Game Theory - Game Theory: The COMPLETE Lore of Secret of the Mimic

Episode Date: January 2, 2026

2025 was a BIG year for FNAF and with the release of Secret of the Mimic, there was a LOT to discuss. We all know how complicated FNAF can be, it’s hard to keep track of all the theories at the best of times. So, I figured I’d give you guys a little gift and package all of our Secret of the Mimic theories up into one convenient little present that you can enjoy. Here is EVERYTHING you need to know about FNAF Secret of the Mimic!

This is the complete law of Secret of the Mimic. 2025 was a big year for FNAF. We finished off the interactive novel series, the second movie hit theaters, and of course the crown jewel of summer 2025, an actual FNAF game. Secret of the Mimic, a game that promised to answer all of our questions about the earliest parts of the franchise. And there was a lot to talk about. Plus, we all know how complicated FNAF can be. It's hard to keep track of all the theories at the

best of time, so I figured I'd give you guys a little gift and package all of our secret of the mimic theories up into one convenient little present that you can enjoy. Here is everything you need to know about FNAF Secret of the Mimic. 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. Cheekha! I can't believe we got Cheekha! Hey! 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 friend. 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 Fazbear 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. Let's start from the beginning. We jump into the game as a lowly mechanic working for the wonderful as always FASBair 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 FasBah 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. He's going for it. 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 at 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 understands 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 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 FNAF fan, we see a handful of characters that you might recognize, like Pirate and Cowgirl Roxy. Hill Billing 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 Cheekha, 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 audiologs, presumably because they have a level of familiarity and friendship

thanks to their shared technological creativity. I got the change order from Hen last night. They don't think of me as a friend anymore. 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 Pesplex 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 for With that failure under his belt and the business still struggling, Edwin locks himself away with his final Fasbear project, a restaurant called Freddie 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

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. 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 M1 Fiona 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 be. willing to spend a lot of time avoiding rollerblading Cheetah, 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 lighthearted, 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 here. I do. But they're all those grounds. This is the perfect spot for David's play.

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 19th. 70s, 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, 1970s. However, I'm not entirely sure that's the case. Firstly, the achievement you get for entering David's party room is called elated 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 something. seeing number go 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 noting 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 also present. Thanks to Help 1 or 2, 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, Fall Fest 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 Fullfest 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 birth, 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 and therefore his date of birth is actually December 6th, 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 prematurely.

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 Full Fest 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 materials, like a statue,

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 Fall Fest. The Fasbear Carnival we've been theorizing 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, full fest should have to 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. They're next to the Fallfest Snow Globe. It's the same time of year, almost as if they're going to Fullfest

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 Foolfest 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 family. 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 audiologs even mentioning him. But those two audiologues 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 favorite singing bear company. In the audiologue where we learn about Murray Sr'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 his 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. All of that to say, that Murray Sr. died sometime between Edwin and Fiona dating and then

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 Sr. 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 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? 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 can take it here.

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 that 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 Senior knew about Fasbear, Afton and all of their shady business practices. Either because Murray Senior 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 Fazbear 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're, 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 with that, let's move on to our second character. The one of a kind villain, The Mimic. 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. 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 Fasbear's improvements on the original design, creating an endoskeleton that could change its shape and size to fit any cost of. more 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 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 now know as glitch trap, taking over Fasbear's systems and using it to manipulate people into doing its bidding. Like, 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's safe now. Yeah, it 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 M-1 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. This is where I heard it. It's heard or someone that sounds like that. It's something that. M1 begins showing signs of mimicking the deceased, 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 Fallfest, 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 of 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.

Not him. 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 going to 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 springlock scooper, wooden boxes filled with costumes like crows, elephants and lions, the similar flooring and wood panel walls with builders' lights hanging from them. Everything 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 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 arms stuck in an elevator. But the fact that Steelwall 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, she'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 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 playthrough, 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 Fasbear 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 too. in my opinion, most likely boxy. He was originally a puppet and she was a puppeteer. But Bonnie has always represented Afton. Afton was the reason Edwin 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 asks 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. M-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. However, 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. Well, 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. M1 was the first mimic, the original. So it needed to be on the same machine as Mexies to act as the hierarchical X-form for M-2. M-1 has also taken on the role of Fiona, while M-2, 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. Mexes 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 MXS program could use her to control the child and keep it locked away. But Mexies isn't actually installed until we come along during the parachute. Eventually, FASBair came along and collected the cradle in a FASBair 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, mexes 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 storyteller, 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 fours and things like that. Which of course leads to M1 taking over Fasper's 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 Mexis. They are no longer on the same system. Mexis no longer has the hierarchical power to use M1 as an X-form. But on that note, if Mexies was M1's, I guess. 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 Mex's 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 herself. 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 cast her. in ruin, leading her to an almost certain demise just to shut down mexes 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 a 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 GlitchTrap 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. But instead, we see an old-school version of Afton's Yellow Bunny. Why? Because M-1 has awesome. 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 Bridge's bad ending, and leading them into the back rooms during VIP. All of this explains why Security Breach'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 Pizza Plex in general were pointing towards Afton and his involvement with the Mimit. 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 a half. 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.EXC. 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 Fasbear 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. After, 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 Pizzaplex. 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 Mexies and Free M2. But which family she's now trying to rebuild is obviously getting a little lost in the story.

That's why we have two Glitchtrap 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 1970. 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. And it's connected to a character that we have been theorizing about four years, Sun and Moon. When he first showed up in Security Breach, We knew nothing about the sky or what his purpose in the whole story was. By the time Ruin came along, it felt like he had to be connected to the mimic, with both of them sharing the same individually moving teeth,

and the fact that he wears a jester costume, which felt very connected to both the jester costume we learned about in the books, as well as the whole Fall Fest carnival. But now, we have Secret of the Mimic, and Sun and Moon are all over this thing. We've got OG versions of the characters, we've got symbolic mini-games, we've even got a mysterious...

lullaby, all of which make one thing extremely clear. We were 100% right about Sun and Moon being connected to the Mimic. Throughout the game, we are being shown that these two, or three, or I suppose, four characters, are intrinsically connected in so many interesting ways, but most importantly, Sun and Moon is actually the key to not just solving the mimic, but ending it once and for all. I hope you've knocked over all your stackable toys, friends, because it's finally time to clean up the mess. That is, Sun and Moon. The first instance we get of Sun or Moon appearing in this game is right as we enter Murray's costume Manor for the first time.

As we head over to the computer and the security office, we can find a few options to select. Maps, obviously a map of the facility, logs, which is where we get to see all the juicy law-filled chat logs that were found from the mailboxes strewn about the building. And then, there's our main focus for today, Moon.exe. We've talked about Moon.exe.c in our previous episodes, but in case you missed those or the massive playthrough, we did over on GT Live, it's basically a game within a game. We start in a bedroom, and while the goal is initially unclear, if you take a wrong turn, you face the wrath of Sleepy Moon, who tells you to go back to bed. Now, as you play the normal game, you can find collectibles inside of presents that you can then

load into the system, and they will appear inside Moon.exe for you to use. Each one serves a specific purpose, either helping you to thwart Moon's attempts to stop you, or giving us information about Edwin and his family. In the previous episode we've talked about the Snow Globe that is next to a married man and woman, where the woman looks burnt, and how it's meant to be symbolic of Edwin and Fiona Murray. But that isn't the only law this game provides us. The initial premise of us being told to go back to bed gives you the impression that we're a child, trying to sneak out of our bedroom and go on an adventure.

As we go through this adventure, we encounter a baby owl that we can save that then sticks with us throughout the journey, cooing and rubbing up against us like a pet. However, things take a weird turn when we encounter the old. old woman that lives in a cabin in the woods. This old woman has a head covered in spikes, kind of like you'd expect a sun to be represented. After fulfilling her tasks and fixing her three broken masks, she then hands you a final mask, the mask of a baby owl. At the same time, our baby owl friend seems to have gone missing, but the oven is now on and there's a suspicious smell of chicken in the air. With our new mask equipped, this sun woman takes us to a cave that

Moon is guarding, only for Moon to see the baby owl mask and to run away crying. This was the moment that things clicked for me. At first, I figured we were playing as David, with Moon being an obvious analog for his father Edward. That's why we got explicit messages like, go back to bed, I'm too busy, things that Edwin would actively say to both David and his wife, Fiona. Just give me a minute. David's two years old.

He won't remember a thing. Besides, he's got plenty more birthplace. However, this moment where Moon, Edwin, sees us wearing a baby owl mask and then and runs away crying, along with us only gaining the owl mask as the baby owl disappeared, it made me realize we weren't playing as David, but the mimic M2. M2 was designed to mimic David perfectly, like it was wearing a mask pretending to be him. And we know that that actually really upset Edwin. Stop not him. You're not sounding like him.

This game, therefore, moon.exc, is essentially M2 learning how to be David, being taught how to behave, like being in David's bedroom and being told to go back to bed. The baby owl, therefore, the one that we get the mask from that disappears and dies, is the actual David. And the old woman's son, the one guiding us through the game that directs us on our journey once we have the owl mask? Well, the game is pretty clear about who that is. Once you execute the parachute program and head down to the R&D department, we find M1, the original mimic. Now taking on the persona of Fiona, sitting there like we spoke about last time. And on the monitor surrounding her, we see the same Sun character.

