Game Theory - Was FNAF's Final Mystery REALLY That Simple?

Episode Date: November 20, 2024

Join Game Theory Host Tom as he reviews a popular FNAF theory on the name of the Crying Child, found in the Secutity Logbook

After nine years and countless theories, the Crying Child's name has been found. That's right, on screen right now is the real name of FNAF 4's Crying Child. And by the end of this episode, you're going to know exactly which one it is. Hello, Internet. Welcome to Game Theory, the show that's just desperately trying to keep up with the FNAF content train. It feels like there's been a lot, right? We had all that stuff from the 10th anniversary. We've had our first full entry into the Choose Your Own Adventure Style Style.

book series, there's even a fnaf level in the new Funko Fusion game. I swear if there is law in this thing, I am going to scream. But while I was busy just trying to keep on top of all of that, someone else decided that it would be fun to add one final slice to my already oversized mountain of lore pizza. Fellow theorist and friend of the channel, Hyperdroid. Now normally another theorist posting a theory of their own doesn't particularly slow me down. I'd normally finish writing what I'm doing and then I'd go back and watch that later. But this one was different because he claimed he'd done the impossible.

He claimed that after years of speculation, he'd finally found the name of the crying child. That is a massive claim, especially when so many others had tried and failed in the past, but it wasn't all talk. He backed it up with some pretty solid evidence that the fan base seemed to love. We were inundated with messages on our subreddit, Twitter, YouTube comments, all asking us one thing. Is he right? And I get it. Hyperdroid is a fantastic theorist, but this particular puzzle has alluded us for so long, to the point where most of us just thought it would never be solved. If he is right and we're all going to start calling the crying child something other than

the crying child, we want to make sure it stands up to scrutiny. Don't want to be caught backing the wrong animatronic horse. So, let's go through the evidence he's presented, the methods he's used, and see whether this new name holds water. Ladies and gentlemen, it's, um, um, Huh. Can't use Morty anymore, can we? And doesn't look like Matt's going to be interrupting me this time. Hmm, gotta come up with something new. Oh, I know. Leave your theories in the comments below.

I'll pick my favorite in the next episode of Trash. Yeah, that's about right. I guess that's what happens when I let Yosie pick the acronym. Let's give a trash take then, shall we? To understand how Hyperdroid came to find this new name, we first need to recap where the mysteries started. The Survival Logbook. After the release of FNAF6, we got this book that seemed to just be a kid's puzzle book,

but it turned out to be one of the biggest law clues in the entire series. And I really do mean that. Inside, we have three characters talking to us. Mike Afton writing in red pen, a ghostly spirit writing in faded text, and a final spirit altering the physical text of the book. Across several pages, the faded text wrote the words, My Name. And on one page, my name was written on a gravestone.

This reflected the fifth gravestone with no name that we found. at the end of FNAF 6. Thanks to Reddit user D Powerful 1, we realised that you could take the altered numbers on the pages where the words my name were found and use those as coordinates for the word search, giving us the name Cassidy, the fifth missing child.

This, in of itself, was a huge dub for the FNAF community. But it was kind of bittersweet because there was another puzzle in this book that remained unsolved, the Foxy Grid. This grid had faded letters in the first few boxes, showing us that we needed to fill in the rest, and likely meaning we needed more coordinates to figure out a new name. The name of the spirit writing an altered text in the book.

Based on Cassidy's questions about the purple plastic telephone, psychic friend Fred Bear, as well as a birthday party that was for you, all things seemed to be pointing to this final spirit, being FnaFor's crying child. The Foxy Grid was going to finally help us figure out the name of this character. The problem was nobody could solve it. Matt was literally ripping his hair out for it. years over this thing. Some people tried to find the name in other places and then reverse

engineer a solution. In Help Wanted, the FnaF4 bedroom was called Norman Bedroom. So maybe Norman? Some people thought Garrett because that's Mike's brother in the recent movie. Some even thought it might be Gregory because he's designed in a similar way to the crying child. But none of them were able to link it back to the foxy grid and so it just felt inconclusive. A few Reddit users found the phrase is Springtrap using six Cassidy coordinates and six My Name page numbers. This seemed to pair nicely with My Name because it matched the Naf3 teaser, my name is Springtrap and implied therefore that the ghostly text was actually Afton speaking to the crying child whose name would therefore be Cassidy.

