Game Theory - The ULTIMATE FNAF Timeline (Complete)

Episode Date: April 7, 2023

Friends, today we've compiled our ENTIRE FNAF Timeline into one long video for you all to enjoy! From Fredbears Singing Show all the way through Security Breach all ROLLED into one for your listening pleasures! This video took a lot to get done and I can't thank you all enough for the support on it and for offering your own thoughts... even if they were marinated in rage. Thank you all for watching and supporting and ALWAYS remember... it's all JUST a theory.

Today we end the torment. 19 books, 11 games, 8 whole years. All leading to this moment. The ultimate FNAF timeline is finally complete. The pieces are in place for us. Now, all we have to do is put this story of tragedy, jealousy, and loss back together. Oh, Internet, welcome to Game Theory. The show that feels like a kid revealing the class project that he's been working on all year.

Except here, it's the class project that I've been working on for the past decade of my love. This one is big, my friends, and I gotta admit, kind of nervous. I haven't attempted a timeline video on this franchise since 2018. Back in the days when Mike was the crying child, Afton coming back was actually a surprise, and Fasgu wasn't a phrase I'd ever thought I'd have to utter. But since the last time I did something like this, we've had three more massive games,

to death and revival of the FNAF movie, and more robot kids than you can shake a staff bot at. It is exhausting trying to keep track of this whole franchise, which honestly is why I'm here today. The lore! this point is complicated. It is full of speculation and theories. So to hopefully make it a little easier for everyone and to give us all a baseline to talk about this franchise moving forward into the future, it's time to reveal my current working FNAF timeline. So sit back, grab some popcorn,

or your pitchforks, if you're the type to get upset when I say something controversial. Without any more waiting, I present to you the story of a loving, obsessive father who slowly descended into madness and along the way discovered the secret to eternal life. Our story begins not the 1980s, or even in the 1970s, but all the way back in the 1930s. It was the throes of the Great Depression, and people were in desperate need of cheap entertainment, especially in Utah. One of the states hit hardest, fourth highest unemployment in the nation and full of transients. People looking for work in Salt Lake, finding none, and ultimately moving on to find their fortunes out in California. People were tired and they were hungry. But as they traveled, there was one thing

that could lift their spirits. A simple roadside attraction called Fred Bear's singing show. The ads were plastered all over town, featuring an animated bear drawn in the popular pie-eyed cartoon style for characters at the time. He resembled cartoons like Mickey Mouse, Felix the Cat, Betty Boop. It immediately said that this, Fred Bears, was a place where you could bring the family. And the price, honestly, couldn't be beat. For 50 cents, you could get food and entertainment as you watched the local trained real-life dancing bear perform on stage. Normally, you only got to see dancing bears at large traveling circuses, like Barnum and Bailey, where the tickets would go for about a dollar.

That's a dollar without food. This was a smaller show, like the type from the Vaughn Brothers or the Robins Brothers, where tickets would sell for just a mere 50 cents. Watching that bear do tricks on stage brought a glimmer of joy at a time when so much was wrong with the world. The simple show would go on for years, bringing happiness to hundreds of travelers passing through looking for a quick meal. But it left a permanent impression on one little boy, capturing his imagination in a way that nothing else had. One little boy named Billy. That was his nickname at least, but his parents like to call him William. William Afton.

The bear could dance. It could sing. For decades, William dreamed of recreating that moment of bringing a musical bear to life, but how? William was smart, without a doubt, and he had a keen mind for business, but he wasn't the most creative. How do you make a singing, dancing bear come to life? The best he could do was using rudimentary costumes. William was inspired by the work of Walt Disney, who throughout the 50s and 60s was pioneering the use of mascot suits throughout his theme park. The big innovation? Suits with five fingers.

This allowed the performers wearing the suits to use their natural arms and hands to interact with the guests, As opposed to the older models where the arms would just hang limply by their sides. Finally, with a simple mascot suit, he would be able to realize his childhood dream. He would be able to bring Fred Bear to life. To appeal to the kids, and for copyright reasons, he changed Fred Bear from a realistic brown animal to a cartoonish yellow bear with a purple hat and bow tie. But feeling like one character wasn't enough, he added another friend, a yellow rabbit with a purple vest and matching tie named Bonnie the Bunny.

While Fred Bear was certainly his first love, Bonnie was extra special, because that was his. It was an original character that he had created from scratch. And I do mean scratch. Williams' hand-sown costumes were rough with seams and stitches visibly showing, but it was the best that he could do. And you know what? It was just enough.

Bonnie and Fred Bear would perform on stage to small but enthusiastic crowds. Finally, he was able to deliver fantasy and fun to all the kids, delighting and inspiring them in the exact way that he had been delighted and inspired so many years ago. And things could have ended there. That could have been the end to his story. It could have been perfect. Had it not been for one thing. Other people saw the success of his idea, and they wanted in.

Enter Chica's Party World, a rival restaurant starring performing animal characters. His idea, except they did it better. William may have been the first, but obviously he wasn't the best. It hurt the prideful William Afton to admit it, but this restaurant was able to do the thing that he always wanted to do, make the animals actually come to life. All of the performers in this restaurant were robots, simple metal skeletons that were powered by battle.

packs, but all of them able to freely turn and talk and dance on their own, no human required. It was like magic. Magic that came from the mind of a brilliant creator named Henry Emily. This Henry, in some small way, had been able to harness the power of life itself. Afton admired him. He was jealous, to be sure. But he also looked upon this man with awe. Off to one side of Chica's party world was a small cabaret stage featuring an elephant magician.

On the other, a hippo known to ramble on and on. That one was more of a joke for the parents. But it was the main stage that was for the kids. rocking band of characters featuring a yellow chicken thing with a southern drawl named Chica backed by a band of other country-themed characters, including a pig with a banjo, an upbeat frog from the local swimming hole, and a brown bear with a heavy southern accent. Wait, a bear? But bears were his animals. Why not a cow or a horse? Something to fit the country theme a bit better. Why did it have to be a bear? And adding insult to injury, they had the nerve to call this thing

Ned Bear, a direct copy of his own Fred Bear. Whoops, that's gonna leave a mark. No, that was not okay. Afton's jealous admiration turned to hardened bitterness. A bitterness that would only grow over the next couple of years as families continued to choose Chica's party world over Fred Bears. William just couldn't compete with the appeal of the robots. Eventually, his restaurant would go bankrupt,

only to get bailed out by, of course, Henry Emily. Another insult. Another humiliation that William wouldn't soon forget. Despite being bitter, Afton couldn't deny that what came next was a period of massive success and expansion. With the two franchises now merged into one, it was the best of both worlds. Afton's ideas with Henry's robotic expertise. The two men decided to launch under a new name, Fred Bear's Family Diner, a pizza chain that would eventually come to feature a mix of humans in performing suits,

as well as on-stage animatronics. They decided to stick with Fred Bear as the headliner, considering the yellow bear was easily identifiable as a brand, and because he was the original performing animal mascot. appreciated that. This new restaurant would also see a mix of characters as the two franchises merged into one, with Pig Patch and Happy Frog performing right alongside Fred Bear and Bonnie. And as part of this one big Fred Bear family, they even got themselves official merch that were released ranging from masks to magnets. The crappy Mr. Hippo Fridge Magnet?

Oh, I am sorry, Gregory. That said, not all the characters were winners. The reception to some characters was just mediocre. So they faded away into the dumpster, storage units, and retro budget tech stores of lost nostalgia, waiting for their chance to step back into the limelight if and when a headliner went out of commission. Others, though, would fare much better, like a new pirate fox, as well as a blue guitar playing variant of the yellow Bonnie Bunny Bunny. Ultimately, the franchise would get so big, it would spawn its own cartoon show. Fred Bear and Friends. Business was booming.