M1, Fiona, is Son. And that actually explains how M2 learned to be David in the first place. When M1 and Edwin are arguing about whether to make M2, David is already gone. It happened that you have to deal with it. You did it before. So how did M2 learn to copy something that wasn't around to be copied? Well, if you saw our last episode, you'll know that M2 is actually a copy of M1. and M1 was around while David was alive.

We even see a photo of them sitting on a hill together. So Son, the one who is controlling and guiding this game for M2, is able to use her memory of David to help inform M2. This does bring up an interesting detail though. M1 gives M2 the owl mask and suddenly baby owl is gone, being cooked on Sun's stove. We also know that M1 was the one that Edwin asked to go down and get David from his playground. Fiona, go get him. I left him out of the playground. This would seem to imply that David's death may not have been an accident after all, that M1 actually killed David in order that she could have a real family,

a robot family, just like her. We spoke last time about how she's getting confused between different iterations of Fiona, one from the books and one from the games, thanks to this note we found in the basement of MCM, it's possible that she figured out she wasn't the real Fiona, and so wanted her own family, rather than just an inherited one where she didn't really belong. But I'm aware this part's a little bit more speculative, it just occurred to me while I was writing this. Anyway, the point is that moon.exc is showing us that moon equals Edwin and sun equals Fiona.

Well, M1's version of Fiona. This finally explains why we see our modern sun and moon presented the way they are. By the time we get to Security Breach Glitch Trap or M1 has control of the person. Pizzaplex. She is in control of the animatronics, which is why they turn on us in the first place. But when she gets control of Sun and Moon, we see that Sun is the caretaker. They are the one who wants things to be perfect and wants to win the child's affections. They are also the one during ruin who wants to be rebooted. Just like M1 Fiona wants M2 to be fixed.

Moon, on the other hand... They want the child. child to just go to sleep and are far more aggressive, reflecting how M1 sees Edwin. She believes him to be aggressive both because of Moon.EXC and, well, Jedi. However, there is one more mention of Sun and Moon that's inside Moon.EXC that I want to mention, because on the surface, it is slightly confusing. Once we get inside the cave that Moon was guarding, we encounter a broken statue. We go through the various tunnels and one by one, find pieces of the statue, putting it

back together to create a moon-like figure. Suddenly, we're told that we have been reborn. You rebuilt yourself, but now you are split in two. Moon and Sun, destruction and life. So, does this throw a hole in my argument here? Sun and Moon are now being used to describe M2, not Edwin and M1. And at first, that was my concern. But as I've thought about it more, I've realized it's not about the metaphor or symbolism

changing. They're actually feeding into. one another. The rebuilding of the statue is reminiscent of M2 rebuilding itself after Edwin destroyed it. You know, speaking of legs, what do you think? I just finished mine. But then why a moon statue? Something that specifically references Edwin. Well, because it's not the same moon. Edwin is represented by Sleepy Moon, a full Moon character, but this moon is a crescent moon. This is a new character, one that is similar to Sleepy Moon, even inspired by, you could say, but it's entirely its own thing.

And when we're finished, we are told that it has been reborn. M2, putting itself back together, wasn't just fixing itself, it was reborn. Now, with a new input, violence. Edwin's violence, Moons, violence. It was no longer just the M1-based program it was before. Edwin's actions affected M2 and caused it to be reborn as the violent animatronic we know now, like a new version of the character, Moon. But it isn't just Moon.

We're told that it is a combination of that destruction and the life of Sun. M1 wants to create life, making M2 their Sun, while Edwin wants to destroy M2. These two things have combined together to make the mess that is M2. And those pieces are now at war with each other. Again, just like Sun and Moon are in Security Breach. Duality in this franchise is something that I've wanted to write a theory about for a long time. It felt like there's been so much of it in the series, From the two-toned logo on the ruined website,

to the two-colored eyes of the tiger plushy, sun and moon, to even as far back as William versus Henry. It's always been about these two opposing sides being mixed together into one thing, something that usually ends in a mess or tragedy. At the time, I just didn't really know where it was going in order to write the theory on it. But now I understand. This is what it was trying to tell us. Visual clues to tell us the story of Edwin and

M1 Fiona Fiona without actually spelling it out. It's also why Sun and Moon's moving teeth are the same as the mimics. They may not literally be the same. Sun and Moon may not actually be a mimic, but it's visual storytelling, giving us a physical clue to their connection. We were just missing the key detail of Edwin and M1 even existing in this continuity to be able to tie it all together. Although I'm sure the law reason for the teeth thing is once again just the mimic rebuilding itself

with spare parts. We'll see. But Sun and Moon isn't done teaching us about the mimic just yet. Because in ruin, we get to see that these opposing sides can turn from a mess into something new. We see Sun struggling to keep control while Moon is acting dangerous, again like we've been seeing with M2. The original program unable to keep control, with the violence taking over and attacking people. But after Cassie is able to plug in the data diver, I mean, FasRench, they reboot and eclipse is born.

They are calm, fun, friendly, protective, exactly. as they were supposed to be. We fixed them. But did you notice the key detail? Eclipse isn't Sun now fully in control, nor is Moon completely gone. It's both halves mixed together in order to create something new.

Sure, Sun was trying to help us and was the good side of both of them, but we're being shown that you actually need both sides in perfect balance in order to make things work. And this idea is reflected in Secret of the Mimic 2. When down in the basement, we encounter sleepy

moon in the flesh, or cloth, or whatever it is he's made out of. And one of the telltale signs he's close by is you can hear him singing. It can be hard to make out the exact lyrics he's singing while you're trying desperately not to lose all your progress, but the melody should definitely ring a bell. It's actually the most popular lullaby of all time, simply called Vagan Lai, or Lullaby in English. You may have also heard it known as Brahms' Lullaby named after its composer, Johannes Brahms.

And it goes a little something like this. Lullaby and good night with roses bed eyes. With lilies or spread his babies we bed. Lay thee down now and rest. May thy slumber be blessed. Lay thee down now and rest. May thy slumber be blessed. Thank you, thank you.

You could say that the use of this song was just, They needed a lullaby from Sleepy Moon to sing, so they picked the most obvious one. But where does that ever been the game theory way? You see, this song wasn't written to be sung on its own. It was designed as a mother and father duet. While the mother would sing the lullaby alongside it, the father would sing an old German folk song called Siz Andesht,

which is a song that the original mother actually used to sing two Brahms when they were together. This would then work as a counter melody underneath the primary melody of the lullaby. Counter melodies are super interesting because rather than a harmony which works in lockstep with the melody, the counter melody is literally a second different melody that plays at the same time. If you try this with just any two songs, you're going to have a lot of clashes and mess and it's just not going to work. But when done right, these two parts that don't feel like they should go together suddenly begin to almost dance. They bounce off one another, creating something totally new. It's not working together in harmony, but they do work together, despite appearing diametrically opposed. But right now,

with mimic as is, it clearly is a mess. These two forces are working against each other, not as a counter melody, but as clashing melodies. So if Eclipse and the Lullaby are showing us we need to bring these pieces into alignment, how do we do that? Well, I think the The answer lies in the secret ending of Secret of the Mimic. In order to get M2 to calm down enough that we can insert new programming into it, we have to play a bedtime story for it. The bedtime story itself changes each time, but what doesn't change is the people telling the story.

The pre-recorded tapes that we find throughout the Murray household to get here include Edwin's voice and Fiona's voice. Both of them working together to tell a story, telling M2 that violence doesn't solve anything. in order to bring balance to M2. The Lullaby also hints at this because it actually has one more name that I neglected to mention. It's sometimes known as the Cradle Song or Cradle Lullaby, just like Cradle.exe, which we spoke about last time is Mexies, a program designed to soothe M2, keep it under control,

but required M1 and Edwin to work together to implement. M1 wants to restore M2. Edwin wants to destroy all. versions of the mimic. These two things shouldn't work together. They feel like conflicting views. But when these characters come into alignment with one another, the song begins to form. M1 cannot restore M2 on her own. Sure, she may have the glitched code, but Edwin's voice was crucial for the plan working. We need to bring M1 and Edwin back together in order to truly stop whatever M2 has become, and to put both M1 and M2 to rest finally.