But sadly, this solution ignores the seventh coordinate needed to make up the name Cassidy in the first place. And so by cherry picking six of the coordinates, it kind of causes the whole thing to fall apart. Finally, the most simple and well-known of the theories was offered by Reddit user Wolfie 1740 Kingdom. They matched the questions that Cassidy was asking to the answers given by the the crying child in altered text. The party was for you.

It was for me. What do you see? I can't see. Does he still talk to you? I can hear sounds. This gave them the letters E, V and A. But they weren't really able to figure out the final letter. Another Reddit user, Godzilla 813105, did manage to find a solution.

They added up the tally marks to give them the final coordinates 39, leading to the letter N and the name Evan. A lot of people really liked this name and thought it was an interesting theory, but because Because you had to break the method on that final letter, it was just too tough a moon drop to swallow. Enter Hyperdroid. He too liked the initial method posed by Wolfey, but he agreed that the final letter would need to follow the same method, especially as Crying Child does offer a fourth answer. I'm scared.

So, he took the same three answers to get the letters E, V and A, but rather than skipping the fourth answer, he tried to match it to another one of the questions. On page 41, Cassidy asks, do you have dreams? Initially, that doesn't seem to make a lot of sense given the response, but I Underneath that question, Mike has drawn a picture of nightmare. The nightmare animatronics came from William's experiments on his kids, and it's been theorized that this is what was used to make the crying child scared of the animatronics in FNAF 4. That means the crying child would not only know what this is, but would also be afraid of it,

leading to him giving the seemingly non-direct answer, I'm scared. Taking the page number for that question, you can plug it into the foxy grid and get the letter D, spelling Evad. Then noticing all the references the book had to reflect. Along with the random mirror next to the word search that's never been used for anything, HyperDroid reflected the answer, giving them the crying child's name. D-A-V-E, Dave. Everybody lost their frontal loads over this.

But Hyperdroid wasn't done. Not only did he offer the initial solution, he also went classic game theory on all of us and used some real-world evidence. He calls out that Dave, or more accurately the full name, David, was the third, to fifth most popular baby name for boys between 1970 and 1980, around the time that he would have been born. I love the fact he did this. Real world evidence is so useful for theory crafting. It can give you insight into things that the games or books might otherwise not. And given how important this name is, I wouldn't be surprised if Scott had actually done some real world research himself into the name. And what's more, I think we can actually expand upon Hyperdroid's idea here by getting a little more specific. So let's give it a go.

depicted as taking place in Hurricane Utah. According to the United States Social Security Administration, between 1970 and 1980, David switched positions a few times, occupying either the fourth, the third, the second, or the first most popular spots, higher than what Hyperdroid presented. So we're off to a pretty good start. Although, there is one detail about the aftons

that we never really talk about that could change all of this. Ludwig actually mentioned it when he binged all of the FNAFLA with Matt on stream. Matt, why are they British? Why are they British? The kids are raised in Utah and they sound British. When the aftons speak, they sound British. Likely somewhere from England based on the accents.

I'd like to say it's nice to have some British representation in video games, but I'm not really sure this is the one I'd want to claim. Anyway, this detail could throw a spanner into the works, as there's a chance that William named his kids based on what was popular back home rather than where they lived now. So, was David still a popular name in the UK? Thankfully, the answer is abs so freaking loot. More so than in America, actually.

According to the Office of National Statistics, David was the most popular name for boys in England from 1954 to 1974. After that, between 1974 and 1994, it only dropped down to number three. So still, this is looking like a pretty solid piece of evidence right now. Plus, we can actually take it a step further. Wanna guess what other name was in the top 10 baby boy names during the 70s? Michael. In the UK, Michael was the ninth most popular name for a boy, and in Utah, it was literally the number one name,

every year in the 70s except 1973, where it was overtaken by Jason. Of course, Jason had to ruin the perfect streak. Hashtag blame Jason, am I right? Regardless, again, this seems to be lining up pretty well. But what about the final Afton child? Elizabeth. Well, she is also on these lists, although she's nowhere near as popular. In the UK for that time, she was sitting between 20th and 25th most popular name.

And in Utah, it's similar. anywhere between 19th to 24th. That's not really as high as I'd like for it to feel like a solid connection. It isn't super bad. It would be way worse if the names were like 50th or 100th most popular, you know. But if this is being used as evidence for how Scott picked his names, then Elizabeth would likely need to follow that same pattern. And in reality, she'd have then ended up being called something like Sarah or Jennifer,

both number one names for the time period in the UK and Utah, respectively. Therefore, while David was a really popular name between the 1970s and 80s, kind of feels like a weaker connection. Maybe Scott just thought Elizabeth sounded more British because that was the queen at the time. Who knows? No need to worry though, because that wasn't the only real-world evidence Hyperdroid used. He also mentioned the meaning of the name David. While it was a popular name in both the UK and the US, it's actually of Hebrew origin, meaning beloved. Fun fact, Thomas also comes from a Hebrew word that means twin. I'm not a twin, at least as far as I know, maybe you could let me know down in the comments if you think you found my long-loss twin.

