Game Theory - FNAF 7, The Untold Story of Sister Location

Episode Date: February 20, 2024

Join Game Theory Host MatPat as he predicts the entire plot of FNAF Help Wanted VR! *Credits:* Writers: Matthew Patrick Editors: Marc Schneider, Alex "Sedge" Sedgwick and Shannon (Bomb0i) Assistant Editor: AlyssaBeCrazy Sound Editor: Yosi Berman

Screw it. Let's talk about this thing. By all that's unholy, FNAF is somehow back. Someone got together their little summoning circle of Funco plushies and recycled Chucky Cheese Pizza and awakened the sleeping behemoth and is Scott Coffin and now here we are with a new trailer for FNAF 7 and me in children's pajamas. So thank you, internet. Also, can we just agree that this is creepy, right? Not me wearing kids PJs, certainly though.

Come to think of it, that is really weird. Now, the fact that I'm in a nightie that is dedicated to an animatronic that gets dead children stuffed into him. God, man. Now, at the end of last summer, FNAF was basically done. The book series had concluded FNAF 6 had burned the series to the ground, and Ultimate Custom Night ended the story by trapping William Afton in eternal torment. All that was really left was the movie. Just like Jeremy laid to rest on a nearby hillside,

it was time for the series to finally rest In peace. But then, back in November, Scott hopped onto Steam to give all us Fredheads an update, and suddenly the movie was the least certain thing of the group. A VR game? An AR game? More books? A third new game called Into Madness?

Clearly Scott intended me to be the protagonist of that one, since that's exactly where I'm headed to with so much new FNAF edit our way. Even a Triple A game, where apparently instead of stuffing children into animatronics, they start getting stuffed into loot boxes. Fast forward four months to today, and here we are with the first new Scott Cawthon teaser in nearly a year. A teaser for one of the items on this massive list of animatronic horror sent to taunt me. But which one is it and what it means for this new era of fnaffining is exactly what we're exploring today. So let's get analyzing. First, let's just assess what we're seeing here, shall we? Clearly you have

5 animatronics that are all melted together, which would be interesting enough on its own, but making it even more compelling is the fact that they all span the history of the franchise. You have Freddy, Foxy, and Bonnie, all in their FNAF 1 forms, but then you also have the pre-mangle form of Fun Time Foxy from sister location, and also pre-trapped Spring Trap from, well, a lot of different cutscenes throughout the series, but most notably from the Fruity Mays mini game dating in Fnaf 6. You can actually tell this based on the general shape of the news, nose as well as the lack of decay and aging that you normally see post-springlock failure. But since this is a Scott Cawthon teaser, you know that there's gonna be more here than just a cool image.

If you throw this thing into Photoshop and start brightening it up, step one in any FNAF teaser analysis, you're gonna see the background has lines. Lines with some oddly inconsistent spacing. And of course you have text. The quote is from Fazbear Entertainment in the upper right-hand corner saying that everything is working as intended, but also a not quite so-histor hidden bunch of text right here in the middle of the image that you really gotta squint to truly read. Don't listen to them, blank, let something inside, it was an accident, remember Jeremy. Jeremy? That's the guy from the Gravestone. The night guard who has his name on the paycheck from Fnaf 2. The supposed bite of 87 victim. Ladies and gentlemen, sound the alarms, we are talking about the lobe lad himself, which means that there's only one option here. We are in the same continuity.

Cue the party horns and cheerful children sound effects. I know we were all eager to throw out our textbooks at the end of last semester, guys. But it's time to break out FNAF lore for dummies one final time. Wooby-Doo! Who's excited? This guy, I guess. Now, creating my own A-R-G over the last couple months has taught me a lot of things, specifically better ways to hide and code messages. And one particularly effective, but simple way to do it, is by opening image files as text files.

So if we open this image file in Notepad, we actually get our answer to that first missing word. Don't listen to them, we let something inside. It was an accident, Remember Jeremy. So with all of that evidence compiled, let's start analyzing before we start digging deeper. Because there's a lot deeper to go, ladies and gentlemen. We are just scratching the surface. Now, the phrase, remember Jeremy. actually tells us a lot of things here.

