Game Theory - FNAF, The SECRET Afton Killer

Episode Date: April 18, 2025

Join Game Theory Host Tom as he reveals the TRUTH about the Afton family!

FNAF's main villain has been keeping a secret from us since the beginning, and none of us caught it. Now, Scott has released Into the Pit for a third time to try and get us to realize that while we were all looking at Afturn and the mimic, there was another lurking in the shadows that explains everything. Hello, internet. Welcome to Game Theory, the show that revisits for that floor about as much as Scott does. Yeah, if you haven't already heard, we've gotten the second main entry in Scott's interactive novel trilogy. It's called Return to the Pit. And if you're a fan of FNAF, that name will absolutely ring a bell. In 2019, we had the first ever FASBair Fright story called Into the Pit. Then, last year, we had Into the Pit The Game.

And now Scott is returning to what is clearly his favorite story in the franchise for a third time. But you want to know what's more infuriating than Scott telling us the same story over and over again? Scott changing that story just slightly each time. both the original story and the game, the missing children's incident was shown to involve six kids, rather than the typical five that we've been told about in the games, which in and of itself caused lots of disagreements within the fan base. But now in this new book,

do you want to guess how many kids there are? It's been changed back to five. Is this to line it up more with the games? Does that mean that this version is canon, but the original Fasbear Frights isn't? Scott, my guy, I literally spent an entire episode talking about how it would be nice if the books were canon.

And then you go and pull this on me? I mean, I'm thankful you didn't change it to something crazy like seven, but seriously. That being said, this version of the story being more likely canon than the other versions does allow for some interesting theorizing. Something I didn't talk about in our week before theory was how a choose-your-own-adventure can work in terms of canonicity. With each of these stories, while there are multiple endings, there is only one canon ending. However, that doesn't mean that the other endings can't be used to help solve the line.

In the week before, we know that phone guy Ralph has to die on night four. But that doesn't mean that an item he finds in a drawer in a non-canon roots can't be used as evidence. The item still exists in that drawer in the world. It is canonically there. It's just that canonically, Ralph never discovers it. Return to the Pit is working on that same principle. The canon ending is Oswald defeats the Yellow Rabbit and saves his dad, like he does in the original story. But there are a number of alternate paths that don't go that way that we can still

learned from. Remember, this is the third time we are going through this story. Clearly, there is something that we've been missing that Scott is trying to draw our attention to. And while I was reading one of the alternate endings, something hit me around the face like a yellow rabbit in 1985. This one ending doesn't just add another log to the Is It Cannon Fire. It set off a chain of dominoes that completely changed my outlook on the franchise. It seems crazy, but if you'll stick with me, I promise you, you'll realize just as I did, how this book affects the timeline, Fasbe's Fullfest Origins, and one of the most confusing, yet most important villains in this franchise. No, I'm not talking about Afton, and it's not

the mimic. Get your arcade tokens ready, theorists, because we've got a prize waiting for us to collect. Law. Before we get too into the details, in case you somehow miss the last five years of this story existing, Into the Pit is about a kid named Oswald. During his summer break, his dad drops him off at a local pizzeria called Jeff's Pizza. While there, he discovers a bull pit that has strange powers. It can take him back in time to 1985. Back then, it wasn't Jeff's pizza, but Freddy Fazbear's pizza. There, he finds a golden rabbit mascot that lures him into a back room and reveals to him

a lineup of dead children. Oswald runs to the ball pit to escape and finds his dad on the other side, but the yellow rabbit follows him, pulling his dad into the pit and taking his place in Oswald's life, driving him home, sitting at his dining table, and sleeping in. in his bed. Oswald has to break out of his own house and return to the pit in order to find his dad, where he manages to trap the yellow rabbit and put an end to it. Now, in the original Fazbear Fright story, it was unclear what exactly was going on with this ball pit. Was it really using time travel? Or was it Oswald seeing agony-induced memories of the other victims that

died in the ball pit? Agony being a powerful negative emotion that works kind of like Remnant, but not really? Listen, don't worry about it. It's really not that important because in this new telling of the story, as well as the game from last year, we're being shown that this bull pit is using physical time travel. In the game, Oswald is able to take objects from the future into the past and vice versa. And in return to the pit, Oswald meets a grown-up Chip, one of the kids he met in 1985, and Chip remembers him. So, these retellings do seem to be showing us that it really is a time-traveling ball pit. And if that's the case, then there are a few other details that really begin to matter. Suddenly, anything Oswald witnesses in 1980s,