In the end, Fred Bear and Bonnie's popularity would be so strong that they would be able to support the Fred Bear's family diner franchise all on their own. while also spinning off a new sister location dedicated to their friends. In 1983, Freddie Fasbear's Pizza launched, given a dedicated home to all this new supporting cast of characters. Cheek of the Chicken, Bonnie the Blue Bunny, Foxy the Pirate, and of course the headliner, a brown Freddy Fasbear. Business was good, and Afton was happy, mostly. It did bother him that the one original character that he created,

the one that he himself played, Golden Bonnie, got passed over for inclusion in that cartoon show. The only character in the roster of regulars to get ignored for the show, but other than that, things were going smoothly. He had himself a wife, two sons, a daughter. He had a thriving business. And best of all, he was able to learn the craft of robotics from the man that he both loved and hated Henry. Together, they were constantly pushing the limits of what these characters could do. Because it was quick and easy, new characters introduced into the roster would be given a simple hand-sown suit with five fingers that any performer could wear. Eventually, Henry would design one of his signature animatronics for that character,

utilizing a divided mouth with either a hinged or sliding jaw design. This was the first generation of animatronics. But why stop there? Afton had big ideas. What if the animatronics weren't just locked to the stage but could freely roam the restaurant and interact with the kids? What if his mascot suits could become animatronics? What if you could use more than just rigid metallic skeletons?

Mightn experiment with tubes and wires that would give the animatronics fluidity and flexibility while still providing structure? The possibilities for this technology were endless. He often fell in love with robotics. He had started with a dream of bringing one simple singing bear to life, but with robots, he had stumbled across the tools that gave him the ability to control life itself. And thanks to Henry, he was practically speed-running his way to an engineering degree. And while William wouldn't admit it out loud,

one other thing that kept pushing him forward was the desire to beat his former rival, to prove himself smarter and more capable, to surpass the man who everyone else considered to be a visionary genius. But pride cometh before the fall. And tragedy was a bit more. was about to strike. 1983, business was booming with two whole restaurant franchises running,

Fred Bears Family Diner, and the newly opened Freddy Fasbear's Pizza. Together, William and Henry had been able to take the hybrid suit idea and make it into a reality. They called their new invention, the Springlock suit, and fittingly enough, it was symbolic of the partnership between these two men, a human suit as designed by William

that could become a freestanding Henry-style robot. But because it was still new tech with Kings to Workout, the rollout was limited, restricted only to the Fred Bear's family diner location. All of this meant that William was busier than ever. He didn't have time to be a full-time parent, so he designed a nanny cam system where cameras and speakers were hidden throughout the neighborhood, as well as in his youngest son's favorite toy, psychic friend Fred Bear. I mean, plushy, Fred Bear. But since cameras just weren't enough to raise a kid, he also left child care duties to

his eldest son, Michael. There was just one problem with that. Michael was far from the best babysitter. He tormented his younger brother by jump scaring him with a foxy mask and constantly left him behind. William watched all of it from his cameras. Kids would be kids. Tomorrow was another day, after all. Except Michael's torment didn't stop. Bitter, angry thoughts would run through Michael's mind. Why did he have to be the one to take care of this whining crybaby all the time? It just wasn't fair.

It was time that he got even with his brother by playing the ultimate prank. A prank that just so happened to be on this crying child's birthday. He and his friends would take his scared little brother and make him do the one thing that he was terrified of doing, getting close to the animatronics. That would be embarrassing for the kid that was such an embarrassment to him. His brother squirmed, screamed, kicked, and fought. But just as they were putting that small squirming boy up to Fred Bear's lips, the mouth snapped shut.

The sensitive spring locks inside the body had been triggered by the boy's movements, and they'd immediately clamped down. The wriggling stopped. The boy went limp, but it was just a prank. It was meant to be funny. The boy was taken to the hospital and was immediately given an IV. Flowers and pills filled the nightstand next to his hospital bed, but the damage was too severe.

He couldn't recover. As the younger brother's consciousness began to fade, he could hear Michael's last words, a small and flimsy apology. But his father, Williams, through the voice of the Fredbear plush, were a firm and committed promise to a dying son. You're broken.

I will put you back together. This would not be the end. No matter what, William's son would live again. It would just take time. Time that right now he just didn't have. His young son's heart flatlined as the boy faded into the inky unknown of the afterlife. In the aftermath of the tragedy,

changes started happening around the restaurants. Kids were now required to wear security wristbands to prevent anyone from getting outside without parental permission. Any kid who approached the exit without permission would have to answer to the security puppet. A marionette on strings that could fly around on rails across the restaurant to stop kids in their tracks. It was William's idea, inspired by Michael constantly leaving the restaurant without his brother. In the wake of Fred Bear's springlock failure, all the hybrid suits were getting retired, locked away at the nearby Freddie Fasbear location. It was yet another tough pill to swallow after all the hard work that he and Henry had put into them.

William would eventually bury the boy's small body in a remote location out in the woods right alongside his drive into and out of work every day. The death of this little boy sent the family spiraling. His wife, crippled with grief, was so distraught that all she could do was sit and watch TV. But his son Michael was far worse. Complaining of seeing hallucinations of a golden bear standing outside of his window. The boy was so racked with guilt that he was convinced that he was being haunted by the ghost of his brother stuck inside the suit that took his life. The suit's three-toed feet digging into the wet earth. it's me ringing through Michael's ears.

Some nights, Michael would even go so far as to break out of his room to check the grave site and ensure that his brother was still there. As for William himself, he disappeared into his work and his drinks. Juniors, the local bar, wasn't far from his son's grave site. He found himself going there more and more frequently, spending longer and longer amounts of time there. The bar gave him a place to think, to remember, to reflect and stew on how Henry had stolen his idea for an animal-themed restaurant.

How they'd cut his character out of the country, cartoon when everyone else was there. How Henry had humiliated him by buying him out of bankruptcy. And now? Now there was his son. Henry had taken his son from him. The robotic part was the part that failed after all. William ordered one more drink, but it was one too many. The bar turned him out and told him to go home. But William didn't go home. Drunk and angry, William raced back to the restaurant to give Henry a peace of his mind, only to find someone else waiting. Henry's daughter, Charlie, locked outside of the building, bullies laughing at her through the window. Fine. other problem to fix. But then Afton got an idea, a beautifully awful idea. This. This was his chance to get back at the man that had humiliated him all those years ago. Henry had killed his business. And now Henry's robotic suit had killed his son. It was time for William to do some killing of his own. Let Henry feel what it's like to have something you love get ripped away. While parties continued inside the walls of the pizzeria, William attacked Charlie in the back alley. It felt good. He felt free. The years of resentment and bitterness.

trapped in his heart, finally released in a moment of pure unapologetic evil, he would make Henry hurt like he hurts. And in that moment, William became a killer. He dropped Charlie's lifeless body and drove home, forced to confront his family problems later that night, appalled, but also a little excited by what he had just done. Charlie's death would remain on the books as a random act of violence. And though Henry had suspicions about William, there was no physical evidence.

Nothing that could link him back to the crime. In the weeks that followed, Fred Bear's family diner would close for good. Two high-profile deaths around the restaurant with two grieving owners in such a short period of time was just too much bad pressed handle. Besides, Freddie Fasbears was still open, and it was the newer restaurant anyway. All the equipment from the diner, including the old yellow suits and security puppet, would get retired to that location. And there they would sit for two uneventful years. The rest of 1983 and 1984 were spent quietly grieving. Freddy Fasbears' pizza and the new cast of characters were a hit.