You may have noticed a problem with that solution. As far as we can tell, Edwin is dead. You do a minor detonation. There is damage to my office interior as well as a small fire. So, M2, response, please. I can't move. You can't feel my legs. M2 blew up part of the house and refused to help Edwin

while it burnt and collapsed around him. But remember what franchise we're talking about here, friends. Just because someone is dead doesn't mean they're true. truly gone. In fact, Moon basically tells us as such with the lullabies he's singing. Oh yeah, this thing still has a lot to give in terms of law significance. And it's to do with the more meta side of it, why it was written and who it was written for. Brahms wrote this lullaby for his close friend Bertha Faber. Brahms and Faber used to date many years before, which is when she used to sing Siz Andish to him,

a song about a shepherd and his lover. When they reconnected years later, she was married to someone else. had a child with another on the way. Brahms wrote this lullaby for the birth of that second child, but it wasn't a completely selfless sweet act. He wrote it so that when she and her husband sang it together to their baby, he would also be there. It was a way of making sure he was connected to her always,

even when he wasn't physically around. If Moon is supposed to represent Edwin, and he's the one singing this song, it makes me think that we're being told that while he may be physically gone, he's not completely gone. He's just somewhere hidden, somewhere we wouldn't expect. And that somewhere I believe is Princess Quest. Because I think that Edwin is the king,

otherwise known as Old Man Consequences. Okay, okay, before you start writing in the comments about how I followed in Matt's footsteps and I've lost my mind to this franchise, hear me out. I'm not the only person to have had this idea. This idea was actually brought up during our recent life theory crafting session by fellow FNAF theorist, Gibby's Horror Homestead. Oh, I see that Gibby Hors Homestead, Edwin as Old Man Consequences. Hello, Gibby, great for you to join us. This thought actually occurred to me today. And not only had the thought occurred to me earlier that day, since then,

I've not been able to get it out of my head. It just makes so much sense to me. I mean, Edwin is the ultimate man of consequence. His creation of crazy gadgets landed him in bed with Fasbear, who then took everything from him. His rushed inventions meant things could go wrong, easily, so Fiona went to Fulfest to make sure that didn't happen and she died. He didn't pay enough attention to his son and so David ended up dead. He created an incredibly powerful AI and then beat it up and so in return it killed him. Everything Edwin did came back to bite him on the butt. Consequence, thy name is Edwin.

Plus in the tales from the PizzaPlex story, The Storyteller, Edwin does come back 40 years later and tries to stop the mimic. And Old Man Consequences in Security Breach is all about a equipping the princess to defeat the glitch trap virus, aka the M1 program that's been corrupted by Afton's influence and is now running the Pizzaplex. We also know that Game Edwin wants to stop the mimic. Both mimics. You, I let a machine raise my kid. You're not real. What was I thinking? He realized what he'd created and that it couldn't replace the real thing, which is why he didn't want to fix M2. Instead, just going along with the plan to create mexes to pacify it.

I'm not saying that Edwin is possessing Princess Quest or anything like that. Modern FNAF requires modern solutions. And so I believe it's more likely that like M1 isn't really Fiona, but the M1 program mimicking Fiona, that this is another program designed to imitate Edwin, like a digital signature of sorts. In the real world, programmers will sometimes physically put part of themselves into their code. They will leave a line of code or even just a few letters or symbols

so that when someone else takes a look, they will know whose code it is. We actually see Gregory do this in GGY. When the animatronics begin behaving strangely, the characters take a look at the code and find the letters GGY all over the place. It's not really doing anything, it's just a digital signature

to let you know that this was Gregory's doing. At this point, M1 has been integrated into basically every part of Fasba Entertainment's technology. M1 is running the show, corrupting everything. But M1 was Edwin's code. He created it, and so I'm suggesting that deep in that programming lies a little piece of himself, almost like a failsafe that's there trying to fight back. Old Man Consequences.

In Fnaff World, he was buried deep in that code, but as time's gone on, he slowly come more and more to the surface, able to help more and more. He helped Vanny fight back against the glitch trap virus. We even saw Moon, the character we've talked about representing Edwin, giving over glitch trap to Vanny, so that... that she could crush it and be free of its influence at the end of Princess Quest 4. And I think in whatever sequel Steelwell has planned, we're going to have to help Old Man Consequences one last time to free M1 of GlitchTrap's influence and bring Edwin and M1 together

to stop M2. They may be doing it for different reasons. Edwin may still want to destroy it. M1 may still want to fix it. But if we can get them to put aside their differences, those counter melodies are going to start to work together to create a a complete peace that will end the internal battle of the mimic once and for all. Although, the mimic in ruin does seem to have a convenient hole, where we had to insert the data diver during the secret ending. So we might have to figure out a different way to get these two fighting programs into it in the first place. But the biggest question that I have yet to solve,

and the main question I had going into this game, wasn't about the mimic. Or Edwin Murray, or Security Breach. I wanted to know the truth about the origins of Fazbear and... Entertainment. William and Henry. These two characters we've known about since the beginning and yet know very little about. Where did they start? How did they create this empire? Who were they really? But friends, nothing. And I mean nothing could have prepared me or the rest of the internet for what we were about to witness. Springlock assembly may be required. No! Are you kidding? Oh my God!

Oh my God! Oh my God! To be fair, that reaction was several hours into stream where all we'd witnessed so far was invention after invention that we thought had been a FASBair invention for years now, only to discover that Edwin made it. Like the Data Diver, a device used to access certain points around Murray's costume manner that looks an awful lot like the Fas Wrench we use in ruin. Or what about the massive list of characters? Happy Frog, Mr Hippo, Orville, Monty, Roxy, Moonsy, Foxy, Chica, Musicman, Helpy, even the wet floor butts from security breach shares similarities to the Kleinovac. They're all here in Murray's costume manner with designs, schematics and costumes strewn around the facility.

Edwin and his wife Fiona designed them all. It felt like everything we'd known over the last decade had been a complete life. It was never William and Henry. It had all been Edwin. Or had it. See, while at first it definitely reads that way, there are clues hiding in voice memos, text logs, and just in the physical designs themselves, that show us the truth is a little more nuanced. So, let's jump into our unfinished helpful carts, friends, because we've got to get to the bottom of this

and figure out whether William and Henry invented anything or whether they are just complete fraud. First off, there is one important thing we have to clarify. Did William and Henry actually steal a... Edwin's inventions. And the short answer is, no. I've mentioned in a past few theories, little tidbits of information about this, but while it was clear Fasbert had some shady business practices and were actively stealing employees trying to obtain company secrets,

which is not totally legal. They never actually stole Edwin's intellectual property. Edwin was a contractor, and so they would have contracted him to make stuff for them, like the demo of Freddie Fasbear's pizza that we see in the R&D department. And that whole process would have included that decided ownership, which we sadly never get to see. I can't tell you though as a former contractor myself.

Typically, those contracts favor the client, the person who came to you to be a contractor. When I would shoot or edit a video for someone, that would then go back to them and they would own the final product. I didn't own anything. But what about Chica, who was made for Chica's party world? Not Fasbear. Or Roxy and Foxy, who were built for Edwin's TV show idea. Those were definitely Edwins and Fasper. Fasbear surely had no rights to them. Well, until they did. One of the text logs you can obtain is

from Willie A himself, and while the messages cut off a bit at the start, the intention is very clear. Quote, software development and the entire MCM catalog. We would love to keep you on as a lead engineer. Although we now technically own the land, we would never touch the house your parents built. Afton was offering Edwin a position at Fasbear because he had just bought MCM. Its remaining employees, the ground it's built on, and most importantly, its catalogue of characters and inventions. Fasbear now owned everything. They never stole it from Edwin, they just stole all his employees, drove the business into the ground, and then bought the rights so that they could claim it as their own.

But let's be honest here, that's kind of a small nitpick in this whole thing. The real issue here is that we believed Henry and William were these great inventors, and yet it seems like they just kind of bought everything and didn't make any of it. it themselves. How could Henry claim... Trapped in prisons of my making? If they weren't his making at all. So, let's take a look and try to clear things up. Henry may not be the originator of most of the characters we've attributed to him over the years.

R.I.P. Cheeker was Henry's first theory. But that doesn't mean he didn't invent any characters. From the minute you step into Murray's costume manner, you will find one item that appears everywhere in the facility. Pizza boxes from Fred Bear's Family Diner. Now, while we are visiting MCN, The place has been abandoned for a bit. But what that means is that while the place was active, so was Fred Bear's diner.

Which makes sense, given Fazborough Entertainment was a thing and had the means to buy MCM in the fast place. They need some way to make money. We also see Fred Bear and Spring Bonnie on a number of posters throughout the place, identical to the ones we found in security breach. But notice what we don't see throughout MCM. Despite promoting posters for the characters of Fred Bears, we never see versions of Fred Bear or Bonnie within the main, And that is because of this line. The green one of my creations are available for purchase or lease. For Edwin to be able to say that, he would have to own the rights to the characters.

But the fact that Bonnie and Freddie are missing implies that those two characters were not created and owned by Edwin, but instead William and Henry. Edwin has posters on the walls because there's clearly a long-standing relationship between the two companies and based on his audio log telling us that they should, just hire some teens to wear the suits like we always do. It seems like he has worked on the diner in some way. So the posters are just him promoting himself, going, hey, you know this successful franchise?

Well, I helped make that. But he can't show any of the costumes or animatronics for Fred Bear and Bonnie because he doesn't own the rights. They were created and owned by William and Henry. So nice big tick for them there. But that leads us into the big discussion around Fausbeer. Springlock assembly may be required. No.

