Game Theory - Everything You Know About FNAF is a LIE!

Episode Date: August 28, 2025

Secret of the Mimic is here and it changes EVERYTHING! Our understanding of the books, the timeline, and the characters we’ve come to know and love over the last 11 years may have crumbled right before our eyes. Join Game Theory Host Tom as he puts the pieces back together.

Seeker of the Mimic is finally here and it changes everything. Our understanding of the books, our understanding of the timeline, and our understanding of the characters we've come to know over the last 11 years. But as always, I'm here to pull an Afton or an Edwin, as it turns out, and put it all back together. Hello, Internet. Welcome to Game Theory, the show that's jaw has been hanging open like a badly made Cheka costume ever since the release of FNAF's Secret of the Mimic. And I'm not alone in that feeling.

Every single YouTuber has been completely sideswiped by this game. She can't believe it! Oh my God, there she is! That's insane. Why has it taken us all by surprise? Well, besides the fact the game actually works, mostly. It also did something that is completely unheard of in a FNAF game. They actually gave us a story.

And I don't mean the super cryptic kind that we have to spend years and years figuring out. I mean the kind that actually helps us move forward in this franchise. For a long time, the community has been frustrated with the lack of clarification out there for this series. It's been years of theory upon theory upon theory. And while we have come to certain agreements for parts of it, there are still massive sections of the law that we haven't been able to agree on, simply because there's never really been a solid foundation to jump off of.

But now, after 11 years of this franchise, Secret of the Mimit came as, the earliest entry in the FNAF timeline and said, Guys, I got you. Giving us relatively clear breakdowns of how the early years of Fasbear came to be. As well as throwing a bunch of handcranks into the works that make us question everything we knew about this franchise. There's timelines that have been displaced. Character personas completely shattered and understandings of where the future of this franchise is going totally flipped on its head. We jump into the game as a lowly mechanic working for the wonderful as always,

Fasbear Entertainment. Our name is Arnold, and we've just gotten off of a 36-hour shift, only to be called in for one last job to help recover some Fasbear assets from one of their contractors, Edwin Murray. Regudgingly, we head to Murray's costume manner, only to discover the asset is a set of blueprints for a killer animatronic endoskeleton that can fit into any costume and learn the role of any character or person, the mimic. We gain access to different areas of the facility, by upgrading our data diver with different permissions from basic to security, repair, all the way up to executive privileges, all while trying to outrun or outweigh the Mimic. Eventually, we get our hands on the blueprints, only to discover that it wasn't Fasbear talking to us through dispatch.

It was the Mimic pretending to be them to get their hand on the data diver. This leads to one of three endings where we either escape and get killed by the Mimic, we escape, and get killed by the mimic, or we fix the mimic and then just stand there watching it sleep. Now, these guys deserve an episode of their own because whichever one is canon could have massive implications that I just don't have time to get into right now. Instead, let's turn our attention to the stuff we can discover during the game, and the first of our big three characters, Edwin Murray. If you're a long-time viewer of this channel or you're one of the people who understand my pain and has actually read the books, then that name isn't anything new. Edwin Murray is a character that we were introduced to in both the storyteller and the mimic from the Tales from the Peterplex series. His company was bought out by Fazbear.

He created the mimic to babysit his son David, but his son tragically died. And because the mimic kept mimicking his dead son, he beat the thing up, teaching it violence, and then showed up 40 years later trying to stop it. However, when the secret of the mimic's creative director Evan Lampi said to Dorco, If you've read the books, you don't know the full story. He wasn't kidding. The story of Edwin goes so much deeper and is so much more tragic than we could have ever realized. As Arnold explores Murray's costume manner, we can find audio recordings and mailboxes containing digital text logs that give us the real story of what happened to this place. It was originally owned by Edwin's father, who will call Murray Sr.

Edwin Murray works for him. Edwin, Edwin Murray, this is my dad's place. You know, because nepotism. But Edwin is the quirky inventor type, and to test out his new voice recorder creation, He seeks out one of the new employees and former puppeteers. Excuse me, can I borrow your voice for a project? Oh, what for? I don't even know you.

