began to pop up. This is also when fangames began to be made, with “Five Nights at Treasure Island”— —which is still the most scared I’ve ever been playing a game— —and “One Night at Flumpty’s” and “One Night at Flumpty’s 2.” And then of course, there was Vincent; oh dear god. Also my introduction to the animator DietStab, who now does entirely different stuff. But back then, that “I Can’t Decide” FNaF Purple Guy animation slapped for my tiny baby brain. Also, while it may have been released a tad bit after FNaF 3 released, I think Piemation’s “5AM at Freddy’s: The Prequel” deserves a spot here. Alright, the theories. Now, it would be impossible to go over all of them, so instead we’re just going to talk about some surrounding the death mini-games and where the lore was at the time. First off, less a theory and more a confirmed fact at this point: the game is actually a prequel, not a sequel, timeline-wise. We can tell for a variety of reasons, the biggest being the fact that your paycheck gives you the date 1987, a year referred to in the past tense in FNaF 1 with the Bite of ‘87. There’s also the reference of this new-and-improved restaurant actually being a remake of a place called Fredbear’s Family Diner, which would become a very important name later in the series, but for now just meant that there was at least one location before FNaF 2. And at the end of Night 6, you’re told via newspaper that the Withered animatronics are going to be repurposed in a new restaurant, presumably the FNaF 1 restaurant. Now in general, the accepted theory was that the Purple Man killed one child first, as seen in the “Take Cake to the Children” mini-game. This child then became The Puppet, and then the Purple Man strikes again. The Puppet brings the children to life by having them possess the animatronics. And that’s about where the agreement left off, so let’s get into this shit. MARKIPLIER: “Purple Guy—!” The introduction of a new human character was pretty big, let alone someone this iconic, so theories abound. Was there two Purple Guys, considering their two different sprites? Last time I checked, this one is still up for debate. Popularized by MatPat’s video, was the Phone Guy Purple Guy? Was the night guard from FNaF 1 Purple Guy? Was it the day shift night guard that’s referenced by the Phone Guy? And don’t get me started on what the Purple Guy is holding: a taser, a phone? I’m gonna be honest, I always thought it was just his big funny hand. I mean his security badge is a different color, why wouldn’t what he’s holding be too? I don't know. MARKIPLIER: “Was that the Bite of ‘87?!” That’s right, we’re back. There were plenty of possible culprits put forth. Was it The Mangle, who jumpscares from above right at your frontal lobe area? Was it Withered Foxy, was it the Shadow animatronics? Some believe that the victim was the night guard that we play as, and the canon ending of the game is getting killed by Mangle because we’re the Bite victim. Or that the day shift party we’re supposed to go to is where we get bit. Others thought it was the day shift guard, whose position becomes mysteriously available, or maybe it’s the Phone Guy. Wait what? The Shadow animatronics are often overlooked with the advent of The Puppet and the Purple Guy, but they remain one of the most mysterious additions to the game. From lost souls to manifestations of the Purple Man to just hallucinations, because of how mysterious they are and continue to be, the theories are rather limited, especially back then. I mean hell, I thought Shadow Freddy was just Golden Freddy when I first saw it. And then there was a theory that the Living Tombstone song was secretly canon and that they had partnered with Scott Cawthon, which was just not even a little bit true. All right, in the last video I made, I had a whole dedicated section to my experience, but it felt kind of redundant, so I’m just going to go over how I fit into the community at the time at the end of the community section. Now my theories about the game weren’t exactly the most popular thing in the world, but it was really interesting to get feedback from a community, which I had never experienced before. And the views I was getting were unlike anything I had ever got before. My FNaF 2 let’s-plays never blew up, but I had a fantastic time making them. And like I said earlier, I’m pretty sure I was one of the first people to encounter Shadow Freddy on YouTube. [Electronic hum and low ambience] All right, so where does this game go on the tier list? I’m gonna have to go S-tier. The first game goes up there just because it’s so iconic, I mean it’s “Five Nights at Freddy’s 1.” But the second game goes there because I legitimately think it’s the best “Five Nights at Freddy’s” game. Every aspect of the gameplay is used, it kicked off a way of storytelling that was insane at the time and still is, and it also introduced characters that are going to be important to the series forever. In my opinion, it’s the quintessential “Five Nights at Freddy’s” game. I’m sure some people would put it lower because again, the sort of learning curve and the RNG that is introduced into it is pretty tough, but to me, I think it’s the best game. [Carousel music] After FNaF 2’s release, Scott Cawthon’s website was updated to “offline.” And then, “I am still here.” [Electronic hum] [TV static] [Eerie music box song] [Distant thunder] [Glitched game audio] [Electronic hum] Welcome back. First off, wow. Just wow. The amount of support I’ve had on these “Five Nights at Freddy’s” retrospective videos is more than I could ever ask for, so thank you so much. All right, “Five Nights at Freddy’s 3;” let’s get into it. Now, others have pointed out in the past, “Five Nights at Freddy’s 3” was when the game hit its peak in hype. MARKIPLIER: “Hello everybody, my name is Markiplier,” MARKIPLIER: “and welcome to ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s 3.’” MARKIPLIER: “This might be the most hype game in the history of gaming.” The thrilling conclusion, a new animatronic, so many unknowns. So, let’s start by looking at the teasers and the trailer. [Electronic hum and low ambience] I mentioned in the last video that Scott’s website turned “offline” after the release of “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2.” Well, there was a little something more than that. Yet again, we’re back to “brighten the image.” “Until next time.” Well, that time came pretty soon after. Filename “fnaf3,” “I am still here,” and the reveal of a new character. There were people who thought this was Golden Freddy, but it would prove to be yet another new character, someone who would be arguably the most important character in the entire series. Also, if you brighten it, there’s a three in the corner, just in case you couldn’t tell. “Whatcanweuse;” again, just in case you couldn’t tell. Here we have a bit of a reveal: this is actually a sequel, not a prequel. The old animatronics are scrapped, forgotten, destroyed. And then, when the image is brightened, a little more of our new character. If I remember correctly, this was around the time people started calling the character “Salvage” or “Amalgamation,” because it was believed to be a combination of different parts. Now there’s a quote I recognize; an iconic line that would permeate the series forever. The purple text obviously alludes to Purple Guy, and is pretty much a dead giveaway as to who this new character truly was, but we’ll save that for later. Here, we have a reveal of the camera map we’d see in the game. And if you brighten the image, we can see a new system, what would later be revealed to be the vent system. Another thing to note: if you flip the map upside down, you can see it’s very reminiscent of Scott Cawthon’s icon; just a funny little thing. “Guess who?” Balloon Boy had already been established as a hated character; not actually hated, just more of a meme because of his annoying laugh and the role in gameplay. And that caused this mix of shock and panic at the fact that he may reappear, especially in this nightmarish appearance. Well no, not that yet. When the image is brightened, you can see the number 10. Exactly what this means is still unclear, but theories range from there being ten nights, to ten characters, to a release date. Again, I still don’t think we know what this means. And, the Phantoms. While technically Phantom BB was the first reveal, here we have a hint at their incorporation: “all in your mind.” And then there was the trailer. There was so much surrounding this. From the little things like Bonnie looking at the camera, to the iconic line: “He will come back.” There’s even a scene that, while creepy now, would actually have some crazy lore relevance. But then, there’s the jumpscare. [Jumpscare sound] I think this is around the time people started making the “Springtrap is a good guy” theory ‘cause he just sort of walks at you instead of jumping right at the camera. Oh, did I say Springtrap? The name reveal for this character is wild. On his Steam community page, Scott Cawthon made a seemingly innocuous post about early beta testing of the game. However, certain letters were doubled up. Selecting these letters and putting them together creates the message, “My name is Springtrap.” Why this was his name was not exactly clear yet, and people still thought that he was an amalgamation between Bonnie and Golden Freddy. I mean, I guess they were half right. And then, the game was released. [Low ambience] [“Trololo” song]
Aw, fuck. Another fun way Scott Cawthon built hype was by completely trolling the community. Early on in the hype of “Five Nights at Freddy’s 3” in February, Scott Cawthon made a Steam Greenlight post saying that the game was going to be released early because someone had hacked him and released the game on Game Jolt. Downloading the game however, after this creepy menu screen, would lead you directly into a simple reskin of an old Scott Cawthon game, “There Is No Pause Button,” which is where Scott got his profile picture, with a Freddy head on. In the background, that classic Troll song would play, but that ended up getting changed due to copyright reasons. There was some stuff of actual note in this game, however. For instance, some actual game files were found in the decompile, and a strange number easter egg that many believe is connected to the Balloon Boy 10 teaser in some way. Also of note, the menu music for this game is the actual menu music for the final game, but just slowed down. But then, on March 2nd, 2015, “Five Nights at Freddy’s 3” was released. [Electronic hum and low ambience] This one was really different from the other games, I mean really different. In one way, I like the concept of this game better than 1 and 2. But on the other hand, it’s the only one of the main four and “Sister Location” that I have yet to beat. Seriously, I have no idea what it is that I’m getting wrong, but I can’t seem to figure it out. Plus, it’s not as engaging as the first two, so I lose motivation pretty fast. But, let’s just get into it. First, there’s only one animatronic: Springtrap. The Phantoms-slash-Hallucinations do act as a part of the gameplay, but there’s only one character that can kill you, and that’s Springtrap. The first night, Springtrap isn’t even in the building yet according to the lore, so instead you just get accustomed to the office. Starting Night 2, Springtrap is released into the office, and it can come at you through the vents or from a door on your left. Now, I would go into a gameplay loop, but it isn’t quite as simple as the last couple games, although among players it is considered easier. In FNaF 1 and 2, the cameras were only used mechanically and not to actually keep track of the animatronics. However, in this game, that’s the most important part. Springtrap moves from camera to camera, either in the vents or around the main building. Once you spot him, you can either use an audio cue to lure him somewhere else in the building, or block off a vent, one vent at a time. There are a couple limbo areas, for instance, standing outside your office or hanging around outside your door. As far as I remember, if Springtrap is standing in front of your window, you still have a little bit of a chance to lure him away. However, if he’s in the doorway, you just sort of have to wait it out, or else you’ll be jumpscared. The Phantoms come in all different shapes and sizes, and all have slightly different mechanics. Phantom Balloon Boy appears randomly in the cameras, and if you don’t move away from the screen quickly enough, he’ll jumpscare you. Now, Phantom jumpscares don’t kill you, instead causing some other havoc, disabling your other systems, but we’ll get into that later. Phantom Foxy appears randomly in your office, and if you turn to look at him, he’ll jumpscare you. Phantom Freddy will appear walking down the hallway in front of you. If you stare at him for too long, he’ll jumpscare you. Phantom Chica is similar to Balloon Boy, but only appears in the arcade machine on Cam 07. Phantom Mangle appears on the cameras as well, but doesn’t jumpscare you. Instead, Mangle plays ear-piercing static and stares at you for a while. Phantom Puppet will appear on Cam 08, and will appear in your office if you stare for too long, blocking you from using your camera and maintenance panel for a short period of time. This is where things started to really change from “Five Nights at Freddy’s” 1 and 2. Like FNaF 2, there’s no doors, so instead you have to use the defense mechanisms I talked about earlier, audio lures and blocking vents. However, all of these systems—the video, the audio, the vents— —have a counterpart in the maintenance panel. Getting jumpscared by a Phantom, or if you use one of these aspects too much, it will stop working and you need to move to the maintenance panel to fix it. This takes precious time away from trying to keep Springtrap at bay, and god help you if multiple systems fail at once. This was also the first introduction to an Extras and Cheats Menu. Beating different aspects of the game unlocked a cheats menu, a gallery, a jumpscares menu; you could play all the different mini-games and an Aggressive Mode. However, there was no Custom Night. Now, on a more personal note, I prefer this idea for gameplay in concept way more than the other ones. Like, actually having to use the camera instead of just flipping it up really quick to wind a music box or check on Foxy. You actually have to keep track of Springtrap. But even though I like it so much, I don’t know why it’s so hard for me, even though it’s supposed to be easier by all accounts. [Electronic hum and low ambience] It’s not easy being green. This game is not afraid to use entirely moldy greens and like, dusty browns. From the stained tile walls to the dilapidated wires and animatronic parts; all of this is intentional, of course, but we’ll get into that. Despite being set 30 years in the future, things are even more jankier and low-tech. Now there’s a reason for that, but we’ll get in that in a second; for now, let’s talk about the cameras, the office, and the characters. The office, much like in “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2,” is a lot less claustrophobic than “Five Nights at Freddy’s 1.” In fact, you have to move all the way to the other side of the office to flip up your maintenance panel from your camera. A window stares right at you, a vent on your right and a door on your left. A box of animatronic parts sits next to your desk, and a Freddy Fazbear suit sits missing parts on a coat rack outside your door. The art, posters, and even plushies on your desk seem somehow even less cute and more uncanny. Despite the rest of the location being lit by bright green stage lights, your office only has a single hanging bulb, keeping you relatively in the dark. The main thing to note, though, is just how wide the office is. Like I said, you have to move all the way from side to side to access the camera and the maintenance panel. It sets up a perfect feeling of hurried tension as you try to fix a broken vent or reset the audio cue in time to save yourself. In my video about “Five Nights at Freddy’s 1,” I talked about how well that game makes you lean in and try and pick apart everything that happens in the camera. Well, it’s very similar in this game, for a couple reasons. Firstly, it’s the main aspect of the game. In later nights of FNaF 1, you don’t need to check if Bonnie is in the camera or Freddy is in the bathroom. It’s more of a mechanical gameplay loop, not utilizing the other cameras except Pirate’s Cove. But in “Five Nights at Freddy’s 3,” you always need to keep track of Springtrap. The other aspect is how much harder it is to see these cameras. Pure darkness and deep shadows, absurd static, and a character who’s the same color as 90% of the map. Actually trying to distinguish Springtrap in the cameras is insanely difficult, which once again means you’ll be putting your face right up to the screen, putting yourself in the perfect position to be scared by a Phantom animatronic. For the Phantoms, I feel very similarly to the characters in the second game: they’re cool, but not scary, they’re trying too hard, except Chica is kinda creepy. Springtrap, on the other hand…wow. You know, because of his more goofy animations in this game, his design doesn’t reach its full potential. He is one of the best slasher-type character designs in video games, maybe even going into movies too. There’s a reason there’s a huge movement to get Springtrap into “Dead by Daylight.” This old, moldy machine with visible viscera and gore of a human that is fused inside of it, it’s amazing. His bloody skull can be seen through the holes in his head and his mouth, destroyed, ripped, and moldy. Unlike the more uncanny animatronics, who seem expressionless, Springtrap radiates too much expression. He seems too alive, like a thinking, breathing creature. Which, as half-corpse and half-robot, he has no right being. And that is why Springtrap is one of the best character designs in the game, and he would eventually make his way up there to be iconic like Freddy and The Puppet. [Electronic hum and low ambience] There isn’t a lot here that I haven’t already said about the other games. Droney, eerie ambience, a stinger that happens when things get a little bit too close, loud and human-like jumpscare sounds. There are a couple things I want to mention about this game in particular though. First, the beep-beep-beep of the breaking ventilation. Paired with the visuals of the blinking red lights, this sound creates pure panic. That’s really just a large part of the game, inducing panic in-between moments of just dread; which is what the “Sister Location” trailer called it. Another thing I want to mention about this game is the glitchiness of the audio. Along with the more janky visual design, which again, is on purpose, the audio sounds…crunchy? I don’t know audio terms. It feels as if the audio itself is glitching, breaking, unstable. This not only adds to the visual feel of decrepitness, but also to the tension behind the broken-down and shoddy electronics you’re armed with. Much like in FNaF 2, your means of defense do not feel at all reliable, making you feel much more vulnerable, further increasing the fear. Also, in the between night mini-games, which we’ll get back to, there’s this really interesting use of 8-bit sounds and then like real-life background ambience. It makes you feel like you’re actually playing one of these arcade games somewhere in an old, abandoned building. Also, the two ending songs are some of the best pieces of game music ever. [Electronic hum and low ambience] I know I say this a lot, but wow. I mean, if you thought “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” is convoluted, you haven’t seen anything yet. Now, I’m not a guide for how to beat all the secret mini-games, and, you know, how to get the good ending. But for now, let’s talk about some of the easier stuff, and then I’ll go over the basics of that sort of thing. So, the premise: first off, it takes place over 30 years after the first game. And much like the first game, the story is revealed through phone calls. However, it isn’t the classic Phone Guy who first calls you. It’s a new character dubbed Phone Dude who has this sort of surfer accent going. He reveals that the location is actually a haunted house attraction based on the rumors surrounding Freddy Fazbear. They’ve been collecting memorabilia and props from the restaurant. However, due to being so faithful to the original restaurants, the technology you’re using— —camera, ventilation—is old and janky. The air vents are unreliable, and the equipment is a real fire hazard. You are doubling as an actual security guard and as part of the attraction, with people walking past and looking into the window to feel like a real Freddy’s restaurant. It hasn’t quite opened yet though, because they’re waiting to find something that really hooks people: an animatronic. They even contemplate having you dress up in, and I’m saying this verbatim, a “furry suit” to jump out and scare people. However, on Night 2:
PHONE DUDE: “We found one. A real one.” And so, Springtrap has been released into the building. Also, replacing the phone calls as nights go on are these vintage training tapes talking about this new Springlock animatronic, narrated by Phone Guy. Springlock animatronics double as both an animatronic and a suit by sort of compressing the animatronic parts out. They operate with springlocks, which keep the animatronic parts out so you can get inside. However, if you were to accidentally trigger one of these, well, you’re dead. Now, you can start to see what happened to Springtrap. They also mention this back room where you’re supposed to bleed out if the springlocks go off while you’re inside. Okay, so the basic premise. You’re a night guard at a horror haunted attraction, and an evil zombie robot is after you. In-between nights, you play these 8-bit mini-games, very similar to the death mini-games in “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2,” which reveal a different story. Each night, you play as a different animatronic in a leaking, abandoned pizzeria that seems to resemble the FNaF 1 location closest. A shadowy animatronic figure leads you to a back room which you can’t enter, and then Purple Guy attacks, taking the animatronics apart. Finally, on Night 5, you play as the crying child, making your way to the back room again. And we see Purple Guy, seemingly afraid of you, and a few other ghost children. You chase him around the room until he gets inside of a Golden Bonnie springlock suit. However, the suit goes off while he’s inside, and boom, he’s dead. And now we know that Springtrap is the Purple Guy. Then we get the…bad ending? Also, at the end of Night 6, we learn via newspaper clipping that Fazbear Fright has burned to the ground. However, Springtrap may have survived the fire. Alright, so I am going to get into how we get the good ending, but first let’s go over some smaller easter eggs. Sometimes this poster will turn into a Spring Bonnie poster, and sometimes you’ll be able to see Shadow Freddy over on your office, but it doesn’t do anything. Sometimes a paper plate doll will appear in your office, and then there’s the classic rare screens of the animatronics, including a mobile-only one. Okay wow, here we go. In the in-between night mini-games, there are these hints that you can find around the map: numbers, symbols. When applied to the game correctly in the actual nights, you can unlock these secret mini-games; clicking hidden cupcakes, pressing on certain buttons on an arcade machine, or, and the most convoluted one, entering a code on your wall tiles as if they were a keypad. MATPAT: “Scott, seriously. Seriously, Scott? Oh look, here’s a wall—” [Crosstalk] Once you enter these mini-games, you can just complete them normally and go back to your night. But that’s not how you get the good ending. Instead, you have to glitch each mini-game, some in the most convoluted ways imaginable, to give cake to some hidden ghost children. Also of note, in these mini-games, we can see a glitchy Shadow Bonnie and a location that is presumably Fredbear’s Family Diner, as referenced in the second game, featuring Golden Freddy and Golden Bonnie, now known as Spring Bonnie. After you’ve done that, you can play the “Happiest Day” mini-game, where you, as a child in a Puppet mask, wander through a pizzeria until you reach one last crying child. All of the other children from the other mini-games join you to give them a birthday cake, and then you can get the regular, not-bad ending. Wow. There are a lot of theories here, and we’ll get into that later, but just for now, the fact that anybody figured these out is insane to me. [Electronic hum and low ambience] At this point, there were a couple different ways to view the game. First, it was the most amazing, scariest game ever made, or there were the people who resented it for being made so quickly and relying mostly on jumpscares, or at least that’s how they saw it. However, the let’s-play scene was at its peak here. Everybody wanted a piece of the action. I mean, with the only game with an actual end, people thought it was going to be the thrilling conclusion to the biggest horror franchise in a long time. All right, I’ve mentioned fan songs on here before. This is when DAGames made his “Five Nights at Freddy’s 3” song, and The Living Tombstone released their only fan song that I didn’t like when it came out. To be fair it has grown on me, but the old SFM models and the chorus turned me into a little “Five Nights at Freddy’s” fan song elitist. Also, Roomie made a “Five Nights at Freddy’s 3” song? What? To be fair, it does kind of slap though. There was the fantastic “2 Evil Eyes” SFM short film. Springtrap really seemed to strike something with people; a serial killer stuck inside of a moldy, disgusting, rusting animatronic. It’s a really great character concept. And there were also a lot of hoaxes or just fanmade leaks in general; the classic SFM Fazbear Mall “Five Nights at Freddy’s 3” trailer, the “Freddyland” teaser, and of course, the hoax screenshots and character reveals. Okay, this was a really interesting time for theories. For all intents and purposes, the main story had been wrapped up at this point. Generally, the consensus on the story was this: Purple Guy, an employee at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, was a serial killer who murdered children at Fazbear Entertainment restaurants. Dressed in a Spring Bonnie costume, he was able to lure children to a back room and kill them. With the help from The Puppet, the first victim, the children haunt the animatronics. The Puppet helps bring them together, giving the Golden Freddy victim the birthday he never got. Years later, after the franchise has closed, the Purple Man, haunted by the children, goes back to the abandoned restaurant to dismantle the animatronics and get rid of the evidence. However, the spirits chase him into this old springlocked suit, which goes off due to the leaking ceiling tampering with the springlocks. Now dead, the spirits are set free. However, Purple Guy’s spirit now haunts the suit, and 30 years later, he’s released into the horror attraction Fazbear’s Fright, which burns down not long after. Throw in a little cliffhanger at the end that he survived, and you’ve got a nice bow on the story. There were still some loose ends, but I feel like this is where “Five Nights at Freddy’s” peaked storywise. There were also some smaller miscellaneous theories. There was the idea that The Mangle wasn’t actually a Phantom, and instead a physical animatronic roaming the facility. Or the idea that the blue jeans, green shirt character was somehow integral to the story, popularized by 8-BitGaming. And the idea that this scene in the trailer is actually the same scene in the mini-game, which, if true, would be very gruesome. But still, there were those loose ends. The Bite of ‘87 still wasn’t solved. Was the Golden Freddy victim the Bite victim, or was he killed by the Purple Man at his birthday party? Who the hell are the Shadow animatronics, or these masks in the “Happiest Day” mini-game? Who started the fire? MatPat’s theory made a lot of attempts to cover these: the endoskeletons belonged to Golden Freddy, The Puppet stuffed the children, not the Purple Guy, Purple Guy used the taser, Phone Guy’s recordings being out of timeline in FNaF 2, the Bite of ‘87 being The Mangle, Jeremy being the Bite victim, Phone Guy is Purple Guy, the rain is what kills him in the Springlock suit, the bad ending is canon, and so many other timeline issues. Honestly, it felt nice having some closure. That wouldn’t last. [Electronic hum and low ambience] Alright, so where does the game go on the tier list? Okay, maybe some people will say this is blasphemy, but judging on the Twitter poll that I put up, I think a lot of you agree with me: I’m putting it in B-tier. Remember when I said people thought it was easy? Well, that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. A lot of people felt, like, a little disappointed. There wasn’t a Custom Night, it felt like it went by a little too fast. And people thought the gameplay was just lackluster, along with the jumpscare. In fact, some people speculate that the reason Scott Cawthon would go on to make a “Five Nights at Freddy’s 4” was because of how poorly that this game did. It’s not that it was terrible, it’s just compared to the other two, it doesn’t quite hold up gameplay-wise. I might have even put it on C-tier if it weren’t for the fact that Springtrap was introduced in it, and the story is really amazing in this game. It’s just gameplay-wise, it’s not great. But I feel like B is a good spot, it’s above-average. After FNaF 3’s release, a new teaser showed up on ScottGames’s website with a top hat. And then, it disappeared. And then:
