Game Theory - Are the FNAF Books Actually Canon?

Episode Date: March 15, 2025

Join Game Theory Host Tom as he debates the canonicity of the Five Nights At Freddy's books to the games!

What if the FNAF books were canon? It's a question that's torn the fan base apart for years, and now we've had an update to Help Wanted 2 that seems to be telling us the answer is yes. But what would that change? What theories would this ruin? And what does it mean we can expect from Secret of the Mimic this year? Today, we're going to find out. Hello, internet.

Welcome to Game Theory, the show that's always looking at FNAF from a new perspective. You may remember that last time I was getting a little... frustrated with Scott and his lack of clarity in this franchise. It is fun to be able to solve the small loose threat, but we're still unable to use those to figure out the bigger mysteries. What's the deal with Gregory? What happened to Cassie? Are the books canon?

Well, it appears Scott was listening, and now he's not messing around, because we just got ourselves a couple of new pieces of information to answer the biggest question in the franchise's recent history. Are the books canon? Recently, Friend of the Channel Dorko did a charity live stream, and as per usual, he got special access to some unreleased gameplay and teasers. One was a new version of Five Laps at Freddy's, the weird spin-off cart racer thing, and while playing, a new billboard was discovered. It was advertising a company called Murray Co and their brand new robotic vacuum cleaner. In the story The Mimic from Tales from the Peterplex, we have a character called Edwin Murray, who builds a robotic vacuum cleaner.

Pete later goes on to be bought by Fasper Entertainment and builds the mimic. The big bad that we saw at the end of ruin. We also got a very short teaser for a Help Wanted 2 update where we get to see the Mimic's costume model up close. But the important detail was actually in the very corner of the screen, a white tiger plushy with different coloured eyes. In that same story, the Mimic, Edwin's son David has a white tiger plushy and after he dies,

the Mimic begins carrying it around. In later stories like Tiger Rock and Storytellers, the mimic is heavily associated with a white tiger animatronic with two different colored eyes. A couple of days after all of this, the update came out and it became even more clear that this was all to do with the mimic. The tiger plushy was unlocked by using the code 1979, the date we found in the secret of the mimic trailer, and roughly around the time Edwin created the mimic in the books, we get to see the toy factory that people reported the secret of the mimic demo from Pax West taking place in, and in the Mimic story, we learned that Edwin lived in a factory where he was making animatronics. As you might imagine, this set the fan base ablaze because it seemed like the games were finally confirming the canonicity of the books.

Before this, the strongest connection we had to the Tales books taking place in the game timeline was just the mimic existing down in the Fnaf 6 building in both the epilogues of Tales and the ending of ruin. But now, with Edwin's company existing and a White Tiger character who we've only ever seen in the books at the film, this point, it feels like more than ever we are being shown that the games and the books may coexist in the same universe. But if that's the case, what does that change? We've been theorising about this franchise for a long time now, and we've never really considered the books to be canon to the game timeline. So, if the books are now being shown as canon, I wondered what dominoes begin to fall? Which of those theories get debunked? What parts of the story would we have a new perspective on? And what could that mean for future releases? Better grab your vanny

masks once again theorists, because we've got to take a look at FNAF in a whole new way and ask the question, what if the books were canon? Let's start with the series of books that are most tied to this modern era of Fnaf. Tales from the Pizza Plex. In case you don't know, this is a series of eight books, each containing three short stories and an epilogue, with all the epilocks combining into one continuous story across all eight books. That gives us 25 full stories, all of which take place in a world where Freddy Fazbear's exists. Most commonly, it's some version of the PizzaPlex. You may have seen the term Tales Games thrown around when talking about whether the books are canon to the games. Well, this is where that comes from. Tales Games boils down to these 25 tale stories

being completely one-to-one canon to the games. Fortunately, you don't need to know all 25 stories inside and out in order to get to grips with how Tales would change the game's law. There are a few stories that make small changes, but mostly it's just to provide clarity on parts of the story we weren't sure about. Stories like Help Wanted, where we learn about Steve Snodgrass, a game developer who made the original four FNAF games for Fazber Entertainment. Though we find out he's making them based purely on the rumors surrounding the business and his own memories.