are real things present in 1985, even if they aren't the canonical route. And with that in mind, one of the alternative paths becomes very interesting. In 1985, Oswald has the option to leave Freddy's. Once he steps outside, he hears a voice calling for help. If we follow the voice, Oswald is led to a basement around the back of Freddy's. He makes his way down the stairs and is swiftly bonged over the head by the yellow rabbit. As he lies on the floor in a pool of his own blood, beginning to lose consciousness, he hears Here's the voice laughing at him.

Now, you may be wondering why this particular ending stood out to me. Yeah, it's a bit creepy, but it's just another nowhere path that leads to Oswald's demise. What's the big deal? Well, the big deal comes from when you read the description of the character this mysterious voice is coming from. Quote, about five steps away, sitting in the shadow, you see a doll that resembles a little girl. She has red hair in pigtails and is wearing a red dress that matches her hair. Her face, legs and arms are bone white. And she has a blood red nose and crimson circles on her cheeks.

Her entire appearance is unnerving. Immediately I knew I needed to identify this character. My first thought was Eleanor from other Fazbear Fright stories like To Be Beautiful. After all, Return to the Pit is a retelling of a fright story. She is described as looking like a dog with a clown-like face and red pigtails. This felt like an obvious match. But then when I went back and took a closer look at Ellen. description, the more that connection felt less and less strong.

Yes, she's got a clown-like face, but her cheeks are actually pink, not red, and her body is silver, not white. There's also how her body is described. Quote, its body was sleek and silver with a long neck, a tiny waist, and a rounded bust and hips. Its legs and arms were long, slender, and elegant. Yes, she is described as being doll-like, but that doll is more reflective of an adult woman with a rounded bust and hips and longer limbs. But the doll in return to the pit is described as

looking like a little girl, as in not a fully grown woman. So, Eleanor wasn't really fitting the bill for me. But while I scratched my head over this, there was one other detail that pointed me in the right direction. Quote again, you hear the sound of laughter beside you, high-pitched giggling. You turn your head and look at the doll. She sits there perfectly still, but the laughter gets louder and louder. As we've discussed, it feels like this book is trying to align itself with the game canon. So, a red nose, red cheeks, red hair, a red dress, and a creepy childlike laugh can only match one character. Plush Baby.

Now, if you're like me, you're probably sitting there thinking, what the heck is Plush Baby doing here? Her inclusion felt so intrusive. The truth is, I've actually been asking this question for a long time. Plush Baby was first introduced back in FNAF VR. help wanted as a simple plushy version of Circus Baby, even using the same lines as her just higher pitched. Her level was, let's say, challenging. But from a law perspective, this was a VR game made by Fasper Entertainment to fix their reputation while also promoting merchandise. So, a plush version of baby that people could then love or hate that they could then take home with them makes a lot of sense.

What didn't make a lot of sense is the fact she can. kept reappearing in games that didn't have that law purpose. In Help Wanted 2, we're essentially a technician fixing all the attractions. But their Plush Baby is, making her way towards us to jump scare us. In Security Breach ruin, Cassie can find a secret room inside Bonnie Bowl that, when you take off the Vanity Mask, reveals a room full of Plush Babies all laughing like they do, only to disappear when you turn your back. And you can also collect AR versions of the Plushie, with Cassie's only comment being,

What is she doing here? Not only has Scott been including her in all the steel wool era FNAF games, but he is specifically calling out that her presence is weird. And now she's being shoved into Return to the Pit during 1985. What is Scott trying to tell us with this character? Well, take a look at Plush Baby's design compared to the character she's based on, Circus Baby. What difference do you notice?