[Yells] So, there’s “Five Nights at Freddy’s 3.” I have to say, writing this made my head hurt, there’s so much going on— [Distant banging]
Hold on. [Faint high-pitched tone] [Low ambience] [Electronic hum] Welcome back. Today, in our ongoing series looking back at the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” games, we’re at “Five Nights at Freddy’s 4.” The “final” chapter. First, I just want to start off by saying thank you for the amazing support on these videos. It is more than I ever could have imagined, so thank you. I also want to say that the next video is going to be about “FNaF World,” which presents a unique challenge, so it might take a little bit longer than normal to get “FNaF World” out. With that said, let’s start this video about “Five Nights at Freddy’s 4.” [Electronic hum and low ambience] Like I said in my “Five Nights at Freddy’s 3” video, everyone thought the third game was going to be the end to a trilogy, that was the last game. But we know that didn’t turn out to be true. Let’s take a look at the “Five Nights at Freddy’s 4” teasers. “4.jpg.” A terrifying—cartoonishly so— —Freddy Fazbear, a bunch of what would later be known as Freddles crawling all over him. “The Final Chapter: Halloween.” Here we have the “Was it me” teasers. These are probably my favorite pieces of official FNaF art ever. The lighting, the poses, Foxy’s spiking tongue blade, glowing eyes; it’s amazing. The “Was it me” text was interpreted as a lot of different things, but mainly who did the Bite of ‘87. Which one? This was supposed to be a reveal of one of the biggest ongoing mysteries in the franchise, and people got really hyped. Also, it was the name reveal of these new animatronics, the Nightmare animatronics, seen as very lightly visible on the teasers. Then the color purple again, this time not necessarily related to Purple Guy. Who exactly this new purple bow tie belonged to wasn’t entirely agreed upon, which wasn’t helped by the mystery of what the text at the bottom of the screen said when brightened. “Property of [gibberish].” No, yeah, very helpful. However, it was generally believed to say “Fredbear’s Family Diner” or be related to that, or maybe it belonged to Shadow Freddy. Also, there is a smaller light in the corner illuminating a reflection of some sort of jaws, and who these jaws belong to would be revealed in the next teaser. And here we go. Stomach mouth, purple bowtie, black and white body: the reveal of Fredbear. This was confirmed by a secret code in the Inspect Element of the website, a random set of letters that, when taken back one in the alphabet, spelled out “Fredbear.” Also brightened in the corner is the text “or was it me?” Well, you already know, but we didn’t back then. Other hidden text includes something that appears to say “property of me.” There was also the theory that there is a teeny-tiny, itty-bitty crying child or Puppet face, which, looking back on it, makes me realize just how much we were reaching back then. And “terrible things come in small packages;” a tiny Springtrap plush, now known as Plushtrap. And here’s where things begin to get strange. This no longer looked like a pizzeria, it looked like a house. And of course, there were more theories out there about this. 8-BitGaming posited that the window in the back of “Mangle’s Quest” were these same windows. I love 8-BitGaming, but they must have pulled their backs out with some of these reaches. This would also inspire the worst piece of “Five Nights at Freddy’s” fanart ever, not because of lack of talent, but just because the way that it is; if you know, you know. Also, another thing to note really quickly is that in the source code of Scott’s websites and a lot of these points, the numbers eight and seven were hidden all over the place. Obviously, we know what that means now. Then, there was the trailer. “What is it that you think you see?” Flashlight in an empty hallway, clock chimes. “What game do you think you’re playing?” Boom, terrifying. This line right here, “What have you brought home,” was cause for a lot of speculation. Assuming it was a sequel instead of a prequel, people figured that maybe you bought it from the auction at the end of FNaF 3. But who would want these in their house? Maybe you were playing as the son of Purple Guy. Well— This also revealed that there would be more than just one screen, one office; each door had a screen, you could run around the room, and there was even a view of a hallway with Plushtrap. People speculated that this would mean it was similar to the fangame “Five Nights at Wario’s,” where each night you are in a different part of the house. But all of these questions would be answered when, as usual, Scott Cawthon released the game ahead of schedule, July 23rd, 2015. [Electronic hum and low ambience] Now, I know I say this every single time, but “Five Nights at Freddy’s 4” really changed the game gameplay-wise. No longer did you have the power of industrial electronics to fend them off, only a weak flashlight and your creaky doors. Before we get into the gameplay loop, which does change at times, let’s talk about the aspects of the gameplay. [Low ambience] That’s right, movement, the first game to really have any sort of movement. You have a few places you can move to in your room. First, the center of your room. Here is where you can choose what part of your room you want to move to. You can go in front of you, you can swipe down to look behind you, or click on your left or right. Your closet is in front of you, where you can use the light and hold the door closed. On either side of you, you can run up to the doors and look down the hall. You can hold the doors closed here too and use the light. And then, looking behind you, you can see your bed. Your two lines of defense in this game are your flashlight and the doors. Unfortunately for you though, you can’t just press a button to close these doors; you have to actively be there holding them closed yourself, their default state is open. The light works much like FNaF 2, just using Ctrl to shine it. The doors keep the animatronics out, and the light scares them away. Now once again, these things change depending on the night, but mainly this is what you’ll be dealing with. Now, let’s talk about the main characters. The main characters are Bonnie, Chica, Freddy, and Foxy. Bonnie and Chica come to either the left or right door, respectively. If you can catch them in the hallway with your flashlight, you can hold them off for a moment. However, don’t get too overzealous with your light. If they’re too close and you shine it, they’ll jumpscare you. That’s the main way you’ll die in this game. So, how do you tell if they’re close to you? You listen for their breathing. I know, it’s weird that the animatronics have breath, but that’s the mechanic. So, you open the door, listen for breathing. If you hear it, hold the door closed. If you don’t, shine your light to scare them off. They don’t just jumpscare you from the doors, though. If you let them come in, they can kill you too, either Bonnie attacking you in your room, or Chica sending in the cupcake; I don’t know. Freddy works in a very different way. Checking on your bed, these little evil Freddy plushes slowly begin to pile up over time. Shining your light on them scares them away. If too many pile up, Freddy will come out from under your bed and jumpscare you. Honestly, I think there’s a real missed opportunity here for you to actually see Freddy under your bed, but these Freddles are pretty scary anyway. And, Foxy. He moves back and forth around the halls too. However, he doesn’t jumpscare you from the door, and when he gets in, he doesn’t kill you either. Instead, he hides in the closet, which you will be notified of by this little animation. From here, he has a few different phases: first being a plush, and then becoming a monster, until he finally climbs out of your closet. You can check his phase by using the flashlight for a moment, and hold the door closed to make him slowly move back in phases. So despite not having a camera or a maintenance panel to deal with, there’s all these different complementary aspects of gameplay that mean you’ll always be on the move. With that, let’s look at the main gameplay loop. Now, there are many different strategies people use to beat this game. Some of it relies on memorizing exactly what certain sound cues mean, some of it relies on mechanically going back and forth in an exact loop, but all of them use at least a few of the same aspects. Check the doors; Bonnie and Chica are always going to be the most imminent threat, and keeping Foxy at bay by shining the light before he gets in will only make your life easier. In between almost every other action you do, check the bed. While Freddy may be the person you die to the least, if you let him sneak up on you and forget, you’re in for a rude surprise. And check Foxy regularly. Like Freddy, making sure to check on him every few actions is very important. There’s a few things that we haven’t talked about yet. First, “Fun with Plushtrap.” In-between nights, you get a chance to skip two hours in the next night by completing a mini-game. You are sitting at one end of a hall, with a plush version of Springtrap from the third game sitting on a chair. It will only move if you have the lights off. A timer ticks down, and your goal is to stop Plushtrap on this X before the time runs out. Only problem is, if Plushtrap gets too close, you get jumpscared and fail. If the time runs out, you fail. This would seem hard, but thanks to the dedicated community, you can beat it pretty easily by following specific times to use your flashlight that they trial-and-errored. The other time it gets different is on Night 5. You run around from door to door, looking behind you, expecting to see some Freddles or hear some breathing, but there’s nothing. Instead, after a moment, you hear this. [Fredbear’s laughter] And that’s when you know some shit is going down. There is only one animatronic in the house: Fredbear, Golden Freddy. He can appear anywhere: either door, behind you in the bed, in the closet. The only way to keep track of him is using the sounds of his footsteps moving quickly back and forth, or the sound of his laughter. If he laughs, he’s in your room somewhere, on your bed or in your closet. If he’s in the closet, shut the door. If he’s on your bed, shine the light on him. You can check him at the door with the flashlight, but be careful. Looking too long or flashing the light too many times will activate his jumpscare. This use of turning the gameplay upside down completely on the last night creates a sense of panic rarely seen in the other games. MARKIPLIER: “Hey, what the f—!” CORYXKENSHIN: “What the freak?!” I should also mention, much like FNaF 3, there’s an Extras Menu that unlocks cheats, a gallery, and more. The more difficult nights you beat— —Night 5, the Night 6, Nightmare Mode, and the secret 20/20/20 Mode, which we’ll talk about later. We also got some interesting behind-the-scenes stuff, looking at how some of the models were created. Oh, and Night 6. It starts like a normal night except really difficult, but at 4am it changes to a harder version of Night 5, except instead of Nightmare Fredbear, it’s a new character simply known as…Nightmare. [High-pitched tone and heavy breathing] [Electronic hum and low ambience] Visually, this game changed the pace the most out of any game so far. Now, there was a lot of differences in the visuals, but there was always a through line in the previous three games: a security office. However, just from the menu alone—which is amazing by the way— —you can tell we’re in a completely different environment. [Eerie ambience] The location of a house brought the game series into the realm of haunted house media like “Poltergeist” and “The Conjuring.” The visual of the menu also helps a lot with the world building. Even though we see a relatively small portion of the actual house inside, just by seeing the house here, we get a sense of the actual space the world exists in. The room in which the main game takes place is pretty good at creating a very certain atmosphere. Old wallpaper, plush carpet, toys lying on the ground, a lava lamp, photos, and stars plastered on the wall; it creates a real feeling of nostalgia, almost melancholy, which is emphasized by the music, but we’ll get into that later. Another thing to note is all the little homages to certain staples of the game: a robot toy, a toy phone, a fan. From the hallways outside the door to the “Fun with Plushtrap” room, the house feels big and empty; it gives you a feeling of being small, not just emphasizing the fact that you’re a child, but that you really aren’t in control. The animatronics loose in the house really have a sense of scale because of how open and empty the house feels. You get the feeling that there’s nobody else in the house to help; no parents to run to, no one else the animatronics are after, it’s just you. And here we are again. I’m gonna be 100% honest, the Nightmare animatronics are not scary at all. The teaser art made it look pretty cool, but especially in-game, there’s absolutely no fear factor when it comes to actually seeing them. In fact, sometimes when I see them at the end of the hall, I just get relieved. As with the other games, the more that they go over-the-top and try and one-up the last game, they lose the feeling of the uncanny valley that made them scary in the first place. Now, there’s something to be said about how they match with the canon and the lore of the game, but when it comes to just seeing them in-game, there really isn’t any fear factor, and some parts, like the cupcake jumpscare, make me lose all tension. On some more specific notes, I feel like Nightmare Freddy really got the short end of the stick here. His design is a little bland, especially when compared to Nightmare Fredbear or Nightmare Foxy. Also, a note on Nightmare Foxy: Foxy clearly had the design change of removing the big spiky tongue, which for a long time was speculated to be to deter the more “undesirable” fanart. But I think it was later stated by Scott to be just that it was harder to animate. Alright, even with all my criticisms of the visuals, this is the only “Five Nights at Freddy’s” game that still scares me. Even though the characters themselves don’t look that scary, it’s the fact that you see so little of them that really adds to it. The only time that you get to see them is after you’re already dead. The mix of wide-open spaces, panicked gameplay, and silence adds up to create something that still scares me, even so many years after its release. [Electronic hum and low ambience] Where the visuals may have lacked, the audio is amazing. It is the best in the series, and it really makes up and carries the entire game. From the creepy chorus-like menu music, to the dark, droney ambience, to the creepy footsteps and the barely audible breathing, it brings it all together and makes it legitimately terrifying; just listen. [Low ambience] [Low ambience]
[Crickets chirping and footsteps] It feels almost too real while elevating the level of dread and fear. But let’s get into a little more detail. The ambience actually has a lot of different pieces. There’s the drone in the background and the reverberating bells, but there are a lot of little touches that build the atmosphere and make it seem like there’s actually a world outside of the house. The grandfather clock chiming, a dog barking outside, or the distant sound of wind chimes. It gives a lot of depth to the soundscape, and I think it’s the scariest background ambience of any FNaF game. In contrast, the “Fun with Plushtrap” ambience is a little more focused and overt with its churning, almost water-like background ambience. This really separates it from the main gameplay, but the two still feel very connected. There’s a lot of different sounds that act as components to the gameplay, from the creak of the door to the jumpscare to the Freddles and the breathing. The jumpscare, much like the animatronics, is a little over-the-top and monstrous. It definitely doesn’t feel very robotic, but I suppose that fits with the plot. It also fits with the other non-robotic aspect: the breathing. Interestingly, the breathing you hear in this game is not exactly what it sounded like when the game first released. The audio was originally too quiet, so the volume was increased in a later update. Okay, I could talk about the audio forever here, but for the sake of time I want to talk about one more aspect: Nightmare Fredbear’s laugh. In “Five Nights at Freddy’s 1,” Freddy’s laugh sounded almost like crying, but in FNaF 4, Fredbear’s laugh is evil and sinister. Not only is it lore relevant, there’s an aspect to it that is really uniquely scary to me. When I was younger, I would have these recurring nightmares about these two siblings coming into my room and debating whether or not they were going to kill me, and the older brother sounded exactly like this. So there’s that sort of unique aspect that makes it extra creepy to me. [Electronic hum and low ambience] Unlike the other games, Phone Guy isn’t here to explain the premise. He’s not in the game at all, actually. Well, kinda. Instead, you just get a tutorial. Instead, the game opens with a countdown: “5 days until the party.” And here we go. So, before the start of each night, you are thrown into a mini-game counting down the days until the party. In these mini-games, you play as this crying child tormented by his brother and guided by this creepy Fredbear plush. We learn that this kid is terrified of the animatronics, and apparently witnessed something terrifying. You soon learn that this party is this kid’s party. After you beat Night 5, it’s the day of the party. The older brother and his bully friends further torment the crying child, until: MARKIPLIER: “Was that the Bite of ‘87?!” And so, at least for the time being, we figured out the Bite of ‘87. Until the 1983 date came up, but whatever. After beating Night 6, the crying child is seen in a void with a voice talking to him. Who exactly is speaking is up for debate. Then his plushes, including his Fredbear friend, disappear, and a quiet sound of a flatline is heard. There are plenty of other little secrets, in mini-games and gameplay. Of course there’s the 1983 TV with the “Fredbear & Friends.” Phone Guy is also technically in the game; a distorted and slowed version of his Night 1 FNaF 1 phone call can be heard sometimes in the ambience. Some people have pointed out that this is where the Bite of ‘87 is first mentioned, further putting the focus of the game on this. In one area of the mini-game, you can double back and see Purple Guy helping someone in a springlock suit. And another large part of the theory-crafting section, your bed. Behind you are items on your bedside table that will change: flowers, a bottle of pills, and an IV bag. If you’re not looking in the heat of gameplay, you won’t notice it, but the changes are definitely there. Less of a secret and more like a fun fact, the pictures on the wall are of Scott and his family. And then there’s 20/20/20 Mode. By going into the Extras Menu and typing 20/20/20 into your keyboard, you unlock an extra, extra hard night, although it doesn’t reveal anything besides giving you an extra star. But I know what you’re thinking: there’s something else, something missing. And you’re right, there is one last thing. After beating Nightmare Mode, you get a screen of a box: the Box. Clicking on the two locks moves them slightly, but there’s no way to open it. There were countless attempts, even going into the source code to find out. After a while, the text appears on screen: “Perhaps some things are best left forgotten, for now.” And so, it began. [Electronic hum and low ambience] Alright, this is the motherlode of theories, so we’ll get to that last. For now, it’s pretty much the usual stuff. The fan songs: “Break My Mind” slaps so hard. Fangames: there was a really cool Iron Horse Cinema “Five Nights at Freddy’s 4” short film. If I remember correctly, this is when the hate train for “Five Nights at Freddy’s” really picked up because of the infamous “Five Nights at Freddy’s” Pewdiepie video where he wasn’t scared at all. Okay, bud. Of course, there was the Bite of ‘87 meme that came up more recently as like a meme resurgence. On a more personal note, this was the first game I ever actually finished. [Sounds of children screaming] And Scott Cawthon also made a Halloween update. There was a lot of debate about what all of this update meant in the story, but Scott Cawthon clarified that it was largely non-canon, so it was more just for fun. Okay, theories. There are so many theories for this it would be insane to try and cover them all, so I’ll break it up into four points: the Bite, the main story, the Box, and of course, Dream Theory. The Bite: now, the most obvious explanation for this bite scene is that it’s the Bite of ‘87, but the entire thing was thrown into question with the 1983 easter egg. There were two ways to interpret this. This was actually a separate bite called the Bite of ‘83, or this was the Bite of ‘87, and the 1983 date was the date of Fredbear’s founding. In the current FNaF lore meta, I have no idea what the more accepted theory is, but there you go. To me, this being the Bite of ‘87 makes the most sense, because Scott was literally telling us it was in the source code earlier. Then again, it wouldn’t be the first retcon in the series, so there’s that. Okay, so the main story. How exactly does this all fit in? Well, most people generally believe that this was the old location Phone Guy talked about before FNaF 2, and in-between FNaF 2 location and the location scene in the “Save Him” mini-game. But when exactly this took place was still up for debate. 1983 or 1987? There was also theories about who we were actually playing as. A very popular theory is that we weren’t the crying child victim at all; we were his brother, seeing imagery of the hospital room of his brother whose death was his fault. Haunted by the masks and the imagery of the restaurant, and his friends who helped him make the worst mistake of his life. Finally, Fredbear confronts him in the final night, attacking him, now. It’s a decent theory. Alright, the Box.