Tragic memories of their yellow predecessors quickly faded. Afton kept a low profile and buried himself in. and work and research, quickly reaching Henry's level of engineering and even surpassing him. And while Henry slowed down to grieve, Afton kept going. Even starting his own company, Afton robotics for all those pet projects that were a little bit too experimental for the regular operations of the pizzeria. The first of these experimental projects was a secret workshop under his house. A veritable bunker, which allowed him to work while still monitoring his kids via hidden security

cameras. 1.9.8.3. A passcode that served as a constant reminder of why the cameras were so important. Why he was down there in the first place. This was all to fulfill the promise that he had made to his son, right? I will put you back together. This was for him. All for him, right?

But cameras weren't enough. He needed to solve the runaway Michael problem. He had to keep him in the house. He couldn't have another one of his kids wind up dead inside of an animatronic suit. So why not run a little experiment on Michael? You see, all this work with Henry had gotten Afton to start learning more about life. Robots, the human mind. And what a fallible machine we as humans were.

Are realities so easy to manipulate with a few sensory deceptions? Deceptions like sound. It was just a few sounds, he had discovered that he could alter a person's vision. He could transform blank, smooth, plastic robots into lumbering, twisted nightmares. Nightmares far scarier than he could create with actual materials. They would appear organic, rotting, putrid, terrifying. These would be his means of keeping his son Michael in the house where he belonged. Was it extreme? Maybe.

But then again, this was the boy who had killed his son. He would make him sorry. And so Michael would grow up not only dealing with the memories of his own guilt, the hospital room, the pills, the flowers, the death of his brother, but also facing literal nightmares, illusions created by sound. Michael would never forget these either. Years later, as a security guard, he would still draw pictures of them inside of his logbook. But all of these extra projects meant that his home life suffered even more.

He was an absent father and a non-existent husband, leaving his wife cold and alone. Why do you hide inside your walls? There is music in my halls. All I see is an empty room. No more joy, an empty tomb. And despite her repeated demands that he leave his office and engage with the family, he refused time and time again, leaving her no choice but to leave. You burned down my house?

You call that a house? It was like a morgan there. You need to see your son. The baby isn't mine. Well, how's this? I'm keeping the diamond rain. And through it all, there was one lingering feeling. William wasn't done.

He had gotten a taste of what it felt like to be unleashed, what it felt like to be free. Charlie's murder had unlocked something in him, and he wanted more. June 26, 1985, putting on the Golden Bonnie suit, he lured children one by one to the back room of the pizzeria when no one was looking. At first, he was cautious.

He would lure them with promises of cake and cookies. He told them that their dog had died. He would ask for help with homework. Susie was the first. You never truly forget your first. I was the first. I have seen it everything. But where to hide the bodies?

He couldn't sneak out. Someone would see him. He had to hide them in a place where they'd never be found and where they'd never leave the building. They had to be stuffed, stuffed inside of the suits. No one maintained those things anyway except for him. And so Susie would go into Chica. Fritz, Jeremy, and Gabriel would come next.

But it was easy. It was too easy. And with each little life he snuffed out, his lies got bigger. Their house was burning. They're just being kidnapped. Until the last one where all pretense was off. He let himself get violent. Too violent.

I'll just wait for him after school. Throw a bag over his head. Hit him with a shovel and drag him into the back of my car. The body of Cassidy was far more bloody and broken than any of the others. He'd let himself go too far. That one? That one he shouldn't have killed. With no more active animatronics left,

he shoved the body into the one suit that remained backstage. The long-forgotten yellow Fredbear, now broken and discolored with age. Broken, like Cassidy was broken, like his son was broken. Newspapers reported on this disappearance, naming the whole thing the missing children's incident. Police would even charge William with the crimes after finding security footage of the golden mascot suit, luring kids to the back. But they couldn't convict him.

They had no bodies, and his face had been hidden behind the mascot suit the entire time. What they had was circumstantial at best, and so he walked away a free man. But Henry knew the truth. In these murders, he saw his daughter Charlie all over again. So he threw Aftan out of the company and shuttered the doors to the old pizzeria. Henry would keep the franchise quiet for two years. This would not happen again. This could not happen again.

How could he protect the kids? Finally, he developed a solution. He would implement an even more extreme security system in the form of new animatronics, toy animatronics, inspired by the toys that they had been selling years ago. But these guys, these were special. They were a new breed of robot with facial recognition abilities. All the original animatronics now withered with, were moved to the new location. With a plan in place, it was time to try once more.

The year was 1987, and the new and improved Freddy Fasbear's Pizza was making headlines in local newspapers. Headlines that just so happened to catch the attention of William Afton. Freddy's was back? Without him? That was his idea. His character. Henry was, yet again, trying to cut him out of the picture. No. As long as these restaurants stayed open, William would always come back. Then he noticed the phone number to apply at the bottom of the article. dollars a week to apply call. Afton would go back. Not as an owner or co-founder. He would go back

in the one place that they would least suspect him, a lowly day shift security guard. And there it was. Buried in the back of parts and services mixed in with the old withered animatronics was the golden rabbit. With the yellow security badge still on his chest, he used his crank to pull open the spring locks.

It was time for Bonnie to give an encore performance. Someone used one of the suits. We had a spare in the back. The yellow one used it. Someone used it. The building them on previous employees. When we get it all sorted out, we may move you to the day chef. A position just became available. 1987.

Five more kids. He didn't know what felt better. Getting back into the suit after two long years of waiting, or knowing how devastating this would be to Henry the next morning. He didn't even try to hide his crime this time. Just meant more blood on Henry's hands. He'd failed to protect the kids again. The restaurant had only been open for a few weeks,

but William was sure that this would get it to close. Good. If he couldn't have Freddy's, no one would. Whenever a new pizzeria opened, he would be there. But as he sat in his bunker, something else started to linger in William's mind. He had seen something strange. The old withered animatronics, they had been wandering around the building, spurred on by the puppet. It was almost like those old robots were trying to save the kids.

Save them? They couldn't, obviously, but still, how were they moving? It was almost like they had been given life somehow. Did he have something to do with that? The following day, the news would report a security guard getting bitten by one of the animatronics during the day shift. Was that bite meant for, for him? William's curiosity was stronger now than his bloodlust. He had to learn more, but how? There was no way he'd ever be able to get inside another Freddy's Pizzeria.

Heck, there was practically no way a Freddy's would ever open again. He needed to create something new, something brand new. He needed to create his own pizzeria. Due to the massive success and even more so the unfortunate closing of Freddie Fassbear's pizza, it was clear that the stage was set, no pun intended, for another contender in children's entertainment. Circus Baby's Pizza World. This. This would be the place where he could continue his work. No longer just murdering, experimenting.

He needed more kids, and he needed them alive. And knowing that he couldn't show his face on the restaurant floor, he needed a way of remotely capturing his victims and preserving them for his work. With that goal in mind, he designed a new breed of animatronic, their endoskeletons, fluid and flexible. He equipped them with sound lores that could mimic voices. They could isolate children. They could incapacitate and contain them with zero direct input from him.

It was brilliant. He was brilliant. Far beyond the simple bars and wires of Henry's designs. And the characters he chose for this were uniquely his. His new roster wasn't going to be tainted by Henry's disgusting barnyard bird. Instead, it was back to his characters, his creations. Freddy, Bonnie, Foxy, as well as two special ones. The first, Ballora was an homage to the woman who left him.