Plus, his mind is being affected by this little high-pitched noise, distorting the reality around him and it's all coming from one little disc. If the books are canon, then this story would not only confirm the canon existence of sound illusion discs, everyone's favorite FNAF gadget, but it would also 100% confirm that canonically, the first three to four games are in universe games. Now, we have known about this idea since the Help Wanted Game. Fas Bear Entertainment hired the game developer. Those indie games were designed to conceal and make light of what happened.

This isn't just an attempt to rebrand, it's an elaborate cover-up. But what this changes is the reliability of those games for law purposes. After the Help Wanted game, despite being told that these were in universe games, it was unclear how one-to-one they were with reality. This story tells us that they were being made by someone who didn't know the true stories and whose mind was slowly being worn down. This allows for Scott and Steelwall to recons certain details from those games without them really being recons.

They're just something Steve made up. Obviously, if a modern entry confirms a detail from FNAF 1 to 4, then we can be sure it's likely true. we actually get a good example of this. Ditterphobia. This was the final story from Tales from the Pizzaplex, and it involves a character named Rory, living in a house that is described exactly like the Fnaffor House.

Rory believes he is a kid with a family, but as time goes on, it revealed he's not a kid, he's grown up. The house is disgusting, and the entire place has been filled with a hallucinogenic gas coming from the underground bunker, circus babies. We've wondered for a long time what was causing the nightmares in Fnaf 4, whether it was sound illusion discs or just the overwhelming sense of fear and guilt.

But if these books are canon, the answer becomes clear. The nightmares are real, but it's the hallucinogenic gas that truly brings them to life. So, that's hallucinogenic gas, sound illusion discs, and don't forget we have VR and AR in this world. There are three reality-altering tools on the table for this franchise. Basically, we can't trust anything we see in the games anymore. Then there's the more modern stories like G-GY. This one focuses on a kid named Greg that is hacking into the Pizzaplex animatronics, leaving high scores on all the arcade machines and is getting rid of any counsellors,

or anyone else, that gets too close to the truth. With his arcade and hacking sign-offs being G-GY, it's almost certain that his full name is Gregory, as in our Gregory from Security Breach, which also makes Gregory Patient-46, the mysterious child from the therapy CDs we collect during Security Breach that also has a habit of getting rid of therapists. The final point of clarity here is that Greg refers to himself as the wizard's favorite apprentice during the story, as well as using the handle Dr. Rabbit, which feels like a mighty

big hint that Gregory is working for glitch trap just like Vanessa. To be fair, we've actually been on board with this idea for a while, so it hasn't really changed any of our theories. But if the books are canon, it just solidifies it more as fact rather than theory. The only thing we have to wonder now is whether he's still under GlitchTrap's control. Help Wanted 2 and Security Breach seem to be telling us that Vanessa is now free of Glitchtrap. And in ruin, they are implied to be working together to help Cassie. So, is Gregory also free now?

Or is he just playing the longcom? As I've said, those three stories don't really change much about the law. They provide some clarity and add depth to certain law aspects that were otherwise just dropped on us with no real explanation. But it doesn't really derail anything. However, that isn't the case for every story. And now, we have to talk about the big three. The Mimic, the Storyteller, and the Epilogs. And if these stories are canon, it causes a drastic shift in how we look at this modern era of FNAF.

A quick recap for those who don't know. These stories focus around the latest big bad of the series, The Mimic. It starts with Edwin Murray and his son, David. Edwin is a robotics genius whose company was bought by Fasba Entertainment. And his job was to turn to... and the original Freddy's costumes into animatronics. He ends up building the mimic out of spare parts and it's designed to mimic and play with his son. Sadly though, one day, his son runs out of the factory into the road and is hit by a car.

But even after he dies, the mimic continues mimicking David's behaviour, causing Edwin to get angry and beat the mimic to a metallic pulp. Edwin then disappears, leaving Fazbear to come and collect their property from Edwin's factory, where the mimic begins violently murdering those who come to collect. They do eventually manage to contain the mimic, as while they begin construction of the PizzaPlex on top of the Fnaf 6 location, a version of the mimic is dropped off alongside other animatronics that will make up the glam rock band. The mimic is then programmed to help clear the endos that remain inside, ripping their arms and heads off. But it doesn't just stop at the endos.

