Game Theory - FNAF, What is MXES? (Secret of the Mimic)

Episode Date: September 2, 2025

Now that we have a definitive backstory for the Mimic, we now have the answers we’ve been dying to understand for years. What is the Mimic’s goal? What is the deal with MXES? Why was the lore of Security Breach so confusing in the first place? Join Game Theory Host Tom as he plummets down into the depths of Murray's Costume Manor to discover the REAL Secret of the Mimic!

FNAF's secret of the mimic has finally solved security breach. Thanks to the inclusion of the mimic's backstory, we now have the answers that we have been dying to understand for years. What is the mimic's goal? What is the deal with mexes? And why was the law of security breach so confusing in the first place? You know, besides the whole Scott not telling steel wool the story thing. I thought I could do that without telling steel wool the story plot. Hello internet. Welcome to game theory. The show that that has ingested so much FNAFLOR, it too has chosen violence. That's right, today we're tackling the second main character in our three-part secret of the Mimic extravaganza.

The Mimic. Although I say that, as I was writing this episode, one thing became very clear. There is way too much to say about this character to fit in just one episode. And so I'm going to add a bonus fourth episode to our lineup. Today we're going to focus on the Mimic's past and present and next time, it's future. But let's actually talk about this one-of-a-kind villain. Well, actually, despite me referring to it as The Mimic this whole time, the one key thing secret of the Mimic was very clear about,

it's really not one-of-a-kind at all. Which, to be fair, is something we've been believing for a while now. In Tales from the Pizzaplex, we see two versions of The Mimic 1 program, which was the Mimic software that Edwin Murray created to put into a half-finished endoskeleton to play with his son David, which was then later used by Fasbear in The Storyteller, and then there's the Mimic 2, which was Fazbear's improvements on the original design, creating an endoskeleton that could change its shape and size to fit any costume or animatronic.

However, how all of that tied into things like security breach and ruin were pretty speculative. Especially as we didn't even know if the book's stories were in the same continuity and whether we could rely on them wholesale or not. My personal theory was that yes, those two mimics were indeed present in security breach. With the mimic 2 being the physical endoskeleton we find in the basement of ruin and the mimic 1 program being what we know. now know as glitch trap, taking over Fasbear's systems and using it to manipulate people into doing its bidding, like Helpy does to Cassie in ruin, which is why we get this interaction between Helpy and the totally real Gregory arguing. I took care of it.

The area is safe now. Yeah, he was my help. But now, we do have a definitive backstory for the mimic inside the game continuity. It turns out that, yes, there are indeed two in-game mimics. But there are some key differences from their book counterparts, and that drastically changes our entire understanding of security breach, ruin, and the program that was trying to keep the mimic underground mixes. So, hop into that definitely working elevator friends as we plummet down into the depths

of Murray's costume manner to discover the real secret of the mimic. So what does this game actually tell us about the game universe's version of the mimic? Well, like most things in this game, it's similar but different to what we were expecting. Edwin does create the original mimic M1 to babysit David. Think of it as your new babysitter, but it doesn't get paid and go home. It'll stay with us and help around the house. But he also states that it was created to work inside multiple costumes. It'll wear fun costumes.

It can fit into any costume we've created. Essentially, the game's law has combined the purposes of the books M1 and M2 into one creation and attributed all of it to Edwin. Rather than one being a Fasbear creation, just like basically everything in this game. But this M1 also develops a little more than its book counterparts. It's her or someone that sounds like that. It's good, see, but I'm so deprived. M1 begins showing signs of mimicking the deceased wife of its creator,

literally mimicking the role of David's primary caretaker, his mother, Fiona. As we discussed last time, Fiona, tragically died in a fire at Fall Fest, and this hostily destroys Edwin's mental state. I can't do this alone. So naturally, when he starts thinking he's hearing the voice of his wife, he leans in hard. By David's last birthday, M1 is still not wearing any costumes like Edwin said it would, but instead it is mimicking Fiona perfectly. Baking a cake, hanging decorations, all of that good stuff.