For this theory, though, hyperdroid claims that the meaning does make sense. He connects the meaning of Beloved to the crying child's brother Mike, and how his whole character arc is caused by killing his brother, showing us that his brother Dave was beloved by him. This is where I have to press X to doubt. While, yes, Michael does say sorry to his brother by the end of Fnaf 4, the rest of his actions don't really say that he considered his brother beloved. He jumpscares him, he actively puts him into an animatronic,

he doesn't seem to care about him at all. After that, his actions seemed to be spurred on more by his father. Afton sent him down into sister location where he then learned about Elizabeth and the monster his father was, and so went on a quest to destroy him. Some of that may have come from the guilt of killing his brother, but I'm just not convinced enough to say that Michael considered his brother beloved. Now, that doesn't mean that I think the meaning David being beloved is invalid evidence at all. He may not have been beloved by Michael, but he was beloved by someone else.

William. William didn't want his little boy gone. He didn't want him to die. He needed to save him. I will put you back together. We've also believed for a long while that he killed Charlie in a drunken or emotional rage after the death of his own son. That wouldn't happen if he didn't care about his kid if his son wasn't beloved. And by associating that meaning with Afton, other pieces fall into place for the other Afton kids as well. Michael once again comes from the Hebrew language and it means who is like Typically, this is meant as a rhetorical question because there is no one like God. But it could also be interpreted as a statement. Michael, who is like God.

William is a man who has figured out power over life and death in this world. He sees himself as a god. And Mike tells us himself that the fun time animatronics confuse him for his father. They didn't recognize me at first, but then they thought I was you. He is like his father. He is who is like God. The same thing goes for the name Elizabeth. It's derived from the Hebrew name Elie Sheva and means, my God is a promise.

One of the only lines we get from Elizabeth before she becomes baby is her begging William to let her play with baby. Oh, take her just for me. Baby was made by Afton for Elizabeth. She's annoyed because she is now being denied the thing made specifically for her, the thing that was promised to her by her father, by the god of this world. After that, she disobeyed and got scooped. And so Afton made her another promise, the same one he made the crime child. He sent Michael down into the bunker to put her back together.

Three Afton kids, three Hebrew names, three meanings that all point back towards dear old dad. It's like poetry. It's like they rhyme. Interestingly, William isn't of Hebrew origin, it's actually Germanic. But it also has an interesting meaning. Resolute Protector or Strong-Willed Warrior. He tried to protect Elizabeth. He was resolute in fixing and protecting the crying child after he died.

And if you don't call surviving a springlocking strong will, I don't know what else you'd call it. So, from a thematic standpoint, the name Dave does seem to work. Its meaning fits what we know of the character, and it ties into the same themes as the rest of the Afton family. It's at this point though I should probably address the Orville in the room. Real world research is great and strong connecting themes are fantastic pieces of supplementary evidence. But that's the point. They're supplementary. If the core evidence isn't there to back it up in the first place, then it don't mean squat. It all comes down to the actual method that Hyperdroid used to solve this puzzle.

And I'll be honest, when I first saw it, I was a little unsure. Using the faded text of The Party Was For You and What Do You See? Make complete sense for the answers it was for me and I can't see. I can hear sounds technically works with Does He Still Talk to You? Though it's not the clearest. But I'm scared being a response to Do You Have Dreams does feel like a bit of a stretch. The line only works because of the nightmare drawing on the same page, even though none of the other questions need context clues from the page.

This feeling was also exacerbated when HyperDroidid pointed back to a Reddit post by the user Ecstatic Mazepan 7 from the GT subreddit. They came up with a solution three years ago, so way to represent the GT community. But when I took a look at the original post, they were receiving similar pushback. People were commenting the same things that I'm saying now. However, we theorists are nothing, if not thorough. We always dot our eyes and cross our T's. Rather than just say, this answer feels wrong and throwing the whole thing out,