No. No! No! Are you kidding me? Oh my God! Henry didn't even invent the Springham? Did Edwin invent the Springlocks? Before this point, we've been under the impression that it was Henry who invented the Springlocks.

As during the Silver Eye trilogy, we're pretty much told that outright. Quote, these are Springlocks, one of the first ones Henry made. But now in Secret of the Mimick, we see plenty of Springlock suits. We see messages about Edwin making them, and we even get to travel around in inside them, which is kind of horrifying. However, there is one big detail that stands out pretty quickly, which made me reconsider whether this was another acquired contraption. The fact that we cannot be killed by the Springlocks.

Springlocks suits are notoriously finicky, causing fatal injury at the first sign of sudden movements or water, and yet we managed to fall through an entire floor and yet sustain no injuries. It's almost as if they're not the same kind of Springlocks. And that is exactly the case. We receive a text log from Edwin during the game that specifically talks about updating the spring locks to sustain water damage and be okay. There's also the facts that the original spring locks were designed to be both suit and animatronic, while the new ones seem to only really be suits. And finally, the versions of Fred Bear and Spring Bonnie down in the R&D department,

while looking somewhat like the versions we know, have coloured exoskeletons made of metal, rather than the felt-based material that would stain and discolor like we know from modern spring. spring trap. And to top that off, there's an audio log in the same area that talks about spring locks being used for a long time before this moment. It would be so much easier to keep using the spring locks. The fact that there have been spring locks used for hen, while these new improved metal versions of the spring locks for Fred Bear and Spring Bunny currently only exist down here in the facility, it tells us that there are other spring locked versions of these characters in existence, felt-based ones that use the old water damage prone design. So that's it.

Case closed. Edwin made the new spring locks, but Henry can still have made the originals. Right? Well, I really wanted that to be true. Believe me, I did. But when Ash and I went back to find all the secrets on GT Live, we discovered this message on one of the misses help force to Edwin from Fiona. I'm worried about the new suit design. One of my costumers, Vic, nearly lost his hand today. All he did was spill a can of pop and the thing snapped shut like a fair trap. Fiona is worried about Edwin's springlock designs, and the one her team member was wearing does end up having an issue with water damage.

It's almost like that text look we read earlier was a response to Fiona's request to check out the problems, because Edwin was involved in the creation of the original designs. This isn't the only time Fiona is worried about Edwin rushing out designs that later caused problems either. You have a lot of new ideas and new projects coming in. The staff can't keep up with all your changes, but I think you need to step. back a little and focus on one project at a time. This is a pattern of behavior for Edwin. He sprints through dozens of projects moving on to the next one so fast that his previous

invention isn't fully finished, leading to a bunch of failures and returns like we see in the text logs. And so the idea that these Springlock suits that were incredibly dangerous and faulty were also Edwin's creations actually makes a lot of sense for his character. And yes, there is a chance that the original Springlocks were potentially a collaboration between both Henry and Edwin. But right now, I'm just not sure the evidence is there. The books say that Henry was the inventor of the Springlocks,

but that's a very different continuity. The games have never made that claim. The closest we get is... Prisons of my making. But here, Henry is talking about the normal animatronics, the ones that Edwin never finished. And so you could plausibly say that Henry was the one who made them. Edwin did say that Henry was the one changing the designs.

I got the change order from Hen last night. Why change it now? Now they change their minds. What we're so close to final. New concepts are frankly creepy. But he never mentioned Springlocks. That doesn't make this a retcon. It's just a real lining of our understanding

between the different continuities of these characters. Which is basically what's secret of the mimic did with all of the book Continuities. In the novel trilogy, Henry made the Springlocks, but in the games, it was Edwin. Who knows? Maybe it'll turn out to be Afton in the movies. But thanks to the company failing, and Edwin's eventual demise,

the new springlocks for Fazbear's characters were never finished. Fazbear just had to keep using Edwin's old designs, so I guess you could say that it was Karma that got Afton in the end, in more ways than one. And speaking of good old Willie A, what did he actually do? I mean, we've always known he's a bit of a scumbag. So I don't think his lack of inventions would be all that surprising. But just like I think we can still credit Henry with the creation of the normal animatronics,

I think there are a couple of things Afton can be credited with creating himself. namely the Fun Time Animatronics and The Scoop. In Sister Location and Pizzeria Simulator, we found blueprints for these devices, and they all have copyright attributed to Afton Robotics. Of course, we know that Foxy isn't his OC, that one firmly belongs to Edwin and Fiona, and the whole stomach hatch design definitely borrows from Edwin's Springlock designs. But the animatronic part, the weird, wiry bodies, we don't see anything like that from Edwin. The Scoop also, of course, bears resemblance to the Springlock crane that we find in MCM,

and that we then saw in ruin. They have the ability to scoop something out of a costume or Springluck soup or whatever. But all the stuff about remnant injection and storage? That's all Afton, maybe. Which means at this point, we're pretty even. Edwin did make a lot of stuff that we thought were Henry and William, but that doesn't mean they were completely incompetent or unable to make stuff themselves. However, there is one more thing that we need to discuss.

One more invention that if it was claimed by Afton could affect the entire, a timeline as we know it. You see, everyone, and I mean everyone who played this game or watched someone else play it, have been very quick to point out the similarities between David Murray and Afton's son, The Crying Child. The most obvious similarity is their name. Thanks to a friend of the channel Hyperdroid and a handful of other theorists, last year we came to the conclusion that Crying Child's real name was also David, David Afton.

But there's so much more to it than just a name. Their bedrooms look almost identical and both of those bedrooms are in houses on top of a hill near a tree and near their father's work. They're both missing mother figures in their lives with fathers who spend too much time working. One of the collectibles we get is David Murray's purple plastic telephone. The same one we see in David Afton's bedroom along with a bunch of other similar toys. David Afton is famously scared of Foxy, having ripped off the head of the Foxy plushy and his brother Michael bullying him wearing a Foxy mask. David Murray also is afraid of the pilot. at Fox, crying when Edwin uses one of the Foxy hand puppets on his first birthday.

RR, Arr, Arr! Oh, honey, you're scaring you. Both of them even have a birthday party for them coming up on a Saturday only for them to die on that same birthday. Everything about these two feels identical to a strange degree, almost as if they're the same person. But obviously, as I've mentioned, David Murray is dead. So they cannot physically be the same person. But you know who is still alive and kicking? The thing that was created to become David Murray, M2.

And this is where we hit an interesting fork in the road. There are two ways we can look at this information. There's the more literal approach where the reason these two characters feel so similar is because they are the same character. M2 takes on the role of David and Afton adopts it as his child. Or there's the less literal approach. So let's start with that first. Before we can talk about what this path would solve, we have to figure out the how of it all. How was William able to get control of M2 and turn it into his son?

David, the crying child, Afton. Well, that comes down to the secret ending of Secret of the Mimic. You see, in that ending, we complete Moon.exc. We get some glitched permissions that allow us to access special doors in the Murray household. And from there, we fix M2, turning them into the perfect mimic of David. M2 then goes to bed and shuts off as the game fades. to black. This is the only ending where M2 is completely fixed, which allows him to live on as a child, as David, and therefore in the future could become the crying child that we know from the original

games. One of the text locks we get from William directly confirms that he owns the land Murray's costume manor is standing on, including the house Edwin's parents built on the top of the hill, the one where M2 now sleeps. With Fasbear's ownership of the land and the IP and the inventions inside, that M2 would now belong to William. And so, with the disappearance of Edwin, William would likely show up, at least eventually, to claim what was his. And when he did, he would come across this incredible little machine, mimicking Edwin's son, David.

Now, Fasbear already knew about this special animatronic that could fit into any costume and learn any routine. Someone told them about M2. But seeing it actually imitating a child, essentially bringing a kid back to, life that would absolutely have intrigued Afton. In the Silver Eyes trilogy, it's clear how much he idolizes characters like Henry, those with animatronic and creative genius who were able to imitate the spark of life itself. He wants to reach their level of genius, to understand, to go even further beyond what they did. Sure, he could have just taken M2, turned it into scrap or shoved it into another costume. But if he could figure out how it ticked, then he could create more

and help his empire grow. It's for this reason that we see camera feeds down in the sister location bunker, displaying the M4 bedroom, the same bedroom where M2 was sleeping. He is monitoring M2, watching its every move. He threw different stimuli at it, high-pitched frequencies that mess with its vision,

creating animatronics that looked like the stuff of nightmares, all to see how lifelike this thing truly was to a child. Afton was trying to understand how it worked. also why we see the Fun Time animatronics using technology that allows them to mimic sounds and actions. It was Afton trying to replicate that same technology, but it wasn't fully there yet, because William wasn't the original creator, although they clearly did manage to mimic one thing correctly. In order not to raise suspicion, Afton would need to make M2 look like another one of his kids. We see masks down in the sister location bunker, Afton's attempts to create realistic

human costumes, one that M2 would be able to wear out and about, which is why when the fun times encounter Michael Afton all those years later, another one of the Afton kids, they knew what they had to do. They mimicked what they saw M2 doing all those years ago, jumping inside the skin of one of the Afton kids in order to explore the world. They were able to mimic an action, but they lacked the nuance of understanding. Just like M2 would stuff people into suits, because as far as it could tell, that's just where human bodies went. like there's maybe a bigger lesson we could take away from that. But there are a bunch of other pieces of evidence from previous games that suddenly

begin to line up when we continue down this train of thought. For example, why does Mike bully his brother? Of course, older brothers can just be mean sometimes. I should know, I am one. But if David Afton is actually a robot kid wearing a skin suit and they are getting all of this attention from their father, well, that would make any kid jealous and want to lash out. They aren't his real son. Why is he getting all the attention instead of me?