Now she would never leave him again. The second, the titular baby was designed with his baby in mind, Elizabeth, his youngest child. She would always be Daddy's little girl, the one that listened to him, the one that obeyed until the day that she didn't. Daddy, make her just for me? The day before a circus baby's pizza world opened, she disobeyed. She didn't listen. Left alone with baby, she got too close. The animatronic ripped in half and swallowed her whole.

A scared and confused child fading into eternal darkness. By the time Afton found her, it was too late. She was gone. He immediately canceled the launch of circus babies under the guise of a gas leak. But wait, as he sat there at the foot of the stage, he noticed that something was different. The eye color of the robot had changed. Baby had been built with blue eyes, but now they were emerald green, the same color as Elizabeth's. Was she in there?

Could this all be connected to the free-moving animatronics that he had seen at Freddy's? He had to know more. His morning turned to excitement. He had to return to where it all started. 1993. Pathetic. This place was pathetic. Henry had clearly tried to reopen one final time with those old original animatronics from so long

ago, but William's damage to the brand had been permanent. These things stank of death. They hadn't been washed in decades. But even if they had, nothing could wash away the stink of murder that haunted these halls. One night, then another, then another. William repeatedly snuck into the old, broken restaurant to lure the living animatronics to him, one by one dismantling them, robbing them of their endoskeletons. The metal had to be the secret. It had to contain the remnants of life itself. But he had to know for sure. Leaping out of a room that was invisible to the animatronics programming, he dragged the oversized robotic skeletons back to his underground workshop, back to where Circus Baby watched on with glowing curious eyes, eyes that somehow felt alive.

Not knowing what else to do, William melted the robotic parts down. Five animatronic endoskeletons reduced down to one silvery puddle of goo. Could he transfer this living metal to his own creations? He had to try. He picked up a syringe and filled it with the molten metal and injected the goo into Funtime Freddy's twisted, wiry endoskeleton. And suddenly the coils came to life. Like snakes writhing in a pile what had once been cold lifeless metal moved and jolted on its own.

He'd done it! He had unlocked the secret to life itself. Except something was clearly wrong. The movements were erratic. They were violent, angry. Baby didn't act this way. She had been calm, collected. This was clearly something else.

Something mindless and frantic. Perhaps by mixing the souls and then portioning them out, he had created incomplete beasts. He would need to keep testing to truly understand it. He needed more of this remnant. As he searched the old pizzeria one more time for any remaining scraps of metal, the ghosts attacked. His past victims come to collect their due, all led by Cassidy. The five lined up and blocked the door, and Afton's mind reeled.

The scientific implications of this were incredible. Ghosts, real ghosts that he could see all standing against him. But what could they do? What couldn't they do? He panicked as Cassidy approached. How do you stop something that's already dead? Maybe with the thing that resulted in their death in the first place. He would get into his suit like old times.

He would regain his power over them just like the day that they died. He was the genius. He was the one in the suit. He was the one in chart! The spring lock snapped into place. Maybe it was his frantic movements. Maybe it was the leaky abandoned restaurant. Maybe it was just fate coming to collect its due.

He didn't know. The only thing he did know was that his brain was suddenly filled with searing white-hot pain as hundreds of metallic pins and gears stabbed into his body from all sides. All he could do was collapse, blood slowly oozing out of the suit and pulling onto the floor around. him. It couldn't end like this. It wouldn't end like this. His work was unfinished. Unable to move, his only option was to survive, to live, to keep living. It took days lying in his own blood, but eventually someone found him, a security guard making a normal report. When he saw the animatronics torn apart in the middle of the party room floor, it caused him to file an immediate

report of a break-in. An owner would have to come in and claim the damage. And who else would it be other than Henry? Hope jumped in Afton's heart. Henry would see him. They were partners, after He would be the one to help save him, to get him out of this suit, to relieve him from this tremendous pain. Henry entered the secret room. His eyes fell on Afton sitting there in the pool of red, and Henry, saying nothing, turned and walked away. This is just too much mentioned safe rooms that are being sealed at most locations. Management also requests at this room edited. And so there, Afton would sit, hanging on for 30 years, trapped behind the walls with an iron will that refused to die.

William still wasn't back. Weird. Michael knew his father sometimes traveled for work, disappearing for days on end, but usually there was some sort of notice. A phone call, a post-it, something. It's not like Michael and his father were close. Far from it. But as a household of two suffering men coping with years of tragedy and loss, there was at least some element of communication between the two of them. They were united by a name and a shared pain. This time though, things felt different. William had left nothing. His absence was longer. There were no check-ins, no updates,

just silence. Something had happened. If there was one thing Michael knew about his father, it was that he had contingencies, safety checks, backup plans. His father was a careful and guarded man. He held his cards close to his chest, and as such, William had prepared him in the event that something like this ever happened. Normally, his father kept his home office locked. But in the event of an unexpected, prolonged absence, Michael had been instructed to enter his father's office and look behind an empty set of shelves mounted in the corner of the room.

Rolling his eyes, Michael entered the office. Never fully understood how William was able to spend so many hours of his days locked up in here. There was just nothing to do. Most of this place was empty. He dragged himself over to the shelf in the corner, expecting to find an emergency contact list, a family safety deposit box. But what he actually found there was completely unexpected.

Father, it's me, Michael. I did it. I found it. It was right where you said it would be. The shelf swung open and revealed a giant industrial elevator, one that led straight down into an underground bunker. But that was impossible. Hidden inside his childhood home was a secret entrance.

to an enormous underground science layer? It didn't make any sense. Seriously, it didn't make any sense. And yet, here it was, mapped directly underneath the floor plan of the house that he'd grown up in, lost his brother in, been tortured in. Michael thought that he'd known his father, a prideful, sad, angry man with petty everyday problems,

but clearly he'd been living with a stranger this entire time. His father had secrets. Suddenly, the days of William being locked inside of his office made sense. He'd been here the entire. the entire time. Where was here though? Was this Circus Baby's Entertainment and Rentals? The Circus Baby Restaurant always did seem to be a deeply personal project for Father, a failure of his that cut unusually deep, especially after that first location had to be closed prematurely due to the gas leaks. After that day, Father really did seem to change,

to lose himself even more in his work. Clearly the entrance he had found was some sort of secret backway into the facility, one that required crawling through vents to navigate. His father had been working here, but in secret. Why? And the entrance he had been working here, but in secret. Why? And And that's when he found her. At the end of the facility, Circus Baby. His father's pride and joy. Except something was different about her. She wasn't like the others. The way she talked, the stories she told. This wasn't just a robot. She was alive somehow. And not only was she alive, she also felt familiar. There is something bad inside of me. I'm broken. I can't be fixed. Will you help me? Was this his sister? Williams' baby girl? But how? Why? What was this place?

He dug around some old files and found blueprints outlining the features of these animatronics, storage containers, voice mimicking, parental tracking. And was that a child in Freddy's stomach? Was his father collecting and experimenting on kids? Were all the rumors that he'd heard throughout his past actually true? That the animatronics came to life at night, that there were murders done in all the pizzerias, that his father had somehow been the prime suspect in all of it?

Suddenly, Michael's mind flashed back to his persistent nightmares throughout his childhood. had he been experimented on two? Tears stung in his eyes as anger, fear and confusion filled his body. His father's secrets were pouring out. William wasn't just a lame, overworked father. He was a monster, toying with life itself.

Suddenly everything clicked. He frantically looked around the room, blinking human heads on poles, staring back at him. Green eyes, his sister. Blue eyes, his brother. Closed eyes, his mom. All just staring expectantly.