I'm brand new here. Let's start again. I'm Fiona. Murray Sr. then passes away and leaves the whole thing to Edwin, who rebrands everything to bring his wacky inventions to life. Maybe rebrand? We could start making some of my inventions for real. Together with Fiona, they invent a bunch of wild tech like it.

a coffee machine that can learn your coffee preferences to make the perfect cup, a coat hanger that can adjust to any size you need, and an adorable vacuum cleaner. Oh, just look at it with his tiny little brooms and his little dumpy. Anyway, alongside this, he is also making a bunch of costumes, which I suppose makes sense given that's the name of the business. But the characters we see are interesting. If you're a Fnaff fan,

we see a handful of characters that you might recognize, like Pirate and Cowgirl Roxy. Hill Billy Monty, a puppet pirate Foxy, and the big one, a rollerblading costume of Cheekha. It is, that's freaking Cheekka. Let's party. She really was the first, wasn't she? But besides Cheetah, who Edwin and Fiona were specifically hired to make for a client, Cheekers Party World, yes, that Cheekers Party World,

all of these other characters were rentable or purchasable from Murray's costume manner, meaning Edwin owned these characters. They weren't originally Fasbears. However, Fasbear was around as another one of Edwin's clients, taking interest in his technological genius even to the point where Edwin refers to Henry as simply Hen in the audiologues, presumably because they have a level of familiarity and friendship thanks to their shared technological creativity.

But the real tragedy of Edwin comes from when we look at his family. I've mentioned his wife, Fiona, but he also has a son named David, just like he did in the Tales from the Pizza Plex book series. Unlike that series, though, Fiona doesn't die in childbirth. She's still around during David's early years, until she tragically passes away, leaving Edwin to run the business and raise David all on his own, leading Edwin to come up with the only logical solution, build an animatronic that can babysit David, obviously. He creates the M1 mimic. But something strange happens. It begins to not just look after David, but mimic Edwin's dead wife Fiona. The family is back together again,

until it's not. One day David dies outside the facility, leaving Edwin completely devastated. At the same time, the business is completely crumbling around him. But M1 Fiona has a solution. Make another one of her. Edwin, you can't put it off any longer. You need to try again. Build another. Make another mimic that would now mimic David so that they could be together again. Edwin isn't convinced at first, but eventually he gives in. He takes M1 out of the endoskeleton, copies the program and creates M2, putting the new program into the endoskeleton. And it works.

M2 begins acting like David. But it's too much for Edmund to handle and he snaps. Beating the animatronic, breaking its legs and teaching it the valuable lesson of violence that Arnold now gets to experience first. With that failure under his belt and the business still struggling, Edwin locks himself away with his final Fasbear project. A restaurant called Freddy Fasbear's Pizza. But M2 has other plans. It destroys the house and Edwin is never seen or heard from again. It's a real sad ending, but you see what I mean about how it upends a lot of what we thought we knew?

We've got characters we thought were Fasbears now created by someone else. We've got a wildly different setup to Edwin and T's. his family than we saw in the books. And this is just the top level stuff that's been given to us on a plate. The more you dig into these things, the more things begin to change and shift our understanding of the entire franchise. But we've got some time, so let's keep things simple for now. We've been given a bunch of information about Edwin, his family and his company. But what is the timeline of these events? This is FNAF after all. Timelines are a staple for FNAF theorists everywhere. And I don't just mean a vague order of events. I mean cold,

hard dates. Well, as you might expect, this game is pretty careful to leave those sorts of details hidden, only giving us months or days for dates at best. They even block out years so we can't place exact details. But when has that ever stopped us before? Let's start with the very first teaser for this game. In it, we saw the number 1979 showing up on a film reel, giving us a pretty good indication that that was when this game would take place. And once we boot up the game, that does seem to still be the case. In Arnold's van, we come across his work order to collect an endoskeleton from Murray's costume manner. The job, he is literally on.

That work order contains both an issue date and a signing date, which both end up being the same date, September 7, 1979. I suppose that means that the mimic not only faked dispatches voice, but also sent a fake work order? And wait, does that mean that Arnold has a fax machine hidden in this van? What other mysteries does this van hold? Oh, Arnold, you teasing enigma. So, okay, we have the end of our timeline for this game.

