Game Theory - The Origins Of EVIL (FNAF)

Episode Date: November 12, 2023

Join Game Theory Host MatPat as he takes you back to the ORIGINS of Five Nights At Freddy's and the earliest animatronics. Credits: Writers: Matthew Patrick and Tom Robinson Editors: Dan "Cybert" Seibert, Tyler Mascola, JayskiBean, Pedro Freitas, Warak and Shannon (Bomb0i) Assistant Editor: Caitie Turner (Caiterpillart) Sound Editor: Yosi Berman

I've done it. I've solved FNAF! And the clue that brings it all together is this. Don't you hate getting killed by obscure secondary characters? Oh, internet, welcome to game theory. Last episode I brought up how the team and I have been tackling this whole timeline project. Basically that we've broken down everything into three key sections, the foundation of Freddy's, the Afton era, and post-purple guy. In that episode, we dug hard into the last chunk,

trying to figure out the recent history with things like FNAF VR and security, security breach. But even trickier is the first chunk, the foundation of Freddy's. You see, at this point we all have a general basic knowledge of the games, right? Kids die, animatronics get possessed, all that good stuff. But here, that foundational stuff right at the beginning, that's the murkiest, because honestly, there's not a lot that's immediately clear that we can go off of. Sure, there's a couple of lines from phone guy, maybe a sentence or two from the novels, but otherwise, it seems to be about it. How did William Afton and Henry Emily start working together? Were they rivals? Why did Afton

start killing in the first place? Was Fred Bear's family diner truly the first location? These are questions that seem important for us to answer, and honestly if you're looking at where the timeline of Five Nights at Freddy's really begins, it's with those sorts of questions. The only problem is that the answers just might not exist anywhere in the canon yet. Or so I initially thought, which brings us to today's episode. I suspect that there may be a way to answer some, if not all of those questions using a mix of evidence from the games, the books, and real-life lore. In the process, I think it'll help us get a better understanding of William Afton's motives,

while also outlining a rough sequence of events that will ultimately help place locations and other things when I tackle the full timeline in the series next week. And all of it hinges on one thing, a set of obscure secondary characters named the mediocre melodies, Orville Elephant, Ned Bear, Pig Patch, Happy Frog, and of course, Mr. Hippo. Sometimes a story is just a story. You try to read into every little thing and find meaning and everything anyone says, you'll just drive yourself crazy. Yeah, yeah, I know, Mr. Hippo, I get it.

That has been leveled at me more times than I can count. But I think in this case, we actually didn't read into you enough. You see, when the mediocres were first introduced in Pizzeria Simulator, we, as the community, largely dismissed them. And why wouldn't we? This is a game where you're pulling animatronics out of a dumpster. Trash and the gang are literally made of garbage. Why would we think that some random barnyard-themed characters would be

worth our attention when there was already so much established lore inside of the thing. We beat the game, we solved the lore, we moved on. Then Ultimate Custom Night released, and there they were again. It was strange to see them fill so many slots, but I don't know, there was also trash in the gang. And Music Man! Other random pulls from the character deep cuts, so maybe it was just Scott trying to fill out the roster. But then something unexpected happened. Well, they were, mostly treated as a joke, if you died to them every once in a while,

they'd give voice to the most important character and mystery from the game, the one you shouldn't have killed Cassidy. We've only just begun. I will never let you leave. I will never let you rest. It was a huge revelation, and the lines that they spoke ultimately helped us to determine that custom night was William Afton's endless torment at the hands of the spirits inside the Golden Freddy suit. But again, none of us ever stopped to consider why them? Why these characters? Why were they the ones that Cassidy was choosing to speak through? Why are they here? Well, after doing a lot of research for the grand overall timeline, now I think I know. The mediocre melodies were Henry's creation from a time before he and Williams started working together. When the two men merged their ideas together to form one company,

the mediocras became temporary characters at Fred Bear's family diner before eventually being retired and largely forgotten. Oh, yeah! That is a lot of big swings that I'm making with some massive assumptions. So let's just rewind and take it one step at a time, shall we? First, how do we know that the mediocre melodies belong to Henry? Well, let's just look at their design. It's very simple.

They're similar to the Endo-O-1 designs from the Fnafone animatronics, but even more rudimentary, with less flexible joints and less complex wiring. But the important point here is that for each one, the upper jaw and the lower jaw are entirely separate, operating using a very basic hinge towards the back of the head, or two metal bars that slide up and down along the side. And you see, that right there is what tells us they belong to Henry. Well, there are plenty of animatronics that fall into a nebulous zone of who designed them.

There are a few pieces of tech that we can definitely trace back to their original creator. The Fun Time animatronics, for instance, definitely came from Afton. Not only were they designed with the intent of luring and capturing children, something that just doesn't jive with Henry, but the blueprints outright have Afton robotics written in the corner. Not much you can do to deny that one. Sound illusion discs? Another Afton creation, considering the backs of them, are standing.

with his company name as we see in the graphic novels. But the one I'm most interested in today is Lefty, the animatronic designed by Henry used to capture his daughter the puppet during Fnaf 6. That was clearly not Nafton project. This was purely Henry's doing in secret. So, knowing that, did you happen to notice the two straight metal rods in the schematics with the jaw fully detached from the top of the head? It's an exact match for the design of Happy Frog.

