Game Theory - The Problem with Modern FNAF

Episode Date: August 27, 2026

Does anyone know what’s going on with FNAF these days? I’ve been noticing a recent trend in the community lately where everyone seems to be going backwards. I’ve seen more theories on past games than anything recent, which I think says a LOT of the current state of this franchise and I want to unpack why this may be happening.

What's up with FNAF in 2026? Since the release of Secret of the Mimic, I've noticed a trend within FNAF YouTube that says a lot about the state of the franchise and why its audience feels the way it does. Hello, Internet. Welcome to Game Theory, the show that's actually kind of starting to miss that creepy old bear. It's been over a year since Secret of the Mimic, eight months since the second movie, and then basically nothing. There's been no new games, no new books. The closest we got was Scott jumping into Dorco's live stream and telling us about him working on a sequel, but nothing about when that would come out.

Five laps was supposed to come out this year, but we've heard nothing about it. We didn't even get any DLC from Steelwall. Instead, they just shared us these teasers, and trust me, we'll get to that. Those teasers did end up announcing Security Breach 2, and we got an announcement from Megacat Studios about FNAF World 2. But the point is, it's been a fairly dry spell for FNAF recently in the physical. things department. And it's the largest we've had in years. Usually we could fill the void with books or just some constant new discoveries from massive environments like we saw with security

bridge. But not this time. And that's done something very interesting. For the first time, FNAF theorists have nothing to really talk about, which has left some actually a little worried. A big part of theorizing is about looking forward, trying to figure out what the story is so that we can figure out what comes next. I mean, just look at the amount of predictions that I did on Secret of the Mimic. But with nothing new to talk about, there's nothing new to work with. Instead, we're just left with the story that exists right now, and that has done something really strange. As I've been keeping up with the theorists from across the YouTube space, I noticed that the new videos they were releasing almost all had a similar theme. What do you

notice about this video? What about this one? This one? What about all of these? What do they all have in common. They're all focused on the Afton era of games, FNAF1 through to Ultimate Customs. And this isn't just me pointing fingers. My first FNAF theory of this year was a thought experiment about whether there are two mites, another Afton era character. Every now and again, a theory focused on Secret of the Mimic or Security Breach does surface. John FNAF actually did a fantastic one recently about the original law of security breach, but the overwhelming majority of theories over the last year have focused on these older games. And I find this fascinating. Given the amount of pure information in games like Security Breach, to the point where people

are still finding new clues, why aren't people diving deeper into that? When we had a game with as strong as story as Secret of the Mimic, why are theorists moving on so quickly? When we have mysteries like Sheikers' Secret Freaking Party, why are people talking about the old days? Well, dear theorists, I did a bit of a deep dive into this. And so next, Now I'm going to take you on that journey, because the answers I found by reflecting on our theories and talking to other theorists in the space revealed some really interesting stuff about how the franchise has evolved over the years, what the state of FNAF is in 2026, and why theorizing has moved in the direction it has. What is the main goal of FNAF theorizing? As far as I and many other theorists are concerned, the main reason we theorize is to figure out the story. From day one, the story of FNAF was. was cryptic, hidden and vague.

There's a reason our first video was using a real-life Chucky Cheese event as an allegory, because otherwise there's not a huge amount to go off of. As time's gone on, more and more has been added to the story, but that doesn't mean the clues got less cryptic. Now, there were secret mini-games you unlocked if you died, or punched random codes into wall tiles. Then 12 years have gone by, and we still don't fully understand the story. But this is where the divide comes in.

As I mentioned, FNAF is split into two halves, the Scott era and the Steel Wool era. Or if you want to stick to in-universe names, the Afton era and the Mimic Era. The Mimic Era is still ongoing, but the Afton era, technically speaking, is over. Sure, the Mimic era is still throwing stuff at us like Afton's email to buy Murray's costume manner in secret of the mimic, or Vanessa being related to an Afton in some way, but as a whole, the Afton era is completely over. His story is wrapped up. We started with a man who killed five kids in a back room and stuffed them into suits, and it ended with a man stuck in purgatory being forever tortured by the souls of one of his victims.