[“Eee ooh” sound from Roddy Ricch’s “The Box”] What the fuck was inside? Theories range from Springtrap to The Puppet to a meta analysis of the community as a whole. Scott ended up addressing it in a community post, saying that it’s one of the only mysteries the community has yet to solve, and ending it by saying “some things are best left forgotten, forever.” To be honest, as the game moved on, the Box has sort of been forgotten, and I’m not really going to have a chance to talk about it except if I decide to make a series like this on the books, so I want to talk about this specific point right here. This was a sort of retrospective stream that Markiplier did with his friend Tyler, who didn’t really know much about the games. There’s plenty of theories and ideas thrown out, most of which weren’t exactly groundbreaking or even correct, but there’s one moment when they’re talking about the Box that I remember. TYLER: “Well my question would be, with two locks,” TYLER: “it makes me think like two different people have to have keys to open the box.” MARKIPLIER: “I’ve never thought of that. Oh.” MARKIPLIER: “See, this is why I brought him here—”
[crosstalk] TYLER: “—The makers of the animatronics, like are there two people that made them?” MARKIPLIER: “Are there? There are!” MARKIPLIER: “‘Cause ‘Sister Location’ just established that! ‘Cause there are!” It’s moments like that, these moments of sudden realization where pieces start coming together and you have this lightbulb go off, that I think perfectly captures why the theory community grew so big. It’s these “aha” moments. Speaking of “aha” moments, the Dream Theory. During a stream by MatPat with some of the biggest theorists in the community at the time, Scott Cawthon began live-updating his site to communicate with them. All of these questions and hints led to this little moment: MATPAT: “Here, here’s a weird—this is weird okay,” MATPAT: “but it’s one of the things that immediately jumps to my mind.” MATPAT: “Is it possible—again, this is completely off the wall—” MATPAT: “—is it possible that FNaF 2 didn’t actually happen.” DAWKO: “And it was just, um—yeah, I know what you mean.” MATPAT: “Similar to FNaF 4, which takes place inside the mind of a child,” MATPAT: “you know, is it possible that FNaF 2 also took place in the mind of a child?” MATPAT: “You know, maybe—again, this tortured boy…” MATPAT: “Also think about the—the aspect—element of putting out a mask, you know.” MATPAT: “You have a child, maybe putting on a mask.” MATPAT: “Or you have the brother, who has shown himself to regularly put on a mask, you know.” MATPAT: “Again, I—this is without having any time—” And so began the Dream Theory; for a full explanation, watch MatPat’s video. But I remember the feeling of what seemed like we had finally uncovered everything. Almost the whole story could be explained. Sure, it was a bit of a cop-out, but that’s why Scott said he wondered if the community would accept it. Obviously it turned out to be completely wrong, and it sounds kind of insane thinking about it now, but part of me really felt at the time like this was a good thing. We had finally solved everything, and most parts at the time seemed to fit; I just had this sense that the story had been solved. What a naive little shithead I was. [Electronic hum and low ambience] Okay, so where does this game land? I’ll probably get some shit for this, but I’m putting it in B-tier. A lot of people think, that I’ve seen at least, that it’s one of the worst games in the whole series. But like I said, it’s one of the only ones that still scares me. And yes, the visuals aren’t great, and yes, that is sort of when the story started going downhill. But in general, the audio was really great, it’s still really scary, and even with all the other stuff, I think it deserves to be at least on the same level as “Five Nights at Freddy’s 3.” [FNaF 3 “Bad Ending” theme on piano] And so would begin the most different, the most insane— If you thought “Five Nights at Freddy’s 4” was different, you haven’t seen anything yet. “FNaF World.” [Electronic hum and low ambience] [“FNaF World” Main Menu Theme] Welcome back. Today we’re continuing our “Five Nights at Freddy’s” retrospective series, today “FNaF World.” This game is the most different out of any “Five Nights at Freddy’s” game to date. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better, but it definitely changed things the most. So without further ado, let’s get into it. [“FNaF World” Ice Cave Theme] After FNaF 4, the classic “Thank you” image was uploaded on Scott’s site, basically all of the characters waving and saying thank you. It seemed like it was a real send-off to the game. However, people then started noticing something changing: certain characters’ designs looking slightly different, more cartoony. And this culminated in the reveal of the name “FNaF World.” With a few interruptions for FNaF 4’s Game Theory stream and some Halloween update stuff, we had revealed all of the new designs for this “FNaF World” project. And then of course, the trailer. Creepy, eerie heads zooming in with ominous text and music, and then… a cartoon turn-based RPG. Uh…okay then! And The Mangle using a ping-pong paddle, for some reason. I don’t remember a lot of theories of substance surrounding these reveals besides it possibly just being another prank game. It was just so odd, it didn’t really make a lot of sense. So I guess we can move on, because January 21st, 2016, “FNaF World” was released. Now, you might think we’d move right onto gameplay, but things were a little complicated and controversial with the release of “FNaF World.” Unlike what was shown in the trailer, the overworld was just simple 8-bit art. The game had a variety of other issues, being generally unstable and unfinished. It originally cost ten dollars, which was more than any other FNaF game. So, people were disappointed. But what Scott did next I think shows that he was a developer of integrity. He offered refunds to everyone who had bought it, removed from Steam, and later in February of 2016, he released an updated finished version on Game Jolt, this time with the 3D overworld and many of the issues fixed. And so, that’s the version we’re going to be talking about. Let’s go. [“FNaF World” Ice Cave Theme] Now, it would be stupid to compare this gameplay to the gameplay of any other FNaF game. It’s a turn-based RPG. But also, I don’t really know a lot about RPGs either, so I’m just going to call it like I see it. I think it’d be most useful to break it down into a few sections: the basics, characters, chips and bytes, and areas. The basics are pretty normal; you can play the game on normal or hard, and with or without a fixed party. As Freddy, you wander the overworld, advancing the story. Randomly, like in “Pokémon” grass, you will have encounters with enemies in groups or by themselves. These move you to a separate battle screen where you fight. Interestingly, this isn’t normal turn-based game. The characters in your party work on a sort of timed order which they can attack, but so do your enemies. So instead of specific turns, you can time certain attacks or moves to defend against the enemies. Certain areas will also have boss encounters, which are just like regular battles but harder and you can see their health. You can use money you get from chests around the overworld, beating enemies, or Dee Dee’s fishing game to buy helpful things like armor, bytes, and chips. If you do fixed party, you are stuck with only a few that you select at the beginning of your two parties, but you start with more unlocked. In Adventure Mode, you start with the classic FNaF 1 characters in one party and then the FNaF 2 characters in your second party. As you play, certain encounters will lead you to a new challenger. It will be a random character from the games that will be added to your roster if you beat it. Obviously, the harder to beat and the higher level, the better the moveset is. Each character has an arsenal of three attacks or moves. Some are more heal-centered, some are more support or debuff-centered, some are more damage or just straight up random chance-based. This is where the game becomes most interesting. Now the depth of customization isn’t as much as other RPGs, but finding exactly how you want to balance with what characters in each party and using your first and second party uniquely is where the interesting and fun part of the game happens. Oh, also between loading screens you get little character flavor text. With the introduction of a now fan favorite, Lolbit sells things called “bytes.” These are miniature characters that can’t die, but also don’t count as a part of your health. They have a range of different abilities, from healing to damage-dealing to bosses to their own small attacks. There are usually three levels of each type, and you can add up to four active at a time. Chips are similar in a lot of ways. You find them in various large chests in the overworld. You equip them to have certain passive effects and can only have four at a time. These effects range from damage-dealing comets falling to giving your team a speed boost to giving you more luck. This is again where things become interesting. You know, depending on what you’re actually trying to do— —find characters, defeat a boss, or just level up— —you’re going to use different chips and bytes, and deciding which ones to use because you only have a few slots becomes really interesting and a fun balancing act. Throughout the game, there are different biomes and areas. The bosses and enemies change based on the biome as you progress: snowy characters, rocky cave creatures, weird funhouse guys. Enemies in these areas usually get harder as you progress, and the bosses are usually pretty unique. Then there’s the Flip Side, an obvious reference to Phone Guy’s line “See you on the flip side” from FNaF 1. These are glitched areas deep inside the game you enter by walking into flickering objects in the overworld. They take you to more and more simplified versions of the overworld, which you can use to get around blocked areas. However, as Fredbear warns, don’t go too deep. [“FNaF World” Ice Cave Theme] But what makes it scary? Absolutely nothing, obviously. It’s not supposed to look scary, all the characters are redesigned to look cute. Although I will say, certain times, just like with Nightmare Balloon Boy, it can’t be made cute. And although some of the designs are really great, like the Nightmares, sometimes in an attempt to make them look cute, they look scarier than they did in the original game. Here’s another thing about the visuals: they are insane. Later on in the game, it’s just a million particle effects and screen shake. I personally really like the chaos, it makes it feel like shit is going down, but to others it may seem more obnoxiously bright and distracting; but, to each their own. When it comes to enemies and bosses, a lot of them are legitimately well done. Browboy is a masterpiece.
[Chef’s kiss] Some enemies are just retextures, but I suppose that was an attempt to create enemy types. Each biome’s adherence to a specific style is legitimately impressive, and it makes the whole game feel cohesive. [“FNaF World” Ice Cave Theme] There’s not much to say here like there is with the other games. The music is really great. Each area has a unique backing track that sound good and are memorable, and all the boss battles and fights are high energy because of the really good fight music. The sound effects for each move are satisfying and really cool. Honestly, just the sound in general in “FNaF World” excels, but there’s not anything special about the way it does it, just good music and nice sound effects. [“FNaF World” Ice Cave Theme] Now there are so many endings and hidden secrets in this game, but let’s just start with the basics. The game opens with a pair of pixel eyes staring in the darkness, and the lines “Everything that happens out there, has an effect here. Do you understand?” “This is a safe place. This is a sanctuary.” “But something has gone wrong, and now it can be seen here.” “Something went very wrong. That’s why I’m here.” “But I won’t let the same happen to you.” “I will put you back together.” The rest of the game centers around you progressing with the advice of Fredbear. At certain points in the game, including right after this cutscene, Fredbear explains the main motivation. There is something horribly wrong with this animatronic world. Something has gone wrong on the Flip Side, and now strange creatures are wandering the world. From here, Fredbear sends you through new missions, beating bosses and exploring new areas, finally ending in you disabling a security system and defeating the final boss. And then you get the…Wink Ending. After defeating the boss, you enter a tent and get mocked by a voice, likely Scott Cawthon himself. “Congratulations! You beat an imaginary monster in an imaginary game” “without taking any risks, without finding anything interesting.” Literally mocking you for beating the game, which might seem odd, but with a game series that is so centered around secrets and hidden things, this was making it clear that there was something more; and there was. Playing through the game normally but on hard mode, you defeat the final owl boss, Security, and then move into the tent. This time it leads you to the real final boss, Scott Cawthon himself. He gives you a monologue that seems almost like venting his frustrations with some aspects of being popular and having his games dissected so much, although this seems to be another way to motivate the player to look deeper. Defeating him will give you The End. Remember how I said Fredbear tells you not to go too deep in the Flip Side? Well, if you go four layers deep, you are teleported to Old Man Consequences Lake. A strange fisherman tells you that there’s nothing else the player can do. After a bit, the game ends. By walking into the lake and glitching down, you begin falling endlessly in a void for two minutes. Finally, it cuts to an image. What exactly this is has been debated: an angel? Scott Cawthon and his kids? Either way, it will stay here until you shut the game off. Whichever character you have as party leader will appear when talking to Fredbear. If you get Fredbear as your party leader and then talk to Fredbear…well, there’s two of them, and as the game explains, there cannot be two Fredbears in the same time and space, so the game ends. Universe End. This end occurs when you enter the Mysterious Mine and move to a secret boss: Chipper, as in from Scott Cawthon’s previous game before FNaF, “Chipper and Sons Lumber Co.” Essentially, Chipper is upset that his franchise was set aside for FNaF, and that’s why he wants to destroy you. After you defeat him, he says you haven’t seen the last of him, which to be fair is true. And finally, the Clock Ending. See, when talking to Fredbear, at the end of his dialogue you get a “done” button. But if you don’t press it, after a while Fredbear will glitch and begin breaking the fourth wall, leading you on a different objective: finding the clocks. When activating these secret dialogue options, clocks will begin appearing on the overworld. Each has a unique puzzle. The first has the player pushing Balloon Boy into a box. The second has the player activating four square buttons. Then pushing four cupcakes into boxes, then properly setting a code, and then finally pushing Shadow Bonnie, known in this game as “RWQFSFASXC,” into a box. If you do all of this, the glitched Fredbear leads you to unlocking a portal, which leads you to the final cutscene: the eyes in the dark again. “We are still your friends. Do you believe that?” “The pieces are in place for you. All you have to do is find them. Rest.” The End. Alright, now before we get into theories and what the Clock Ending means and what all this means, let’s just talk about some of the more simpler easter eggs and hidden things. Oh also, each ending has a unique trophy that, once you get it, will appear on your menu screen. First, you can enter this secret other area that’s like a glitched version of the overworld, identified as just random letters. Here there are much harder and glitchy enemies. You enter by walking into the seagull on a stump for a bit. There’s also the pearl, which you get if you successfully catch the pearl in Dee Dee’s fishing game five times. It doesn’t count to your byte limit and heals you. All right, with that out of the way: [“FNaF World” Ice Cave Theme] For most of this I want to talk about the Clock Ending and what the community really thinks it means, but first, let’s talk about some of the simpler stuff; general audience reception and things like that. Firstly, a lot of YouTubers known for playing “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” like Markiplier for instance, decided not to play this game, and I can’t blame them. The appeal of playing a “Five Nights at Freddy’s” game or a let’s-play of a “Five Nights at Freddy’s” game is different than the appeal of “FNaF World.” “FNaF World” is not scary, and it’s also not super long, so there’s not a lot of investment you can get out of it. It’s more of a joke, fun game, and so I guess I understand why the release was a bit rocky. On a more personal note, watching Razzbowski play this game inserted the term “pop it on the go” into my general lexicon for two years. Okay, here we go: what does the Clock Ending mean? Well, the first and most obvious connection would be the Fredbear plush and the line, you know, from “Five Nights at Freddy’s” 4. “I will put you back together.” And there is a connection there, but first let’s talk about what each of the clock mini-games mean. The main theory concluded by the community was that each of these clock mini-games corresponded to a secret mini-game in FNaF 3. Specifically, the hints on how you get to these mini-games, the different things on the walls: BBdblclick, the arcade button code, the cupcakes, the code, and Shadow Bonnie. Now think about the line “I will put you back together;” that’s FNaF 4, the Bite victim. Now think about what happens at the end of the “Happiest Day” mini-game. The children gather together to help free the soul of the Golden Freddy victim. I think you can see where I’m going here. Due to the meta nature of the game, it’s assumed by the community that when Fredbear said “I will put you back together” in “Five Nights at Freddy’s 4,” he meant it in a very fourth wall-breaking way. He literally goes to the player through “FNaF World” to put in place the hints that lets the “Five Nights at Freddy’s 3” player— —not the night guard, the player who actually plays the games— —be able to discover the “Happiest Day” ending, therefore putting him back together. It’s weird how it’s almost canon in a way, but super meta. Like the Fredbear plush knows that he’s in a game; really weird. Now I want to be clear here, it’s not 100% confirmed that this is what all of this means. This just seemed to be the general community consensus when the game came out, and at least for Update 1, that is the relevance to these games at large. [“FNaF World” Ice Cave Theme] So, where does the game go on the tier list? Well, despite all the good things I’ve said about it, when we’re rating it on a scale like the other games, it really doesn’t hold up as well. At least for Update 1, even though I enjoyed it, I have to be honest and put it in C-tier. The story for Update 1 was really not that important in the grand scheme of things, and the game had a bit of a rocky start when it was released. So I think C-tier is a perfect place for it, it’s just average. So, Scott Cawthon’s website. Instead of teasing a new game, he teased a book: “Five Nights at Freddy’s: The Untold Story.” And I would like to talk about this at some point, maybe when I’m done looking at all of the games I can look at the first trilogy, the “Silver Eyes” trilogy, but for now we’re just going to talk about the games. So ignoring the book for now, the next game that was teased was “FNaF World” Update 2. “It’s a vicious cycle, you know. But then, most things in life are.” “The pendulum swings one way, then it swings the other.” “Now we return to darkness.” “Something terrible is coming.” [“FNaF World” Ice Cave Theme] Alright, “FNaF World” Update 2. If you didn’t think things could get even weirder, you’re about to be proven wrong. I want to bring up some background though, for Update 2, and just for the game before its initial release. Scott Cawthon was not originally a horror game developer, he was an RPG developer. And he’s been making games for a long time; since 1995 with the game “Floppy Disk.” He made a whole series called “RPG Max,” “Dinostria,” and the “Legacy of Flan” games, including a multiplayer “Legacy of Flan” and the online MMORPG “Flanville.” I could keep going forever, he has made so many games before FNaF. But let’s just say “FNaF World” was not a new venture for Scott. With that in mind, let’s move on. [“FNaF World” Ice Cave Theme] I want to mention that after the first “FNaF World” teasers were done, there was a new site that was created called FNaFWorld.com. This will be important as we move on to other retrospective series, so keep that in mind. For teasers, it was pretty simple, with the exception of one: “Update 2: Coming Soon.” The additions of the FNaF 4 Halloween characters, and in the corner, Foxy, JJ, and Chica in airplanes in the background. Then, on April 1st, Scott Cawthon set a teaser for a new game: “FNaF 57: Freddy in Space!” Obviously this was just an April Fool’s joke, but keep it in mind. Then we were back to the original teaser with new text: 5-13-16. With the release now set, the stage was set— HANDUNIT: “—no pun intended—” —for something new. But as a game, “FNaF World” Update 2 was in a weird spot. At the time of its release, there was another Scott Cawthon project being teased on ScottGames.com, the book had been released, and the movie had been announced. There were tons of other teasers and hints to all sorts of other projects coming around the same time, and so people weren’t sure exactly what connected to what, and it wasn’t exactly clear how Update 2 was going to come out. We’d just have to wait until release, and strangely it released on time: May 13th, 2016. [“FNaF World” Ice Cave Theme] So right away, you boot up the game, and…it looks the same. It isn’t inherently obvious that something has changed. It’s actually really strange how you have to activate the content of this update. Near the spawn area, there’s a large building. Walking into it will move you presumably inside. Here things are 8-bit and monochrome, and there’s kind of a cutscene here, and we’ll get into that in the story section, but afterwards you can talk to Fredbear and you’re finally released into the new content. So, let’s talk about it. In this update, they added eight new characters: Nightmarionne, Jack-O-Bonnie, Jack-O-Chica, Nightmare Balloon Boy, Animdude, Coffee, and Mr. Chipper, and Purple Guy. The main event for the gameplay were the new mini-games that were added to unlock the characters. Let’s get right into it. “Foxy.EXE” is a mini-game that starts like a desktop where you can open a program called Foxy.EXE. This starts a simple game where you walk along a platform as Adventure Bonnie, with creepy renders of Withered Foxy in the background as voice lines play over and over. Obviously this is a play on the EXE creepypastas and subsequent games. At first you just walk around, but things get harder as you run into Withered Freddy and then later a kitten. To avoid these and move forward, you have to either turn away until they fade or hide behind these black shapes in the foreground. At the end of this mini-game, you unlock Nightmarionne. “Foxy Fighters” is a shoot-em-up style scrolling shooter where you control Foxy, alongside NPC fighters of Toy Chica, JJ, and Nightmare Chica, as you fight waves of enemies, finally defeating the final boss, Souldozer, a character from another previous Scott game. Beating the game with a performance of rating B or lower unlocks Jack-O-Chica, and beating it with an A unlocks Nightmare BB. Then there’s “Freddy in Space,” and there you go, turns out the April Fool’s joke wasn’t such a joke. This is a “Mega Man” type side-scrolling shooter where you collect power-ups, shoot enemies, and eventually kill the final boss, Scott Cawthon’s head in a jar. If you complete the game normally, only collecting some of the power ups, then you unlock Jack-O-Bonnie. If you complete the game without collecting any power-ups, you unlock Coffee, and if you complete the game collecting all the power-ups, you unlock Purple Guy. And finally, “Chica’s Magic Rainbow.” To any veteran FNaF player, that name will strike absolute fear into your heart. This is a side-scrolling platform that is most reminiscent of old rage games like “Unfair Mario.” This game is