But as I've kind of already mentioned, that's like the least interesting part of this game's story. We're really here for the Edwin Murray drama. But don't worry, I think we can figure that one out too, thanks to FNAF's longest running trope. Dead kids. Well, kid, specifically his son, David Murray. At the end of the game, you're given a choice. Either give the data diver back or execute something called parachute. EXC.

This opens up a hatch in the floor leading to the R&D department and the Murray's house that's on top. of the hill near the factory. While trying to avoid M2, you can come across five film reels, showing some good old-fashioned Murray family home video for David's birthdays. The first is a little uneventful. He gets scared by a new pirate Roxy puppet and is given his iconic white tiger plushy. The second, Edwin misses because he's too busy working. The third, Edwin breaks the news to David that mummy isn't coming back.

By the fourth, we see Edwin give David his slide that we see out the front of Murray's costume manner with the robotic voice of Everton. M1 Fiona coming from off screen. And then finally, we get number 5 where we see Fiona in all her mimicy animatronic glory. She made a cake for David's birthday and is asked to go outside and collect David before the party gets started. And it's that last video that is crucial to solving this mystery. When M1 Fiona presents her cake, we can see the room she's in. And it's not the Murray's family home like all the others.

This is actually an office inside Murray's costume manner. And we know that because if you're willing, to spend a lot of time avoiding rollerblading Cheika, you actually get to see this room first hand, complete with all the same decorations. Oh my gosh. Happy birthday, David. The place looks abandoned. The food has been there a while, now all molded over.

And we find out why, thanks to the text logs that we have to collect, to figure out the password for this room. On December 1st, Edwin sends out a work memo telling the workers that they need to be here on Saturday for David's party. Then there's a bunch of more light-hearted, jockey messages between the other employees about the room code, but on the sixth, the tone shifts. A message tells everyone that the party has been cancelled due to recent tragic events. With the state of the room, the notices we find about not bringing children to work, and the fact that the playground Edwin refers to must be the playpark he got David for one of his birthdays, the one near the loading bay, the one he was warned, would be too dangerous to have a kid near?

Look, I get it. I do, but they're all just ground. This is the perfect spot for David's playwright. It all adds up to this, seeing the day that David died. On Saturday, December 6th, everyone was there gathered together just like Edwin had asked only for M1 to go down to find David and report him dead. Okay, everyone hide. Deona, go get him. Saturday was the day of the party and that cancellation message was sent out the same day. December 6th was only on a Saturday once in the 1970s.

1975. Now, given we have five film reels, you'd assume that would make this David's fifth birthday. And so, his date of birth would be December 6th, 1970. However, I'm not entirely sure that's the case. Firstly, the achievement you get for entering David's party room is called belated birthday. And the icon is of a birthday cake with not five candles, but six. And I think we all know that when you're a kid, the number of candles on your cake matters big time. I guess just like content creators, we all like seeing number guys. up. There's also the matter of the collectible scattered throughout MCM. By gathering them all, you can boot up a mini-game on the computers known as Moon.exc. This thing is full of interesting

details and symbolism that we will 100% be exploring in the future, but the detail that's interesting right now is the collectible called the Fall Fest Snow Globe. When you find it again inside moon.exe, you can give it a shake and we're given this description. Opening day Snow Globe, a wonderful day with all of us at Fullfest. It's worth note. that right behind this snow globe is a statue of a married couple. The man wears a bowtie, which is something we see associated with Edwin throughout the game. I mean, just look at the guy's logo. He loves bow ties. Boaties are cool.

This couple is supposed to be Edwin and Fiona. And so this line about Fourfest is tied to them. But the use of the word all here is telling. If it was just supposed to be Edwin and Fiona, it would have just said both of us or the two of us. But all implies a group, i.e. David is one. also present. Thanks to help one or two, the earliest Foolfest we know about happened in 1970. So for this to be a big opening day, to the point where Fazbear creates a special snow globe, it's likely that it's that year being referenced 1970. And if Scott cares at all about giving

this series any kind of logical consistency, Fallfest would likely have to happen in the autumn. Fine fall. With David's birthday being established as December 6th, it would be physically impossible for him to also be here on the opening day of Foolfest in 1970, because he wouldn't have been born for another couple of months. So, he'd have to have been born at least a year earlier, making him at minimum six. But then why only show us five videos? What happened to the missing birthday? Well, we already know that Edwin is too busy to focus on his kid, hence he made the mimic

in the first place. Would it be out of the realm of possibility that he was so busy he didn't even celebrate? one of his kids' birthdays. The game certainly seems to think so. Because inside the Storytime Showroom, you can find David's Little Den with all of his drawings on the wall. And one of them depicts a birthday with David surrounded not by family, but by characters. And he has a cake with four candles on it.