It's a pretty clean and cathartic ending. However, even with the ending too, let's call it the A-plot, there were still plenty of mysteries to solve. Who was the vengeful spirit? What's the name of the crying child? What is in the box? But with Ultimate Customs Night, it felt like a final hurrah from Scott. It seemed like he was trying to actively wrap up the loose end. Which would mean that everything we needed to solve those unsolved mysteries were available to us. We just needed to look harder. Yes, Scott might come and add more context in future games, like I've said, but technically

speaking, everything we need should be right here in these games. This idea I think was solidified when we were fully introduced to the mimic in recent games. Thanks to the idea that GlitchTrap may just be a corrupted AI mimic program that was trained on Afton's data, it means that Afton is well and truly gone for. from the story. His legacy would still have an impact on future events, but his story is over. And that idea of a closed loop where all the pieces

are in place for us is incredibly appealing as theorists, because that would offer us a foundation in which to build up all future theories, rather than it just being this jenga tower that will topple over if one piece of information changes. And with so many small details left unsolved, we all flood back to those old games to try and see if we can solidify our foundations,

before we then move. forward, leading to an influx of theories about those unsolved mysteries. It doesn't help that the story we have solved from that era, at least on a basic level, just feels like a better story than the one we're getting now. The details and orders of events are still hotly debated, but the story of the first few games is the story of a family that was met with tragedy after tragedy. The eldest son, bullies the youngest son, until one day he takes it too far and he gets chomped by one of the animatronics at their father's work.

The daughter gets scooped by one of her father's creations. The father, either out of compassion or a desperate desire for knowledge, commits to putting the family back together, killing a bunch of kids and experimenting to see if their souls could live on and even be brought back. The eldest son also ends up scooped. However, he doesn't die and goes on to try and make amends for everything that he and his father did, eventually burning everything to the ground. Again, orders and specific details vary from theorist to theorist, but the core concept is really strong. Afton is a very compelling, villain. He preys on children, so immediately our minds label him as the most evil kind of character. If you believe that he actually cared for his kids and his actions were out of a misguided

love, then he's even more compelling, as essentially he's a broken-hearted man who made a mistake and went mad as a result. Michael's arc of older brother, bully, two selfless hero, is a fantastic arc, and after several games with him, it feels so good when he finally wins, ending the cycle in our minds and absolving him. Even David, the crying child, and Elizabeth are interesting characters to follow. One, wanting nothing more than to make Daddy proud regardless of the evil because she just doesn't know any better, and one who is so broken and scared that other spirits have to come together to help him find peace.

These characters are so interesting because we can connect with them on some level. We might have felt that feeling of loss, or being scared, or wanting to make up for past mistakes. Or it's just the fact that we like to see stories of humans triumphing over other humans that we deem as evil. The issue with the story we have now is, there aren't really any humans of it. And the ones we do have, we know very little about to the point where we don't even know if we can call them heroes. Gregory was evil. Then he wasn't. But maybe he still is. And other than killing a few therapists, we know nothing about his life before or after security breach that makes us

connect with him. Vanessa, we have some backstory for, but because it's so unclear if she's an afton or just some random girl, it becomes hard to know how much it makes it hard to know how much emotional investment we should put into her. Cassie seems nice. She was a kid with no friends until Gregory came along. But what else? Her dad worked for Fazbear and we think we play as him in Help Wanted 2, but what's their relationship? We don't know. And the main villain in all of this, an AI robot. They tried to give it a sympathetic backstory. It was just a child and it got beaten up by its dad and lost its legs. But at the end of the day, we just can't connect with a robot the same way we can with a human that was abused by their father, like we saw in the after arc.

I'm not saying we can never relate to robots. Certain movies do really good jobs of this. It's just that FNAF ain't one of them. Now, Scott and Steelwall did try to fix this lack of tragic relatable human issue with Secret of the Mimit, introducing us to the Murray household. A wife who tragically dies in a fire, a son who dies in the loading bay of the factory, and a father so obsessed with his work, he neglected both of them until one day his own creation kills him. That is a compelling story. The problem is, in the modern part of the story,

they're all dead now, at least from what we can tell. Which means while they did create the right kind of characters and backstories, we don't put too much value on them because they're not around to continue to affect the story like David and Elizabeth were. And so, creators are naturally more drawn to these older games because the characters, their stories and motivations are just far more interesting to talk about and explore. William care or not? Is the crying child actually the vengeful spirit and not so meek? Was William the drunk father in Midnight Motorist or was it someone else? All of these questions are far more interesting as they change our perspective on these characters

and their actions. They bless them out into 3D characters rather than archetypes. And there's plenty of information to pull from compared to the newer era characters who have so little to show us. Of course, YouTube was always going to play a part in why YouTube. Chewers picked to talk about certain topics. It's no secret that FNAF has pretty much always performed well on YouTube. It's what really boosted this channel into the stratosphere and launched the careers of so many other FNAF theorists we know and love today.