absurdly difficult, with fake-outs, random attacks, and an annoying Rainbow above you taunting you for every failure. The difficulty is high, the controls are frustrating, obstacles like sunflowers, wooden spikes, logs, and even rainbow laser beams the Rainbow itself shoots. You only have 33 lives, because after that the Rainbow kills you herself and the game ends. Just beating the game normally unlocks Animdude, and beating it in under three minutes unlocks Mr. Chipper. There were also the new areas that this update took place in. The Halloween Backstage is a maze-like biome where a lot of the plot hinges around, and where you run into pretty much all the new characters. There’s also the Geist Lair, a mine-like area with toxic air that drains HP when you’re inside. This is where the final boss battle takes place. That’s pretty much all the new stuff gameplay-wise. Otherwise, boss battles, character interactions, fights, they’re pretty much the same. I think they updated some things like some 8-directional movement and minor bug fixes, but generally that’s it. There is more stuff that I haven’t talked about yet, but that’s not purely gameplay, that’s more plot related, so we’ll get into that in the plot section. [“FNaF World” Ice Cave Theme] So let’s talk about visuals. Again, if you want to know about the game generally, go to my Update 1 video, but for this new update, I do want to talk about a couple things. First, the mini-games. Each one has very specific references and inspirations that are tied to it, not just in the gameplay but in the visuals. “Foxy.EXE” replicates the old Windows XP-era creepypasta, with its classic field stock image desktop background that calls directly to the XP default desktop. Then actually playing the game, it’s clearly just a sprite from the game ripped and placed into this low-budget walking game where you just walk on a plane with a spooky background. While it may be a little on the nose, it does a great job parodying the low-quality “Sonic.EXE” rip-offs that spawned, and highlights how unscary they are by literally throwing a kitten PNG in as an enemy. Again, maybe a little on the nose, but still pretty spot-on as a parody. For other mini-games like “Foxy Fighters” and “Freddy in Space,” it’s clear that these are love letters to other games that Scott Cawthon enjoys. I recall Scott Cawthon saying something about loving the “Mega Man” games, and that sort of inspiration for the retro space shooter is very clear through these mini-games. Obviously, “Foxy Fighters” is a direct parody of games like “Star Fox”— —obviously Foxy would need to be the protagonist for this one— —with little dialogue screens popping up and the characters talking like little puppets. And “Freddy in Space” is clearly a love letter to “Mega Man” and other Metroidvania games. And for “Chica’s Magic Rainbow,” well, obviously the happy-go-lucky visuals contrast with the absolute rage that fills you when playing the game, but there is a bit more than just that. Like other games in the genre, the unfair or rage games, there’s this weird use of assets, like the petals on this flower just flying out. If you wanted to make a game that was hard, you could have made something that would shoot them, or made spikes that shoot out. Instead, like an “Unfair Mario” or “Unfair Cat Mario” and all that stuff, it’s this weird feeling of assets ripped from a different game. But obviously, this is the game, so I think there should be a real appreciation here for the care Scott Cawthon took in recreating each of these styles of games. And I quickly just want to touch on the new area, the Halloween Backstage. I honestly wonder if this was originally planned to be a Halloween update and then it had to take a turn, or if this was all planned from the beginning. Either way, the new Backstage area reminds me a lot of FNaF 4. Not just because of FNaF 4’s Halloween update, but also the use of spooky houses, trees, and the color red and orange. I think it’s done this way almost to remind you that yes, FNaF is still a horror series, even if this game isn’t. [“FNaF World” Ice Cave Theme] Okay, let’s get the big thing out of the way: voice acting?! Fully voiced characters that aren’t Scott Cawthon! Let’s go into a little more detail here. For a few of the mini-games, they are fully voiced with all the characters, that and also…the end. But what’s really interesting about things like “Foxy Fighters” is the names here are actually pretty impressive. For instance, JJ, Toy Chica, and Nightmare Chica are voiced by Amber Lee Connors, who’s done voices for “Borderlands 3,” “My Hero Academia,” and a “Final Fantasy” game. Foxy is voiced by Jesse Adam, who’s been in “Marvel’s Avengers Academy,” and other characters like Souldozer and Fredbear were voiced by people who would become staples of FNaF from here on out, PJ Heywood and Christopher McCull—McCu— The introduction of fully voiced characters is very important to the series as we go on, but for now let’s just talk about it in the context of this game. In “Chica’s Magic Rainbow,” the Rainbow itself mocks you whenever you die, including what I think may be the first instance of, like, an actual swear word in a FNaF game. RAINBOW: “Dumbass.” Oh, and um…don’t try to turn off the voice. RAINBOW: “Oh really, it’s like that? Voices off, you say? Well now you’ve really pissed me off!” Now obviously, this adds a lot to the rage of the game, specifically the high-pitched overly happy sound, but guess who voiced the Rainbow? Jimmy fucking Neutron. I’m not joking. Jimmy Neutron’s voice, Debi Derryberry—is that her name? That is an insane name. She was also in “Toy Story.” What I’m trying to point out is, they have star power here. Speaking of star power, guess who did the voice lines in the background of “Foxy.EXE?” Marc Martel, aka the guy who did Freddie Mercury’s singing in the Queen movie. The point is, this is a star-studded cast. Of course, we couldn’t talk about voices without talking about Toy Chica’s little debacle. I’ll just play it. TOY CHICA: “You won’t get tired of my voice, will you?” [Sped up]
TOY CHICA: “You won’t get tired of my voice, will you?” [Slowed down]
TOY CHICA: “You won’t get tired of my voice, will you?” Oh, and speaking of annoying, the “Foxy.EXE” voice lines just play over and over and over and over with no breaks. This game is really good at annoying the shit out of you on purpose. Before we move on, I want to talk about the music, not just for Update 2, but for the game in general. My last video, I didn’t really talk about it that much, but I think the person who composed it deserves some credit, Leon Riskin. There are actually some tracks that I remember being available that didn’t make it in the game but were on the “FNaF World” website. The music is all catchy, memorable, it’s just really good, and I think the creator deserves some credit. Moving on. [“FNaF World” Ice Cave Theme] Okay, the plot. Now, there isn’t a bunch of different endings or some Clock Ending that ties into the main lore somehow, but there is something important here. Like I said, when you first enter the game to activate the Update 2 content, you’re led into this pixelated cutscene. Here, a mysterious man sits at a desk, known as the Desk Man, seemingly working on something. Here’s what he says: “It’s a vicious cycle, you know. But then, most things in life are.” “The pendulum swings one way, then it swings the other. Now we return to darkness.” “Something terrible is coming. Come back later. Maybe I will tell you more.” From here, all you can do is leave. At this point, you can then talk to Fredbear again. He starts out like he’s about to send you on some big adventure, but the music cuts out, and, well, Fredbear seems awfully disappointed. He tells you that the game bombed, in reference to the poor reception of the game’s release, and now “he” has gone insane. No one knows what “he’s” making, and they can’t get to it. It’s best to just leave the game alone. However, after a lot of dot-dot-dots, you convince him to help you along. He lets you into a portal that leads you to the Halloween Backstage area, where unreleased characters are. They’re the only thing strong enough to defeat the guardian that’s protecting this “thing” that “he” is making. Here is where you salvage the code of the characters by completing the mini-games their code was used for. The area that leads to the guardian is filled with toxic air, meaning you’ll need a full party of these new characters to move on. Many of the mini-games themselves have plots inside of them, like “Freddy in Space” is sort of a meta commentary on Scott Cawthon making a bunch of games and crazy spin-offs. There’s plenty of inside jokes and references, and even a reference to I think what might be the first time we ever heard anything about the FNaF movie script, although I guess we didn’t know that’s what it was at the time, a reference to the “Plushies Take Manhattan” rejected script that I think happened early on in the FNaF movie development. Generally, like the first update of “FNaF World,” all the dialogue is very meta and jokey. After collecting all the characters and levelling them up, you enter the final toxic Geist area. The Geist Lair is filled with pixelated and extremely difficult enemies. Navigating this area leads you to the final boss, the PurpleGeist. He pops on screen and…the Rainbow from “Chica’s Magic Rainbow” squashes him. That’s right, the final boss is Chica’s Magic Rainbow. Very fitting, considering that mini-game is regarded as the hardest one. Not only do you need to beat this boss, but you need to do it in three minutes or else you lose automatically. Doing so leads to a quick death cutscene: RAINBOW: “The next time you see a rainbow in the sky, that is me coming to your house!” And then we’re back to the Desk Man. “I’m impressed. What are you doing here? Can’t you see I’m busy?” “You deactivated my games?” “I didn’t know what else to do. I don’t want to disappoint people, but my mind isn’t right.” “I’ve made something terrible. Her name is ‘Baby.’” “It’s too late to deactivate her. I’m sorry.” The lights go out, and: BABY: “The show will begin momentarily. Everyone, please stay in your seats.” Then the lights cut back on, and blood spills out around the Desk Man’s head. Fade to black, to be continued, the end. Obviously there is a lot to talk about here after that, and we know generally that this was a teaser for “Sister Location,” but more theories we’ll get into later. For now, I just want to talk about a couple miscellaneous things. First off, there’s a secret path that lets you get into the Backstage area without ever talking to the Desk Man, as Purple Guy tells you. [“FNaF World” Ice Cave Theme] Generally, this update was received a lot better than the first update. It added a lot of content, it was funny, and it was generally more polished. Plus, like I said, it broke new ground for the series: a whole cast of voiced characters, a teaser for the next game inside the game, and plenty of meta commentary. I also remember Dawko having to play this game in the hospital and just personally being very worried about him. Also, weirdly enough, there have been plenty of fangames based off of “FNaF World,” although not nearly as many as the main series games. People also drew comparisons to, uh, “Five Nights at Fuckboy’s,” which was a game that was released a little bit before “FNaF World” initially was. Also, with the increased difficulty of the mini-games, a whole mini community built around speedruns. “Chica’s Magic Rainbow” world record, as far as I know, is 59.22 seconds. Whenever Scott presents a challenge, people always find a way to take it upon themselves to make a harder one and then beat it. DARK: “OH—!” Alright, the theories for this were pretty straightforward actually. There’s a couple different ways to look at it, but the main one was that Desk Man was Scott Cawthon himself, talking about this new game that he was creating. [Burp] With the hard mode ending and a lot of the meta talk, it made the most sense. There were other ideas though, mainly that Desk Man was Henry. For those who don’t know, in “The Silver Eyes,” a FNaF novel released not long before “FNaF World,” there’s a character named Henry who created the animatronics and then kills himself. It’s never exactly clear why, so people thought that that’s what this end cutscene was, and he did it because he created this new character, Baby. When it came to who the “Baby” character was, we’d find out pretty soon. [“FNaF World” Ice Cave Theme] Alright, let’s get straight to the point. Although this update was received a lot better than the initial game at release, it was also a lot shorter. There was interesting content, but not a lot of it, and there weren’t multiple endings. In the end, it was more of a glorified teaser for the next game. It was fun, and great for the community at the time, but I’m gonna have to put it in C-tier with the original game. So, “FNaF World” Update 2: great for the time, and still fun to go back and play through, but gameplay-wise and story-wise, it was a little short. Either way, it was a fantastic interlude for the next game, “Sister Location.” TV NARRATOR: “Where will they go, what will they do?” TV NARRATOR: “All of that and more happening now.” VLAD: “Clara, I tell you, the baby’s—” [Mechanical door closes and reopens] HANDUNIT: “Press the red button now to administer a controlled shock.” [Electrical surge] [Electronic ambient music] Welcome back everyone to our “Five Nights at Freddy’s” retrospective series. Today, we’re talking about “Sister Location.” This one really marked the next phase for “Five Nights at Freddy’s” in a lot of different ways. This one is going to be long, and my hope is a little scary, so let’s get started. [Electronic ambient music] Now, it’s important to mention here that a lot of the teasers that were going on around the time of “Sister Location” and a lot of the early stuff was also happening the same time as, uh, “FNaF World” Update 2, so there’s some overlap here. But the first big mystery to solve was the lines. This teaser was released on ScottGames and slowly added letters as time went on. There were plenty of ideas as to what it could be, but then we found it and confirmed it. Someone went digging into the metadata of the image and found the name “Sister Location.” Now for the life of me, I can’t find any actual reference of this happening, I just know it did. I have a clear memory of someone posting on the subreddit that they went into the metadata, like Photoshop data of the image, and they found “Sister Location.” But I couldn’t find anything on the subreddit this many years later, and I couldn’t find anything on YouTube about it, I just feel like I remember it happening. And if I remember correctly, this is what made Scott sort of fast-forward and just release the full next teaser. “Sister Location: There was never just one.” And behind, a new animatronic, almost like the Toy animatronics but not quite. Around this time, there was a lot of other discoveries being made. Someone found Scott Cawthon’s copyright logs and saw that he had added a bunch of new names: Baby, Ballora, Funtime Freddy and Foxy, Bidybab, Ennard, and Minireena. Who exactly these characters were was highly debated, but there was a surprising amount of accuracy with a lot of people’s early predictions. There was also the source code. At this point in the series, I’m sure you know that checking out the source code on Scott Cawthon’s websites is extremely important. Scott had hidden a show schedule in the metadata for the new characters, and also introduced the name “Afton Robotics.” This was a huge deal. For those who don’t know, in the “Silver Eyes” novel, William Afton is the name of the murderer, so his name held a lot of weight. There’s also “Chica’s Party World,” which I think it’s still up for debate what it actually means. One big thing I remember from this era was the Adult Theory, popularized by the fangame creator Popgoes. For a while, this schedule and all of this stuff was connected to this theory that somehow the next game was going to be about a robotic strip club? I remember thinking at the time this didn’t really make a lot of sense for the next direction that Scott Cawthon was gonna go, and I think this is what inspired him to add an extra line to the source code that specified “children’s entertainment.” Now, let’s talk more about the actual teasers. There was the full reveal of Baby, which had a little bit going on. Some people thought they could see the reflection of Springtrap in her nose, and there was a debate as to whether she had hair or just a jester hat. And then there was the Ennard reveal, and that line at the bottom, “There is a little of me in every body.” People quickly caught on to that space: “every body.” However, exactly how it connected to the lore wouldn’t quite be clear until the game came out. Then, the Bidybabs, and the classic line “Don’t hold it against us,” a gameplay hint with the “Get back to your stage” teaser, and then of course, the trailer. In typical Scott Cawthon fashion, the trailer was full of quick flashes of gameplay and cryptic messages. However, this time there’s a lot more to theorize about. The lines “Don’t hold it against us,” the completely new setting and themes, and the audio. Some people thought this was a bunker in the robot apocalypse, or a nuclear fallout had occurred. This also had the opening which referenced all the other games, quite aptly I’d say. Oh, and I almost forgot: “Sister Location” ended up being cancelled due to leaks. Except obviously, it wasn’t. Brightening this teaser image, we get a portion of a news article explaining that Circus Baby’s Pizza World’s opening has been cancelled due to gas leaks, and that the building was sold. However, things aren’t quite over for Circus Baby yet. I could keep talking about all the theories and ideas people had around this time, but let’s just get into it: October 7th, 2016, “Sister Location” was released. [Electronic ambient music] Now, the gameplay of “Sister Location,” there isn’t just a simple loop like there were with the previous games. Each night in “Sister Location” is different and very linear, it’s more story-based. So let’s start with some of the gameplay aspects that stay consistent throughout the nights, and then we’ll talk about each night individually. So first off, the limited movement of FNaF 4 was expanded on in this game. While it is extremely limited in “Sister Location,” WASD movement was added in certain sections: vents, large rooms, things like that. Otherwise, it’s still a point-and-click game. Clicking, dragging, moving your flashlight; those are all your most important tools. Aside from that, how you use all these aspects changes depending on the night, so let’s talk about each night. You start the night by coming down an elevator into the main compound of the game, and walk through a room where you must shock Ballora and Funtime Foxy back on their stage. From there, you move forward into a new room where you have to shock another animatronic, Baby, back to her stage. And then, you’re done. You turn around and leave; end of Night 1. This night starts just like the last one, moving through the areas underground and shocking the characters back to their stage. However, in Baby’s area, the power goes out, and Baby instructs you to hide under the desk. From here you have to keep a metal cover closed as the Bidybabs try to pry it open, and keep your flashlight away from their eyes. Once you survive for long enough, you move to the Ballora Gallery, where you move slowly across the room as Ballora moves around you. Using the sound, you must stop when she gets too close and make your way to the Breaker Control Room. Here, you have to reset the power in the building using a control panel. However, as you do, Funtime Freddy gets closer, but whenever you’re away from the control panel, any power you haven’t fully reset begins to tick back down. To move Funtime Freddy back, you have to play a calming voice recording that you access from outside the control panel. After hopefully surviving this, you move back through Ballora Gallery, but she isn’t actually able to kill you here. And that’s the end of Night 2. Night 3 starts the same as 1 and 2, checking the animatronics in the first room. Then you move to the Funtime Auditorium, where you have to use a flash beacon as you move through the dark room. Move too much, Funtime Foxy will get you, so you have to use a flash beacon to locate Funtime Foxy and stop moving if they’re too close. Once you make it to the next room, you have to perform maintenance on Funtime Freddy by pushing a series of buttons in a specific order. After removing a power module, the Bon-Bon hand puppet from Funtime Freddy begins sneaking around the room. Shining the flashlight directly on it will make it run away, so you have to carefully and quickly press the button on its bowtie to shut it off without shining the light directly on it. If you take too long or let it climb too close, you’re dead. After that, you’re done. End of Night 3. Night 4 starts with you waking up in a springlock suit. From here, you have to keep a series of springlocks wound up while preventing Minireenas from climbing on the top of your suit; if they do, you’re dead. But by shaking them off, you loosen your springlocks as well, so it’s a delicate balance. Night 4 is so difficult, there was actually a patch release to make it easier. Even then, it’s the only base game night out of any of the FNaF games I haven’t completed. It’s just absurdly hard and lasts so long. But after you beat that section, the night is over; on to Night 5. Night 5 starts with checking for the animatronics and then moving to the maintenance area again, this time to fix Baby. Here you have to put in a code that is given by Baby randomly to open a hatch, take apart, and then send Baby down a conveyor belt. After that, Baby leads you through a dark room as an animatronic comes after you. Follow her instructions closely, or you’ll run into it and die. Finally you enter a room where the game ends, which we’ll get into in the story section. As you can see, it’s not quite the same as the other games. Instead of a simple gameplay loop, you’re led through different areas to do specific tasks and have different interaction as the story plays out. There is another aspect of gameplay though, an alternate ending that has an entire other gameplay section. We’ll get into the story significance of that later, but for now, let’s just talk about the gameplay. When Baby leads you through the dark room, instead of following her instructions, you can move to a secret room where things are a lot more familiar: an office, two doors, and a camera system. Like most of the other FNaF games, the goal is to survive until 6am. The main part of this is listening. Ennard can be on your right, center vent, or left. Using the sound, you can keep track of where he is and use the camera to see how close he is. Other than that, it’s pretty simple: keep track and close the door. Things get harder at 4am when you need to close the door before checking on the camera, like Freddy in FNaF 1. While being simple, it’s extremely difficult because you have a very small amount of power. But generally, it’s back to basics: conserve power, check the doors, and be lucky. Aside from all that, there’s not a lot else to talk about in the gameplay. Like I said, it’s very linear and story-based. There is, of course, the Custom Night update, but I’ll talk about that in more detail later. Until then, let’s move on. [Electronic ambient music] When it comes to visuals, it changed a lot for the series, but is actually kind of a back-to-basics for Scott. If you look at his career, futuristic and sci-fi sort of modeling is actually what he’s used to, so the change in look from an unsettling house or creepy restaurant to a futuristic-style bunker with… …well, you can’t even call them animatronics at this point, they’re just full-on robots. It’s honestly the natural progression if you look at Scott’s career. He’s been a sci-fi man at heart this whole time. Moving on to the robots of this place, from the Bidybabs and Minireenas all the way up to the Babies and the Ennards, there’s something specific about them that makes them unique. They most closely resemble the Toy animatronics, but even that is only surface level. While the original animatronics were plush or had fabric on the outside, and the Toy animatronics seem to be made from plastic, the Funtime animatronics are made from metal, segmented into different parts that allows for them to seemingly change subtly. While on the surface this just seems like an odd design choice, it actually makes a bit of sense once we get into the theory section. Either way, the design of these animatronics are no longer relying on the fear of mascots. Now it’s like clowns, robots, and