Construction workers begin being torn apart limb from limb, leading to the location being cemented over, trapping it inside the Fnastics location beneath the PizzaPlex. Many years later, once the Pizabeth is up and running, the Mimic Software is used to run something called The Storyteller, a Beabab tree that connects the entire Pizuplex, and it's designed to create new fun storylines for the characters to play out, except it ends up turning the animatronics into more childish and more dangerous versions of themselves.

At this point, Edwin returns and tries to stop the Mimic, only to die in the process, with the storyteller later being removed, but The Mimic Program remains. There is a lot to unpack there, and a number of theories that go out the window, if these books do end up being canon. The first and most obvious one, the origins of The Mimic. Up until this point, we've been theorising that Edwin was meant to be a parallel for Henry. Both were involved in the early days of Fasbear.

We'd even theorised that Henry had been bought out by after, much like Edwin was. Both made the earliest anatronics, and both had young children that died. and they took their agony out on their animatronic creations that were designed to mimic their now deceased child. That led to several theories about how Henry originally created the mimic, and that it was originally made to be part of their travelling circus alongside Henry and William. But if the books are canon, that cannot be the case, as it's very clearly Edwin that created the mimic. Now, that's not to say the mimic couldn't have been used as part of the circus. We see Jackie from Secret of the mimic is very much circus-themed.

But it just wasn't the reason it was created. Instead, that would have just been a retroactive use for it. We also had a theory about how the mimic had been locked underground for a very long time, at least since the 1980s. After Henry disappeared, Afton went to collect what belonged to Fasbe, including the mimic, and then used it to help create the Fun Time Animatronics, only for it to all go wrong and for it to kill his daughter. He then locked the mimic underground and created a blue bunny mixes to keep it locked to work.

Again, if the books are canon, this theory cannot be true, as the mimic doesn't arrive at the Pizzaplex until construction on the Pizzaplex has already begun. There is still a chance that the mimic was used by Afton to create the fun times, as they go to collect the mimic just a few months after its creation sometime in the 70s, way before Afton's own springlocking. It just means that Elizabeth's death wasn't enough to make Afton go, hmm, maybe this isn't such a good idea, which I would say feel strange, but then again, this is the guy who tortured his own son with nightmare animatronics, so it's sadly tracks.

The books also reveal who is trying to revive Fazbet Entertainment. And turns out it's not an important or relevant character like Mrs. Afton, like we theorized about in our FNAF timeline. I should really do a new one of those. Let me know down in the comments if you'd like to see my updated version of this. Anyway, instead, it's a random businessman called Mr. Burrows. And it turns out, the reason the Pizza Plex was built on top of Fnaf 6 and the reason the Mimic was given access to the Pizzaplex systems

wasn't for some big master plan with Afton's old computer chips and burnt corpse. It was just a dumb business move made by someone who knew nothing about anything, in order to achieve the main goal that you might expect from a modern CEO, profits. And because Mr. Burrow dies alongside Edwin after installing the storyteller, which has clearly been removed by the time of security breach, that would imply that the messages we saw about Vanessa's hiring, despite her lack of qualifications, were almost certainly the mimics doing. Vanessa was possessed by, by the Mimic, aka GlitchTrap.

And with Mr. Burrow's dead, the Mimic had full control of Fasbear's systems, including emails. So, when it says that her recommendation came from the top, it was likely the Mimic using Mr. Burrow's email to put its plan into motion. But what is the Mimic's plan? Well, at this point, it's just software. If it truly wants to continue Afton's legacy, it's going to need a body, and it has one just beneath the Pizzerplex.

But this is where one of the... the big criticisms of the books being canon comes from. While there is clearly a mimic under the Pizza Plex in the Games, it doesn't appear to be the mimic 2 that we read about in the epilogs. In the epilogs, it's a black, almost gooey, spider-like thing, transforming into whatever shape it needs. But then in ruin, we got this thing, an endo made up of the most random assortment of parts that walks with a limp.