Besides the fact that one is a doll and one is a seven-foot monster clown, The eyes. Plush Baby's eyes are blue, while Circus Baby's eyes are green. Though, long-time fans of the franchise will remember that this isn't a design error from Scott. Circus Baby's eyes were originally blue, up until she scooped Afton's daughter, Elizabeth, and got Circus Baby's Pizza World shut down before it even opened. When Baby scooped Elizabeth, baby became possessed by Elizabeth, and as part of that, gained Elizabeth's green eyes. So for the plush babies to have blue eyes, they have to have been based on the character prior to Elizabeth's scooping. Therefore, from a timeline perspective, for this toy to exist as it does in return to the pit,

a blue-eyed circus baby needed to exist before 1985. We still don't have anything telling us exactly when her scooping happened prior to that date in 1985, whether it was before or after Dave the Crying Child and Charlie's deaths. But hey, at this point with FNAF, I'll take whatever timeline wins I can get. Although, that isn't the only thing this appearance teaches us. Because of Circus Baby's pizza world's ambiguous placement in the FNAF timeline, there have been a lot of theories about why Baby and the Fun Times were designed with claws in their stomachs and cavities large enough to hold a child inside of them.

Obviously, it was to capture kids. But it's more about why Afton chose this method to capture them, when the only thing we'd seen at that point was him stuffing the stuff. the kids into suits himself. One option that has been theorized about is that the fun time designs were made to capture kids in their stomachs because of the police sniffing around after the missing children's incident. Afton couldn't risk getting caught leading children into the back room himself like he used to.

So he'd just have the animatronics do it for him. But in this book, we're being shown that Plush Baby and therefore a pre-Elizabeth baby were around before 1985, before the missing children's incident. which happened in return to the pit in 1985. That implies that Afton's use of baby and the fun times was less responsive and more proactive. Like it was always the plan to have them assist him in capturing kids, like he knew it was the smart approach to have help rather than doing it all himself. He wanted someone else to bring the kids to a secluded place where he could then kill them.

He needed an accomplice. And if you think about it, this idea is actually being reflected. with Plush Baby's recent appearances. In return to the pit, Oswald is led to a mysterious backroom by Plush Baby and is then killed by a yellow rabbit. It's not literally Afton, it's a weird monster version of Afton with hundreds of teeth. But then again, it's not literally Baby either. Instead, it's symbolic of the relationship these two characters had.

Baby is once again helping to capture the kid, luring them to a place where Afton can finish them off. A similar thing happens in ruin when we play as Cassie, another child. We're lured to a secret back room, much like Oswald was, and inside are a bunch of giggling plush babies. Fortunately, this time, no rabbit came to kill us. And you know why? Because the one who is acting like Afton, the mimic is locked downstairs in the basement. We haven't released it yet.

We can't even put on the vanie mask in this room, because doing so would summon mixes, the thing that is working to keep the mimic trapped. Symbolically, we're being shown that Afton, or things that think they're Afton, don't work alone. Though it's not just symbolic either. The more I thought about this, the more I realized that recent FNAF has been showing us Afton's need for an accomplice to pull off his plans. Just take a look at the Fnaf movie. We've never actually talked about the Fnaf movie on this channel before, mainly because Lee stole it from me. Hey, you weren't using it. Well, I am now, so I'll be taking this back, thank you.

Dude, you can't just... Oh, look over there! I think Santee's trying to steal an anime episode. from you. Hey, come back here, no you don't. Where was I? Oh, yeah, the FNAF movie. In that movie, we meet William Afton, played by Matthew Lillard.

But a key twist of the movie is that while he got Mike the job at Freddy's, he had someone on the inside keeping an eye on him. In fact, the only reason Afton showed up at the end to try and kill Mike was because this person didn't do their job. You had one job, one. Keep him in the dark and kill him if he got too close. That's two jobs. His own daughter, Vanessa, in the movie universe, is Afton's accomplice.

Just like how baby, an animatronic that would be possessed by Afton's daughter and represent her going forward, was his accomplice in the game timeline. Now, look, I know this idea that Afton has always had an accomplice might sound like a bit of a stretch. It always seemed like Afton was the sole killer. And believe me, I get it. I've been going back and forth with Ash on this topic for weeks. Just look at this whiteboard. Does this look like something saying to?