the future horror aesthetic that may remind you of 1950’s horror films and space horror like “Alien.” When it comes to the actual facility you’re in, the sci-fi sort of space theme fits here as well. Wire, buttons, flashing lights, and control panels; this is clearly higher tech stuff than we’re used to. There’s a strong emphasis on the lighting in this game, with a lot of variation. Blue is probably the strongest color used in this, but green and purple also have a prominent space here as well. The feeling of being in a place of entertainment is very much a façade, but I think that’s on purpose. You’re basically crawling through vents and storage containers, but there’s random decorations and masks hung up around, going back to the classic theme of “Five Nights at Freddy’s:” shitty corporate veneer. Oh, and a quick note on the home you go to between nights. Remember how I said there was a 1950’s feel? Well, look no further than the old TV and wallpaper. Plus, we couldn’t talk about the visuals without talking about how there was a whole animated show thrown in just for fun. Amazing. I also want to talk about the animation. This, at least at the time, uh, excluding “FNaF World,” was the most animation-heavy “Five Nights at Freddy’s” game there was. Specifically cutscene-wise, we see a lot; we see the Scooping Room in action, the Minireenas and Ballora, Ennard and Funtime Foxy; there’s also a lot of stark imagery here, from the guards hanging to Ballora’s broken eye staring at you at Night 4; great stuff all around. [Electronic ambient music] Now, in my “FNaF World” Update 2 retrospective, I talked about how important voice acting being introduced would be to the series. We really start to see that here: first off, HandUnit. HandUnit essentially takes the place of Phone Guy in this game, but is not voiced by Scott Cawthon. He goes through more than one voice, actually. Baby’s dialogue is pretty much the most important aspect of storytelling in the game, and the performance is great. And that’s not to mention the iconic voice of Funtime Freddy and the haunting sound of Ballora’s voice talking in the Gallery, and honestly just every other performance. On the sound design generally, while it isn’t quite as gameplay-oriented as some of the others— —with the exception of Ballora Gallery— —it’s where most of the horror comes in. [Quiet sustained hum] Random noises of shifting metal or the voice of the vent notifications letting you know that there is something in the vent with you, the metallic breathing of Ennard or the sudden sound of heavy machinery adds to the atmosphere, but can also cause actual jumpscares. And then there’s the music. Fun fact, there was actually a whole controversy that the “Escapist 2” Lockdown theme had actually been stolen from the “Sister Location” Menu theme, and it just turned out that the drum loop they both used is actually just a really common, like, loop in GarageBand or something like that. But again, like with what I’ve been saying previously, the game’s music is very industrial and fits the new sci-fi aesthetics. Interestingly though, this is sort of how the music has sounded in all the other games too; feels more like the game changed to fit around the music, and not the other way. [Electronic ambient music] Okay, let’s talk about the plot on a surface level. Like I said, it’s a lot more linear and story-based this time around, so there’s actually quite a lot to cover here. The game starts with a cutscene as two voices talk, some investor of some kind, and William Afton himself. They discuss the designs of the animatronics, and the investor seems confused and slightly concerned about the design choices. Then the game starts in an elevator as the HandUnit explains your role here: cleaning, maintenance, and general repair. It’s explained that after the closing of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, Circus Baby’s Pizza World was created, and instead of restaurants, the animatronics are rented out to private parties. The first night goes off without a hitch, using controlled shocks to control the animatronics back to their stage. The next night, however, the power goes out, and the Baby animatronic reveals she’s somehow sentient. She’s trying to protect you from the other animatronics for some reason that isn’t quite clear yet. After surviving the Bidybabs, Ballora Gallery, and Funtime Freddy, we move on to the next night. This next night has a bit of an extra story element that is optional. Instead of going into Funtime Freddy’s Auditorium, you can go to Circus Baby’s room, in spite of what HandUnit tells you. Here, Circus Baby tells you that the only time she was ever on stage, presumably before the gas leaks shut the restaurant down and it was turned into a rental business. She would count the children as they entered until there was only one left. When that child was alone, her stomach opened to reveal ice cream, and then there was screaming. Whatever it is that happened, it doesn’t seem like Baby was in control of herself when it did; but it appears that this is what the “gas leaks” really were. Moving on, on your way back from repairing Funtime Freddy, you get captured by Funtime Foxy and stuck inside a springlock suit. Somewhere nearby, you hear two maintenance workers starting up the Scooper, which guts the Ballora animatronic. Baby tells you to survive inside until the workers rescue you in the morning. In her monologue though, she makes a big emphasis on being able to pretend, how she’s the only animatronic smart enough to fool the humans. The next night, you’re led to repair Baby. She interrupts you and tells you to take her chip out and send her to the Scooper on a conveyor belt. She warns you though, Ballora’s scooped remains are here, and you must listen to her to avoid Ballora. You move to the Scooping Room, and Baby’s true intentions are revealed. As Ennard is revealed in the window, Baby’s voice explains that they’ve been trapped for so long, unable to escape. So basically, they’re going to scoop out your innards and use your skin as a suit to escape. Hm. Interesting. Then you’re scooped, and we cut to a bathroom mirror; eyes open, purple. Now that was all very surface level, but there’s a lot more that we can dive into a little deeper. First, there’s a little girl’s voice between nights. GIRL’S VOICE: “Daddy, why won’t you let me play with her?” Judging by the fact that there’re only two British accents in the series, it seems like this is Mr. Afton’s daughter. The general consensus pretty much is that this is the voice of Afton’s daughter right before she gets attacked by Baby, as Baby describes in Night 3. One last element of the main plot here, the secret death mini-games; back to basics. When you die, there is a small chance of getting this mini-game in which you play as Circus Baby giving children cupcakes. It’s pretty simple, but to actually complete it within the time limit is extremely difficult. Finishing this mini-game correctly, however, unlocks the secret room in Night 5 we talked about earlier with the Ennard fight. To beat it correctly, you need to get all of the children cupcakes— —which takes a very precise use of the power-ups— —collect an ice cream cone, and then run all the way back to the beginning of the game. This time, a girl in pigtails is waiting. Baby presents the ice cream cone, and as the child gets closer, Baby’s stomach opens with a claw, killing the girl. So that’s basically confirming what Baby said in Night 3. Doing this opens up the ability to go to the Private Room, which has an entire other set of story elements. Ennard trying to lure the player out, vague references to the player being William Afton; it’s all very confusing, which is why we’ll talk about the secrets and easter eggs from here on to really understand more, starting with the Private Room. In the Private Room, there are a set of static monitors in front of you and a Fredbear plush on the table. There’s also a keypad. Entering “1983” into the keypad switches on the monitors, and we see cameras showing…the FNaF 4 house? It appears that the “Sister Location” building bunker-thing is directly underneath the FNaF 4 house, and this is further evidenced by the power maintenance panel in Night 2. Here, you can see the layout of FNaF 4’s house overlaid on top of the main compound. Moving away from that for a moment, inside the game’s files there’s actually blueprints of the animatronics, which includes all sorts of design choices the investors might have been concerned about. Mimic-slash-luring, storage tanks, parental voice sync and replay; you can even see what has long been thought to be a child inside of Freddy’s storage tank. These blueprints can also be seen very rarely on bootup. In less lore-relevant stuff, there’s a lot of just random easter eggs here and there. Bidybabs and Minireenas popping up randomly, Lolbit’s head appearing, Yenndo—aka Yellow Endo or Golden Endo—appearing in the Funtime Auditorium, and of course the different nose honks. [Baby’s cry]
HANDUNIT: “—rented out for private parties during the day,” [Strange honk]
HANDUNIT: “and it’s your job to get the robots” [Muffled electronic sounds]
HANDUNIT: “back in proper working order before the following morning.” [Muffled electronic sounds]
HANDUNIT: “You are now in the Primary Control Module—” And of course, the more recently discovered random numbers. At this point, it’s not clear if this is leftover debugging or if it’s actually of any lore relevance. [Electronic ambient music] You thought we’d move right on to community and theories? Yeah, all we’ve been talking about is base game. Then there was the Custom Night update. While Scott did say that the gameplay itself of this update was not canon, there is some lore-relevant secrets here that are very important to the story, and it starts outside of the game itself. During this time, Scott Cawthon’s two websites, FNaFWorld.com and ScottGames.com, were having a conversation in the source code. It seems like it’s Ennard, which is the amalgamation of all the animatronics, is arguing within itself; Baby and the other animatronics are having a fight, I guess, and Baby is being ejected. That will be really important for a future retrospective, but for now let’s move on to the Custom Night cutscenes. Before we talk about the secrets in the Custom Night, I want to talk quickly about the gameplay. Here you’re in the Private Room again with the Funtime crew: Yenndo, Bonnet, Lolbit, and different variations of the Bidybabs and Minireenas. Each one has a unique way of attacking the player. You can use the vents and doors like the Private Room, but controlled shocks also to send some of them back. There’s also different presets of game modes you can use, including different hard modes, and that’s where the secrets come in. Beating the different modes on the varying hardest difficulties reveals mini-game-style cutscenes. It’s always the same, someone walking down the street. But as the modes get harder, the man walking down the street gets more… …uh, rotted, until he becomes hunched, purple, and has wires sticking out. Clearly, this is what the skin suit looks like. At the end, he spits out the endoskeleton and falls over. The endoskeleton makes its way into the sewer, and Baby’s voice begins playing, “You won’t die.” And then this purple corpse stands up. Finally, beating Golden Freddy Mode on very hard, you get this cutscene. MICHAEL: “Father, it’s me, Michael.” MICHAEL: “I did it. I found it. It was right where you said it would be.” MICHAEL: “They were all there. They didn’t recognize me at first, but then they thought I was you.” MICHAEL: “And I found her. I put her back together, just like you asked me to. She’s free now.” MICHAEL: “But something is wrong with me. I should be dead, but I’m not. I’ve been living in shadows.” MICHAEL: “There is only one thing left for me to do now.” MICHAEL: “I’m going to come find you. I’m going to come find you.” Wow. So clearly, the community had a lot to chew on. [Electronic ambient music] So, the community. Like I said, this was the beginning of a paradigm shift for the series, and the community could feel it. Let’s-play-wise, it was your standard fare; the big players hopped in, and some new people as well. Because a bunch of stuff was revealed in the source code, MatPat even had a theory video out before the game was even released. The music, as always, was fantastic. Living Tombstone came in clutch yet again, and “Join Us for a Bite” is really catchy. And then DAGames released a “Sister Location” song before the game even came out, and somehow it predicted like the whole plot. But let’s talk about the part you’ve all been waiting for: the theories. This is when stuff became actually convoluted, I mean like really incomprehensible in a lot of ways, so I’m not gonna be able to give a clear-cut “this is what the community thinks,” so I’m just gonna give out some highlights. First, let’s talk about the big one: this whole game taking place underneath the FNaF 4 house. There’s actually an interesting debate around this. Some people think that it’s just that: a bunker built by William Afton underneath his house, further confirming that the FNaF 4 family is the Afton family. William built this room to keep track of his children— —using the Fredbear nanny cams, perhaps?— —after his daughter was killed by his own creations. He’s paranoid. Others think that the disconnect between the layout of the mini-game house and the house in-game means that this is actually a place where William Afton tests his Funtime animatronics out on children, or more specifically, the older brother. After the Bite, William begins to hate his oldest son, who caused it. So FNaF 4 isn’t actually a dream, it’s a horrible punishment-slash-experiment that William is inflicting on his son. But then you think, “Wait a minute, the Funtimes don’t look anything like the Nightmares.” Well, that’s where the next theory comes in. At this point in the series, the second novel had been released, “The Twisted Ones.” As I’ve said before, we may talk about the novels at some point later, but this is all you need to know about them for this. “The Twisted Ones” introduced some animatronics that may not have been the Funtimes, but are very similar: segmented, plasticky animatronics that could open up to hold a person inside. What’s interesting about these, though, is the very futuristic technology that they have. They essentially have a chip that tricks your brain into thinking they either look like monsters or friendly cartoon characters. So while the books aren’t a perfect one-to-one with the games, people took this concept and applied it to maybe Funtime Freddy’s “power chip” and went, “Hey, these could be the Nightmares, just with a new coat of paint.” With Custom Night there was a huge debate now on who Purple Guy even was. While for a long time we had started to assume that Pink Guy and Purple Guy were the same character, now we weren’t so sure. This meant who was Springtrap, and so began the Mike-trap versus Will-trap debate. At present I believe Scott literally curbstomped Mike-trap, but at the time this was a big point of contention. There was also a discussion about why William Afton even made the evil Funtime murder robots in the first place. Some people thought that it was just so that he could continue to murder children now that Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza had closed down, others thought it was him experimenting trying to figure out what it is that kept his victims’ souls alive and attached to these robots in a way to bring back his son, the Bite victim. “I will put you back together.” I also want to talk about a debate that really inspired a lot of fan lore, from full-blown whole theories to “FNaF VHS” fan lore and alternate universes. What is Michael’s intent at the end, when he says “I’m going to come and find you?” The initial thought is that he’s following his father’s orders again, coming to rescue him or report back. But there’s another interpretation: he’s going to go kill him. This sort of intertwines with the idea that all the night guards we play as FNaF 1 through 3, and come to think of it 4, are actually Mike Afton—sharing a name, being fired for odor, all of that stuff— —now seeing the destruction his father has brought, he’s trying to put an end to it. Now of course, there’s all sorts of other theories now about what this game means and the lore of everything, but at the time, these are the big ones I remember. [Electronic ambient music] Okay, so where does this game go on the tier list? Honestly, A-tier. I know some people are probably throwing their hands up in the air and going “why not S-tier,” but when I’m thinking about the quintessential FNaF game, if I want to show someone the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” series, and I want to go “what is the perfect game,” it’s FNaF 1 or 2. While “Sister Location” may technically be the most well-executed or best “Five Nights at Freddy’s” game, it doesn’t capture the feeling and the simplicity that the first two games do. It’s really well-made and unique, but honestly if I want to sit down and play a FNaF game, I’m still gonna go for FNaF 1 or 2. I think it’s a perfect spot. Gameplay and execution-wise, it is far above FNaF 3 and 4, but it just doesn’t hit the right spot that makes it an S-tier like FNaF 1 and 2. It would be a similarly long break before we got another FNaF game. Mostly Scott was working behind the scenes on things like the next novel and the movies and things like that. But when the next game came…oh boy. I am really excited to cover the next game. I mean, I know I say that about all of them, but this next game is literally in my top three favorite FNaF games of all time. “Hey Phillip. Yeah, uh, just checking in on the restaurant package thing,” “that should be ready today, right? I should be able to go check on that?” PHILIP: “Yeah, it’s ready today, you can get in there, test some of the games out.” “Okay, awesome.” PHILIP: “Uh, something wrong? You don’t seem that excited.” “Nothing, it’s just the brand, you know? It’s—it’s just all those old rumors, it’s…creepy.” PHILIP: “None of those rumors are true, that guy is an urban myth,” PHILIP: “and you should think twice before you spread false rumors about the company that you work for.” “Right, right, okay. All right, well I’ll be down there in a minute.” [Chill music] [“Four Bits to the Left” theme] [Eerie ambience] [Vent noises] [Jumpscare sound] [“Four Bits to the Left” theme] Welcome back. Today, we’re talking about “Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria Simulator.” This is the culmination of over three years of games. Sure, there’s “Ultimate Custom Night” and the newer Steel Wool games, but those aren’t really full lore-intense, complete “Five Nights” games. This really is the finale of the main series games. It answered so many questions that it’s honestly astonishing to me. There are still some unanswered, but things like the “Take Cake to the Children” mini-game, where The Puppet came from, the Fazbear Corporation versus Afton Robotics, William Afton and his family, it talked about so much. A lot of you might not even remember that originally we thought this was going to be a spin-off or side game, but this ended up being probably one of the most important in the entire series. So let’s get right into it. [“Nowhere to Run” theme] So the first real teaser for this game was the “I am still here” teaser. Baby’s eyes lit up in green, very reminiscent of the FNaF 3 teaser. This also had the source code secret, where it appeared Ennard was fighting within himself, like I talked about in the “Sister Location” retrospective. Between FNaFWorld.com and ScottGames, you got both sides of this conversation, which appeared to be the other inhabitants of Ennard kicking Baby out, and Baby saying she will put herself back together. However, as we were all excited for what the future of FNaF 6 held, Scott released a Steam community post saying that the project had been suspended indefinitely. There was just too much pressure to make this project bigger than the last, and he specifically said that he may just work on a spin-off, maybe a tycoon game? Well, he wasn’t lying. So, everyone was a little disappointed. I mean, who even knew if we’d see another main series FNaF game? Although, there was other stuff to look forward to like “The Freddy Files,” a book of lore and theories that was officially released. And when it did, we got a little teaser. At the end of the book, a drawing of a new design for Baby and a promise for new games in the future. Was FNaF 6 back on? There was also the Freddy Plush teasers, but I actually barely remember these, and don’t think they ended up being too relevant. And then there was the first real teaser to give us an idea about what this could be: a retro-style pixel art teaser, referencing back to FNaF 2’s death mini-game, specifically “Take Cake to the Children.” Even though this would slowly evolve into the opening troll part of Pizzeria Simulator, the reference to “Take Cake to the Children” is actually extremely important to the lore of “Pizzeria Simulator,” we just didn’t know it yet. Although there were some theories that this would take place inside of the FNaF 2 death mini-game restaurant, most people just figured it was the spin-off tycoon game that Scott had mentioned earlier. As the teasers continued, people were sure that it was going to be a spin-off game. In the source code, there was a secret that said “What is paragraph 4,” and people thought it was mentioning paragraph four of his Steam post where he talked about the pizza tycoon game. Then, a new teaser on FNaFWorld.com: the green eyes of Baby closed. A lot of people thought this meant that FNaF 6 was permanently on hold until these eyes opened. Then there was the release of the “Survival Logbook,” a book that was sort of supposed to be in-lore, kind of like the “Gravity Falls” journals. And at the end, we got another teaser: artwork of a terribly broken-down Chica sitting on a stool. Surely, this was related to FNaF 6. It’s also important to note that once we get to “Ultimate Custom Night” especially, the “Survival Logbook” is an incredibly important resource when putting the pieces of the lore together. And then there were the final teasers in the days leading up to the game’s release: “Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria Simulator.” Surely this was a spin-off tycoon game, and not FNaF 6. Little did we know, they were one and the same, so let’s go. December 4th, 2017, “Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria Simulator” was released. [“Nowhere to Run” theme] So you boot up the game, expecting it to be sort of a fun, meta spin-off game kinda like “FNaF World,” and it’s kind of underwhelming. All pixelated, simple Build a Pizza mechanic, and then you just throw pizzas at children who don’t move. It seems like it’s not much more complicated than a FNaF 2 death mini-game. However, as you start throwing the ‘za, things start glitching, and a dark version of Freddy begins blocking your pizza. He pauses for a moment if you hit him, so you have to hit him and then quickly move to keep giving the kids pizza. It gets more and more glitched and cuts to black, and then it goes to probably what is one of the best openings in horror game history, and definitely the best opening for a FNaF game. Sitting in front of you in a dark room is Baby, but she looks a little bit different than the last game. This time, it’s the version from “The Freddy Files.” While gameplay-wise all you really do here is listen to audio and mark something down on a piece of paper, it’s an introduction to a later piece of gameplay that is very important. After this opening, you move on to an opening cutscene, and then into the game. We’ll get into the lore and cutscenes later, but for now let’s just talk about the gameplay. This game is simultaneously completely different from any “Five Nights at Freddy’s” game before it, and also sort of a return to form after “Sister Location.” There is a gameplay loop in this game; the thing is, there’s multiple of them. So, let’s talk about them. First there’s the tycoon aspect: you have a top-down view of your pizzeria, which you can fill with items you buy from different catalogs: animatronics, stages, games, tables. Each one has stats for how sanitary, safe, and fun it is. If something is really unsafe or marked down in price, it may carry with it an animatronic that will bite you later. You can earn money by increasing your Faz-Rating by buying and playing games and by accepting sponsorships. Pro tip: don’t accept these, they make things a bit harder later. At this point, you’ll essentially want to make your pizzeria the best it can be and play a bunch of games you buy to increase your revenue and Faz-Rating. There is another reason to