But in recent times, there is something else that has been performing well across the platform. Nostalgia. I'm sure you've seen it. Long video essays about old cartoons or video games from your childhood that you thought no one else knew about. As a personal example for me, I love Caddicarus. His stuff is just great, but it relates perfectly to my nostalgia as I was a PlayStation kid. I know, rip. But when he comes out with a several-hour-long video about a Rugrats game, it immediately gets

recommended to me. Audiences love nostalgia. They love to remember the simpler times, and so YouTube gives some level of favor to these videos. Therefore, people talking about old FNAF fits the criteria way more. People are nostalgic for the old days of FNAF. They want you to read the book about the mimic. I don't know about the mimic.

Why would they change FNAF? FNAF is FNAF. You have to remember, FNAF is now 12 years old. For people like me, FNAF has been a huge part of my adult life. It came out when I was 20. But for others, it was literally their childhood. Those who are now 20 started watching when they were eight. So regardless of what age you were at the time, this franchise and specifically those older games are nostalgic to you,

reminding you of a simpler time where you would just sit and watch a deep-voiced man, yell at a screen, or some theater nerd go insane trying to make connections about the story. And so YouTube is more than happy to recommend those videos to you, which also means that when creators make videos about nostalgic topics like old Fnaf, they get recommended more and more. Suddenly they can hire an editor or a thumbnail artist, or heck, maybe they can just finally take this YouTube thing full time. And so, people want to make more videos about the topic because that's what's working in the YouTube zeitgeist right now.

But this also ties into my next point, which is with that aging audience, there's another knock-on effect, the introduction of new theorists. Like I said, in 2014, you had people like Matt, Dorco, Apat Ryan, Razbowski, giving their thoughts which stirred up the fandom. Kids and young adults started to come up with their own theories. Maybe they shared it with their friends. Maybe they shared it with a few people online in comments or on Twitter or Reddit. But really, those theories were largely left in obscurity, just sitting in the back of their minds. Now, 12 years have passed. The younger people who were watching those videos and coming up with those pet theories have now grown up.

And so, some of them decided, you know what, I'm going to share my own theories with the world. Combine that with the lack of new FNAF content and we start to see new YouTubers pop up. In the drought after security breach, we saw the likes of John FNAF, right host, Ivy's fantasy, hyperdroid, and a bunch more game popularity for their fresh taste. takes on the franchise. In the recent drought post-secret of the mimic, we've seen people like Tidreds, Unwithered Truth, Gibby's Horror Homestead, she's always awkward, and again, many others. And in a few years, I'm sure we'll see even more. But what this means is all those theories that people came up with all those years ago, now get to see the light of day.

They want to share the stuff that's been bubbling away inside of them for years, because that was the stuff that made them fall in love with the franchise. It's not to say they hate the new stuff, they just haven't had as much time to ruminate on it. What theory do you is going to be stronger. The one you've had a year to think about, well, the one that you've had 10 years to think about. And so, with each new wave of theorists, we see a wave of old school theories because they've been sitting on them for so long and want to finally share their ideas. When you're a mid-sized business, you need every competitive advantage you can get. Like an AI solution that works for you, not against you.

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To start with, let's talk about how Steelwall does trailers. I hope you're ready for a bit of a rant. Recently, Steel Will has been posting things that are quote-unquote not teasers. But come on, guys, they are definitely teasers. We even got the announcement of Security Breach 2 at the end of it. So, naturally, when they phrase something like this, all us theorists want to take a closer look. The issue is, there's not really anything to look at. Some people have made videos on these teasers, talking about things like how the rings are the same

colour as the glam rock, so this is clearly from the Security Breach era. Or it's in a pool, so maybe it's a VR experience similar to what we see in the drowning tales story. But that's kind of all we can say about it. And even in the final one where they essentially announced security breach 2 by hiding a two inside of Fannie's eye, great, we found out there's a new game coming. But anything about that game is kind of going to be speculative at best because these images don't actually tell us anything. Even with the trailers they release, they're fine as trailers. They show off a bunch of cool moments.