It's a Henry signature. But why does that matter? Well, the designs of the mediocre's also, also perfectly match up to the first generation of Freddy, Foxy, Bonnie, and Chica. We know that the Withards were the earliest form of our Core 4 animatronics. These were the ones that had children stuffed inside of them and got possessed. They outright tell us this fact in Ultimate Custom Nights. I was the first. I have seen it everything.

But have you ever stopped to look at how the Withards were constructed? They used the exact same techniques as the mediocre melodies. They have a full separation between the tops of their head and their jaws. Withered Freddy and Foxy both have the hinge opening in the back, like we see with Pig Patch, and Withered Chica follows the Happy Frog and Lefty model with bars in the jaw to aid in opening and closing the mouth. Think this is just a coincidence? Look at Chica in other games. Chika and FNAF 1? A fundamentally different design. Fun Time Chica. Definitely not. Toy Chica, nope.

The only other time we see this sort of fully separated head design for animatronics is with the Fnaf 6 Rockstar animatronics. Ones that, again, we know we're built by Henry as part of his plan to lure everyone back to his piece. Pizzeria trap. In short, the animatronic design seems to be giving us a timeline of events. The mediokers and withards were built by Henry Early in the timeline of the games. Eventually, Afton starts to influence the designs more and more until Henry comes back to design the robots that were used for his Pizzeria Trap. But again, I ask, why does any of this matter? Isn't this just a minor detail? Me looking for connections where they don't really matter. No. Knowing that the withards and the mediocre share a design seems like it might help explain another part of the lore Happiest day. In the FNAF 3's Happiest Day minigame, we walk past children wearing masks that match the coloring and rough shape of the mediocres. Pink Pig, green frog, purple hippo, orange elephant, blue... Okay, not all of a match.

But here's the thing, I'm not the one pointing that detail out. This is actually coming from Scott Cawthon himself. In the Five Nights at Freddy's Ultimate Guide, the character description for each mediocre melody calls this out as something worth noting. Quote, it's unconfirmed, but a child in the Fnaf 3 Happiest Day mini game appears to be wearing a happy frog mask, Orville Mask, Mr. Hippo Mask. Every single entry mentions this specific detail. Seems like an odd fan theory to call so much attention to. And remember, Happiest Day is an exact recreation of the FnaF 4 Pizzeria.

We enter at the stage where Crying Child's bitten. We pass three tables. There's a bit of a gap. And then the final birthday table for the cake that's going to set Crying Child Soul Free. It seems to suggest that at some point the mediocre melodies existed in one version of the restaurant right alongside Freddy, Foxy, Bonnie, and Chica. But how could all that be? Well, it's easier than he might think.

In the story, the puppet carver, we read about the pizza playground, a restaurant that seems to predate or be a competitor to Freddy's. And in it, we see that the franchise uses very rudimentary animatronics that break down a lot. There's a pig with a banjo, an off-brand bear named Bear and von Bear, and an unknown bird animatronic. It's the mediocre melodies, guys, pig patch, Ned Bear, and, uh, hold on, there's no bird in the mediocre melodies. Unless, of course, we're talking about Chica. What this story seems to heavily suggest is that Chica started at a different pizza franchise

and eventually crossed over into Freddy's, becoming popular enough to eventually join the Core 4. Also, working at that pizza playground is a talented creator named Porter, someone who seems to have the ability to make wood-based animatronics come to life. In short, it's the book Stand-in for Henry. Henry may not be the most technologically advanced creator out there, but whatever he creates contains this certain X-factor about it, a spark of life. It's how he's able to create endoskeletons out of nothing but wood, no power, no nothing, just wood and a childlike imagination.

This, I think, starts to give us an important piece in the puzzle. Afton was the business guy, a tech bro who was smart and could build machines able to mimic voices and transform and launch giant claws out of their stomachs for no apparent reason. But it was Henry who had the pure love of his craft, that intangible thing that just couldn't be replicated. And it drove Afton crazy.

In the Silver Eyes novel, we read a bit about Afton's old journals that they were quote, full of raving paranoia, passages about Henry that ranged from wild jealousy to near worship, which now gets us moving towards a motive. You see, one thing that I kept getting stuck on in the building of a timeline was the question of why? Why does Afton kill? And out of everyone, why does he kill Henry's daughter, Charlie specifically?

She is one of, if not the first victim of the entire series. So why does Afton do it? Just because he's evil? Just because he's drunk from the bar at juniors? No. I think Afton both loved and hated his business partner. He admired him and his magic, but also despised him for his success. This contradiction starts to point us to Afton's motive for murder.