It's not fair. Michael then goes on to have an obsession with the show The Immortal and the Restless, which the most famous and frustrating line is, The baby isn't mine. We tried to make sense of this thing for years, but now we might finally have an answer. It's not that one of the kids was adopted, or that Afton had a kid with another woman.

It's literally not a baby. It's a robot mimicking another man's child, David Murray. In the security logbook, Michael even comments that he relates most to Clara as she is the one who seems to see the world she lives in as crazy. Just like Michael doesn't understand how people can't tell that this is a weird robot kid that his dad is claiming to be his sibling.

But the biggest thing that this solves is actually less to do with M2 itself, and more how the mimic existing in these early parts of the timeline might solve the most infamous line in all of FNAF. I will put you back together. When this line first showed up, it confused the heck out of all of us. Up until this point, Afton had been speaking in a bright, gold text using the color FFFF57. And he starts off that way during his final speech to the dying crying child too. However, when we then get to the Put You Back Together part, it's a paler shade of yellow. FFFA zero.

It was confusing as there weren't really any other characters left to claim that colour. Nor did it make sense for it to be anyone other than Afton. It wasn't helped that in Ultimate Custom Night, when we're seemingly playing as Afton in Eternal Purgatory, we get lines from Nightmare Fred Bear that repeat this idea. Let me put you back together. It felt like Scott just made a mistake and used Ultimate Custom Night to rectify that mistake. But now I offer you an alternative solution. What if the reason it's a similar colour to Afton's gold text?

But slightly different is because it isn't Afton, but someone or something pretending to be Afton, mimicking him, if you will. Remember, while we've been focusing on M2 as David Afton, there's another character that Secret of the Mimic introduces to us. M1, Fiona Murray. All she wanted to do was to put her son David back together. I beg you, put it all aside and fix M2. And in the secret ending, that's what she got.

But then Avden swooped on in and took her son for himself. She was stuck inside the cradle, the Mexies machine. She would have been powerless to stop him. But, as we've talked about before, she was taken away and likely installed into Fasbert's systems. So, when Michael took things too far and got M2's head crushed inside of Fred Bear, her motherly instincts kicked in. She managed to take over the walkie-talkie and speak directly to M2, promising to put her child back together again. Meanwhile, Afton would have seen M2 as broken and of no use. If anything, he'd actually kind of been an inconvenience to him based on Fred Bear's dialogue.

Plus, he couldn't even fix him if he wanted to. He was just trying to figure out how it worked. He hadn't actually solved it. And regardless, he now had his new fun times who were using some kind of mimicking software. Those were more than what he needed. So he threw M2 away into the bowels of the rundown facility he owned MCM and cemented the whole thing up to start over. But I suspect M2 wasn't completely broken. Edwin beat this thing to a mechanical pulp and yet it managed to carry on.

So once again, just like in the 1970s, this violence towards M2, it getting crushed by Fred Bear, taught it how to be. be violent again. It began to rebuild itself with spare parts again, now waiting for someone to free it so it could take its revenge. All the while, M1 was working on putting her son back together. She was uploaded to Fasbear's system, took control of the Pizzaplex and a young woman called Vanessa. And with Vanessa's help, she was able to start rebuilding her son, a new mimic robot that looked just like David did before he died. That's right people, the Gregbot theory is alive and well. in our very first security breach theory that Gregory is actually a robot version of the crying child. Due to just an avalanche of evidence, the fact that they look the same, the fact that Gregory

doesn't have any records or parents, that he was living in the Peterplex, that Gregory is referred to as broken rather than injured, that when glamorke Freddy gets Roxy's eyes, he says, You look different to me. That he has CRT-style vision when Vanney gets too close with what sounds like a sound illusion disc. There's his robotic actions that he takes in the books. Quote, he cocked his head and studied Tony for several seconds. And to top it all off, we have the Post-it Room, which is covered in notes, starting in binary, but then beginning to turn into phrases we know David Afton would have been saying,

like party time or birthday time, like a robot coming into consciousness and learning the identity it's supposed to be taking on. The party was for him, after all. All the signs point to him being a robot version of the crying child. It just made so much sense. And now I present you with this image. You can find it during the parachute ending of Secret of the Mimic. And it's of David sitting on top of a hill with M1.

Now tell me, does that look familiar to you? Because it should, it's almost identical to the image we get from the burn trap ending in Secret of the Mimic. With Gregory sitting on top of a hill with his protector, Glam Rock Freddy. We are once again being shown the same looking scenario because they are meant to be showing us the same characters. Gregory is M1's attempt to recreate her broken child, David, M2. That might even explain why we get Gregory dropping the elevator on Cassie at the end of ruin. It could be M1 or M2 controlling the system to get Cassie to come back, or it's because Gregory is still following his programming, acting under the orders of his mother, M1, to bring the family back together.

Now, before anyone gets too mad at this idea, I recognize it's not perfect. For starters, while there's a bunch of evidence that does work when you look at it through the lens of M2 is the crying child, the trouble is it basically all hinges on the secret ending being the canon ending, which is kind of hard to prove at this point, especially without the DLC or a sequel. Outside of that, there just isn't a lot of evidence for this line of thinking. You essentially have to go in with confirmation bias. The idea that your belief is correct, and so you can find evidence. that works because you already believe it to be true.

That's not to say that this couldn't be the answer. All I'm saying is that right now, with the evidence we have, it can feel like a bit of a stretch. There's also the issue of M2 being in the basement of Ruin. I still firmly believe that the Mimic we meet in Ruin is M2 from Secret of the Mimic. So by having M2 go on to be the Crying Child, you have to jump through some weird hoops to make it survive Secret of the Mimic, but still end up locked away before Ruin happens.

And those hoops are entirely, entirely speculative. It's me knowing point A and point C and essentially just making up point B to fill in the gap. Which isn't typically how I like to do things because it's speculative at best and fanficy at worst. There's also the small things like why would we hear a flatline in FNAF 4 if David Afton was just a robot M2 the whole time? And of course, there's Greg Bot. The most marmite of our Fnaf theories in recent years. Some people love it and some people hate it. In fact, most people hate it. And believe me, I get it. I would love for some of our human characters to just be their own thing rather than copies of others.

Plus, with M2 down in the basement, it means we end up with three mimics running around. And that just feels unsatisfying from a story perspective. Let's just say Vanessa is also a robot like the movie novelization seems to imply and just have a full set. Or we can try the other option. Because this connection between these characters immediately seems suspicious. It couldn't just be a coincidence, right? Oh no, my friends. This rabbit hole is big.

enough to fit every iteration of William Afton we've had throughout the years. No, not you. Get out of here. Honestly, why do you even exist? What I'm trying to say is that a coincidence implies this kind of similarity has only happened once. However, thanks to Secret of the Mimic, we've actually got a bunch of quote-unquote coincidences between the original set of games and the new law we've learned about from this new game. Just look at one of the other important Murrays. Edwin, he is a brilliant robotics engineer whose life is defined by two things. his incredible world-changing inventions and the soul-crushing loss of his wife and son. He's a genius haunted by tragedy, whose own creations ultimately become twisted into something monstrous and turn against him,

killing both him and his son. Now, flip over to what the original games told us about William Afton, a creative robotics genius whose entire family story is defined by loss and tragedy, at the hands of the killer robots he created. Baby kills Elizabeth. Fred Bear, kills David, and Michael is then killed by. by the fun times. We also have the mysterious and absent Mrs. Afton, who we theorized about in the past, being represented by Ballora,

the musical ballerina from sister location, mostly because of the song she sings. Why do you hide inside your walls when there is music in my halls? All I see is an empty room. No more joy, an empty tune. Again, doesn't that sound familiar? Almost like it's exactly how M1 Fiona feels.

Her husband locked away inside his walls, trying to work on projects, not spending any time with her. All with the room of their dead child laying empty, waiting to be filled by M2. But wait, there's more! There's the old house on the hill with a secret underground workshop, the Murray House Above MCM and the Afton House above sister location. There's a robot designed to be a babysitter that essentially fails in their duty. Security Puppet was designed to protect Charlie, yet she dies, and M1 Fiona, who was designed to protect David, and yet he also dies on her watch.

There's the burning down of a facility, but the main villain survives it. There's mysterious molten metal that works as a kind of power supply for the machines created, giving them life, as it were. You have the primary villains of the franchise, Afton and M1 Fiona, wanting to put their children back together, and there's then the wonderful and ever-underutilized baby, who gained sentience after the accidental death of William Afton's daughter, Elizabeth. William then rejects her, banishing her to a secret underground lair he built beneath the house. A near beat for beat parallel of M2's story of rejection from Edwin.