These two things don't feel like they're the same threatening creature. But if we think about it and we get it, do consider the books to be canon, I think I might have an answer for this. By the end of the epilogues, the mimic is destroyed, spring-locked by a jester costume. If the mimic program wants to use this body, it would need to be repaired. Enter Vanessa, and thanks to GGIWi, likely Gregory, who can then use Glamrock Freddy to clear the path down into the depths, into the FNAF6 building, and to where the mimics destroyed body lies dormant. From here, they would do what we initially suspected Vanessa

was doing with Burntrap. They would repair him using a mixmash of endoskeleton parts, anything they could find in order to put it back together. That could be why we see it limping before the chase scene. It's either still partially damaged or it's just because the parts aren't its own, but a random assortment that's not fully balanced or calibrated. That would then tie into the ending we got from the new Help Warned 2 update. We see mixes driven away in a van that looks suspiciously like the one Gregory drove in one of the security breach endings. Mixes wasn't always underneath FNAF 6. After the event of security breach,

it seems like both Gregory and Vanessa have been freed from the mimic's control. But they know what's down there. They put it back together, and because of that, they know how to stop it. What we're seeing in this ending could be Gregory and Vanessa

driving mixes to the Pizzaplex, collecting it from the same place the mimic came from, the MCM toy store and factory Edwins. That's why Gregory's backpack and walkie-talkie end up down with the Mimic because they were installing mixes to keep it locked away, only for the Mimic to learn Gregory's voice and trick Cassie into freeing it. What all of this amounts to is actually something we theorized a very long time ago about the future of this franchise.

One that we've actually been quite disappointed hadn't seemed to have come to fruition since them, the soft reboot of the franchise. By making Edwin Cannon to the Games, and with the Mimic being the true identity behind Glitch Trap, it removes the parts both Afton and Henry played in our third. theories. We've finally moved on from the original characters and story of Henry versus Afton and into a new era of new characters like Vanessa, Gregory, Cassie, and The Mimic. The Steel Wool era of games still uses the same rules and world as before, but it's more about the knock-on effects of those old characters' actions, rather than their direct input. And that's

great! Ultimate Custom Night felt like a great ending to the story. Now, in retrospect, if the books are canon, we can truly see. split the series up and treat this as a new era separate from those original stories. However, if Tales is canon, this isn't the only thing that changes. There's one more story, one more domino that has to fall, and the story is called frailty. Here we meet a girl called Jessica, who has a special metallic necklace that when she scrapes off shavings and puts them on dying patients at a hospital, they get better. At the end of the story, she uses the last of this necklace and,

becomes a pile of scrap metal. The powers of this necklace are nearly identical to the power we saw from the necklace given to Sarah by Eleanor in the story To Be Beautiful. Sarah was eventually turned into a pile of scrap metal, but while she wore the necklace, she appeared completely human. The reason that this is such a big deal is that To Be Beautiful isn't from Tales from the Pizzaplex. It's from Fazbear Frights, the previous collection of short stories. And if Eleanor becomes canonical, then at the very least, every story connected to her also becomes canonical. Agony would become canon. Time-traveling ballpits would be canon.

And the Afton Amalgamation, or The Agony, the thing everyone said Matt was insane for even suggesting to be part of the game's timeline, would indeed be canon. This idea, the fan base has dubbed Stitchline Games, because they all tie into the epilogs from those books surrounding a mysterious character called the Stitch Rath. The stitch rate is an endoskeleton that contains the souls of two children, Jake and Andrew. And Andrew is the more interesting one in terms of canonicity. Andrew was killed by William as one of the six missing kids that were killed in 1985. Because of this, Andrew is angry, vengeful even, to the point where in the man in room 1280, he keeps a burnt and dying after an alive in a hospital just to torture him inside his mind. That sounds familiar, almost as if it's exactly what happens in Ultimate Custom Night,

a vengeful spirit torturing Afton for all eternity. For the longest time, we've attributed this role to Cassidy, the fifth missing kid and a spirit possessing Golden Freddy. But if the Tales books are canon, which means that at least the Stitch Wraith stories are canon, that would mean that Andrew's spirit is more likely the one torturing Afton. The man in room 1280 and Ultimate Custom Night are happening at the same time. Andrew is the vengeful spirit. I suppose that would explain why the one you should not have killed is referred to using male pronouns.