It also finally helps give us a framework for the early parts of their story. Loyal theorists, let me now point us to the most obvious place that we should have been looking for lore this entire time, the history of the Chucky Cheese franchise. Because in a game all about animatronic pizza restaurants, why would we not look to see what creative inspiration Scott might have gotten from the real-life franchise that started at all? You see, what we now know of as Chuckie Cheese actually started as the product of a feud between two rival animatronic pizza restaurants, Pizza Time Theater and Showbiz Pizza Place. Pizza Time was founded by a smart businessman who wanted to recreate Disneyland's Country Bear Jamboree.

In the end, their on-stage show wound up soulless and had no solid theme. Showbiz Pizza, meanwhile, had a creator who built better robotic attractions, that were full of life. They also had a solid theme where everyone had southern accents and a lot of charm. I mean, just watch the clips and the difference is immediately clear. Like, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you. You get it? See, we're all up here on the stage, and we can all turn, go around a big circle together.

See, like this, our feet aren't screwed through the floor or bolted it down. We can move. We got more moves than a can of worm. And then that old one-tooth, Billy Bob can come up there and stick his old ugly mud. to me the battle between these two real-life pizza places these two men sounds a lot like the battle between William and Henry a smart businessman who wanted to riff off Disney's bear show versus a talented artist that was building animatronics with actual life and good southern accents I was just waiting for you to drop your guard

even small details of the real-life story mapped nicely onto the games like the fact that these pizza places had small cabaret stages off to the side for extra acts to get added later just like how Foxy stands alone in Pirate Cove, a separate act that we see was the last one added to the core group of four. In real life, Pizza Time Theater, the one I most associate with William Afton, went heavily into debt and was forced to merge with showbiz pizza. That meant that, at least for a while,

all the animatronics existed under one roof, but because the characters from Pizza Time were stronger for branding, specifically Chucky Cheese, that's the ones that they ultimately moved forward with. I suspect that something similar happened in the games. William's bear-themed restaurant went heavily. in debt. He gets saved by his rival Henry and the two merge their restaurants together to create Fasbear Entertainment. Chica, a mediocre melody, officially joins Fred Bear's cast of friends,

and the rest are slowly phased out to obscurity. And William, angry and bitter, never truly lives down the humiliation of his failure, prompting him to lash out in a drunken rage against Charlie one night behind the pizzeria. This feels right to me, to set up William as more than just an evil purple guy. This flow of events actually gives him a reason to want to kiss. A motive. It also aligns with a lot of the interviews that Steel Wool Studios has been doing recently J-Top. Creative director at Steel Wool recently acknowledged how important it is for your horror villain to be an actual fully fleshed-out, tragic character. Try not to set out to make a cool-looking villain, you know, go make a monster. They have a reason for it. Look at, like, anthology horror. Here's somebody doing something really, really bad.

Like, they murdered someone. Something happens, often ironically, that then, that then, comes back to bite them. A creature is created, a situation is created, and then they're judged and they get their just desserts. Every big, you know, horror icon, it essentially fits that structure in a way. Why is Freddie Kruger popular? Well, it's a revenge story, isn't it? Miss Warhays, it's a revenge story.

These aren't just like these supernatural forces that came out of nowhere to just hurt people and punish people. There were results of other wrongdoing. William Afton, if I'm right, follows this exact pattern. His jealousy over Henry's skill causes him to lash out. Which in turn dominoes to him building the very robots that will eventually take Elizabeth and his crying child's son away from him. The other thing that this mediocre melody timing issue may help explain is Cassidy's death. In the Fasbear Frights books, there's Andrew, who's basically the book stand-in for Cassidy.

I know we're always supposed to take things in the books with a grain assault, but Andrew here is an angry spirit that keeps William's soul tethered to a hellish purgatory so it can be punished again and again and again. He's also known to have had his body stuffed inside of Golden Freddy, So really the connections between the two aren't subtle. But Andrew has two unusual details about him. First, he wears an alligator mask. Second, and even more strangely, it's repeatedly made clear that his soul is attached

not to an animatronic or an endoskeleton or anything like that, but to a battery pack of all things. Now that is unusual. He's stuffed into Golden Freddy, but his soul is in a battery pack. Where in this franchise do we see animatronics using battery packs, let alone off-branded animals using battery pack? Oh wait, it's the mediocre melodies.

Could they possibly have been around during the missing children's incident? Yes. Given what we already talked about with the Generation 1 Freddy, Foxy, Bonnie, and Chica matched in the designs of the mediocre melodies, it's certainly possible. We also see that the Golden Freddy suit has the same Henry style of design. In both the Fasbear Frights illustrations, as well as FNAF4's minigames, we see that Golden Freddy has the separated jaw controlled by two straight bars,

just like Lefty and just like Happy Frog. And last, but certainly not least, we come all the way to back around to the point that I started this whole episode with, Cassidy speaks through them, of all characters. Not through Golden Freddy, not through Fred Bear, through the mediocre melodies, the animatronics with a battery pack. Just thought it was an interesting series of connections. So anyway, those were some stray observations that I've been kicking around about the mediocris. What do you think? Do they have greater lore importance to the story than we initially thought, or are they just meant to be a joke? Am I just falling victim to everything that

Mr. Hippo warned me against? But hey, that's just Just a theory. A game theory. Thanks for watching.