I could go on, but I think you get the point. The number of times the stories from older games paralleled the stories of the Murray family cannot be purely coincidence. It's a pattern. They say history is due to repeat itself, But when it's this much and when it involves a shady company as Fasbear, you know there's something more going on. And that something is bigger than I could have ever imagined.

Ladies and gentlemen, the reason these things all line up so perfectly is for one simple reason. The stories from the first seven games, the ones that told us everything we knew about Henry, Charlie, William, Elizabeth, Michael and David are entirely made up. Now to some degree, we knew this already. In my theory crafting live stream, I kept bringing up the idea that in hell wanted, we are told point blank that the games were just that. Games.

For total fabrications from the mind of a complete lunatic. The books corroborated this with stories like The Monty Within, where kids refer to Pizzeria Simulator as an in-universe game, where the mediocre melodies come from. But we also learned from Tape Girl that the whole indie dev story wasn't entirely truthful. It's an elaborate cover-up to make light of what happened. And so we basically used that line as a way to a way to a way to a very true. explain away some of the inconsistencies, but really the stories were just as we originally thought. However, since then, we've had a few more pieces of evidence that would seem to suggest they're

not fictionalized versions of real events. They're just fiction. One of the earliest stories from Tales from the Pizzaplex is Help Wanted, and in it we learn about Steve Snodgrass, a developer that was hired by Fazbert to make the first three to four games to make light of the rumors of murder and death surrounding the business. But as he works on it, his mind begins to fall apart thanks to sound illusion discs. Not only did Fasbert never tell him what the story really was, he was working purely on rumours, he was also being driven insane. So how trustworthy is that? And in the Walmart exclusive tale story monster, yeah, we're going that deep here, we learn about a kid who writes stories about a pizzeria owner in the local paper, claiming that he is a serial killer and abuser,

turning the whole town against him. In fact, the stories he whips up sound an awful lot, like the FNAF1 newspapers we see in the game. But throughout the story, we're told explicitly that these stories are completely fictional. Fabrications made up by a kid with a grudge. And if that's the case, we're being shown that these FlaF1 newspapers also can't be trusted. And with that in mind, it makes you question what else can be trusted. Of course, I'm not saying that absolutely everything is fake. If we have corroborating evidence, especially from the steel wool era of games,

the ones that took that meta approach and revealed to us the real world that these games existed in, then we should be good to go. Like, we do know that William and Henry existed. They're mentioned in secret of the mimic audio and text logs. Likewise, a FNAF 6 location definitely existed because we find it underneath the PizzaPlex. And clearly, there was an incident or incidents that Fasbear wanted to cover up with a set of video games in the first place, as we're told about in help want it. However, what I'm saying is what caused those events might now be.

something entirely different because outside of those in-universe games we don't really have any evidence for them and so we can't rely on them as 100% true or even rely on them happening as we saw them at all and when you open up that can of worms suddenly everything we thought we knew is thrown into question was william afton actually a murderer or just an awful business owner did michael die and come back to life as a purple husk was anything ever really possessed by spirits to begin with Maybe instead of a murdery business owner with a bunch of ghost children possessing animatronics, it was always just a rogue AI that Fazbek got their hands on, they couldn't control, and had a habit of stuffing people into suits that could also mimic the behavior and voices of children.

I mean, Scott did say that was the kind of story he was more interested in telling. I know there's a little bit of a divide with maybe me and the fan base. I have a tendency to lean sci-fi, even though I try to come back into the roots of the supernatural. So anything that involves possession of AI or possession of machines or circuitry. I love that sort of thing. That would be an absolute PR nightmare. In fact, it would have been more than a nightmare. It would have been the PR apocalypse.

Admitting to the world, oh yeah, our proprietary self-learning AI has absorbed the drummer of its creator, developed a violence streak and has now started stuffing customers into animatronic suits. We don't know how to stop it and we are liable for all of it. That would be the end of the company. But if you had a scapegoat, like a jerk, who happened to die on the premises in one of their faulty springlock suits. Oh yeah, it was totally him. Our founder was secretly a monster.

We all knew he was a jerk, but we didn't think he'd go this far. He did everything, but it's over now, the monster's gone, case closed. And things like NAF6, was it a gathering of ghosts, or was it a corporate cleanup? A recall, where Fazbear did what it could to contain their rogue AI, sending something like a recall signal or a specific frequency or data packet that would force any machine running the mimic program to be drawn to one location. And that famous speech, it isn't a heartfelt eulogy, it's Fasbeer, cementing Afton's role as the fictional villain, putting a final neat bow on their scapegoat. With the real fire, probably just being a calculated attempt to destroy all the evidence of their rogue AI.

And for a while, they probably thought they succeeded. And so they built the Pizza Plex on top of the old establishment, only to reintroduce the mimic via some old circuit boards. William Afton, his family, their story, was created to turn Fasbe's failure in stopping the mechanical mess they adopted into a spoopy ghost story. And not only did they rewrite Afton's history, but to be sure that people wouldn't trace it back to their acquisition of Murray's costume manner and Edwin's mimic, they took part of Edwin's story and planted it onto their founders. Fiona was a puppeteer, and so M1 was translated into a puppet created by Henry to protect

his child. One of the most traumatic events of Edwin's life, the death of his son, became the death of Afton's son, the bidervaney-3. The echoes of M-1's Fiona's grief over her lack of connection with Edwin after the the death of their son turned into a verse from a video game, a ghost's lament. One of M1's final messages to Edwin. It is me. I'm Fiona.

Became the words screamed by another overarching and vengeful spirit. Even the words that Edwin actually spoke to M1 Fiona about M2, that it could never replace his real son are now just the infamously confusing line we hear in a fictional show. The baby isn't mine. Basbear may not have stolen Edwin's inventions, but they did steal his story. twisting it and removing all memory of Edwin and his contributions from the equation. His merits and faults split apart and grafted onto a scapegoat to keep her all in-house, while also absolving themselves of all wrongdoing.

But while I think there is a lot of evidence to support this whole idea from the parallels in the games, lines in the books, even Scott himself, there's just one issue that I cannot shake. It kind of sucks as an answer. It's basically turning around and telling us, Yeah, the last 10 years of theorizing, it doesn't matter, start over. And that is just super disheartening for us fans who have spent all those years trying desperately to take small pieces of the puzzle and put them together in such a way that we create a cohesive story.

We've spent 10 years building up our ideas of Afton, of Henry, of the crying child, only for this idea to essentially flush them down the drain. It's one of the reasons why some of the early reactions to Secret of the Mimix law was so angry and frustrated because Secret of the Mimic's whole thing was revealing to all of us that we didn't really know the truth about what was going on. Even though we thought we did, it was revealing information we basically had no way of knowing until very recently. Which is tough compared to the quote good old days, where even though solving FNAF was hard, it felt like the pieces were all there for us to use. Rather than key information being withheld for the sake of a twist, and this theory would kind of just perpetuate that idea.

It would also make theorizing incredibly challenging going forward, at least more than it already is. We can speculate about how some elements might fit together, as I've done a little bit today, but it's just that, speculation, because we don't have any sense of how much those old games can even be used as evidence. I'm sure a bunch of you out there hate this idea. Heck, I don't really like it either. We here a theorist have been big proponents of Scott rebooting the franchise in its story for quite some time. This, however, wasn't what we meant.

But there is some hope because this, like every video, is a theory. And if Secret of the Mimic taught us anything, it's that we don't have all the pieces of the puzzle at this point. All we can do is interpret what we have as best we can. And that can be done in a couple of different ways. Like we've done with today's theory. If this ending isn't up your Bonnie Bowling Alley, you can always go and check out the other ending for today's theory. That is a little more on the Keep Everything Cannon side. At the end of the day, the important thing is that we are open-handed.

Be willing to explore all the avenues and work together because that is how we solve this weird and wonderful franchise. then, I've actually received a lot of comments asking me one very specific thing. Why wasn't I mentioning other people's theories? Especially when two of them were trying to answer the same question. Fate Fiona by Gibby's Horror Homestead and God David by T-Dreads. And the honest answer is, I hadn't watched them. I know that might be hard to believe. Us FNAF theorists usually want to take in as much FNAF content as possible.

But as the amount of theorists has grown over the years, so has the rise in comments accusing theorists of stealing ideas from other people. So to make sure I wasn't in any way influenced by their theories, even subconsciously, I purposely avoided watching any other FNAV theories while I was working on my own. It's a shame, really, because at the end of the day, solving FNAF has always been about collaboration. It's why Matt did his live talk back after FNAF4, and it's why we still do them today. We need to work together if we have any hope of getting through it. So, now that I've been out of my secret of the mimic hole for a few months, I figured it was high time I checked them both out to see whether they were able to fill in any of the gaps that I couldn't, or whether there's some combination of our ideas that could maybe make this story finally make sense.