play these games, but we’ll talk about that in the lore section. For now, let’s talk about the next gameplay section, that might be a little more familiar: sitting in a dark office with a computer. Instead of checking cameras, you have to complete automated tasks. This essentially takes the place of surviving until a certain time. You have to survive long enough for the task to complete. If an animatronic is loose in the building from a high-liability item or from salvaging, which we’ll talk about in a second, you must ward them off by shining a light in the vents or luring them away with an audio cue. You can use a motion sensor to track them, and a silent vent to hear them better. However, you can only use one of these options at a time. The animatronics are attracted to the noise of the office, so you can shut off the computers and the vents to hide, so to speak. Of course, you can’t do the tasks if the computers are off, and if the air conditioning turns off the office may overheat, causing you to pass out. Clearly, there is a lot to deal with. This is why I said not to accept sponsorships. See, if you do accept them, they will interrupt your night with a loud noise and stop you from using your computer in the form of a pop-up ad. If you value your survival, I’d suggest skipping out on sponsorships. After you finish this section, you move on to the last area, the dark room with the desk again. Here you’re confronted with an animatronic and given the opportunity to salvage it or throw it out. Salvaging it gives you a lot of money, but it releases that animatronic in the office section. If you throw it out, well, that’s it. Salvaging involves playing terrifying audio and checking for a response. It really doesn’t matter if the animatronic responds, the point is that you can’t move on until you mark it on a piece of paper. But if you look away from the animatronic to mark it, it may move closer. In case of this, you want to hit it with a controlled shock. However, shock it too many times and it begins to lose value. If it jumpscares you, you lose the money, but it’s still let inside. Finally, at the end of each night, you get a rundown of your revenue that day, visitors, and best of all, lawsuits. Depending on liability or safety, you may be prone to lawsuits. If you get them, you have the opportunity to either dispute the lawsuit, which may or may not win, or pay up. If you run out of money from these lawsuits, well, that’s game over. I don’t think I’m forgetting anything? This game has so many little pieces that might not be complicated on their own, but when combined create a really unique and sometimes hard-to-cover gameplay experience. Alright, with the gameplay out of the way, let’s talk about the visuals. [“Nowhere to Run” theme] Okay, so the visuals. First off, there’s an introduction to a ton of new animatronic designs, from the Trash Gang of Bucket Bob, Mr. Can-Do, Mr. Hugs, No. 1 Crate, and Pan Stan, to the Mediocre Melodies of Happy Frog, Mr. Hippo, Nedd Bear, Orville the Elephant, and Pigpatch, and then the Rockstar animatronics, which are just slight redesigns of the main cast. Then there’s some weirder characters like Lefty, Music Man, El Chip, and Funtime Chica. All of these combine to fit this sort of aesthetic of the clean cut and rosy-cheeked feeling of the Toy animatronics, but the bulkier sort of vibe of the Classic animatronics. To be honest, they’re not really that scary, but besides Lefty, you’re not really going to see any of these characters in a scary context. Now, from the new designs to the redesigns of the old classics. Ennard, aka Molten Freddy, is like a Withered-Funtime Freddy, is the best way I can put it, still staying in the sci-fi genre “Sister Location” was in but with a less-polished outlook. Basically, Molten Freddy is a mess of wires with a mask. Scrap Baby looks completely different than the Baby we knew, complete with rollerblades and showtime lights. Something interesting to see is the color scheme change between Funtime Freddy and Baby. They went from a sort of bluish and purple hue with Baby having a dash of orange and red to fully orange. I don’t know if this was intentional or not, but the color shift to a more fiery color really fits for this game. And then of course, there’s Scraptrap, the redesign of Springtrap, like… …look, I know this is not controversial to say, but oh my god, he looks so bad. Peanut head lookin’ ass. How can you take such an iconic, fantastic design like Springtrap and just destroy it in one game? VOICEOVER: “Pickle chin ah boy—” Whatever, at least the Puppet redesign looks cool. There’s this really interesting dichotomy between the main tycoon mode, where you’re buying things and setting up your pizzeria, and the night mode, where it’s dark and creepy and you have to look back and forth to fend off the animatronics. See, you might think that the cute visuals beforehand might take away from the scariness, but to me, it kind of does the opposite. This whole time, you’re squeezing every last Faz-Token you can out of the game so you can get more money and set things up, but the whole time there’s this underlying dread that eventually you’re gonna run out of things to do and you have to go into the night mode. Despite how fun the tycoon mode is, there’s a lingering sense of dread once you start running out of things to do. And if you’re collecting all those salvages, you know it’s only going to be harder than last time. So the change from fun and cute visuals to creepy actually ends up making it scarier in the long run. When it comes to the actual office you spend a lot of your time in, you very much fall back into the “Sister Location” feeling of a corporate façade; creepy posters reminiscent of the first game and a poorly set up office space gives you the feeling that you’re actually in an office, but you’re clearly just between two vents in a crawl space. Who’s this clown? I talked in my first FNaF retrospective about how the doors gave a real sense of relief. There is no such relief here, being crammed between two vents that sit open and waiting. And of course, the salvage area is really well done. The dim orange light from one bulb, the feeling of emptiness and vulnerability that comes with sitting directly across from an animatronic. It seems like this setup inspired a lot of “FNaF VHS” videos, actually. I’ve mentioned this sort of combination of styles multiple times so far already; Toy animatronics and Classic animatronics, cute, poppy visuals and creepy office spaces. There’s also another sort of combination, a mix of sci-fi and 80’s restaurant. Like “Sister Location,” there’s an element of sci-fi with these weird, wiry, scrapped animatronics and the high-quality tech you’re able to purchase. But at the same time, you’ve got this aesthetic of cheap show lights and busted animatronics. It’s a real clash of the two styles this series has had up until now, and it works surprisingly well. A couple last things I want to talk about: first, the mini-games. There’s a lot more attention to detail here in the lore ones that matter, and in the ones that don’t really matter to the lore, there’s a lot more attention to jokes. “Fruity Maze,” “Midnight Motorist,” and “Security Puppet” all call back to the 8-bit mini-games the series is known for, but with a lot of improvements and actual gameplay elements other than just “walk around until something happens.” And for the more jokey ones, they really hit home, from Helpy breaking his fucking back— [Snapping sound] to…Lemonade Clown. [Airhorns] LEMONADE CLOWN: “Lemonade for everyone.” Like, these are actually funny bits. Had to switch to my B camera. Okay, one final thing about the visuals. There’s these cutscenes in between certain areas that are basically corporate talking to you, and these illustrations are beautiful. They somehow capture the feeling of that soulless corporate art style you see everywhere, while simultaneously having more personality than any actual corporate art could. [“Nowhere to Run” theme] Okay let’s talk music, voice acting, sound effects, stuff like that. There’s not a lot to say here actually, but don’t mistake that for it being bad. There’s some legitimate bangers on here music-wise. [“Smashing Windshields” theme] And everything fits its purpose really well. Voice acting-wise, this game is a little hit-or-miss. There’s some lines by the…you know, after you get jumpscared, that are just really, really goofy. But the Cassette Man works I think perfectly for the game. He’s a little cheesy, but it works well for what the game is doing. And like I said, when it comes to jokes, this game delivers. Really, the big thing to talk about here is the audio during the salvage segments. Really, the scare part of this is built entirely around the audio. Each audio clip you play gets more distorted, creepy, and haunting sounding, and you just sit there waiting for something, anything to happen. [Distorted electronic hum] And then silence. Now that you’re all geared up with the most haunting audio you’ve ever heard, look away from the monster in front of you. It’s very effective. And again, I think I should mention that this has inspired “FNaF VHS” videos since the earlier Squimpus tapes because it’s really effective. [“Nowhere to Run” theme] Holy shit, strap in. This is—this section is the most amount of research I’ve done for any video, period. That doesn’t mean I haven’t worked a lot on the other ones, there’s just so much here. Okay, let’s get started on the basic concept. Through voice lines and cassette tapes and Corporate talking to you, you play as a franchise owner; kind of like how things like McDonald’s and fast food restaurants you can become a manager and buy one of the chain restaurants, you basically bought a Fazbear restaurant. There’s something more here though. You seem to be under contract by this mysterious man on a cassette tape to check the back alley for animatronics and salvage them. There’s something important about this “paragraph four” of whatever contract or document; so that’s what the source code meant. There’s also this emphasis on Saturday being the deadline for something, but we’ll talk about that in the endings. Speaking of, you get this ending by getting through the whole week without salvaging any animatronics. The man on the cassette tape fires you at the end for not fulfilling your requirements of paragraph four. This ending is acquired when you don’t buy anything for your restaurant. The Corporate voice actor congratulates you on being so lazy, but then promptly fires you. You get this ending by getting as many lawsuits as you can. At the end you’re deemed a liability risk, and then fired and blacklisted. In this ending, you run out of money; pretty simple, no money, no pizzeria. Here is where things start to get lore-relevant. There’s an absurdly expensive item called Egg Baby (Data Archive) that doesn’t seem to have a use and is very strangely named. However, if you buy it and put it in your pizzeria, then go to your office, you’ll see the button on your monitor has changed to blue. If you press it, it begins to play audio. The recording is titled “hry223.” You hear the Cassette Man talk about his regrets and his past as blueprints show up on screen: the Scooper, Lefty, and something called “RASC.” These have lore relevance in themselves. We learn that Lefty was built to capture and contain something, which we’ll talk about later, and we learn about the first reference to Remnant in the series. The big thing here, though, is the title of the recording. People have interpreted that to be the name “Henry.” The books become relevant here again. Henry was the co-creator of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza in the books, along with William Afton. In this recording, he seems to be lamenting the part he unwittingly played in William’s murders by helping him create the robots and the brand. Things are starting to fall into place. After this recording plays, you are informed that you know too much and are sent to a mental institution. Okay, let’s finally talk about the main story ending. If you complete the game salvaging all of the animatronics, at the end of the last night, Baby starts to talk to you. She seems to be under the impression that you are a gift for the animatronics sent here by William Afton as prey for them. But then Henry, aka Cassette Man, interrupts. He explains that he is the one that brought them all here; there is no pizzeria. They’re in a trap. The room begins heating up, and he makes his intention clear: he’s burning the place to the ground, animatronics, himself, and all. He makes an interesting comment here as well: whoever we play as is not who was originally meant to get this job, and as he says, there was a way out, but he suspects that whoever you are, you want to go down with the ship too. We learn a lot here. We learn that his daughter was the victim from FNaF 2’s death mini-game, we learn that William is going to hell, and that hopefully with the animatronics going up in flames, the misery of Fazbear Entertainment will end for good. HENRY: “End communication.” Obviously, there is tons of lore and revelations happening in this ending, but we’re not quite done yet; there’s still one more ending. This is basically the same as the other ending, but you need to complete all the mini-games and secrets flawlessly. At the end credits you get this image. Yo, what? We’ll talk about how people have interpreted these endings in the theory and community section, but for now there’s still more. So like I said, a lot of the games and things that you can buy for your pizzeria let you do little playtests or basically play a whole arcade game. Now, a lot of them are just filled with funny bits, but some of them have very important easter eggs and lore in them, so let’s get started. “Fruity Maze” is a “Pacman”-style arcade game that you can use in your pizzeria. There’s no enemies, but there is a countdown timer. You play as a blonde girl collecting fruit, and to beat it in time takes an absurd amount of skill and use of power-ups. Each time you beat it, things get…stranger. A bloody dog begins to show up, and this very “friendly”-looking rabbit. Eventually the dog is just bloody chunks, and the girl is leaving a trail of blood. At the same time, whenever the arcade machine lights up, you can see whoever is playing it in the reflection. At first she starts out smiling, but gets sadder until you see someone behind her: Spring Bonnie. If you remember the lore from earlier videos, you know that whoever is in this suit does not have good intentions. Then, this happens. [Car alarm] Wow. So again, more lore given directly to us. We’ll talk about what it can mean in the theory section, but we’ve still got more things to cover. “Midnight Motorist.” This is a sort of racing game where you have to dodge around traffic. It’s pretty simple, but there’s a secret at the last lap. There’s a break in the barriers which you can use to cut into this area. You can follow this forest road to a couple different places: first, there’s Junior’s. This place has given the community a lot of grief. What the hell is Junior’s? Someone tells your character that you can’t be here. Then you can go to this house. And wait, who the hell is Orange Guy? Whatever, we’ll talk about it later. Lots of “getting into it later” this episode. Anyway, you enter and you’re met with, uh, the chocolate lady from “Spongebob” watching TV. She tells you to “leave him alone tonight,” but why would we do that? So we go into the next room, and the door is locked. Our orange man is clearly very upset by this, so we go outside to find a way inside from the outside, but the window is broken and we see two sets of footprints: someone leaving from the window, and very clearly an animal-slash-animatronic footprint coming toward the window. This is enough to completely whip the community into a frenzy, but there’s one more thing. When you’re driving in the forest, there’s another secret break in the road which leads you to this area. And yet again, Scott Cawthon has turned the community on its head with just a few pixels. And yet again, to fully understand how important this section is we’ll have to talk about in the lore section, but just keep in mind that this is huge. The “Security Puppet” doesn’t look like an arcade, but you can play it like a game. We see The Puppet in a box, and the point of the game is to keep track of children with a certain color wristband. It’s sort of replicating what Security Puppet would actually be doing: keeping an eye on coded wristbands. You’re supposed to be looking for green wristbands, but none show up. Finally, the last round playing it, the music cuts out, and we see someone with a green wristband left outside. However, The Puppet’s box has something on top of it, delaying your response. It’s raining outside. The girl fades away, and the Security Puppet chases after her. Breaking down from the rain, the Puppet is too late: the girl is dead, and The Puppet falls over on top, broken. Now, if a child being left outside to die seems familiar, it should. It’s from the most iconic death mini-game in FNaF 2. This section ties directly in with the Completion Ending. So what this means—going very light on the theorycrafting, this stuff is basically confirmed— —is that Henry—the other creator of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza— —his daughter was killed way back, and “Save him” has been retconned to “Save her.” And now Henry’s daughter haunts The Puppet. This is a huge revelation for the games in just one mini-game. There’s some other stuff here too. There’s some hidden death screens that reveal different animatronics in the back alley. This actually reveals something pretty interesting: The Puppet is inside of Lefty, and I know you’re tired of hearing this, but we’ll talk about what that means later. There’s also Candy Cadet, who will sometimes tell you little stories. Taking these stories literally is not conducive to actually figuring out the lore of the game. Basically, you want to pay attention to the main theme: taking five things, putting them into one, and then placing them somewhere. A boy who doesn’t want to lose his pet snake, but he doesn’t want to give up his pet kittens. In the end he lets a snake eat one kitten, but is filled with regrets and buries the kitten’s remains after killing the snake. A man who adopts five children to save them from the danger of a burglar that might break into one of their homes, and end up all being killed because they’re in the same house when a burglar does come. Only able to afford one coffin, he stitches them together and buries them. And finally, a woman who has five keys but can only use one. The keys work to unlock doors that children are trapped behind, but instead of just using one and saving one child, she tries to melt the keys together to unlock all the doors. This doesn’t work, and all the children are doomed. Like I said, you should not take these literally. They are more metaphors to help you understand the lore, depending on what aspect you look at. Last thing I want to talk about here is just this little thing that can happen. Pretty cool and creepy. Alright, finally we can move on to the next section, where we can actually talk about what all these things mean. [“Nowhere to Run” theme] Okay, let’s talk about the community before we talk about all the theories, ‘cause that’s gonna take a while. Song-wise, a lot of the big players basically took a step back for this one, including Living Tombstone. A lot of big players in the let’s-play game, though, did hop in because it was clear this was not just a troll game or a spin-off, that this was basically FNaF 6. And the ending felt so final and so important in this game, a lot of people made these bold statements about how this was the last FNaF game. I thought we kind of learned our lesson with FNaF 3, but I guess not. And one last thing, although these wouldn’t come out for years afterwards, the whole setup of Henry and William’s relationship and the Afton family in general, and the setup of sitting and playing audio cues for an animatronic sitting in front of you; that has inspired AUs and personal stories and theories and the full “FNaF VHS” series since the very beginning. So, this was a pretty important game for the community. Okay, let’s talk about the part you’ve all been waiting for: the theories. I’ve separated these into sort of sections, I guess, for how they relate to each other so it’ll be a smoother transition. Let’s just get started. Okay, so generally, here’s what people in the community have interpreted. You play as Michael Afton after the events of “Sister Location.” You buy the restaurant, which is really just a ploy by Henry to lure all of the animatronics to his maze, trap them there, and burn the place to the ground, hopefully freeing the spirits and setting the whole place to rest. Henry worked with William to create Freddy’s and the animatronics, unknowingly giving William a platform and ability to kill children. Combine that with the guilt, the death of his own daughter and the power of the company, Henry plans to end it all, burning himself as well. Michael Afton, being a half-dead empty zombie corpse suit anyway, decides to go up in flames with the rest of his family too. So, that’s generally the idea. Some other stuff to note is this: in Lefty’s blueprints, it talks about how the animatronic was made to capture something, and like I said, The Puppet is inside Lefty. The theory is that The Puppet is so powerful, Henry created Lefty specifically to lure and capture The Puppet so that it would burn as well. It may have his daughter’s spirit, but this is the only way for their souls to move on. And on that note of Henry’s daughter’s spirit, the retcon that the first victim was actually Henry’s daughter and The Puppet is huge news. This means, and this is backed up by the Completion Ending monologue, all of the spirits ended up haunting the animatronics because of Henry’s daughter; or at least that’s the best interpretation. Another note on some theories surrounding Henry: the Candy Cadet stories can be interpreted in a lot of different ways, but my favorite way that the community has sort of taken these ideas is that William is the snake and Henry is the main character. I’m not suggesting that Henry willingly sacrificed his daughter, but the idea that maybe Henry knew what happened after that but tried to almost convince himself that it didn’t because he thought maybe William would be done after one, because he was his friend. To me, just this take on it really adds interesting depth to characters that are basically just disembodied voices and sprites. A lot of people have used this in their own personal interpretations and AUs, and it’s pretty cool. Okay, so let’s talk about the gravestones really quick. So while there are six in total, there’s only four we can see: Jeremy, Fritz, Suzy, and Gabriel. Jeremy and Fritz are the name of the night guards you play as in FNaF 2. You might be able to get away with saying Jeremy is a different Jeremy, but Fritz is such a unique name it would be wild to assume we’re not talking about the same characters. That leaves Suzy, Gabriel, and two obscured gravestones. Honestly, this is still sort of an open book in the community. Some people think that the one on the hill is William, or maybe Henry’s daughter, and who corresponds to what gravestone is very confusing. However, there is one thing we’ve figured out since then, and it’s a pretty popular theory: one of the two obscured gravestones is Cassidy. This is the name that belongs to Golden Freddy, which the community figured out in the “Logbook.” There’s some overlap here with “Ultimate Custom Night” too, because many people associate “Ultimate Custom Night” as the FNaF 6 Custom Night, but we’re gonna have a whole other video on “Ultimate Custom Night,” so just you wait. Okay, last thing I want to talk about in this main game section. In the “Fruity Maze” game, it’s pretty well implied that this little girl is lured by William Afton, and is probably one of the victims; that much is implied and interpreted. Something interesting though is the sound of a car alarm and the motif of a dead dog. The theory for this, at least the main one, is that William is yet again using his purple Lambo to kill, this time this girl’s dog, and now he’s using her sadness over her dog to lure her by telling her “he’s not really dead.” Some, including MatPat, have even taken it a step further: that The Mangle is actually haunted by the ghost of that dead dog. That’s why Mangle’s voice sounds all garbled in FNaF 2, and why it’s the only active animatronic in the FNaF 2 death mini-game. If this were true, it would almost make it appear that William is experimenting with the whole possession idea, and I don’t think that’s too far off considering the introduction