people would write, but trust me, I really think there's something to this idea that Afton always needed an accomplice, especially because it would really begin to explain why Vanessa was so important to Glitch Trap in the modern games. I always found it a bit weird that the Mimic One program acting like Afton, otherwise known as Glitch Tramp, decided that he needed to brainwash someone in order to accomplish its goal. It's a cool concept and we've always liked the cult of Afton idea, but it just felt a little out of the blue compared to other developments in the franchise. The only logical explanation we've had is that it needed a new body to be made because its main body was destroyed and locked away down in the FNAF6 location. But if I'm right about what this book and all of these other games are showing us, then it is way more than just a

simple Put Me Back Together plan. It was the mimic once again following in Afton's footsteps. It needed its own accomplice. The other weird detail that we just couldn't quite answer was why did Vanessa look like a grown-up Elizabeth? Blonde hair and greener. eyes. Unlike in the movie, she didn't appear to actually be Afton's daughter. The timelines didn't match up. But if the mimic was copying everything Afton did from killing kids in the back room during VIP to literally wearing the bunny costume Afton used to wear, then it couldn't have just anyone be its accomplice. It needed to find one that matched Afton's previous accomplice. Circus Baby, i.e. Elizabeth. And here's the thing. For once, I don't think this is just another one of those

clarifying details that we've talked about in previous episodes. When Scott clarifies small details, they tend to be very obvious and direct. But this relies much more on us connecting the dots and using symbolism. So much so that he's been shoving it in our faces for the past five years, and we're only just starting to realize what it means. That, dear theorists, tells me that while this modern era of FNAF has moved on physically from the days of Afton and Henry, there's still much more for us to learn about them and how they operated.

and I believe it's going to affect where this franchise is going. And ironically, I think that ties together really nicely with the thing we've been theorising about for a long time. Fall Fest. Fazbear's Carnival Origins from the 70s that will hopefully be getting to see more of in the new game Secret of the Mimic. This is where a bunch of our previous theories all come together. In my very first FNAF theory,

I briefly mentioned how Circus Baby has always been the oddball in terms of design aesthetic compared to all the other characters. But a circus like Fall Fest would allow her design to feel much more at home, especially now that we have designs like Jackie. In my secret of the mimic theory, I also theorized that Fall Fest, specifically of 1979, would be where we'd get to see one of Afton's earliest kills,

maybe even his first. This was because of a quote used by Steelwall's design director when the trailer for the game dropped, a line from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar that comes from a scene between Mark Anthony and Brutus, where Brutus had killed Caesar, but Anthony couldn't accuse him publicly. I believe this was reflecting Afton and Henry, with Afton being Brutus, Henry being Anthony, and an innocent child filling the role of Caesar,

because Caesar loved Brutus just like the kids loved Afton's Yellow Rabbit. I believe that much like Anthony, Henry was unable to accuse Afton publicly, despite knowing about it, because it would lead to the downfall of his business. So, by combining these two theories, as well as what we've talked about today, between Afton and Baby, we get a much clearer picture of what we can expect to learn about from Secret of the Mimic. Not only are we likely to learn about one of Afton's earliest kills, but we're going to see the true introduction of his accomplice that he's been using since the beginning. Baby, someone that will distract parents and help Afton lure kids into a secret area and kill them.

If I'm right, this would further explain why after the death of his son, his first instinct was to go back to Baby for his new venture. return to form. Back to the partner he could trust after his previous partner Henry betrayed him by making an animatronic that killed his son. The only thing I'm not really sure about and the thing I'm most excited to see is who this accomplice actually was. As I've mentioned in previous theories, Fall Fest wasn't the era of animatronics, but costumes. So this baby accomplice won't be the bundle of why, as we know today. It will be a costume worn by a human performer. Was it just another person playing the baby clown role as part of the circus that Afton trusted? Or was it Afton's actual baby, Elizabeth?

A little girl dressed as a clown helping her dad at his circus job by playing with other kids, making her more of an unknowing accomplice. Like Vanessa is the reluctant follower for the mimic. I think thematically it works really nicely and it explains the whole baby name. But we just have no idea how old Elizabeth is at any point in the story. So it's hard to say for sure that she'd have even been a little. alive during 1979. Maybe that's another point of clarification that Scott will add for us in Secret of the Mimic.

Or, you know, he'll just do another retcon and then gaslight us into thinking it was there the whole time. I'll admit there's also the chance that this is where Jackie slash the mimic comes into play, with their clown design being the premise for Baby later on. They were initially the accomplice learning from Afton, but later became the master, turning Vanessa into their own accomplice. Either way, friends, remember, it's all just a theory. A game theory.

Thanks for watching. Thank you.