These were meant to be human. William was working down here trying to, make-believable humans, literally rebuilding the family that they had both lost. The small little girl robots with their British accents roaming the hallways of this underground facility suddenly took on a whole new context. Were those meant to be his sister? A replacement for her? A clone? Was William building clones of his sister? They seemed to know him, after all, to react to his presence. They were all there. They didn't recognize me at first, but then they thought I was you. He always did have a bit of a resemblance to his father.

Michael's mind reeled as the reality of his world crumbled to dust. No. No, he had to get them out of there. If this really was his sister, heck, if any of these things were human, souls, whatever remnant of the humans that they once were, they needed to be rescued. They always put us back inside.

There's nowhere for us to hide here. Led by the voice of Circus Baby, he marched through the now-empty halls of the Fun Time Auditorium. He would lead them. He would protect them. And finally, he would be able to forget. He gave himself for the killing of his brother so many years. You are in the scooping room now.

The scooper only hurts for a moment. Scooper? That violent extraction arm? Michael had seen that one in the pile of blueprints. Something about heat rendering the magical silver metal inside useless. In reality, prior to getting himself spring-locked and put behind the wall, William's methods had become increasingly sophisticated, with a mechanized arm that could infuse new bodies with a soul.

William could finally give and take away life. The only thing he needed were the bodies. But William wasn't the only one looking for bodies, as Michael was about to learn. But if we looked like you, then we could hide. If we looked like you, then we would have somewhere to go. Michael was gonna be the hero to help these animatronics all right. He was gonna help the haunted tubes and wires of these animatronics escape, just not in the way that he anticipated.

His sister had lied to him, another game of pretend. The scooper plowed forward, digging its extraction arm into his body, as he heard his bones ripping through his flesh, Michael blacked out. But something is wrong with me. I should be dead, but I'm not. For the next several months, Michael's life was not his own. He was forced to comply with a tangle of wires and spirits that lived inside of him. His body felt like an overfilled balloon begging to burst as day by day, week by week, his flesh began to sag and discolour.

He was a walking, talking, a rotting corpse, alive, but wishing he was. He was a puppet, a walking shell. And while he did his best to conceal his fate, there was only so much a man filled with robot spaghetti could do. The entity in his innards would eventually leave, but by that point the damage had been done. His decaying flesh stank, turning him into a literal purple guy. But still, even with no bones,

even with rotting purple flesh and begging to die, Michael continued to live. That silvery metal remnant injected by the scooper meant that he couldn't die. His anger also refused to die. What he had seen down there in his sister's location, had rocked him to his core. His father had killed and captured dozens. His experiments had killed his sister and then tortured him throughout all his childhood. He was actively trying to build human replicants. He didn't know where his father was, but Michael knew that he was out there somewhere.

I've been living in shadows. There is only one thing left for me to do now. I'm going to come find you. Michael had to correct for the sins of his father. He had to make things right. Michael would burn Fasbear Entertainment to the ground. I mean, what else could you do when your skin was permanently purple. Michael's strategy was simple. He would apply for night security guard positions at the old defunct pizzeria locations. That way no one ever had to see him or smell him during his shift. And all these old shuttered locations did need guards. Teenage vandals and squatters were always looking to get inside these abandoned buildings, and yet no one ever really wanted to work an overnight graveyard shift unless they were practically out of options. Enter Mike. One by one, he would take on

the job of security guard, changing his name each time to ensure that no one was able to follow his paper trail. Once inside, he could tamper with the animatronics and figure out how they worked, writing about his experiences in his security logbook. While there, he would listen to the old tapes where upper management awkwardly welcomed new recruits to their summer jobs, even though he was working there nowhere near the summer months. He heard the gory details of his father's franchise from the outsiders looking in, confused and afraid about what was happening in the walls around them. Sometimes he would see his brother in the form of the golden Freddy suit. It's me appearing on the walls around him. Except now, there was something else there. He was no longer

alone. Another angrier presence was also in the suit, as if two spirits were forced to share the same body. And Golden Freddy would attack him now. It was aggressive. Its vengeance wanted to lash out at anyone with the Aftain name, anyone who wore a security guard outfit. Over time, Mike worked his way through the old restaurants, the original pizzeria, the bigger, better Freddy Fasbears. He spent weeks there looking for clues as to his father's whereabouts. And each time at the end of his week's shift, he would then set the location on fire. Remnant can't survive high temperatures after all. So burning away whatever spirit-laden animatronics that still existed inside seemed like a winning strategy. All this revisiting of his past, though, was causing the nightmares to begin again.

Hallucinations that brought him back to his childhood. The guilt around killing his brother. His dreams were oddly mixed with the shrill phone calls of the security guards. But it would all be worth it in the end. The goal was to eventually, eventually stumble across the one location, the one job that would finally reunite him with his father. Little did Mike know that that day would come sooner than he expected. 2023, an advertisement came across Mike's TV.

Fasbear Frights, a new horror attraction inspired by the awful crimes that occurred around Freddie Fasbear's pizza so many years ago. It made Mike sick. People looking to make a quick buck off the tragedy of others, off his own family. This wasn't a joke or entertainment. Regardless, he had to be a part of it. If this team was combing through his family's history, they might stumble across something that could be useful. And if his father was truly still alive as he suspected, there would be no way that he wouldn't show up here. Maybe finally.

Finally, this could be the final chapter in his family. family's marathon of tragedy. Mike applied for the job and was immediately handed the keys. Years of doing this and taught him that security guards rarely received thorough security checks. They also liked how creepy Mike looked. They thought it was a costume, on theme for the job. What little they knew. Hey, hey, glad you don't be alive. For weeks, there was nothing. But just as Mike considered giving up, he received the call that he'd been waiting for for years. Could this finally be him?

Sure enough, there he was. William inside his iconic Golden Bonnie Springlock suit, only now it was green and decaying. with age. And there they were, a small family of broken men finally reunited. It's been a long time, Dad. Mike had always struggled with the phantoms of his past haunting him. But now, all the animatronics he'd encountered over the past months hopping from pizzeria to pizzeria suddenly sprang to life. Their burned faces haunting him as he tried to keep track of his father on the cameras. It would seem that William's mere presence had put the spirits on high alert. Ultimately, they were harmless, more annoying than anything else. But there was one that felt different from the others,

one that was more than just a mere phantom, the security puppet. If he looked at the cameras at just the right moment, he could see it floating there through the halls. He could even see its reflection in the water pooled on the ground. It would seem like he wasn't the only one there on a mission. While he was dealing with spring trap, Michael assumed that this one was likely dealing with the spirits of this place, finally setting them to rest.

Hopefully this means a happier day for all of us, Mike thought to himself. And in that moment, he felt the air around him release, like pressure being let out of a bottle. The building sighed as if five spirits had finally been allowed to move on. He had the sense that his brother was a part of them. He rigged the wiring inside the building to misfire and the dry, desiccated walls erupted in flames. It is finished.

Except, it was not. Somehow, through sheer force of will, Afton remained. He had survived, and Mike would need to find a new way of finishing off his father. Luckily, the solution would present itself later that year. Not from Mike, but from another victim that had been left in his father's wake. We're talking about becoming a Fasbear Entertainment franchisee. Restaurant ownership and management. Something almost anyone can do with a limited degree of success. You are now the face of the newly rebranded Freddie Fasbears Pizza.

Fasbear Entertainment as a brand had been closed for years. William had been stuck in a suit in a wall. The only person who legally could bring the franchise back was Henry. But he'd largely pulled out of the franchise around the time of his father's disappearance. Something was up. Surely this had to be some kind of a trick, right? Mike, do and when he did best, applied for a franchise, and immediately got the job. There was just one thing out of the ordinary.