I wanted to go back through the logbook and do a bit of my own reverse engineering. I marked down every page number where Cassidy wrote something in the logbook. I then used those page numbers in the Fox Secret to find all the possible letters we could get to see if any of them gave us usable answers that we could then go back and pair with I'm scared. Two of them got ruled out immediately. What do you remember and do you miss them? Because they're on pages 20 and 70. You can't go zero down on a grid, so they're out. On page 56 we get was your favourite ride the carousel, but that spells Vave, so that's out too. Three of Cassidy's questions do give us letters that technically work? Do you remember your name is on page 31? Do any

of these toys look familiar to you is on page 42? And did one of these belong to you is on page 43. 31 gives us a C, 42 gives us a W, and 43 gives us a P. Using these letters, you can spell cave, wave, and pave. All real words, but not exactly names, especially considering the very normal Mike and Elizabeth. Although, page 43 isn't actually labelled as 43. It's one of the altered page numbers, and it shows 15. So I tried that too, and it gave me Yave, another The only time I got close to another answer was by using page 23, which ironically gives you an N spelling Evan. Was Wolfie actually right all those years ago?

Yeah, no. If you thought, do you have dreams made no sense with I'm scared? I feel like was your favourite childhood toy a plastic telephone is an even worse answer. It would then mean we haven't reversed anything either, and so the mirror in the middle of the book would also remain unused, which isn't really ideal. The last page to try was 83 where Cassidy asks, is this song familiar to you? This gives you a T in the Foxy Grid and I tried using this as both an alternative for I'm Scared as well as I can hear sounds. Just to be sure, but no combination of those letters made a name either.

Which means by process of elimination, do you have dreams? Does kind of have to be the answer. If it's not, we'd also have to throw out the letters E, V and A2 because we'd need to find an entirely new method to solve this grid. And at this point, I kind of feel like if there was another method, someone surely would have found it by now. I'm sure that some people still aren't going to be happy with this solution. For all the other questions, Crying Child was just responding to the words Cassidy said. But for this final one, you have to use Mike's drawing to get the full interpretation. As I've already said, that kind of breaks the method.

Not as much as finding the N for Evan using the tally marks did, but enough that it doesn't feel satisfying. Except when you stop and look back, Scott actually did the same thing. with the Cassidy puzzle. Think about it. At the start, we were using altered page numbers from pages with my name written on them. But as the puzzle went on, that changed. Suddenly, we stopped using altered page numbers and began using other altered numbers from the page, like 7 and 2 or 10 and 11. On some pages, we're not even using altered numbers. One of them, we use numbers written by Mike, a completely different character. And on another, you have to follow Mike's clue to a different page and then use the numbers that are just in the book. They're not altered, they're not altered, they're not

written down, they're just there. We were still following the my name part of the puzzle, but the actual number used for the coordinates was different. That rule was being broken. And yet, no one really battered an eyelid when that was pitched out. Why? Because we got an answer that made sense. Yes, the method was a little messy, but clearly it was the correct solution that Scott had planned, given he then went on to confirm the name Cassidy in his cancelled movie ideas. To me, this is the same situation. We finally have an answer that spells a question. We finally have an answer that a name and follows the same kind of puzzles even if the method is a little messy. Maybe Scott wanted to make the puzzles harder as they went on.

Or, you know, maybe he just isn't that good at planning puzzles to begin with. We theorists are so used to complex ciphers and ARGs that sometimes I think we expect everything we solve to be on that level. But in actuality, not everyone is. And so the simplest solutions can actually be the best. All that being said, what do I actually think? Is Dave the real name of the crying child? Well, even though a little messy, the solution does fit.

It gives an answer for the random mirror in the middle of the book, and it works thematically with all of the Afton children and their parts in the story. Is Crying Child's name Dave, for me, after spending days going back and forth, back and forth, looking at every side of the argument, I have to say that the answer is a resounding yes. I believe that Dave is the name of the Crying Child. So, to Hyperdroid, Ecstatic Mazepan 7, and any... other FNAF theorists that came up with this solution over the years,

congratulations. You did it. You solved the foxygrid and you got the theorist seal of approval. Editor, cue the applause. So nice to give one of these out, especially to people like ecstatic Mazepan 7 who solved this thing over three years ago. It's a helpful reminder that there are some fantastic theorists out there. We just need to be open to hearing them out. Whether they're a tiny channel here on YouTube, a small post on a subreddit with only two upvotes, or a random reply on a Discord server, they can have ideas that are just as good as any one of us bigger channels. It may go against our own personal head cannons, but if this experience has taught us anything, it's not to discount those ideas just because they're a little out there.

Give them a chance. Who knows? They might actually have the solutions we've all been looking for. But hey, that's just a theory. A game theory! Thanks for watching.