of Remnant in the series. Okay, so I’ve got to be honest here: I haven’t read “The Fourth Closet,” which is the final book in the “Silver Eyes” trilogy, but from what I understand, this is really where Remnant is explained as a concept. It’s a sort of substance made out of metal, strong human emotion, and human flesh. This is sort of what makes the animatronics become haunted. And in the book, William very much knows about what Remnant is and is experimenting with it. So why exactly he’s using Remnant in the game series— —depending on whether he’s just crazy, he’s trying to figure out the secret to immortal life, or maybe he’s trying to bring his son back— —it just seems like it’s not a far-fetched idea. Staying on the topics of the book’s connection with the game, let’s talk about “Midnight Motorist.” Now generally, this game is considered one of the most confusing in the entire series. Most people are under the impression that this yellow guy is actually Purple Guy, and they changed his palette because Michael Afton became purple in “Sister Location,” and… …ugh, it’s confusing, but the theory I’ve heard most often is that this person at the TV is Michael Afton as a child, and this is a flashback to show the abuse that the Afton family endured from William. It could also be that this bald character is the mother and it’s William yelling at Michael, possibly not long after the Bite; again, this one is up to very loose interpretation. One big thing though is the connection to “The Twisted Ones,” the second in the “Silver Eyes” book trilogy. It’s this weird pile of dirt, and the Twisted Ones— —the evil animatronics made to capture children, like the Funtime animatronics in the games— —bury themselves in the ground to hide. Knowing that the Afton family home is above the “Sister Location” storage facility, is it possible that this is a Funtime-slash-Twisted animatronic’s hiding place, perhaps the one that stole this character away? That’s the only real explanation I’ve heard, but again this one is very confusing. Like, what is Junior’s anyway? Some have said it’s a bar and that William is an alcoholic, some think that it may be the FNaF 2 location; god, this mini-game is exhausting. Okay, now I want to talk about some connections between this game and FNaF 3, because there are quite a few, starting with where this game fits in the timeline. Dawko had a really great theory about how FNaF 3’s “Happiest Day” mini-game was really the end…to one of two stories. It was the end of the main set of animatronics’ spirits being freed, but as you see, The Puppet’s mask falls last. Dawko took this to mean that there’s unfinished business. There’s a whole other set of dead kids and horrible stuff entirely rooted in the Afton family, so there’s this idea that these gravestones may belong to the Afton family. Then of course, the names Elizabeth or Michael don’t show up, and we’ve got these new names. There are still unanswered questions, but I think that FNaF 4 being a transition to a new story, this time about the troubled Afton family, makes sense. Some other theories and connections to FNaF 3, again this time from Dawko: Dawko’s idea posits that the reason someone like Elizabeth Afton, who likely haunts Baby, would become evil and want to scoop and kill would be because the possession involving Remnant isn’t quite a one-to-one. It’s like a battle between programming and soul. So maybe the programming of Baby to kill and capture people overpowered Elizabeth. It would make sense why the haunted animatronics in FNaF 3 can’t enter the restricted back room, and why Springtrap is so easily lured by laughter; his robotics are programmed to go to the nearest sound. This one is more of a technicality in the grand scheme of the story, but an interesting idea nonetheless. Oh, and one more connection to FNaF 3. We kinda actually figured out who all these weird non-main cast masks were in the “Happiest Day” mini-game: the Mediocre Melodies. How exactly this works in a timeline sense, I don’t know, but at least these characters exist in canon now. Kind of similar to how Funtime Chica is speculated to be the springlock suit we’re in in Night 4 of “Sister Location,” and now she’s here. Okay, last thing I want to talk about here is some of MatPat’s contribution to the theory world and what was going on at the time. Like it or not, MatPat has huge sway power when it comes to what the community thinks, and even what Scott Cawthon thinks; in fact, enough for Scott to respond, and on MatPat’s video leading up to this game, he did. Like I said my “Sister Location” video, Mike-trap versus Will-trap was a huge debate, and there was still the whole idea about was it the Bite of ‘87 or ‘83 that we see in FNaF 4. And then when the game was released, there was, you know, Orange Guy versus Purple Guy, so there was a lot of confusion. And Scott, in a history-making move, actually just flat-out confirmed some stuff. Essentially, he confirmed that in FNaF 4, we see the Bite of ‘83, and not ‘87, and that William Afton is indeed Springtrap, and not to get too hung up on the idea that Purple Guy is literally purple. And a final note on MatPat, this time from his theory after the game came out. MatPat had a really interesting take on the box, tying it into the Candy Cadet stories. To get a full rundown of his theory on how the box changed, check out the video yourself, but his conclusion is that the box is the restaurant. In a more meta way, the box is the maze and prison that you trap the animatronics in, finally putting everything to rest. And with all of that tying back into the initial end of the game that we talked about a while ago, I think that’s a perfect time to end this section. [“Nowhere to Run” theme] Boy oh boy, was that section long. So, where am I rating this bad boy? Honestly, same as “Sister Location,” A-tier. Now I will say it is one of my favorites, it’s in my top three, but much like “Sister Location,” it just doesn’t have the—the simplicity, the pure essence of “Five Nights at Freddy’s” like the S-tiers of FNaF 1 and FNaF 2. The story is really good, but some of the gameplay elements are lacking when you put them on their own. Generally it’s fun, replayable, and a fantastic conclusion to this part of the timeline, but it just doesn’t quite make it up to S-tier. So, right there with “Sister Location.” This ending is a little bittersweet, because I’m not really sure what to do with this FNaF retrospective series now. There’s gonna be a video on “Ultimate Custom Night—” HENRY: “This place will not be remembered,” HENRY: “and the memory of everything that started this can finally begin to fade away,” HENRY: “as the agony of every tragedy should.” HENRY: “And to you monsters trapped in the corridors: be still, and give up your spirits.” HENRY: “They don’t belong to you.” HENRY: “For most of you, I believe there is peace and perhaps more waiting for you after the smoke clears,” HENRY: “although for one of you, the darkest pit of Hell has opened to swallow you whole.” HENRY: “So don’t keep the devil waiting…friend.” [Fire crackling]
[Robotic screams] SOFT VOICE: “I will never let you leave.” [Electronic hum and low ambience] Welcome back to the finale of the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” retrospective series. Maybe in a couple years I’ll look back at “Help Wanted” or “Security Breach,” but for now this is kind of a melancholy moment. We’re looking at the end. Now, in the future I’m still going to be talking about “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” just in a different format, and I’m excited to cover a lot of other games. What do we have to look forward to in the future? Well, the Patrons have voted on a retrospective series about the SCP games, from “Containment Breach” to “087-B” to all the stuff in between. So, this is not the end; but, it is a little sad. So before we move on to talking about “Ultimate Custom Night,” I just want to have a look back. The first retrospective I ever released in November of 2020, and it did really well, the support was amazing. What I was doing beforehand was just short “FNaF VHS” analysis videos, and what that video showed me was that I could take my time and put a lot of effort into my videos and people would appreciate it. And I want to give proper credit to Scruffy. I got Scruffy’s video about FNaF 1’s audio in my recommended and I thought the deep dive nature of the video was amazing. It inspired me to talk about the other aspects of the game— —visuals, lore, community, and gameplay—and so the retrospective video was born. And since then, the series has blown up my channel, literally allowing me to do this for a living. I’m moving into my own place in a few weeks here, and of course I’m super appreciative of all the Patrons, so just thank you. All right, with all that out of the way, let’s talk about “Ultimate Custom Night.” [Electronic hum] This game is unique. It wasn’t originally intended to be a standalone game, instead a Custom Night update to “Pizzeria Simulator—” —like how “Sister Location’s” Custom Night was— —but the project got so big it had to become its own project. Every single character from the series, the biggest Custom Night ever, 50/20 Mode. And interestingly, Scott became a lot more transparent with development. He added progress updates as teasers, what characters were added, and even how each of them worked, before the game was even released. As well, there were tons of new voice casting calls, including really mysterious or vague descriptions. Theorycrafting once again began: who were these characters? Also, there was a challenge between Dawko and Scott Cawthon. Like I said, things had become increasingly transparent, so people already knew how absurdly difficult this was going to be: 50 characters, max 20 difficulty. So here was the challenge: could Dawko beat 50/20 Mode? If he could, he got an interview with Scott Cawthon. If he couldn’t, well then he had to make a fangame called “FANF 7,” and it was all about Dawko praising Scott Cawthon; just another layer of hype. What was the outcome? Well, we’ll talk about that in the community and theories section. For now, let’s just talk about gameplay, because on June 27th, 2018, Scott Cawthon released “Ultimate Custom Night” for free. [Electronic hum] I sat for a long time contemplating how to cover the gameplay part of this. All the other games, I’ve talked about how the gameplay makes it scary, but this game just isn’t scary and isn’t trying to be. It’s literally 50 characters, all from different timelines and different…styles; some of them are pixelated or some of them were just hallucinations. It’s more of a goofy send-off to the tryhards of the series. By completing different challenges, you can unlock different office skins based on the different games or buy different upgrades to make your night easier. And like any Custom Night, it’s up to you to set the individual controls for each character, along with some challenges you can try, and the most difficult obviously being 50/20 Mode. There’s also a standalone mechanic with the Death Coin, which you can buy to remove one of the animatronics from your night. Now honestly, a lesser man would just end it there; I mean, there’s 50 characters to talk about. But this is “Ultimate Custom Night” and the finale of the retrospective series, so let’s talk about all 50 animatronics. Luckily, Scott was nice enough to have a whole list of all the animatronics and how they work before the game even released, so here we go. Golden Freddy: When he appears after lowering your tablet, pull it back up quickly to get rid of him! Staring at him for too long will end your run with an unpleasant surprise! Helpy: He will appear on your desk at random when closing your tablet. Get rid of him quick or he’ll get up-close and personal with an airhorn! BB: He will try to sneak in through the side vent. Close the side vent and wait until you hear a thud indicating he is gone. If BB slips in, he will temporarily make a nuisance of himself, disabling your flashlight until he leaves. JJ: She will also try to sneak in through the side vent. Close the side vent and wait until you hear a thud indicating she is gone. If JJ slips in, she will disable all your door controls until she leaves. Nightmare Fredbear & Nightmare: This tag-team duo are invisible to the cameras and can only be seen when they reach your doorways (Fredbear takes left, and Nightmare takes right); even then, only their eyes are visible. Close the doors on their faces to send them back into the darkness! Phantom Freddy: He will slowly materialize in your office, fading in from nothing. Shining your flashlight at him is the only way to make him disappear again. If he fully materializes, he will jumpscare you and cause you to black-out temporarily. Old Man Consequences: Better catch a fish. The Marionette: If you neglect its music box then it will break free of its prison. Once out, it can’t be put back inside, and your ventilation system will drain much faster than it did before, causing blackouts and eventually a game over. Nightmarionne: His presence moves randomly to different locations in your office as you play, and begins to reappear when your mouse cursor moves over him. Be quick to avoid the area of the office that he occupies, or your run will end with a jumpscare! Music Man: He is behind you, always, and is sound activated. If you continue to make a lot of noise, he will slowly become more active, crashing his cymbals together faster and faster, finally ending your run with a startling face-to-face jumpscare. Nightmare BB: He sits in your office throughout the night, usually slouched over. When slouched, be careful not to shine your light on him. If he is standing, however, shine your light to return him to his sitting position, otherwise he will attack you when you turn away. Happy Frog: She climbs around in the overhead duct system, making her way toward the hoses that drop into your office. Use the audio lure to hold her in place. She is fooled 100% of the time by the audio lure, but is immune to the effects of the heater. Mr. Hippo: He climbs around in the overhead duct system, making his way to the hoses that drop into your office. Use the heater to repel him, or the audio to lure him to hold him in place. He is fooled 100% of the time by the audio lure. He is slightly faster than Happy Frog. Pigpatch: He climbs around in the overhead duct system, making his way toward the hoses that drop into your office. Use the heater to repel him, or the audio lure to hold him in place. He is fooled 100% of the time by the audio lure. He is slightly faster than Mr. Hippo. Nedd Bear: He climbs around in the overhead duct system, making his way toward the hoses that drop into your office. Use the heater to repel him, or the audio lure to hold him in place. He is fooled 50% of the time by the audio lure and is slightly faster than Pigpatch. Orville the Elephant: He climbs around in the overhead duct system, making his way toward the hoses that drop into your office. Use the heater to repel him, or the audio lure to hold him in place. He is fooled 10% of the time by the audio lure. He is slightly faster than Nedd Bear. Springtrap: He climbs around in the vent system, making his way toward the opening vent embedded in the wall in front of you. Track him by watching the vent monitor. He moves silently, so don’t bother listening for him, but when he is poised to attack you will see his face looking back at you from the vent. Close the vent door on him to send him on his way. Molten Freddy: He also climbs in the vent system, but is much faster than the other animatronics when it comes to maneuvering his way toward you. You can track him in the vent monitor, and can hear his laugh when he is poised to attack. Close the vent door to send him away. Ennard: He also climbs in through the vent system, but unlike the other animatronics in the vents, he is difficult to track, appearing only briefly here and there when moving. He can’t be seen in the vent opening, but gives himself away by making a squeaking sound before attacking. Close the vent door on him to send him away. Phantom Mangle: Will appear at random in your viewing monitor. Close the monitor or switch viewing modes to make it disappear. If left onscreen for too long, Phantom Mangle will invade your office temporarily, causing audio distractions and increasing your noise meter, which can attract even more problems. Mangle: Mangle makes his way through the vent system, but unlike the other animatronics in the vents, once he reaches the vents in your office he will never leave, and will enter your office the moment the vent door opens. The only way to stop her is to use the vent snare, which can only be active in one place at a time, forcing you to keep track of Mangle’s location in the vents to ensure that the correct vent snare is active. Once in your office, Mangle will hang from the ceiling creating audio disturbances before eventually dropping down to jumpscare you. Withered Chica: She is the last of the five vent-crawlers. Withered Chica can be blocked by the vent snare as well as the vent door. Unlike Ennard and the others, she gives no audio cue when she is at the door, meaning you need to track her position using the vent radar. If she reaches the vent door, she will become stuck in it, preventing you from closing it for the rest of the night. While her girth prevents Ennard, Molten Freddy, and Springtrap from passing, Mangle can still get through. While this may seem like a strategic advantage, keep in mind that Withered Chica may eventually wiggle free and jumpscare you. Toy Bonnie: He sneaks in through a trapdoor to your right. There is no way to prevent him from entering your office. Your only defense is to put on your Freddy Fazbear mask to fool him. Looking directly at him will increase the effectiveness of the mask, causing him to leave a little faster. Toy Chica: She sneaks in through a trapdoor on your left, and just like Toy Bonnie, there is no way to prevent her from getting into the room. Your only defense is to put on your Freddy Fazbear mask to fool her. Toy Chica is faster than Toy Bonnie and will invade your office more often, however she is easier to fool with the mask, especially when looking directly at her. Jack-O-Chica: She appears at both your left and right doors at the same time. Closing either door by itself will have no effect on her. Check your cameras and view the hallways on either side of you; when Jack-O-Chica is fully materialized at both doors, close both doors simultaneously to cause her to disappear. Keeping your office cool will prevent her from appearing. Jack-O-Chica only begins to appear when your office overheats. If the office is over 100 degrees, then closing the doors will have no effect. Rockstar Chica: She stands outside your office waiting for her chance to jumpscare you (she can approach from either side). Closing the doors will not cause her to leave. To make her leave, double-click the “wet floor” sign to place in front of the door that she is standing at. This will discourage her from entering (she will be afraid of slipping), and make her go away. Freddy Fazbear: He approaches from the left hall, emerging from the darkness and progressing in stages toward your door. Keep track of him on the monitor and shut the door when he is standing in the doorway to turn him away. He moves faster as the building gets warmer, so try to keep things at a cool 60 degrees whenever possible. Phantom BB: He will appear on your viewing monitor at random. Quickly change your cameras or lose the monitor to avoid his jumpscare. Getting jumpscared by Phantom BB will cause you to black-out temporarily. Phone Guy: He will call at random into your office, and you will only have a brief amount of time to mute his call. If you fail to mute the call then you will be forced to listen to the whole thing, which will aggravate you as well as any animatronic that is sensitive to the noise level. Also, the mute button will appear in unpredictable locations. Nightmare Freddy: While you aren’t looking, mini-Freddies (Freddles) will accumulate on your desk and around the office. Shine your flashlight to scare them away. If you let too many of them gather together then Nightmare Freddy will be summoned, ending your run with a jumpscare. Chica: She hangs out in the kitchen, being generally clumsy and knocking over lots of pots and pans. In “Custom Night,” the kitchen is also where the music box happens to be, and while Chica doesn’t care if the music box is wound up or not, she can grow tired of the music selection playing. As long as you hear pots and pans, Chica is content. If she stops making noise, however, then she has grown tired of the song, and you only have a short amount of time to change it. Don’t get too eager to change music selections though, because if you change the music while Chica is happy, then she will leave the kitchen to come get you. Once she leaves the kitchen, there is no way to make her go back. Lefty: He sits in the closet off of the left hallway. He becomes more and more agitated if the office becomes too noisy or too hot. This state of agitation increases slowly, and will eventually end with Lefty jumpscaring you. Lowering the noise level won’t reverse the effects, nor will reducing the temperature, and the doors won't prevent Lefty from getting to you. The only way to ease his temperament is to switch on the Global Music Box (which soothes all music box animatronics at the expense of extra power being drained). El Chip: El Chip is just a cameo mascot when he appears in Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. His real passion lies in authentic Mexican cuisine. He isn’t here to jumpscare you, but he may interrupt your night with some jarringly colorful advertisements for Chip’s Fiesta Buffet. Click “Skip” or press ENTER to get rid of the invasive advertisements before you lose control of what’s going on in your office! Withered Bonnie: He slips in through the trapdoor while you’re viewing your monitor. You’ll know he’s there by the audio and visual distortions he causes just by standing there ominously. You’ll only have a short amount of time to put on the mask to ward him off, otherwise a jumpscare is all you’ll have to look forward to. Funtime Chica: She isn’t there to ruin your day, she just wants her moment in the spotlight. She will occasionally appear on your screen as though posing for the red carpet, accompanied by camera flashes which may cause some disorientation. You’ll need to learn to maneuver around your office despite these disorienting effects, otherwise someone else may take advantage of your confusion and crash the party. Toy Freddy: Relax, Toy Freddy is retired. He sits in the Parts & Service room playing video games on his big-screen TV. What game is he playing? “Five Nights at Mr. Hugs,” of course. The problem is that Toy Freddy has never really been very good at video games, and if he loses his game, he will probably blame you for it. Check the Parts & Service cam to see how he’s doing. In “Five Nights With Mr. Hugs,” there are only three ways into the office and only one door can be closed at a time. Click the cams on Toy Freddy’s monitor, then be sure that the appropriate door is closed to prevent Mr. Hugs from getting into his office. If you check on Toy Freddy and see GAME OVER on his screen, that means that Mr. Hugs has already jumpscared him, and now Toy Freddy is on his way to jumpscare you. Once Toy Freddy has been jumpscared, there will be no way to calm him down, and no way to save yourself. Funtime Foxy: He hides behind his curtain waiting for the show to begin. Check his stage and read the sign to see when the showtime is; it will always be on the hour, but the hour will be random. For instance, showtime may be 1am, 2am, 3am. Remember that time, because showtime is the exact moment that you get jumpscared. There’s only one way to prevent showtime, and that’s by viewing his stage at the moment the hour changes. If you’re watching him on camera when showtime arrives, then the show will be delayed by several hours (and the sign will change as well). Each hour in-game lasts exactly 45 seconds, and there is a timer visible while you play; use this to calculate exactly when you need to be viewing Funtime Foxy’s curtain to ensure that his showtime never happens. Ballora: She will approach from either the left or right hall, disabling all of your camera feeds as she approaches. You’ll have to rely on the sound of her music to determine which side she’s approaching from, and close the correct door before she reaches you. Close the door in time and she will retreat into the darkness. Rockstar Bonnie: He will occasionally appear in your office and is conspicuously missing his guitar. In fact, the only way to appease him is to locate his guitar in the camera system and double click on it. Fail to do