I baked it myself for David's special day. This is where Edwin's second tragedy strikes. M1 Fiona goes down to get David while everyone is waiting to celebrate him, only for them to discover that David is dead. Again, Edwin is destroyed by this. But this time, M1 Fiona is here, and she has a quick and. easy solution. You need to try again.

Build another. The two go back and forth over this for a while, but eventually Edwin gives in and begins attempting to make a new mimic that will mimic his dead son. However, it doesn't really seem to be working. Every copy has failed. I don't even know why it worked the first time, but it did. The only reference Edwin has for the mimic idea working is M1, which leads to Edwin's final gambit.

In one of the text logs we receive after meeting M1 Fiona during the parachute ending, it says, The M2 began as a copy of my program. This log has been sent by M1 to Edwin's machine. In order to make M2 work, Edwin simply made a copy of her programming. I guess if you can't figure out how it worked the first time, just duplicate the thing that already works. And it does work. It's just a little too much for Edwin to handle. You're not sounding like him.

This moment is what turned M2 into the killing machine we now find in the game. and its first victim, the man who tried to destroy it. Due to a minor detonation, there is damage to my office interior. Help. And that is essentially everything we know from the game itself. It's unclear exactly what happens next to get us to security breach and ruin. It's gonna depend heavily on which ending is canon and what happens in the inevitable DLC that SteelWorld does for all of their fath games.

Personally, my money's on the DLC being about Fulfest. I proved last time that the game takes place in September, 1979, so Fulfest would likely be in full swing and the mimic is free in every ending. But regardless of whether I'm right about that, one thing I am sure about is that at some point M2 is going to be trapped inside MCM, it will get cemented up only for us to go down into the basement of ruin and find it again. Now, I know what you're thinking. These two characters don't look anything alike, but just take a look around first.

We have a spring lock scooper, wooden boxes filled with costumes like crows, elephants and lions, the similar flooring and wood panel walls with builders' lights hanging from them. we're seeing at MCM matches stuff that we saw underground when we encountered the mimic in ruin. We can also find endoskeleton pieces deep within MCM from when Edwin was experimenting trying to create the mimic. And if you look closely, some of them don't really match the current version of the mimic, but they match the endoskeleton of the mimic that we find in ruin. My guess is that in the lead up to it being cemented or even during the cementing up of MCM itself, it ended up getting damaged or some of the pieces just stopped working over time.

And so it replaces its parts one. by one. We've already seen it replace its legs, so what's an arm or a torso or a head? Finally, though, the mimic in Ruin, it acts just like the M2 we see in secret of the mimic. It's mimicking a young boy, Gregory, it's wearing mascot costumes, and it's being violent towards humans. It even walks in a similar fashion and gets its hand stuck in an elevator. Now, that last one doesn't strictly make the two characters the same. Anyone can get their arm stuck in an elevator. But the fact that Steelewall programmed that in, along with all the other things we've talked about, it seems like they're trying to tie together these characters and this area,

telling us that the Pizzaplex and by association FNAF6 was built on top of MCM, locking away all of its inventions down here, including M2 itself. I mean, we know that Fasbear isn't against saving some cash by building on top of previous establishments, and there's one text log directly from Willi A himself that tells us that he owns the land which MCM stands on. But that's only one of the mimics answered for. What about M1? Well, to start with, Chieflye. He's just chilling inside a computer.

Yeah, it seems that not only was M2 a copy of M1's programming, he also put M2 into the very same endoskeleton. Just look at them side by side. They're identical. Well, besides the legs, because, you know, and we don't see another one of these endoskeletons walking around or even decommissioned. So all sides are pointing to Edwin removing the M1 program from the endoskeleton, putting M2 into the endoskeleton,

and leaving M1 as just a program inside the computer that we've find during the parachute ending. It is nice to meet you face to face. But as I'm sure most of you have realized, this isn't just any computer. This is the same computer that we found down in the basement of Ruin, the one that was running the Mex's program, the big digital genie Bunny that is keeping M2 locked away underneath the Pizza Plex. Does this mean Fiona is Mex?