Paragraph 4. If you are playing this tape, that means that not only have you been checking outside at the end of every shift, as you were instructed to do, but also that you have found something that meets the criteria of your special obligations under paragraph 4. No employment contract he'd ever signed required him to keep special lookout for independently moving animatronics outside the restaurant. Now he knew something was up here. Henry was luring them all back. Rather than trying to go to them, like Mike had done for years, Henry was doing the opposite. He was putting them all under the same roof. He was finishing them off for good. Mike knew this wasn't meant to be a restaurant. It was meant to be a prison, a containment vessel, a locked box, meant to trap them all in so they could finally end the madness.

It took a few nights, but eventually everyone was there. His father, the puppet, the robot spaghetti that had once violated his body, and his sister, now hopelessly devoted to serve the man that had once gotten or killed. It was time. He had been instructed to seal the doors and leave, but while he locked everything down, he didn't move on. If this was truly meant to be the end, if the remnant needed to be washed away, he needed to be a part of that. This is where your story ends. And to you, my brave volunteer, who somehow found this job listing not intended for you. Although there was a way out plan for you, I have a feeling that's not what you want. I have a feeling that you are right where you want to be.

And to you monsters trapped in the corridors. Be still and give up your spirits. They don't belong to you. For most of you, I believe there is my best. and perhaps more waiting for you after the smoke clears. Although for one of you, the darkest pit of hell has opened to swallow you whole. So don't keep the devil waiting for friend. And with that, it was over.

The Afton legacy died with all of them trapped inside of a literal box. As the flames danced around the office, Mike, for the first time in decades, was happy. But William wasn't gone yet. Although the darkest pit of hell was open and waiting for him, something or someone wouldn't allow him to move on. Instead, he found himself locked in moments from his past. The pizzeria, his son's room, his underground bunker. It was as if his brain's neurons were all firing at once, overloaded, mixing and matching all his biggest fears, regrets, failures.

What was this place? How did he get here? He called out into the silence. Then they started coming. Without warning, animatronics both new and old began to jump out at him. Bite him, rip him limb from limb. The pain was immeasurable. Make it stop.

Make it stop. William, for the first time, longed for death. an end to this torture, just as it felt like he couldn't take it anymore. Everything was quiet again. It was as if the world had been reset. There was a brief moment of quiet, and then the onslaught began again. Dozens of faces from his past all focused on him. A waking nightmare that he couldn't escape from.

More pain, more ripping. It was his own personal hell, but why? Why couldn't he just die? And then he saw them. A group of characters he never thought he'd see again. Those janky, stolen characters that had started everything. The mediocre melodies. It had all started to go wrong once they showed up, once Henry had made them.

But mixed in with their obnoxious southern drolls, William heard something else. It was barely a whisper, but he could just make out the words. He tried to release you. He tried to release us. But I'm not going to let that happen. I will hold you here. I will keep you here. No matter how many times they burn us.

That voice. He knew that voice. From where? Greetings for that. The one he shouldn't have killed. William thought back. He'd done a lot of awful things, but there was always the one that stood out. Not Charlie, his drunken act of revenge.

Not Susie, his first true murder, no. Instead, it was the one that he had lost control with. The one that he had broken beyond repair for no good reason other than because he could. The one that he'd stuffed inside the golden bear that his partner used to wear. Cassidy, they were back. And now they were trying to punish him to make him suffer like he'd made them suffer. It was almost like William and Cassidy's souls had been locked together, fused by a collective rage in spite, each refusing to move on.

But while Cassidy was so focused on taking revenge, they actually did the one thing that would be the downfall for so many others. They kept William alive. Even though fire should have destroyed the remnant that was coursing through his being, Cassidy kept William breathing, paving the way for his escape. William's will was so strong. His soul so powerful that he managed to put a part of himself inside the circuitry that housed the springlock suit. And there his consciousness lay inside a single circuit board waiting,

waiting for someone to find him and set him free, a person that no one would suspect. Fasbear Entertainment was dead. There is no need for you to return to work next week, as Fasbear Entertainment is no longer a corporate entity. All debts had been paid, all assets redistributed. The company was outright dissolved. Even the memories of the horrors that had happened there

started to fade away in the public consciousness. The people were gone, too. William was dead. Henry was gone. A whole generation of young Emmys and Aftons had lost their lives to the horrors of, the pizzeria, all of them collateral damage to the man in the bunny suit. Everyone the company had ever touched was dead and gone.

Well, all except one. Pay your child support, you deadbeat. I'm keeping the diamond ring. I also set the house on fire. Clara Afton. She'd been there in the early days. Back when things with William were good, they'd had the perfect home, a thriving business, the ideal family.

But shortly after their youngest son died, things started to change. William had become distant, lost in his work, obsessive. She had watched him change from this irritatingly brilliant man that she had fallen in love with to a drunken monster struggling to hold himself together. And despite her trying to reach out to him in those desperate days, he was just too far gone. You wanted to let me in. For her sake, she had to leave the relationship. And from there, she largely faded into obscurity. A mystery from Williams' past, a footnote in his history. And that was fine for her. She wanted to leave that part of her life behind. She tried to move forward.

never wanting to hear the name Freddie Fasbear again, a time defined by mistakes and broken promises. But then, the paperwork started to arrive. As Fasbear Entertainment began to close as a corporate entity, suddenly her mail was flooded with notifications, requests, obligations. She had been there since the beginning, helping William in the early days of his business. And now, as a shareholder and sole living member of the Afton family, all copyrights and trademarks of both Afton Robotics and Fasbear Entertainment passed on to her. memories of this past life that she had long left behind.

Looking at the blueprints, the contracts, the memos, she felt old wounds begin to reopen, the regrets of a happy family that had been torn away from her. William had always been brilliant. That's what had attracted her to him in the first place. But he'd also been too blinded by obsession and pride. He was too jealous, too petty, too unable to actually see a bigger picture. But now, holding the paperwork that contained decades of heartbreak and trauma,

she realized it was her turn. holding the power. This was her chance, and one thought resonated in her head. I will put them back together. I will put them all back together. She would be the one to rebuild this family, to rebuild the pieces of that shattered life, to reclaim the kids that Fasbear had stolen from her. But how? Looking at Williams' work now laid out before her, she knew that he had been on to something, collecting remnant, robotic humanoids, digital conscience transference, the pieces were all in place. They were just scattered, fragmented. It was almost like there were too many ideas going in too many different directions. It was such an important idea that she reiterated that point to herself.

There were too many ideas going in too many different directions. That said, there had to be a way to save it all. She just needed to put it all back together. But how? To rebuild her family, she would first need to rebuild the franchise that had stolen them away from her. With ownership over the characters, their licenses, the technology patents, and the Fasbear name, she converted the corporation back to an LLC, a structure for smaller businesses that are usually family-owned. Ah, the irony was fitting.

From there, she would need Remnant, and lots of it. Remnant was the key. Clearly, in the later years of his life, William had been using Circus Babies, Entertainment, and Rentals as a Remnant Farm, sending robots to kids' birthday parties in the hopes of nabbing bits of the stuff here and there. But clearly, it wasn't enough. He had, what, like, four, maybe five animatronics going out every week?

No. It was a decent idea, but to get the Remnant, they required it needed scale. Dozens, hundreds of animatronics all out there, all gathering remnant from unsuspecting customers. But to do that would require help, something William would never ask for.