Up until now, David's parties have always been at his house, surrounded by family, not by characters. We never see a video of him having a birthday surrounded by characters, which implies that this is a birthday not caught on camera. Edwin missed his son's fourth birthday. He was so busy trying to save the company and possibly even building M1

that he got his staff to dress up as characters and look after him instead. Then, a year later, David gets his big slide and suddenly M1 Fiona exists to take care of David. This puts David's sixth birthday in 1975, therefore his date of birth is actually December 6th, 1969. Nice. From here, we can.

actually extrapolate a few other dates and start to put things into a rough timeline. We never get exact ages for Edwin and Fiona, but we do know that David was their first and only child. In the late 60s and early 70s, the average age of first-time parents was 21.4 years old. And looking at marriages in the late 1960s, the average man was 23, while the average woman was about 20 when they got married. If Fiona is following these averages, that would mean they pretty much had David just over a year after getting married, putting their wedding in 1968. On top of that, the average length of an engagement for a couple in the 1960s was around just three to six months, with the ideal scenario being a full engagement with a spring or summer

wedding. And most would only have been dating for six months prior to that. So Fiona and Edwin most likely would have gotten engaged in the fall of 1967 and probably only started dating earlier that year. But as I've already told you, this relationship ends far too pre- One of the audio logs we find throughout the facility is a voice recording left by Fiona to Edwin explaining that she needs to go to one of their clients' events to make sure nothing goes wrong. I have to go help the Fall Fest crew. I just have this terrible feeling like I need to be there so nothing goes wrong.

Now remember that part of Moon.exC I mentioned earlier that shows us the married couple, the one representing Edwin and Fiona with the Fallfest Snow Globe at their feet, while the woman's statue is described as being burnt and blackened. There's also a stool nearby that focuses on sewing material. like a stand for someone who was maybe there to help with costumes and puppeteering, similar to what we know Fiona was capable of. That stand is also completely burnt down and destroyed. Putting all of that together, it clearly tells us that the event Fiona went to was Fullfest. The Fasbear Carnival we've been theorising about for so long. And just as we've been predicting, it absolutely did end in fire, taking Fiona's life with it.

Edwin breaks this news to David on his third birthday. and as we've established, Fall Fest should happen in the fall just before that. So, that puts Fiona's death sometime between September and November, 1972. So, right now, our timeline looks like this. Edwin and Fiona start dating in early 1967. They then get engaged in the fall of that year, which I now only just realizing might explain why they're in wedding outfits in Moon.E.C. They're next to the Fallfest Snow Globe.

It's the same time of year, almost as if they're. going to Fool Fest like some kind of anniversary celebration. Anyway, they get married in 1968 and have David in 1969. A few years passed and in the fall of 1972, Fiona goes to Fool Fulfest and dies in a fire. Edwin then creates the mimic over the next couple of years. But on the day of David's sixth birthday in 1975, David dies outside the facility. Edwin falls into a pit of despair. He tries to bring back David as M2, but gets angry, beats it up and disappears, leaving M2 to roam the facility, and Fasbear to grow impatient with Edwin's lack of deliverables, and so they send in Arnold to take what is theirs in September 1979.

But there is one more date we're able to track thanks to all of this. The death of Murray, Senior. Now, look, I know he may not seem like an important character in all of this. Let's be honest, he's kind of a footnote in the whole game. We only see his portrait a couple of times, and we only get two audiologues even mentioning him. But those two audio logs reveal a lot, not only about when he died, but also the final order of events for Murray's costume manner. And an interesting detail about our favourite singing bear company. In the audio log where we learn about Murray Senior's passing, it's a conversation between Edwin and Fiona. So they do have to have at least met at this point. Plus, they seem quite close.

The company is going to collapse and they're all going to hate me. And you'll figure it out. Just take a deep breath. It's your company now. Your dad believed in you. Otherwise, he wouldn't have left it to you. She's being encouraging in the way that a supportive partner would and should. So they're most likely at least dating when he passes.