I hope you're ready, theorists, because it's time for another round of my trash takes. Leave your theories in the comments or subred it. I'll pick my favorite in the next episode of trash. Let's start with Gibby. As the name in place, Faye Fyke Fiona focuses on the character of Fiona Murray, David's mother. He posits that Fiona, after becoming the M1 mimic and put into the Mex's machine, becomes this overpowering force that manipulates the world around her into repeating history. Not just her history either, but Fasbe's history as a whole, like the fires, the bad fathers, the houses being on top of the secret facility, and loads more.

This immediately caught my attention as it explores a similar line of thinking to what I was exploring in my games are fiction. branch. But it manages to keep it all in universe rather than it being a fictional story borrowing ideas from reality. Gibby suggests that Fiona is able to achieve this world manipulation through three main factors. Firstly, the idea that Fazbear keeps building on top of previous establishments, meaning all the remnant and agony of its victims are still present in the area and essentially haunting the building. This explains why in games like FNAF1, we see the posters on the wall change. Or why in Security Breach, there are random plushies hidden around the place. It's the classic burial ground trope. The buildings are haunted because they are built

upon the dead. But when you think about it, thanks to Secret of the Mimic and Ruin, who specifically is dead and underneath all of these buildings, right in the basement of MCM waiting to put her son back together. Fiona. Secondly, he looks at the story of Fetch from Fasbear Frights and the concept of how human thoughts, if strong enough, can actually affect subatomic particles in order to manipulate the world around them and other people's thoughts. This is a real-world concept called the zero-point field. Gibby explains that down there in the basement, Fiona's thoughts are so strong,

her desire to rebuild her family so powerful that she is able to utilise the zero-point field and affect the thoughts of those in the area. Namely, William Afton, subconsciously planting the name David in his head so that he calls his own child David, as well as subconsciously giving him the idea to stuff kids into suits, like the mimic used to do back in the 1970s.

And finally, there's the physical wires. Fiona is plugged into everything, Fasbear touches, much like the storyteller was in the tales from the Pizzaplex books, an AI designed to connect to everything, but ends up infecting it with bad ideas and code. Similarly, Fiona gets plugged into Fasbear and so witnesses everything that happens throughout Fasbear's history due to the agony and remnant they leave behind, causing the technology to also repeat part of the way.

of history. Like Fred Bear killing David when the opportunity presents itself, because her son David also died on the premises, or Glamrock Bonnie being locked away in a back room, destroyed, being watched by possessed wet floor bots. Much like Springtrap was locked away in a back room after dying, being watched by five spirits. Fiona is the central hub for everything. With her memories and will, being so strong, she's forcing history to repeat itself over and over again. Now, when I first watched this video, I thought it was super out there. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized it tied into a number of theories we'd already had on this channel. We did a theory ages ago about why we thought there were so much puppet imagery across the Pizza Plex, specifically in the

wires connecting everything. At the time, we felt the best option was leaning into the only character, we knew that had an association with the puppet, Charlie. We even equated it to the idea that she was haunting the building like an old school ancient burial ground, rather than being tied to a specific animatronic like we'd usually seen. We had the same idea. It's just we didn't know Fiona was a character in order to tie her to all the puppet imagery instead of Charlie. Admittedly, it may still seem a little strange. Why would Fiona be associated with the puppets? Well, I think we can come up with a good explanation for it. In another one of our mimic theories, I suggested that M1 Fiona's memories are becoming muddied thanks to the amount of data she's received

from the original games while being used to make her wanted. But while I focused solely on what she'd have learnt from Afton in order to make her glitch trap, there are other characters in those games she'd have learnt about and possibly even adopted as part of this new messy persona. Characters like Charlie. I specifically called out that she seems to be adopting traits from characters that she identifies with. Afton is a man that wants to put his family back together no matter the cost, for example. But Fiona and the puppet share a couple of close connections too. They're both protectors of children.

They both fail at their duty and the child dies on their watch. Fiona is also a puppeteer. So again, she has an association with puppets. And these similarities all add to M1 Fiona Fiona being a confused mess. She can't tell what is her and what is someone else. Is it glitch trap? Is it Charlie? Is it David?

But that could be why we see all these things connecting the Pizzaplex giving off puppet vibes, even though it's supposed to be Fiona and not Charlie. On the flip side, if you subscribe to Gibby's things, theory wholesale, it wouldn't just be data. But all the agony and remnant and memories of all the victims who died on this one piece of Fasbear land entering Fiona's system, meaning Charlie's memories are now part of Fiona too. But that also brings up the part of the theory that is possibly one of the biggest debates coming out of Secret of the Mimic.

Is there possession, or is it just AI? For this theory to work, it requires you to be of the belief that the M1 MIMIC program didn't just become Fiona through being an AI, but through possessing. possession using the classic old-school fnaf tools of things like remnant and agony. Two of the reasons I've seen for M1 being possessed are that she learned to be Fiona after Fiona had died and that Edwin uses the frequency 4625 on one of the audio logs and hears the voice of Fiona after her death. This frequency is actually associated with a ghost radio frequency in the real world, known as the buzzer. As the name implies, it simply broadcasts a static buzz across the

airwaves, but occasionally you can hear words, sometimes even voices in the background. But the key thing is, no one claims to be running it, leading some to believe it's ghosts, speaking from beyond the grave. However, upon looking into it more, it seems that this radio frequency is something more to do with Russian intelligence, with two other radio stations, the pip and the squeaky wheel, also transmitting a similar signature sound, occasionally interrupted by coded Russian voice messages. It's really, Real messages being sent by real people, not ghosts. Which means that if Steelwall is invoking the iconography of Frequency 465,

they're telling us, while it may appear to be something paranormal, it's actually a real person. Or at least, thing, that's sending the message. John Fanaff has a great theory about how it's actually the Mycelium men who have recorded Fiona trying to help Edwin. Because the AI, Edwin made in all of his inventions, was designed to, You know what you want better than you do? which also explains how M1 learns to be Fiona.

It's not from Fiona herself, but from the recordings of her through the Mycelium Men, which is why she acts like her, but she feels more stilted and robotic. I baked it myself for David's Special Day. And no, it's not just because she's a robot, but because she never learned from the real thing. Plus, as I've mentioned before, Scott does seem to be moving away from the old paranormal stories he used to tell. I have a tendency to lean sci-fi. It's the only thing that involves possession of AI. or possession of machines or circuitry.

I love that sort of thing. Since Help Wanted, we've been getting stories about AI taking over people, not remnant or agony. In The Tales from the Pitaplex series, while we still get ghost stories, we don't really get much in the way of remnant or agony specifically. There's frailty where a girl has a remnant necklace similar to the one from To Be Beautiful in Fazbear Fright, but it's rarely the focal point of this series. Again, emphasizing the move away from those old FNAF story beats and more into AI and machine sentient. And without the real spirit of Fiona, it means there's no remnant or agony, and it becomes harder to explain things like the zero point field. That's not to say it's impossible by any stretch.

There are signs of some paranormal things going on at MCM. I mean, the White Tiger costume feels very much like old school Golden Freddy. That, or it's just Arnold hallucinating. I just finished a 36-hour shift and struggling to stay awake. And the zero-point field idea comes from the story, Fetch, and the Into the Pit game did tease a fetch sequel. So maybe they are gonna bring it in. And the fact is, if it turns out to be true, Faye Fiona would help to justify my theory

that Old Band Consequences is actually what remains of Edwin Murray. I suggested that because Edwin from the books comes back to help destroy the mimic years later, that even though it seems like he died at the end of Secret of the Mimic, in reality, he didn't fully die. Because no one ever dies in this series. I suggested that the king in Princess Quest, known as Old Man Consequences in the Game Files was like Edwin's digital signature,

a safety protocol inside the mimics programming designed as a failsafe to stop the monster he created. Fate Fiona also ties into this theory, just in a more classic Fnaf way. Rather than Edwin leaving behind a digital signature, it's literally his agony and spirit that, like everything else, ended up inside Fiona's systems. Which then plugged into all the arcade cabinets in the Pizzaplex, which then allowed him to appear in games like Princess Quest, and even FNAF World. So while I'm not entirely sure about the method this theory is based on,

I do have to say it helps explain a lot of our past theories, as well as a dozen other theories from across the internet. I also understand that it would be nice to have things like Remnant and Agony still feel like they're important today and not just a forgotten story device. But at the very least, Gibby and I can agree that one way or another, Fiona is definitely the one running the show here. But that's just one of the branching paths. And if you're enjoying this kind of branching path theory,

pre-review thing that we're doing here, you should absolutely consider subscribing. Maybe you can hit the button before Fiona sets the mimic on you. Probably got about five, four, three, two, one. Nice work. Huh, it didn't shut her down though. Ah! Anyway, the second and probably most requested theory for me to look at is called God David by T-Dreads. The reason this one came as so requested is because it actually has a lot of similarities

to the other branching paths I presented. The reason David Murray, David Afton and Gregory have so many similarities, can't be coincidence, they must be the same person. However, rather than it being a bunch of robot kids, Tidreds takes a slightly different approach. He focuses a lot on Gregory, pointing out a lot of the same similarities I did. Similar appearance, both being called Broken, sitting on a hill with their robotic protector. But the one extra PC points out is the therapy CDs from Security Brief. These recordings are from therapy sessions with two different patients.