William had kept everything in-house. His obsession with control limited him. Clara, though, she wasn't nearly that precious. A plan like this required partners. People outside a FASBair to do the heavy lifting. So, she contacted a mid-sized delivery company, DLZ shipping solutions to help build replicas of all the original animatronics.

And with meal delivery apps being all the rage, why not an animatronic delivery service? Order one to celebrate your birthday, your Halloween party. How about a Fourth of July picnic? We'll invite Liberty Chica and Fourth of July Freddy on over. She would make sure that they made skins for every occasion. Chocolate bonnies for Easter, Shamrock Freddy's for St. Patrick's Day, Dia de les Muerretaire Chiquetas.

And thus, the Fasbear Fun Time Service was born. That's right, with the Fass Bear Fun Time Service, you'll never be alone again. You'll always have someone watching your back. Was it ridiculous? Absolutely. Was it a sellout? No doubt.

It was exactly the sort of thing that William would have hated. But it needed to be done to get enough remnant. Normally, the novelty of ordering an animatronic wore off after like what? One, maybe two times. But with new skins for new holidays, suddenly you had yourself an animatronic perfect for every occasion. It would keep people hooked. It would keep them ordering the latest and greatest that Fasbury Entertainment LLC had to offer.

And all the while, they'd be collecting and returning the remnant back to her. In a word, it was brilliant. There was just one problem with it. No one trusted the Fasbear name. The company's brand was still mud in the public eye. No one would want to hire animatronics from the restaurant franchise known for murdering children. Nothing kills a party quite like the threat of death, you know. So, she needed to find a way to discredit the stories that had come before.

She needed to win back the public's affections, reactivate some nostalgia for the spooky stories of their childhoods. She needed a game. Multiple games, in fact. They lied to us. They lied to all of us. They told us that the whole point of this VR game was to undo the bad PR done by a rogue indie game developer. But that's not true at all. Those indie games were designed to conceal and make light of what happened. This isn't just an attempt to rebrand. It's an elaborate cover-up. Struggling game developers were a dime a dozen online, most working on their magnum opus between shifts at the Dollar General.

So she found one. Steve just picked him out of obscurity. The right mix of desperate and doofists willing to say and do anything for a couple extra bucks. And he fell right in line, as expected, delivering stupid little things with dumb generic names like Mangles Quest, balloon boys' air adventure. Five nights at Freddy's. Bad gameplay with even worse graphics, but hey, they got the job done. People were suddenly talking about the clues inside of these things, searching for the hidden lore. They were actively making jokes about dead kids at pizzerias. Her husband's twisted history of serial murderer had suddenly been reduced to a mere Nancy Drew mystery to be solved. The plan had worked. Freddie Fasbears was suddenly more popular than ever.

Things were going shockingly well. Her takeover and reboot of the franchise was full and complete. Suddenly infused with cash, she built the largest, most ambitious project yet, the mega pizzaplex. William had always been so visionary, but always thought so small scale. He was careful to a fault. Not her, though. She knew that this latest project needed to be big. It needed to be flashy.

It needed to be a palace for children. A place that got people talking and checking out the latest in FASBARE products. So with a steady supply of remnant flowing in, it was finally time. The stage was set. It was time to get to her real goal, literally rebuilding a family. March, 2035. The first was obvious, a crying child. Her little boy, the one that was the first to get ripped away from her.

She'd seen down in his bunker that William had gotten very close to replicating artificial humans using animatronic technology. And so that's exactly what she would do. rebuild her boy from the ground up using robotic parts. His shaggy brown hair, his favorite striped shirt, even down to small details that no one would notice, like the Band-Aid on his left knee. Williams' research had even found ways of making animatronics that could bleed and process food,

making them virtually indistinguishable from a typical human. He would never have any idea of what he actually was unless he was explicitly told. The only things that could possibly ruin the illusion were any overrides to his internal systems. If something were to say, interfere with the cameras that he had had in his eyes, or cause some sort of a core reboot to his hard drive, or x-ray his metallic bones, then yeah, he would be exposed, but otherwise, to the outside world, he was just your typical

normal human boy. She worked down in the bowels of the Pizzaplex giving him life, but it was one thing to build him was another to help him remember his identity. He died so young, so early in their history that there was no preserved memories for him, no documentation that she could just download into his digital brain, so bit by bit she trained him, forcing him to remember who he was. In a corner of the room, she even made a makeshift dinner table. A reminder of their happier days. The family recreated two brothers, a sister, a father, and the mother at the head of the table. The one in charge.

The one in command. The one bringing all of this to fruition. But his progress was admittedly slower than she would have liked. At first, he could only communicate through simple ones and zeros, then rudimentary drawings and crude letters. But bit by bit, images of his past life started to come through. Balloons, colors, houses, bears, and face. birthdays, birthday parties, all for me.

Gregory was alive. As the robot boy embraced her, she felt a warmth that she hadn't in decades. This, this was the joy that she'd been working towards. This was what it was all for, her son, back in her arms again. The plan was working. She had to keep going. Next was William. If the family was truly going to be put together, she would need him. And she knew exactly where he was, in the ruins of that old Freddy Fasbear's pizza place

where Henry had trapped him. In fact, that's specifically why she insisted on building the the Pizzaplex there over the sinkhole was the best place to hide what her true intentions were with the entire operation Digging through the wreckage she found him. He was right where she thought he'd be Seeing the putrid shell of the spring trap suit though was not something she was prepared for The rotting corpse of William Afton was disgusting scorched flesh fused into the fur lining Hollow black sockets where eyes once were a smell that reeked of burned carbon and bloody iron He was no longer flesh. It was just the tangled sinews of a creature and

that was once called human. How far this brilliant man had fallen. It was clear that her work was cut out for her on this one. Afton was practically lifeless. The man may not have been able to die, but he was about as close as you could come. And his body would need a lot of reconstruction. Replacement arms and endoskeleton reinforcements were the top priority. Maybe pulled from their new line of glam rock animatronics.

She'd have to see if they had any spare Bonnie parts lying around that they could steal. In the meantime, though, she threw the husk that was once her husband into a life support pod infused with aerosolized remnant to help keep him stable. But more important than recovering his body was recovering his mind. In his current state, he was comatose, an empty shell. Severe brain damage starts at temperatures over 108 degrees Fahrenheit, 42 degrees Celsius, and years of repeated fires had burned his brain to goo. Gone was the brilliant, frustrating mind that had drawn her to him in the first place, but she had a plan. Unlike her darling boy Gregory, Afton had found ways to record his consciousness. Fundamentally, the brain is only a series of electrical connections

after all, so why couldn't you replicate that in the form of a standard circuit board? In essence, you could create a digital consciousness. And one thing she knew about William, he was nothing if not cautious. A planner, someone who had backup plans to his backup plans. And sure enough, there it was, buried in piles of old animatronic CPUs, a record of Afton himself. But she needed someone to test it. Someone was definitely here during the night. It had to have been the client.

I mean, they sent us that stuff in the first place with no explanation, told to scan it, said it would expedite the process so we wouldn't need to program any pathfinding ourselves. Unlike the other games that she'd paid to have made in the past, this one had a different purpose. This wasn't about PR, it was about getting William back up and running, spreading his virus to the masses. You acknowledge that FASBair Entertainment is not responsible for accidental digital consciousness transference, real-world manifestations of digital characters. She hired a new developer, Silver Parasol Games, to scan the boards and bring her husband into the system. And because of the immersive nature of VR, William's consciousness would be able to merge with the player,

giving him a new body, a new agency. There was just one complication. Afton's hold wasn't as powerful as she had hoped. He wasn't able to gain complete control. The first trial run, Jeremy, was so desperate to escape from his grasp that he sliced his own face off with a paper shredder. Messy. Afton's followers were reluctant, to say the least. But it was the second attempt that looked like it had the potential to kill two birds with one stone.