First, it tells us both the speaker of that line and the person it's directed to know who Jeremy is. Secondly, it tells us that the events of this game are happening in the aftermath of his death, which at this point is commonly accepted to be the result of the bite of 87. So from a timeline perspective, it looks like this quote is coming after 1987, meaning that we're after the string of murders in the FNAF2 location, and around the time of Michael Afton's revisit to the FNASTA

F1 building and his discovery of sister locations location. In fact, knowing where in the timeline this quote must fall and seeing those lines in the background of the teaser, my mind immediately jumps to prison bars. Now, that seems like it might be a stretch. Clearly these are just meant to be tiles, and while yes, that's probably what they are, the inconsistent spacing still felt weird to me, and it resembled the narrow strip of horizontal bars that many prison doors have. Now think back, way back to when this story first started. Back to the secret newspapers from Phanaf 1.

The things that first told us that there was a deeper story to begin with. Quote, video surveillance identified the man responsible and led to his capture the following warning, end quote. And on the follow-up story, headline, five children now missing, suspect convicted. While the suspect has been charged, the bodies themselves were never found, end quote. So if these newspaper clippings are still considered, this former employee was convicted, meaning that they found him guilty and as a result most likely he went to prison for his crime. And we can be fairly confident that this isn't Afton, since his only come-up-in seems to have been the Springlock failure and the eventual eternal

torment in A.E. Double-toothpicks. Meaning that there is still a potential story to be told of someone there who's trapped in prison wrongfully accused, haunted by the nightmarish amalgamation of animatronics that got him thrown into the slammer. At least, that's my wishful thinking for a potential plotline for one of these stories. Is it the story that we're getting in this game? Probably not. But a boy in Freddy pajamas can dream. Can't he? Let's go back to the text. Don't trust them. That them could be referring to the animatronics or it could be referring to the members of FASBair Entertainment, that quote in the upper corner saying that everything is working as intended. Now, as established, by Ultimate Custom Night, the only haunted characters who still possess rational thought are baby and the puppets. The others are like animals, but I am very aware. Which eliminates everyone that we currently see on screen here. Thereby making it doubtful that the them in this quote is referring to the animatronics.

Instead, this seems to be two employees of Fasbear Entertainment talking to each other, basically confirming not to trust what the bosses are saying. All the other lines here, we let something in, it was an accident, remember Jeremy, seem like those same coworkers realizing that something is wrong and that it relates to a mistake that they made, a mistake that's ultimately related to Jeremy's death, and now they're both worried about their own survival. Remember Jeremy? Seems to me to read more like, hey, remember that guy? We don't want to end up like him. So now, looking back across the games, what are some of the mistakes where something deadly has been,

Let in. Well, he got spring trap being led into Fasbear Fright in FNAF 3. You have basically the entirety of FNAF 6's Salvage mini-games and Ennard from sister location. Ennard who, funny enough, during the false ending to that game repeatedly begs you to let him in. You must help us. You must let us inside the room. You have to let me inside the room. And where in the series do we have two co-workers who wind up dead because they let something inside? Sister location again. Now, it's a scene that's really easy to forget, but night five of sister location actually starts

with Michael Afton crawling through the vents and suddenly coming across the hanged bodies of two former technicians, co-workers, done in by the newly escaped pieces of Ennard. So we have something where the placement in the timeline makes sense. The relationship of the characters to Jeremy as co-workers make sense. Their skepticism of FASBair Entertainment definitely makes sense. And you know what? That's not all.

Their role specifically as technicians also makes sense with everything that we're learning about this new game. You see, Scott wasn't content to just give us one teaser. Oh no. He gave us eight separate images teasing this new game. Apparently to make up for lost time. Thanks, buddy. I mean, sure, we just analyzed the imagery and text of this one image, but if you check the source code of Scott, of Scott's website, which at this point is FNAF Research Step 2, right after brightening up the images, you'll notice on strings of text, all with this tag, content equals.