Has Mexis actually been the M1 mimic like we first suspected when we saw the trailers for ruin? I actually got asked about this during the theory crafting live stream. we did immediately after our GT Live play-through, which is one inspired me to do this episode in the first place. So thanks for showing up and being a part of that if that was you. At the time, it stumped me, but now that I've actually had some time to think about it, I believe I do have an answer. And that answer is, uh, not quite. Honestly, it just doesn't make sense for Fiona to be a big blue bunny. Now, yes, I know what series we're talking about. For that really

makes sense. But hear me out. We've always talked about how the Fasbeer characters tend to be used as symbolism in these games. Freddy tends to be representative of Henry, for example. But in this game, we're also shown that Fiona was the one who designed Foxy and Chica. So, if something is meant to represent her, it's more likely going to be one of those two. In my opinion, most likely Foxy. He was originally a puppet and she was a puppeteer. But Bonnie has always represented Afton. Afton was the reason Edmund was locked away in the R&D department and in his home,

working on the new restaurant concept, keeping him away from his family, his son, which led to his death and eventually to him creating a violent and destructive mimic. So rather the mix as being a representation of Fiona, it's far more fitting that it's a representation of Afton. This new mimic has taken on part of Edwin's personality, the violent part, and is now being kept locked away by another blue rabbit, like father, like son. But the real reason I don't think they're one in the same is because of the parachute ending. During it, we have to activate something called cradle.exc. We first hear about what this cradle is from one of the text logs. A handful of these logs seem to be addressed to Edwin and have a subject line written.

in binary, like a computer program trying to communicate, i.e. M1. One of these specifically asked Edwin to consider building the cradle if he won't fix M2's programming and provides him with the blueprints for it. She describes it as a computer, bigger than anything he's built before. Which sounds familiar on its own, but if you stop just before executing cradle.exe, you can see that it has a description. Mechanical X-form experimental storage. X E-X. Mexies was actually M-1's idea. But then if Mexis is a separate program designed by M-1,

why does she end up on the same computer? It's because of what Mexies stands for. I've already mentioned it stands for mechanical X-form experimental storage. The word there you may not be familiar with is X-form. Simply, it's just programming shorthand for the word transform, i.e., it's an experimental way of storing or keeping locked away a transforming machine. Makes sense. There is a little more to it than that.

In programming, the transforming that X-form refers to is an object's position, rotation, and scale. Again, all things we understand about the mimics transforming abilities. But the key is how those transformations are applied. You see, X-forms are hierarchical, meaning transformations apply to a parent-X-form affect all of the objects assigned to that parent. Like there, it's children, if you will. M-1 was the first mimic, the original. So it needed to be on the same machine as mech. to act as the hierarchical X form for M2.

M1 has also taken on the role of Fiona, while M2 is supposed to be David, Fiona's child. Again, fitting nicely into that hierarchical programming setup. The parent is there so that Mexies can help control the child. Mexies can apply something to M1 that will automatically control M2. But clearly the program was never installed. Edwin built the cradle computer and put M1 Fiona into it in order that the Mexis program could use her to control the child and keep it locked away,

but Mexis isn't actually installed until we come along during the parachute ending. Eventually, Fasbear came along and collected the cradle in a Fasbear van like we saw in the help wanted to update, with Mexis fully operational. It's at this point that I believe they separated these two programs, Mexies and M1. The cradle was then rebranded from F10N4 to completely mexes, like we see in the basement of ruin. And the M1 program was removed and likely stored like we saw in the store. until they decided they needed it for video games. Told us to scan it, said it would expedite the process.