But for theorists, they leave a lot to be desired. Both Secret of the Mimic and Help Wanted 2 were just narrated by Fasbear's classic voice, saying how the job is bad, but you'll be okay, probably. There are Easter eggs like the Monty Cutout or the Fazridge ports, but these are more like pieces that we don't have any direction on because we don't get any sense of where the story is going. Back in the day, we used to get a lot of teasers on Scott's website that were full of secret little mysteries.

Either we up the brightness to reveal a phrase that we needed to solve, or we'd be told that the game was cancelled due to gas leaks, only to up the brightness and reveal it was a news article about an in-universe location. We'd check the source code to reveal a comment. conversation between Baby and the Fun Times, telling us that baby got kicked out of Ennard. This was the stuff that got us excited. They felt like they were building the world and telling us things that we could connect to previous games and books to help us predict what might be happening next and explain more of that story.

But now it just feels like we are literally getting teased. These are presented in a way that implies there's a mystery to be sold, but it also just feels so disconnected, like the main piece of the puzzle is being hidden until the actual game comes out, which means we can't really do anything with it. Sometimes I wonder if this goes back to Steelwall and their security beach trailer. I'm sure we all remember this iconic trailer. We did a theory based on that trailer like we do with most big trailers, trying to predict what it meant for the upcoming game in its story.

Matt later said that Steelwall actually emailed him asking if he had a man on the inside feeding him information. Woo! Looks like we got it right. And then none of that story appeared in the final game. Now, I'm not going to stand here and debate the whole, Did they change the story thing? That's being done to death.

But what I wonder is if that instance of them giving us an actually very compelling trailer, with us then supposedly getting it right, meant that they're now afraid of giving us too much. If they give us too much to work with, we might all just figure out the game, which in their minds could end one of two ways. Either we guess the story and then when the game comes out, we're disappointed because there's no surprises. Or we guess the story, but then the game's, changes as game development often does. And so, once again, none of what they presented shows up in

the game. And so we're all mad that we didn't get what we thought we were getting. I'm not saying they need to give away everything in a trailer. Absolutely not. That's actually a big issue in Hollywood right now. What I'm saying is you can have a trailer or teaser that leaves a little story direction, which if you're smart enough to put together with other parts of the teasers and trailers or even the books, can tell you the story. But for most people, it would just be completely mixed. I get it. It's a tough situation to be in. But right now it feels like they've gone too far in the other direction, so afraid to give us anything that we can actually work with, that we end up with these trolley Nothing Burger posts that, sure, some people might be able to make a quick 15 minute video on or discuss on a live stream, but it's a flash in the pan. It doesn't really fill the gap in the lack of content like old teasers and trailers did, and so people move back to solving the old FNAF mysteries because there's actually enough there to work with, enough to make an actual theory,

rather than just pure speculation. And here's the thing. That lack of direction for the story isn't just for the new teasers that are coming out. It's also been a problem that we've been feeling for the entirety of the Steel Wool era. I've already spoken about how the older stories feel more compelling than the newer ones,

especially when it comes to things like the villain. But it also feels more compelling to theorists because the game makes it very clear what mysteries were trying to solve. Here is obvious villain Purple Guy, so we try and solve who he is. Here, we learn about the five missing kids in the posters so what happened to them?

We're introduced to the crying child, and then in a book we're shown puzzles about solving a name, which makes us go, oh yeah, he doesn't have a name, does he? Those questions are presented pretty front and centre, and so as a theorist community, we had direction on what we needed to focus on and solve. Since Security Breach, however, we felt a little bit rudderless. Again, look at how many Secret of the Mimic Prediction theories we did before it came out.

We did that because it was the only obvious mystery to solve. Security breach is infamously a mess of environmental storytelling with a bunch of Easter eggs that mean nothing and details that make very little sense on their own, or even when connected to other clues. The game is also so big that we are still discovering things to this day. Technically, this means there are a bunch of mysteries to solve. We just don't know which ones we're supposed to be focused on, and which clues connect to one another and which are just separate mysteries.