He's here and always watching the one you soon have killed. The only confusing part is why show us Golden Freddy for beating the hardest difficulty? In the story The New Kid, they do find a kid with black curly hair inside the Golden Freddy suit, which matches the description of Andrew's hair. But then, he's not shown to possess Golden Freddy in the story. any of the Citraith stories. And in the Into the Pit game, we have a mini-game that shows us an Andrew-possessed fetch, while Golden Freddy sits there with its eyes litter, implying that Golden Freddy is already possessed and that it and Andrew are separate. Plus, what's with Andrew not

getting a gravestone? The six graves we have are Gabriel, Fritz, Susie, Jeremy, Cassidy, and Charlie. Did Andrew's parents just not love him enough to get him one? It does feel odd that this clearly very important character doesn't really appear in anything, and has largely been forgotten in all the clues given to us inside the games themselves. But then, I guess this is where the new games can come in. If Stitchline is canon, that would make the Into the Pit game canon. And Megacat has already teased us with a fetch sequel coming at some point. So, details like this could be more thoroughly explored in those future titles. And actually, there's something quite satisfying about that. What that would essentially leave us with are two sets of games running side by side, the Megacat series and

the Steel Wool series. One aimed at clarifying Andrews story within the older games, and one aimed at exploring the future of the franchise's story. It all sounds so idyllic, doesn't it? It feels like a number of holes in the story do get filled in if the books are in fact canon. The question is, do I really think they are? Now, I would be remiss if I didn't talk about the other side of this canon coin, just a little bit.

While the appearance of a Tiger Rock plushy and Edwin's name on the sign do seem like compelling pieces of evidence towards the books being canon, there is a chance this is another silver-eye situation. In those books, we have William and Henry, but while they share a name with their in-game counterparts, they are decidedly different characters. In the games, Afton gets spring-locked and locked away in a back room, only being found 30 years later in Fnaf 3. While in the books, Afton survives his spring-locking, isn't locked away, and goes on to pursue immortality. In the books, Henry unalives himself in 1985 when he can't take the grief of his daughter's death. While in the games, he sacrifices himself when burning down the Fnath 6 Pizzeria, which is at least 30 years

after the closure of Freddy's. Same characters, different stories. And so, there is a chance we're seeing the same thing happen here. Edwin definitely seems to exist in the main canon, but it may not be one-to-one with his book counterpart. Tiger Rock also seems to exist in the games and the books, but the story surrounding him and the mimic might be slightly different. It's also worth noting that we were introduced to William Afton's name,

and Henry as a full character in the books first. And then later, they showed up in the games, which is exactly what we've seen with the Mimic, a character that was introduced in the books first, then showed up in Ruin later. It's following a similar pattern. The truth is, either of these options is entirely possible. Right now, we just don't have enough evidence

to say one way or the other with complete certainty. We're just going to have to wait for Secret of the Mimic to hopefully learn more and get the answer. However, despite the existence of these items, not confirming the book's canonicity 100%. I will say that the more I worked on this episode, the more open I became to this possibility. Like I said at the start of this episode, last time I asked Scott for clarity. And it feels like that's what we're getting.

So I'd be silly not to take it seriously. Plus, if the books weren't meant to be canon, then including a Tiger Rock plushy and Edwin's name is just sewing discord for the sake of it, rather than actually trying to help clarify things. And I know Scott is known for being a bit of a troll, but that feels extreme even for him. By including them, while not completely confirming anything, it does feel like we're being pointed in that direction. And as we've talked about today, that could be really helpful for explaining the mess that was security breach. Vanessa's original plan, who is running the Pizza Plex and why the mimic is different now than in the books.

But I guess we're just going to have to wait and see when Secret of the Mimic comes out this year to know for sure. Maybe on April 6th, 2025, if the 4625 code from the new help wanted ending is anything to go by. But in the meantime, remember, that's just a theory. A game theory! Thanks for watching.