Enter Vanessa. Mrs. Afton wanted a surrogate daughter. Her darling Elizabeth would have been a young woman at this point if she had lived. And Clara wanted someone who wasn't Elizabeth, but could be just like her. Could she have just rebuilt her like Gregory? Sure, but she decided against it because she wanted an actual human mother-daughter connection. Well, that, and it would be redundant and narratively unsatisfying to have two robot kids in the same family. What could she say?

William had put a lot of tools on the table for her to use, and she was planning on using them all. Plus, Elizabeth had always been so loyal to Daddy. It was time to give her a second chance, a true choice. And Vanessa seemed to be the perfect candidate to fill the role. Your dad's name was Bill. Your dad didn't play a fair, did he? He used to make your mom look bad in court. He manipulated you.

I know your mom... After she lost the custody case. I was supposed to be a good girl. She started as a QA tester at Silver Parasol Games, a VR game development company that was part of her plan to bring back William. But more importantly, Vanessa checked all the correct boxes. Right age, blonde, green eyes with a fondness for flowers in the outdoors. In many ways, it was her daughter all over again. Except, it wasn't just looks and personality.

What really mattered was Vanessa's mind. Underconfident, coming from a broken home, motherless, able to be manipulated. Yes, she would do nicely. She would be the one to save dear old daddy, just as the real Elizabeth would have wanted. I will make you proud, Daddy. While testing the VR game, Williams' digital consciousness merged with Vanessa. Oh, sure. She's just, she's. fought, fragmenting Afton's code into a series of tapes hidden across the game, trying to do web

searches to regain control over her life, but it wasn't enough. She was weaker than Jeremy. She was a thrall that, despite occasional moments of lucidity, had to obey. And with Vanessa, it was a two-for-one deal. She was getting a daughter back while also bringing her husband one step closer to reactivation. She just had to make sure that Vanessa was headed the right way. The reborn Gregory was an expert hacker, part of the benefits of being an Afton and a robot. So Clara had him keeping tabs on Vanessa. into her emails and trailing her therapy sessions to ensure the future Elizabeth was falling in line. If any of the therapists started to ask too many questions, they were promptly dismissed from their positions. And while Gregory kept tabs on Vanessa's personal life, Mrs. Afton made sure to clear a path for her professionally.

With silver parasols collapse at the hands of the anomaly, she then had the possessed Vanessa bring the contaminated circuit boards to DLZ shipping and the Fasbear Fun Time service. More glitches, more remnant, more Afton. But it was her last move that was the best. And a true masterpiece of poetry, she brought Vanessa over to be chief security officer at the PizzaPlex. A true family tradition to don the hat and badge. And all it took was a recommendation from the top as well as some emails marked for deletion. Sure, Vanessa didn't have relevant experience for the job, but when it comes directly from the CEO, does it really matter? Husband, son, daughter.

A corpse, a robot, a human. All that was left was Michael. Poor troubled Michael. The boy that killed her youngest, the one that would spend years trying to make his guilty conscience right again, a self-professed protector. While she knew she needed him to complete the family, something told her that the problem had already solved itself. Something had shifted when using Glamrock Freddy to excavate the buried pizza place.

I have been here before. I found myself for the first time when I cleared the path. I have changed. My friends are here. But I can protect you. I am not. Maybe it was the remnant that had coursed through Michael's veins. Maybe it was the spirit of Michael living on as a protector.

But he was there somewhere inside of Glamrock Freddy. She could feel it. And just like that, she'd won. She'd done it. Sure, there were still some kinks to work out, some final brainwashing of Vanessa, some rehabilitation of William. But they were there. Finally, all together again under one roof,

the Aftons reunited. A happy ending. That's how it could have ended. That's how it should have ended. Had it not been for a few unanticipated developments. For one, something was just wrong with the Pizza Plex, almost as if the entire building was haunted, possessed. Puppet plushies hiding on ceilings, behind crates, places that they had no earthly way of belonging. Staffbots with greasy tears down their eyes acting like they were being puppeteered by some sort of a nightmare.

Even their sounds had the echo of nightmares long past. It was as though a guardian spirit of the past refused to move on. As long as her husband was around, it too would linger. Only now, it wasn't just in one body, but it was in the essence of the building itself. She had seen stories of houses built on burial grounds getting possessed by angry spirits, but she'd never assumed that it could be real. Then again, in a world of living spirit metal and mind-control glitches, who was she to be so judgmental?

The whole thing was ridiculous. Why would this be the line that she refused to cross? After all, the Pizzoplex was built over the burial ground of angry spirits, but it was the power cords that finally convinced her that something was wrong. Suddenly, these cords were striped black and white, like the security puppet from generations ago. The very foundations of this place, the materials and wires that constituted it, were rebelling against her, against the aftons, against the quest to bring them all together again. And it was being helped by something else, something slithering through the building. Maybe they were connected, she couldn't be sure, but a blob of living wires could be heard oozing through the walls,

stealing pieces and parts of the old animatronics showcased in Rockstar Row. She could only assume that it was a byproduct of all the remnant they'd been collecting. From Afton's testing, she knew that both light and dark remnant existed, one of positive emotions, and the other created from anguish, anger, agony. Perhaps this, this thing, was an amalgamation of all the darkest parts of the pizzeria's history, a collection of the hatred still housed inside these defunct endoskeletons and exosuits. As long as it was left alone, it seemed to be harmless. But if any Afton outside of Michael got too close, it would lash out wildly.

Even young Gregory, looking to punish the family that had been complicit in its horrible creation. Little did she know, though, that Gregory should have been her biggest concern, that bringing the family together would have some unforeseen consequences. Gregory was normally the goodest of boys. She had literally built him that way. But lately, he'd been disappearing more and more often, disobeying her orders, requests. She knew that he loved playing on the arcade machines once the Pizsplex closed, being so good as to top the leaderboard on practically all of them.

But lately, he was nowhere to be found. She suspected his absence had to do with Glamrock Freddy's failed performance the other night, when he malfunctioned live on stage. Almost as though the core programming of Freddy responded to seeing this rebuilt small boy. Almost like it awakened something inside of him. She'd have to make sure that Vanessa was on the lookout for him. But she'd soon come to learn that Vanessa wasn't enough. Whether it was the influence of the nightmare puppet or a reawakened hatred of animatronics seated deep in Gregory's code,

something had caused him to rebel. To rip apart each animatronic in the Pizzaplex. Bit by bit this boy was tearing down the empire that she'd so painstakingly built. Freeing Vanessa from her mind control, destroying the remains of Afton in the basement, setting glam rock Freddy loose, as her carefully created world crumbled around her one more time, she began to plot her revenge.

She would have to bring them all to ruin. And with that, my friends, I'm wrapping this thing up. Congratulations, we are on page 40. 22,000 words of fnaf, baby. Practically just wrote myself a Tales of the Pizeplex short story. answered everything? No. Does everything fit cleanly? No. But does it feel like the best and most cohesive narrative for all these characters that addresses most of the evidence we're given? Yeah. For me, honestly, it really does. And let's be honest with ourselves, the DLC will probably

come out later this year and prove me completely wrong. Wouldn't be the first time. Then comes the movie, whatever. My descent to madness continues. But regardless, we can finally rest. I can leave the demon to its demons with one final reminder that it was all just a theory. A game theory. Thanks for watching.