Are we supposed to be solving what happened to the missing kids? The only mention we get of them is one line from Gregory and a newspaper during the bad ending. Are we supposed to be solving what the mimic is going to do next? We know it wanted to get Cassie into the basement to let it out, but other than being free, its motivations are a bit obscure. Are we supposed to figure out if Edwin is still alive? It sounded like he died, but in the books, he didn't, so it could go either way. And how important are any of these things to the actual plot of these games? It is impossible to tell.

And part of that is down to How Stillwell is telling the story in this era. of games. In the afternoon era, all the pieces were in place for us. We just had to work hard to put them together. From that, we might have a few interpretations of how they could fit, which would then help us solve the story and maybe predict the next game. Then a new game would come out with some extra info that would inform and clarify those details. However, in this new era, while we're still getting lots of little pieces of information that technically fit together, it's vagus to how. In the next game, we then get a massive piece of. revelationary information that we could never have predicted that ties everything together. Like Insecurity breach, there was basically zero way to predict the mimic existed and was the one in control.

Hence, we made a whole theory about Mrs. Afton being in charge. It wasn't until ruined that the mimic was revealed, which then made us all go back and start connecting the dots. Or the whole, are the books canon debate? There were signs that they weren't, but it was impossible to tell for sure without the release of Secret of the Mimic. It's a small but important difference in approach. One has a bunch of pieces that can be put together beforehand and then gives you potential confirmation of your theory after the fact. The other has a bunch of pieces that don't really feel connected, only coming together when you have one specific piece which isn't revealed until the next game. This leaves theorist with a feeling of what's the point?

I know, I've certainly felt that. Why bother trying to solve mysteries we do see? because we're clearly missing the key cornerstone to it, and we'll just get rug pulled when the next game comes out anyway. Theorizing is fun, and we sometimes just want to do thought experiments to see what would happen. But we also like trying to get things right. We do want to solve things.

And if we can't do that before the next game, why should we try? It doesn't help that these games are now coming out super far apart. I've already talked about us being in a FNAF drought, but those are becoming way more common. The first four games all came out within 13 months of each other. Sister location was a little over a year later. Peter Rita Sim was a little over a year again. Ultimate Custom Night was just half a year.

Help Wanted was just under a year. And then Security Breach, two and a half years. Then Ruined was almost two years after that, although that was just DLC. Help Wanted 2 was two years after security breach. And Secret of the Mimic was a year and a half after that. I guess we technically had Into the Pit and FNAF AI are in between some of those, but in terms of mainline games that we can 100% use for law purposes,

you can see how the gaps are just getting bigger than they used to be. Now look, game development takes time, and I think for a lot of us, we'd rather still will take more time on a game so that it looks good rather than just rushing it out the door. But that does come with a consequence for the theorist community. When there's larger gaps between games, there becomes less and less to talk about over time. During the original run of games, Matt could barely get a thing. out before Scott released the next game. This kept the conversation and theorizing going over a year.

And then, by the time those mysteries were solved, it was time for sister location. Not to mention there were a bunch of books to fill the gaps. But since Help Wanted, they've taken more and more time. And you combine that with what I've already said about there not being any clear direction in terms of which mysteries we should focus on, or the fact they're hiding key information from us, it means that after a couple of months, the games have been talked about as much as they can.

And so we go back to the old games, where new games might help us fill in those mysteries rather than just trying to solve new ones. Basically, I think this last year of FNAF theorizing has been the culmination of a number of things. The lack of new games, new theorists joining the platform nostalgia being king, and the newer era just feeling a little bit lackluster compared to the OG run. That's not to say that things can't and won't change. We've got a bunch of new releases next year. Maybe Security Bridge, too, whether it's just from better marketing or from the game itself,

we'll end up seeing a shift back to people finally feeling like like they can solve the new era of FNAF. Maybe the FNAF World 2 that got announced by Mega Cat Studios will be set within the older timeline of games to follow on from the original Fnaff World in order to help put those mysteries to rest and forcing us to look forward at new ones because that's all that will be left to solve.

But hey, that's just a theory, a game theory! Thanks for watching!