Well, if you take those strings of letters and plug them into the URL bar, it reveals a trove of new findings. The first and most important of them, we're going to be playing as a technician. Here, in this image, we can actually see Freddy's body opened up, ready to be worked on, Which perfectly coincides with what Scott teased when he initially mentioned the possibility of this new VR game. Quote, if you liked repairing Fun Time Freddy up close and sister location, just wait until you try to do something like that in VR. Up close and personal with these huge animatronics that are just one mistake away from jumping at you. Another of these images, the one of Bonnie without the eye,

also is teasing at this idea of no longer being a guard, but rather an animatronic tech, having to be a of no longer being a guard, but rather an animatronic tech having to repair all of these robots. So could the main story of this new fnaf game actually be the story of these two hapless technicians who end their lives in an underground robotics bunker? If the quote on this teaser is to be believed, the answer seems to be a solid yes. If it is, it even relates back to the title of the game. You see, going back to look at the source code yet again, you see that the original teaser image is listed as H-GELMAN, W.jpg. Now, back in February, my buddy Dawko tweeted out that a new FNAF game had gotten leaked on the ESRB ratings website.

The ESRB man, get your act together. First you leak the Super Smash Bros. 4 roster and now you're leaking the new FNAF game. It is time to stop! It's time to stop, okay? And yes, this is someone else's meme, but I thought it was appropriate for the situation. Plus I'm in pajamas, thought would be funny. There it is. Filthy Frank. We miss you. But in all seriousness, this game's title is Five Nights at Freddy's VR Help Wanted, HW, just like the name of the teaser image.

The description for this leaked game even confirms that you will be playing as a technician. Quote, once again, players assume the role of a repair person tasked with monitoring and repairing animatronic characters at a pizzeria. From a first person perspective, players explore dark hallways, complete puzzles, and try to avoid menacing, malfunctioning animatronic figures. The game contains frequent screams and jump scares with the words, You Are Dead appearing on screen after players are attacked." End quote. And what happens when you lose two technicians to sudden animatronic related fatalities? Time to find some more!

Throw up the sign! Help Wanted. So we have ourselves a VR game, starring a technician who's repairing animatronics, slowly coming to realize that they've made a terrible career decision. Or, do we? Looking across all the other teaser images, it feels like this whole game may actually be disconnected. We see scenes from all the various settings we visited in this franchise.

The tile floor behind that old model of Bonnie suggests that it's the FNAF 1 location. This shot of Springtrap looming in the background tells us that we're going to be visiting Fasbear Fright. The appearance of Fun Time Foxy in the teaser suggests that we'll be visiting sister location for some challenges. Heck! We're even going to be invading the Crying Child's bedroom from FNAF 4 based on this shot of baby. Notice the iconic closets from that game as well as the bedspread design in the background. So is this game just gonna be a bunch of vignettes? A compilation of the series' greatest scares? Only now they're in VR?

I don't think so. I do think that this game can and will tell its own unique story that builds out the lore of this franchise. And one of these teaser images solidifies that for me. True to form, Scott hit his biggest reveal the deepest. You see, going on to Scott Games one final time, and it's a lot of times to visit Scott Games just for one teaser image Something seems a little off if you're paying close enough attention. You see, the meta label for the website is actually misspelled with a zero in between the two T's And if you go through the source code with a really fine tooth comb and a really keen eye

You'll actually notice a couple more typos an R in content A big old G in block quote and an N in the word text Zero RGN. Type those letters into the URL bar and you get this. Now, clearly it's been obscured very heavily, but if you blur it and affect the contrast a little bit, change some of the levels, you actually get something that looks more like this. Something that doesn't just look like an animatronic, but one animatronic in particular. Notice the half-closed eye.

It's Enerd. It's Ennard's signature appearance. half closed eye, horizontal tube-like lips, an endoskeleton looking to be let in. So, there you have it. We have ourselves a new VR game telling us the story of two technicians who made a fatal career decision. Based on the fact that the game already has a rating, I'm assuming that we're gonna probably see this one coming out pretty soon. It's weird actually to think about a fnaf game coming out on something like

PlayStation 4, the PlayStation VR. I'm excited to see it. Will I be right in my predictions? Well, we're just gonna have to wait and see. And by wait, I mean, it's probably out already now. As soon as I hit the publish, it probably came out because, you know, that's how Scott goes. Right? Is it, is it out? Is it out yet? How about now? Right now. It's there. Nothing? All right, screw it. I'm gonna go get out of these pajamas. But hey, that's just a theory. Game Theory. Thanks for watching.