this in a timely fashion and you’ll lower your monitor and only be greeted with a jumpscare. Rockstar Foxy: His parrot will occasionally fly through your office, and if you’re able to click on it before it gets away then Rockstar Foxy will appear in your office. While the other Foxies are here only to torment you, Rockstar Foxy isn’t quite as hostile. In fact, he will probably offer a few interesting boosts to help you get through the night, such as increasing your power meter, restoring the temperature to a cool 60 degrees, or soundproofing your office for five seconds. However, choosing to summon Rockstar Foxy isn’t without risk. If you catch him in a bad mood, he may just greet you with a jumpscare and end your turn. Circus Baby, Nightmare Bonnie, & Nightmare Mangle: They will all approach from the right hall, but each of them will only attack once per night, and they change their order of attack each night so you don’t know who to expect first. There are two ways to defend against them. One is to shut the right door and leave it shut for the duration of the night (which is obviously impractical as well as it will drain your power). The other is to purchase their plush toy from the Prize Corner. The Prize Corner has only three plush toys available to buy: Bonnie, Mangle, and Baby, and your funds will be very limited, so it’s important to buy the characters in order that they appear in the hall. You must use Faz-Coins to purchase the plush toys, and there are two ways to accumulate them throughout the night. One way is to block the attacks of other animatronics. Each successful block earns one Faz-Coin. The other way to earn coins is to find them on the cams and scan your mouse cursor over them to collect them. Increasing the difficulty of these characters will increase the price of their plush toys. William Afton (AKA Scraptrap): Afton has the distinction of having the simplest mechanic in the game, but also possibly the scariest. He will only attack once per night, and there will be no way of knowing in advance when this attack will happen, or if it will happen at all. He will always attack from the vent on the right wall, and when he does, there will be a violent clamoring sound in the vent and the lights will flicker. When this happens, you will have only a fraction of a second to close the vent door or your turn will end with Afton screaming in your face. Scrap Baby: Once per night, she will appear on the other side of your desk, slouched over and appearing to be decommissioned. There will be a shock panel sitting next to her. You can shock her at any time by clicking on this button, but it will drain 1% of your power battery each time you do so, and will have no effect until she is poised to attack. You must refrain from pushing the button until you notice that she has moved. Shocking her at this stage will cause her to leave your office and not return. If you fail to notice that she has moved and bring up your monitor again, then you’ll have nothing but a jumpscare to look forward to. Rockstar Freddy: He will stand in your office the entire night, and on occasion will activate, demanding a payment of five Faz-Coins. If you pay him, he will return to sleep-mode. If you fail to pay him in a timely fashion, however, then your run will end with an angry Rockstar Freddy in your face. The problem is that Faz-Coins might be scarce, especially if you have other Faz-Coin demanding animatronics in your halls. Thankfully, there is another option at your disposal. If you’re running short on Faz-Coins, or just prefer not to spend them here, just crank up the heat for a few seconds. This will cause Rockstar Freddy to malfunction and eventually think that the payment has been made. In Scott Cawthon’s official post, the Trash Gang is just question marks, but as I was looking on the wiki, they basically just jumpscare you and make loud noises, but they don’t end your night or really do anything other than scare you. Bonnie: Poor Bonnie has been forced to share a cramped stage with another animatronic, Foxy, and he’s pretty upset about it. These two will take turns looking out from the curtain, but whereas Foxy will hide himself when viewed on camera, Bonnie will do the opposite, and become more agitated. If Bonnie is looking out from the curtain when you view Pirate’s Cove, he will take the opportunity to flash his blinding eyes and scramble the cameras, all of them, for a significant amount of time. Needless to say, losing your ability to use your cameras for a long time will most likely be a death sentence. The only way to tell who is actively looking out from Pirate’s Cove is to observe a tiny figure on your desk. This figurine will change from Foxy to Bonnie depending on who’s active in Pirate’s Cove. Not paying attention to this detail and thereby looking (or not looking) at Pirate’s Cove at the wrong time can cost you your run. Foxy: He inhabits Pirate’s Cove along with Bonnie, and while you shouldn't view Pirate’s Cove when Bonnie is active, it’s a necessity when Foxy is. Foxy will gradually make his exit if you don't check on him regularly, and once he’s out, there’s no way to make him go back. He also has a new trick up his sleeve to get into your office: he gets in piece by piece. He will find any vulnerability in your office and slip chunks of himself in (arms, legs, head, torso) through any open vent or open door, until all of his fragments are inside. Once there, he will wait for you to pull up your monitor before putting himself back together and jumpscaring you. Dee Dee: She appears at random and can add a whole new animatronic to your game. The animatronic added will not be announced, so you’ll have to quickly look at your cameras and other systems to find out who it is! Dee Dee also has the potential to add one of three characters not listed in the character select screen. RXQ, or Shadow Bonnie: He will cause your office to become pitch black for about ten seconds. There is no way to avoid him. Plushtrap: He will appear on a specific screen and sit in his chair. But if you don’t scare him out of his chair fast enough, he’ll jumpscare you. The final one on the list is just question marks, and I believe this is Fredbear, which is an easter egg which we’ll get into later. We’ve been going for a really long time already so I don’t want to extend it anymore, but the other characters that Dee Dee can spawn are Nightmare Chica, Bonnet, Minireenas, and Lolbit. [Airhorn] That enough detail for you? If not, I don’t know what to tell you man, that’s the game. So, let’s move on to visuals and audio. Now there isn’t a lot to talk about here, so these segments will probably be pretty short. Again, they’re not really scary and it’s not trying to be, so there’s only a few things I have to say. [Electronic hum] One cool aspect that I mentioned briefly are the offices. Instead of being stuck in one office, you can unlock different skins for the office that reference the different games, from FNaF 1 to 4 to “Sister Location,” etc. And the default office has plenty of references and homages to the different offices throughout the games; the desk, walls, cupcake from FNaF 1, the toys from FNaF 4 to the shell of animatronics from 3, to the pipes and the Ennard mask of “Sister Location.” Almost every game is represented here. All the characters are here, from your favorites to obscure characters you might not even know of if you’re a more casual fan like the Trash Gang, Dee Dee, and Old Man Consequences. Nothing has really changed visually for the characters, they’re all pretty much the same. Now, the clash of all of these styles, characters, and games does not create a very scary atmosphere. Like I said though, it’s not really trying to; tense, sure, but it’s really goofy more than anything. I mean, the visual alone of Toy Freddy gaming is goofy enough to ruin any fear. But with so many things going on, especially in this crowded office, the feeling of tense panic is tangible; it’s almost like a rhythm game. Maybe it’d be easier if it was just timing lines down the screen, but they’ve gotta add explosions and effects and loud sounds and screen shake and all sorts of shit to distract you. The visual overload on something like 50/20 is astonishing. Characters fading in and out, things popping up on screen, any number of random eyes staring at you from the desk; it’s very confusing on purpose. Okay, one more thing about the visuals: we have to talk about Funtime Chica. They gave the chicken titties. Okay, that’s fine on its own I guess, in the bubble of this goofy finale game it’s whatever. Kind of a joke or a nod to that joke that’s basically been around since FNaF 2. [Yelling] BLASTPHAMOUSHD: “She is such a bad bitch though!” BLASTPHAMOUSHD: “I would fuck the shit out of that robot, man, I’m not even—” [Yell] But when it comes to just the drawings as a whole, just the artists Scott has chosen for, uh, like drawn art for the series, I’ve been kind of disappointed. I’m not trying to stir up drama, I’m just looking at a product as a consumer. The drawings are passable, I suppose, and I appreciate the idea of hiring people from the community, but there are artists that are so much more deserving of the spotlight. And there are personal reasons why I don’t like the artists Scott hired from the community, mainly PinkyPills and LadyFiszi, mostly because they’re both huge perverts; and I think LadyFiszi is like, a transphobe? I’m not trying to throw Scott under the bus here, I appreciate the idea of what he was trying to do. He wanted to take people from the community who have put a lot of time into it and give them a job to actually work officially on the games, and I can see that his heart is in the right place with other things like the Fazbear Fangame Universe Initiative. But I’m just glad he’s actually hiring professional comic artists for the “Twisted Ones” graphic novel, because the “Silver Eyes” one was…ugh. [Electronic hum] Okay, not a lot to say here. Honestly, the big thing is just that all of the characters have voice lines. Almost every single character has multiple after-death voice lines. In “Pizzeria Simulator” it didn’t really work for me, I just thought it was too goofy and it ruined the whole tension of it because it was trying to be scary and trying to take itself seriously. But this game is just completely wacky and goofy, so it adds a little bit of depth and character. Generally, the music and sound effects are good as always, and the menu music goes hard. And not that I need to remind you, but the audio is used a lot in this game; from Phone Guy to Music Man, there’s a real importance to the audio. No stone of gameplay was left unturned for this game, so don’t just keep your eyes peeled, keep your ears open. But like I said, there’s not a lot else to say here, so let’s just move on to the fun part: the lore and the secrets. [Electronic hum] So if you dipped out of the fanbase before this game, you may be thinking, “how is it even possible that any of this is canon?” “Is it like ‘FNaF World’ where it’s sort of meta?” Well, not exactly; when we get to the theory part, we’ll talk a little bit about how the gameplay itself is probably canon, but for now let’s just look at everything face value. First, the voice lines. Like I said, after every death, the character that jumpscares you will say a voice line, and many times they will have multiple to choose from. NIGHTMARIONNE: “I am the fearful reflection of what you have created.” Now, 99% of these don’t really mean anything; just spooky or funny one-liners. However, a lot is revealed in some of these; for instance, one of Withered Chica’s lines is: WITHERED CHICA: “I was the first. I have seen everything.” Now that seems important: the first victim? The first set of victims? Other lines, including another one from Withered Chica, reference someone that “you should not have killed.” That is obviously a big deal, it means whoever you’re playing as is a killer. So, William Afton? That is a wild revelation, and it means all of the voice lines are directed at the main killer of the whole series, which adds a whole new layer to all of these lines. A bunch of other lines start to make more sense and connect to this idea, and feed into what the story really means. JACK-O-CHICA: “I am a burning reminder of your misdeeds.” NIGHTMARE FREDDY: “I am given flesh to be your tormentor.” Really hammering home this idea that this is some sort of punishment for William Afton. That’s just the surface level for these voice lines, but there’s something more. So, who’s the “one you should not have killed?” Well, most likely it’s the Vengeful Spirit that was hinted at in the voice casting. And where does this show up? The Mediocre Melodies, strangely enough. These characters usually just have goofy voice lines, but every once in a while they’ll say something out of character. And behind their voice, you can hear someone whispering, controlling what they’re saying. NEDD BEAR: “This is how it feels. And you get to experience it over and over and over again, forever.” NEDD BEAR: “I will never let you leave.” SOFT VOICE: “I will never let you leave.” Someone else is pulling the strings. So obviously that is important, but we’ll move on to more details of what that could mean in the theory section. For now, just realize we’re playing as a killer, this is some sort of punishment, and someone else is pulling the strings. Quickly before we move on, I want to make a correction. In my last video, I said we don’t really have any idea what the gravestones mean at the end of “Pizzeria Simulator,” but there is one connection that I missed out on. The gravestones are set up in line with the animatronic heads at the end of FNaF 3, so it seems like these are the names of the original crew victims. I still think having two FNaF guard names is stupid, unless they’re saying that they are the victims, but then the five kids going missing? This story is hard to track. I do think having the parallel with the first real finale of the series with FNaF 3 is really cool. But I bring the gravestones up for another reason. At this point the community was still working hard at the “Survival Logbook,” and a mystery was being solved: the name of Golden Freddy, aka one of the obscured gravestones. There were all sorts of codes and hints and crazy stuff to be solved, but one user actually did it. I believe the first person to really figure this out was dpowerful1 on Reddit. Using the word search in the book, they were able to find the name “Cassidy,” which I believe is a name referenced in the last of the “Silver Eyes” trilogy. It’s a pretty big deal, literally Golden Freddy’s name, but there was more lore in the books around this time. On the note of the “Logbook,” there was a little bit of stuff I didn’t mention about the “Logbook” in my “Pizzeria Simulator,” most notably that the owner of the “Logbook” was Michael Afton. Tons of different hints and even the first name suggests this, but the drawing of Nightmare Fredbear really hits home: this was Michael Afton’s logbook. And finally “The Fourth Closet” came out, the final book in the “Silver Eyes” trilogy. Again, the name Cassidy is in that book too. There’s also a more expanded definition of what Remnant is. I explained it a little bit in my “Pizzeria Simulator” video, but to just go over it again briefly, it’s essentially a mix of molten metal, human flesh, and strong human emotion. It’s basically what makes the animatronics haunted, or maybe more of like a byproduct; I’m not exactly clear. Either way, in “The Fourth Closet,” William Afton is experimenting with it to give himself like eternal life. I never really finished that book, but it does add a bit more of an expanded definition to the lore. Looking away from the books, let’s look at more of the hidden secrets of this game. First, let’s look at Old Man Consequences. If you set him to be the only character and then catch a fish, you’ll be teleported here, a very similar place to Old Man Consequences’ area in “FNaF World.” He says, “Come and sit with me for a while. Leave the demon to his demons.” “Rest your own soul. There is nothing else.” Meanwhile, creepy ambience plays in the background. If you go into the lake, then the game crashes. It seems like we’re switching perspectives from William’s to the Vengeful Spirit, being told to leave William alone and let their own soul move on. And to slightly get into the theory area for a moment, that’s why the game just ends and crashes. The game is the punishment, so the game crashes when the soul moves on. Kind of reminds me of this part in “FNaF World” after going to Old Man Consequences Lake; a lot of people thought this was an angel. There’s also something else here too. The audio in the background is actually an extremely slowed version of screaming. [Robotic screams] Likely, this is William screaming; pretty horrifying. There’s also these weird anime cutscenes, one about like Yandere Chica, and another one which I guess was like a precursor to the recent “Fury’s Rage” game. The only thing here outside of the jokes that might be interesting to the story is some possible parallels to Chica and William. The only thing that really creeps me out and does any real worldbuilding is the fact that Chica has victims and says the line, “By the end of the day he’ll be mine.” If you want to look at the parallels, it paints a really creepy picture of William Afton sitting in the corner of Freddy Fazbear’s choosing a victim for that day. Ugh. And of course, there’s the Vengeful Spirit, the “one you should not have killed’s” face. You see this creepy, distorted face faintly on the Game Over screen at times. Besides being like the only human character we’ve seen that isn’t pixelated, it’s also just really creepy. But aside from that, there’s no like hidden codes or whatever, it’s just the face. You can also summon Fredbear—not Golden Freddy, Fredbear— which is basically the same thing, but with a purple hat and tie. Turning on only Golden Freddy, buying the Death Coin, and then using it when he’s on screen will cause Fredbear to jumpscare you. Afterwards, distorted audio plays that are very hard to make out, but some people have taken a crack at it, including MatPat: FREDBEAR: “There’s more fantasy and fun where I come from.” FREDBEAR: “Let’s find a suit that’s right for you.” But it’s really hard to tell. The last really important thing I’ll talk about is the Golden Freddy cutscene. After getting a score of 9,800, you get this cutscene: [Eerie piano music] Pretty creepy, but also slightly emotional. There’s something hauntingly sad about the music and Golden Freddy just twitching as he fades away. Exactly what it means is unclear, but it’s pretty cool. There’s a couple other like smaller, not really very relevant easter eggs I should mention: some “FNaF World” characters will appear at times, and then of course the opening. [Whispering] [Bass boosted sound] I completely forgot that that was a thing until I opened up the game to make this video and it completely got me. With all of that out of the way, let’s talk community. [Electronic hum] First, just a reminder: this was the most community transparency Scott has ever given to a FNaF game; the progress, how far along he was, each character and how each character worked, and also 50/20 Mode was a huge deal. This was obviously talked about with all the Custom Nights, but people were legitimately wondering if 50/20 Mode was even possible. And like I said, because of that, Dawko challenged Scott Cawthon. And well, you wanted to know the outcome, although I’m sure you do if you’re in the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” community. Well, after literally days of streaming, Dawko did it. DAWKO: “Oh, oh, OHH!!”
[Assorted yells] He wasn’t the first, but he was up there. And so, we got probably the only audio interview with Scott Cawthon, and definitely the only official interview since like FNaF 1. If you like FNaF, I would definitely recommend watching it. It’s really interesting, and there are some good questions in there. But definitely a huge shout out to Rhemery for beating 50/20 Mode first. All right, with all the stuff I’ve talked about in the lore section, let me just quickly spell out the two main theories behind this, although the first one is definitely more widely accepted. The first theory goes like this: after the events of “Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria Simulator,” William is on his way to Hell, but that didn’t quite work. See, this Vengeful Spirit, who is widely thought to be Golden Freddy, keeps his soul from moving to Hell, instead wanting to punish William himself. So that’s what “Ultimate Custom Night’s” gameplay is: all of the visions of William’s creations coming after him, killing him over and over for eternity. For some reason, The Puppet’s attempt to help him in “Happiest Day” wasn’t successful for Golden Freddy, and his soul stays behind to punish him. Some people even think that he’s holding the other spirits hostage to help him, stopping them from moving on. However, the hope is that Old Man Consequences, whoever the hell that is, convinces Golden Freddy to rest his spirit, and I guess William goes to Hell. Except when in “Help Wanted” his digital self is uploaded to the matrix, and— The other theory is a little thinner considering how much points to William, but this was a pretty popular theory back when the game first came out. At this point it’s pretty well established that the older brother in FNaF 4 is Michael Afton, who accidentally kills his younger brother. Well, the theory here is that his younger brother is Golden Freddy, “the one you should not have killed.” After Michael burns at the end of “Pizzeria Simulator,” his brother punishes him. Not sure why they’d have to specify “the one you shouldn’t have killed” or how the references all fit in, but that was one of the other ideas. Unless of course, you’re MatPat, who thought that Michael Afton is the younger brother. All right, man. Okay, speaking of MatPat and stuff, um, I feel like I need to address this: a lot of people— —especially after my FNaF 4 video where I had a whole segment basically debunking an old MatPat theory— —a lot of people think that I hate MatPat, but that is not true. Look, there’s a lot of stuff that MatPat has done that is cringey or just in—plain in poor taste, and that’s not just like the “Sans versus Ness” video. Plus his persona is just very smarmy, so it makes him an easy target to make fun of. But I don’t hate him; he’s a very important part of the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” community. I admire the amount of work he puts in and dedication to making these extremely long, well-edited, uh, most of the time really well-thought-out “Five Nights at Freddy’s” theories. And the charity work he’s done is astounding, he’s raised so much money and put together huge events that are really amazing, and I admire him for that. I actually really like watching FNaF Game Theories whenever they come out. He’s just kind of goofy and has the whole know-it-all persona, so he’s kind of easy to make fun of. And with that out of the way, let’s see where this game goes on the tier list. [Electronic hum] Okay, so where does the game go on the tier list? Wow, this is the last time we’re gonna do one of these. The final answer to my personal tier list of all the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” games. Well, it goes in…C. I mean, this one rides pretty much entirely on its community importance alone. It’s a cool concept and well-executed for what it is, but what it is is not a lot. It’s not really very scary and doesn’t have a lot of the hallmarks of a “Five Nights at Freddy’s” game, uh, despite having like every character. I mean, it’s a feat to get that many characters into one game and have it still work, so you know, there’s no denying that, but as a game on its own, it’s just not a lot. “FNaF World” Update 1 and 2 definitely have way more going for them, but I just couldn’t put it in F. It’s perfectly fine for what it is, and there is some pretty cool lore stuff in it. So here we are, the end of an era. Although you could also look at it as the beginning of a new one. I’ve got plenty of content in the future: the SCP retrospectives, reviews, video essays, and livestreaming again, and a few projects I can’t quite talk about yet. And don’t worry, this is not the end for “Five Nights at Freddy’s” on the channel, I’ll just have different ways of covering them. And people really seem to like the idea of doing a retrospective series on the book series, so maybe I’ll do that. Like I said at the beginning, this series has been amazing from beginning to end, and I can’t thank you guys enough for it. I look forward to making more content in the future, but until then, I hope you’ve enjoyed this look back at “Five Nights at Freddy’s.” [Instrumental medley of FNaF themes and fansongs]