One is Vanessa, with her being named in the tapes, and one is a mysterious unnamed patient, who we all came to call patient 46. We theorised early on in the life of security breach that patient 46 was in fact Gregory. This was later seemingly confirmed thanks to the story Gigi, where we see a kid called Greg killing off these counsellors when they got too close to the truth. The truth that Gregory wasn't really himself anymore, but being controlled by someone else. Teardroids points out that multiple therapists call him out for making up stories, that he's lying about his past, almost like an AI reading from a script.

told a story is more like you were reading something from a book. But rather than it being because Gregory is a robot, it's because he's possessed by a version of M2's programming, a version of David Murray. He points specifically to the Balloon World arcade cabinet in Gregory's Hidey hole, the one which as you play begins to glitch out and become corrupted, ending with the words, good night,

as if Gregory is going to sleep and allowing M2 to take control. That's why when the therapists say lines like, You had great parents. It's because Gregory is telling the story of David's parents, not his own. Edwin definitely wasn't in the running for Father of the Year, and both Edwin and Fiona met tragic ends. But that wasn't true for Gregory's parents. I got to say, I'm a fan of this.

Even in my video where I brought up Gregory being a robot kid, I said I wasn't in love with the idea of having more robot kids around. It meant that we had M1, M2, now what? M3? It's just a lot of robot kids and not enough real big. And this use of the therapy CDs actually helps move away from that. A robot kid made inside the Pizza Plex by M1 Fiona and Vanessa wouldn't have physical records or files for the therapists to refer to. They wouldn't be able to say lines like, you had great parents, because he'd be an anomaly with no past.

He literally just showed up one day. But if instead, he's a real kid with his mind taken over, then he would have real records that might even explain why he ended up in therapy. because his teachers noticed he suddenly started acting differently. From there, he starts acting like and dressing like a slightly older version of David Murray, just like M1 wanted, only for him to be set free sometime before security breach. The only thing I would question about this idea is the specifics of exactly what is possessing Gregory. T-Dreads presents it as a version of the mimic program that contains David's memories, which would seem to imply M2.

He uses Balloon World's Glitched Sun as evidence for this. the character looks a lot like Eclipse, which is a character that represents the collaboration between Fiona Sun and Edwin's Moon. And so, that shows us that David or M2 is taking over Gregory's mind. But just like in my previous theories, there are a few ways you could interpret this, and mine would be slightly different in this case. So far, there's been one AI that clearly has the ability to take over people's minds. Glitch track. We saw it with Jeremy, who sadly sliced his face off, and with Vanessa, who mentions that in the therapy tapes as part of her, is locked away. In many of our previous theories, we've connected glitch trap back to the M1

Fiona program, who, after being used to make games like how wanted, became muddled and confused as to what her true identity was. M1 Fiona is also represented by Sun, as we see in both the Parachute Ending of Secret of the Mimic and during Moon.exe. So when we see the Sun glitched out in Balloon World, it's possible it's not showing us Eclipse, but simply a glitched out sun. It's Sun that itself has been corrupted by the memory and influence of the world. of Afton becoming a glitched trap for Gregory. So if we have an AI program that can take control of human minds, that that human can also have an internal dialogue with,

and it's the same one already taking over the entire PizzaPlex, it makes the most sense for Gregory to also be taken over by that same entity, rather than having a bunch of different mimic AIs all existing at the same time. Otherwise, you end up with the same problem that I had with my own Gregbot theory, where it's just so many of one thing,

robot kids or AI, and it becomes so complicated that it's just not satisfying anymore. It's Occam's Razor. Sometimes the simplest solution is the right solution. It being an AI, M1, wouldn't actually change the fact that Gregory has been mind-controlled in order to make him a new David either. After all, M2 was a copy of M1's programming, and we theorize that M2 was originally being taught on how to be David through moon.

dot EXC. Essentially, using the memories M1 had of David to help recreate him. It's just doing the same thing in Gregory's head. It would also tie more into Gregory's persona that we see in Gigi, where he takes on the moniker of Dr. Rabbit, which feels more connected to GlitchTrap than to M2 specifically. Plus, Gregory is shown to be hacking the animatronics in that story, which again is not something we'd necessarily expect of David Murray, but would make sense for someone infected by Glitch Trap who's trying to take control in order to make their vision a reality.

But that's just one part of that theory. The second half focuses on the similarities between David Murray and David Afton. Diedredd once again does his due diligence and not only calls out the same things that I did, but adds a bunch more. Like the fact David Afton's favorite ride is the carousel according to the security logbook. But there isn't a carousel in Fred Bez. There is a carousel, however, in Murray's costume manner, almost as if he's remembering a different child's memories. There's also the line, do you miss them in the logbook? Right next to a picture of Foxy writing a note.

And in moon.exe, there is a note asking the moon to bring back the sun because he misses them. Again, it makes it hard to deny there's a connection here. The challenge becomes the how of it all. Even T-Dreads admits that this part is a bit of a stretch because we just don't have enough evidence yet. But he presents the idea that psychic friend Fred Bear actually contains a version of the M2 David AI, which William uses to swap the mind of his son with David Murray. We see the Mycelium men who contained mimic technology have the same black eyes with white dots. Glitch trap resides in a spring bonny plush in order to swap minds with Vanessa,

and this particular story structure is repeated all over the books like the week before, into the pit, gumdrop angel, the Monty Within, but most prominently for this theory, in a story called Lonely Freddy. A small Freddy asks a child questions to learn more about them in order to assume their identity, eventually swapping bodies with them. Ironically, this is almost identical to a theory we had many years ago. It's just now we understand why. M1 Fiona needs an animatronic genius like Edwin,

and now, like Afton, to be able to rebuild her son. Afton is intrigued by these machines that feel alive, and so is willing to go along and plan so that he can study it. All of that makes so much sense, and again, lines up with the same motivations I presented. The main challenge I had with it was the timeline. In our original theory, and also in T-Dread's theory, it presents the questions that psychic friend Fredbear slash the Lonely Freddy is asking

are so it can learn stuff about David in order to steal his body and become David Murray once again. Except by the time we see him in the FNAF 4 minigames, he's already exhibiting signs that he is David Murray. He's wearing the same clothes, carrying the plushy around, he's scared of Foxy, has the same name. I suppose you could argue that these things are just things William conditioned him to do in order to make him susceptible to the mind transfer. But then, when does he take over? Is it after he gets bit when he says, I'll put you back together? but then what happens to him after that?

Why does he disappear from the story? And if it's before that moment, then it means Fred Bear wouldn't have any need to ask those questions or be the M2 AI because he's already taken over David Afton's mind. Now, all of that being said, I do recognize that there's definitely evidence for the crying child being more like a human child than a robot one like I presented originally. After all, the key evidence that T Dreads refers to,

the security logbook, has two spirits talking to one another, the vengeful spirit Cassidy and the spirit, of David. If the Fred Bear plush was the M2 David Murray program, then David Afton's spirit would be present and able to attach itself to Fred Bear in order to take control and then talk to Cassidy. Plus, in the logbook, we see David struggling with his memories. Hence, all the questions about favourite toys, rides and even his name. Cassidy is trying to help him remember. Maybe because its own memories have been suppressed for so long by M2, much like with Gregory and the therapy CDs. Although we don't ever get the last name from that spirit. So I suppose, I suppose,

I suppose there is a chance that this is really David Murray's spirit, trying to remember itself after years of wandering, kind of like we see happen to Jake in the Stitch Wraith stories. I mean, Cassidy is calling out that his favourite ride is the carousel, which, as T. Dredds points out, the crying child, David wouldn't have ever witnessed. But we know that David Murray did. And all of this can be happening while M2 is walking around dressed like David Murray. Now under the watchful eye of William Afton. And see, this is why I did the brunt.

punching paths in that original theory to begin with, because it's important to explore all of the options. And I'm so glad to see other theorists exploring alternative ideas from the same evidence, while bringing up new points that agree, but also counter my own. Every theory has its strengths and weaknesses. But just because we don't like one part of the theory, doesn't mean we have to throw the animatronic baby out with the bathwater. I love the evidence surrounding Gregory's possession by the mimic. We may differ on the specifics, but it solves one of the big problems I had with the Gregbot theory. Even if I don't believe that M1 is physically possessed by Fiona,

it doesn't mean that I can't use parts of that theory to fill the gaps that I had with characters like Old Man Consequences or The Puppet. And I hope that both Gibby and T-Dreads are able to take some of the additions or counters that I've made and run with them to help develop their theories even further. The point is, by exploring all of the options, we can get a better sense of what's really going on. So let me know in the comments what you think. Do you think the answer is one of these alternative branching paths? Or do you think it's some combination of them?

All I ask is that you remember to be kind and patient with one another. Because at the end of the day, it's all just a theory. A game theory. Thanks for watching. World premiere on Game Theory. Who caused the bite of 83?