But the real key comes from when you backtrack through the entire game to find this specific Mr. Helpful. I mentioned earlier how we get new permissions for our data diver throughout the game to access new areas. Well, that isn't the only thing you get to access. The Mr. and Mrs. Helpfuls throughout the facility also have different responses depending on the staff level that is talking to them. If you go back and find them all once you get executive level access, we actually start to hear messages recorded by Edwin or Fiona directly addressing one another. And this one right here is very interesting indeed. I've got something very important to ask you.

Okay, here goes. You become the heart of this company. And I want to share it with you. And you're also really pretty. Like asymmetrical pretty. So will you marry me, please? Yes, it's very nerdy and very sweet, just like how I propose. The point is, during Edwin's awkward ramblings, he says this line.

You become the heart of this company. You are the heart of the company. When they met, she was just a new employee. There's no way she would be that instrumental to the company, and it's quote, unquote, heart. However, once Murray Sr. passed on and Edwin was left in charge, Fiona became his main collaborator. She is the one who cared for the employees and the company while Edwin was off making more crazy inventions. We can even hear our concern during the pre-recorded elevator repair tapes. It feels like she's reading a script and she's kind of concerned.

It's only once Edwin takes over that Fiona has the opportunity to fill the position as the heart of the company. And also, I mean, this recording is on a helpful. One of the things that Edwin would only have been able to install fully once he'd taken over. Some of my inventions, for real. All of that to say, that Murray Sr. died some time between Edwin and Fiona dating and them getting engaged, placing it sometime in 1967. And that's an important detail, because while it seems early in most timelines for this franchise, Murray Senior appears to have some kind of connection with Fasbear Entertainment,

even before he passes and hands the company over to Edwin. In a number of the audio logs you can find later on in the game, it becomes very clear that Edwin is getting a little bit paranoid. Edwin, never forget. They're behind it. Don't trust them. Never tell them. They want to destroy you.

Dad was right. Now, you may be asking, who is this them? And what is it he's not supposed to be telling them? Well, through another couple of audio and text logs, both of those answers become quite easy to figure out. In literally the next audio log you can obtain, Edwin tells us that there's a leak in the company. I figured it out.

There's a leak. Someone's something. told them about M2. Well, they can't have it. M2, the brand new mimic that can adjust to any costume and mimic any character or person is what's being leaked. With that in mind, the they becomes even easier to figure out. A bunch of the text logs have a consistent running theme. Working for Murray's costume manner sucks.

They want out. One more injury and I'm out of here. I mean it this time. Barb, I swear if I hear that song one more time, I'm going to tear that dolly off her hinges. I have no clue how much longer I have. Some of them leave on their own accord, while others are being poached by a rival company. We're almost there. I need the rest of the Murray staff contact info. The sooner the better. You get for me and I can sweeten the deal. How would you like to manage one of the new franchise locations?

W.A. That's right. Good old Willie A is here and he's as evil a businessman as we always thought. Fasbear is actively stealing not just employees, but their business secrets. So, it's Fasbear that is quote behind it. They are the ones who want to destroy Edwin and he is reminding himself to not let them have the mimic program. But do you remember the last thing he said? Dad was right. Dad was right. This mini-paranoid speech is all about how Fasbear isn't to be trusted.

And those words of advice came from Edwin's father. How? Because clearly Murray Sr. knew about Fasbear, Afton, and all of their shady business practices. Either because Murray Sr. was already in business with them prior to his death, or simply because MCM had been around for a while, and so he'd have likely seen how they operated and how small businesses they were working with suddenly disappeared.

And so he made sure to warn his son about them. We all knew that Fasbear had been around a lot longer than we thought with the introduction of the 1970s Fall Fest poster and Help Wanted 2. But now, it seems that they go back even further. Sure, it's only a few. more years on paper, but just like everything in this game, we're being shown that we can't strictly rely on what we think we know as definitive. If we thought this prequel destroyed our understanding of the franchise, just wait until we learn about what was going on before all of this.

First, it's a few more years into the 1960s, but who knows how far back it goes? Huh, maybe Matt and I weren't so far off with the whole singing bear in the 1930s. But hey, that's just a theory. A game theory! Thanks for watching.