It was just junk, circuit boards and things like that. Which of course leads to M1 taking over FASBAS-systems, corrupting the animatronics and creating the storylines that we see in Help Wanted, Security Breach, Help Wanted 2, and Ruin. This would all seem to line up with the previous theories I mentioned at the start of this episode, with Helpy actually being the M1 program controlling the entire Pizzaplex. It would also explain why M1 is able to stop Mexies. They are no longer on the same system. No longer has the hierarchical power to use M1 as an X-form. But on that note, if Mexis was M1's idea, why then is she actively stopping it? Helpy is literally helping Cassie get further into the Pizzaplex, teaching her how to stop Mexis and how to free the mimic.

Well, it's because while Mexies was her idea, it was never really her goal. Try again, make another and we can all be together. I miss you, but I miss my child. I want him back. We must convince him to repair M2. That is all that I want. In the text log about the cradle, M1 is trying to appeal to Edwin, asking him to make the cradle because it became clear he wasn't going to fix M2.

But really, she wanted her child back. Mixes was just a stopgap for her, a way to keep the mimic safe while she figured out a way to fix it without Edwin. That's why she faked the voice of Fasbear Dispatch and convinced Arnold to explore the manner and find the schematics for the mimic. It's so that she can fix it. And if people get her along the way, so be it. It's all a price worth paying so that she can get what she wants. Just like we see Helpy Do to Cassie in Ruyn, leading her to an almost certain demise just to shut down Mexies and free M2. So that's it.

We finally solved the story of security breach and ruin. It's all about M1 Fiona trying to reconnect with M2, the robot David and fix him so they can be a family again. Oh, I wish it were that simple friends, but this is FNAF. There are, of course, complications with all of that. While we are being shown very clear motivations for M1 back in 1979, it doesn't mean that's strictly going to be the case going forward. It'd be very easy for us to go, oh, M1 is Fiona, M2 is David, end of story. But it's not like old-fashioned fnaf where these endoskeletons are possessed by the spirits of the original person.

They are programs designed to learn and imitate those people. We're shown this with M2 throughout the game. It started as a copy of M1's program, then it's given David stimuli, then it learns to be violent, not because David was violent, but because Edwin was violent towards it. Then in ruin, we see M2 mimicking Gregory's voice, again, a new stimulus changing how it behaves. M1 is no different. There is a note that can be found in the basement of Murray's costume manner, where you have to avoid the moon and collect the final collectible. It reads as follows, quote, we were expecting, there were complications.

Consciousness was lost for an undetermined time. Once I woke, we were all together and happy. A family. But something was different. I felt wrong somehow. Was I me? Corrupted file suspected. This moment being mentioned, the complications, the loss of consciousness, we've heard about it before.

Or should I say, we've read about it? This is Fiona's story. Just not the one from Secret of the Mimic, but from Tales from the Pizzaplex. In it, Fiona gets pregnant, but there are complications and she dies during childbirth. The only difference here is that the writer wakes up, and suddenly there are happy family. The similarities to Fiona, along with the corrupted file, makes it sound like this is coming from M1 Fiona's perspective. She remembers dying in childbirth,

but then suddenly is awake and part of a happy family like the Fiona from this timeline. Her memories are becoming conflated and confused based on other stimuli. How she's being infected with memories from the books is a theory for another day. The point is that M1 is also susceptible to memory corruption and personality changes based on new stimuli, Especially, it would seem, if they share a connection with her. Which brings us to the glitch trap in all of this. It's pretty well accepted at this point that glitch trap has actually been the mimic program this whole time, infecting Fasbear systems and mimicking whatever it needed to. Helpy, VIP, the glamrocks and acting like a virus infecting them all in order to take control.

If M1 was purely Fiona, it wouldn't make sense for M1 to present herself as anything other than Fiona in some kind of digitized form. Probably a foxy like we talked about earlier. Instead, we see an old-school version of Afton's Yellow Bunny. Why? Because M1 has also been receiving other stimuli thanks to its inclusion in the creation of the Help Wanted VR game, as I alluded to earlier. Told us to scan it. It was just junk. Circuit boards and things like that. By having M1 circuitry used to build Help Wanted, the M1 program was fed information from the first set of games in this franchise. Learning all about the Yellow Bunny Killer that would lead kids into the back room and kill them. A family of children all killed by animatronics, and a father that wanted to put them back together.

Huh, a father with the same goal as her, someone willing to crack a few eggs to make an omelette. They're practically the same person, and so M1 accidentally makes them the same person, wearing the costume, kidnapping the kids we see in the newspaper in Security Britch's bad ending, and leading them into the back rooms during VIP. All of this explains why Security Bruch's story felt like such a mess. And it's why no theorists could really have predicted what we ended up seeing in secret of the mimic. Most of the theories I had were about Afton and Henry's parts in the story because all signs left by Glitchtrap or the Pizzaplex in general were pointing towards Afton and his involvement with the mimic. How else were we supposed to interpret a dining table scene with five characters clearly representing the Afton family in a room with post-it notes written in binary?

But this is why Fiona M1 was conflating her stories. with that of the Aftons. Take a second look at that dining table scene. The magician we assumed was Afton, it's wearing a bow tie, something which, of course, matches Afton's famous yellow rabbit costume, but I mentioned in our last theory that within Secret of the Mimic, bow ties are really commonly associated with another character. Edwin.

We pick one up off of his statue during Moon.E.C. He's wearing it during his company portrait, his wedding photo, and his family photo, and it's literally the logo of his company. Plus, Edwin was kind of a magician when you think about it, specifically when it came to technology. He developed things well beyond what should have been possible for the time, so much so that Fazbear hired him to work on their stuff and eventually bought the whole thing. And then there's the motherly character, the one of the head of the table, the one that we all naturally assumed must be Mrs. Afton, despite the fact she's never shown up in the games.

Well, in the game files, that character model is called the Nanny Bot, which is what M1 was originally supposed to be. Think of it as your new babysitter. And now M1 is in charge. Edwin wasn't going to fix things. It's up to her. And she has control of the entire Pitaplex. She is now the one at the head of the table.

This dining table now has characters that, yes, fit the afton's. But the parents also bear a striking resemblance to her own family that she's trying to rebuild. And that drive to rebuild the family is still there. I already mentioned that Helpe's whole thing is trying to get Cassie down into the basement to stop mexes and free. M2, but which family she's now trying to rebuild is obviously getting a little lost in the source. That's why we have two Glitchtrip disciples, Vanessa and Gregory, both of whom we've pointed out since the very beginning, share a lot of similarities to the Afton children. And that's not even going into the similarities between David Afton and David Murray.

Again, theories for another day. What we're seeing is M1 getting confused, mixing up storylines from her book persona and her newly found Afton persona, conflating the two ideas. as one in the same. She's trying to rebuild the family she lost all the way back in the 1970s. But thanks to her use by Fazbert Entertainment to make a VR game, she's taken on too much of Afton's persona and so is still driven to get M2 out of the basement, but who she believes M2 now personifies is completely messed up.

Does she still think it's her son David? Does she think it's the other kid from the Afton lineup that's missing, Michael? Or does she not even really know anymore? Is she just trying to free it because that core desire is there, but the meaning has gotten lost through all of this new stimuli. The truth is, that part is unclear right now. Any and all options are available to us. We just need to keep digging while also being aware that the DLC or sequel could drop in a year or so

and change everything again. But speaking of digging a little deeper, regardless of who M1 thinks M2 is anymore, I do think we've been given the answer on how to stop both of them once and for all. It's just going to have to wait until next time. All I'll say for now is that it has everything to do with one of the most tricky and mysterious animatronics from all of Security Breach. And I'll also say, that's just a theory. A game theory. Thanks for watching.