Game Theory - We Were Right ALL ALONG! (FNAF Ultimate Custom Night)

Episode Date: August 6, 2023

Join Game Theory Host MatPat as he breaks down the lore of FNAF Ultimate Custom Night and what it means for the Five Nights at Freddy's franchise!

Dear Diary, yesterday was so amazing, I met such a wonderful guy, and I know just how to get him. He'll be mine by the end of the day, I just know it. I'll tell him that I've solved the lore of his games and constructed a timeline, and once he's there, I'll have him. And once I have him, he'll be mine forever. There's only one thing that could possibly go wrong. How can Mangle be walking around in Fnaf 2 before all the animatronics are possessed? How can Springtrap be experimenting with Remnant when he's sealed in a wall? I...

Answering! I don't know. That's exactly what I worry might go wrong. No! No! Hello, Internet. Welcome to Game Theory, getting burned by hippos since 2018. Not every story has to have significance, you know?

Sometimes, uh, you know, sometimes a story is just a story. You try to read into every little thing and find meaning and everything anyone says, you'll just drive yourself crazy. Kind of, kind of harsh there, Scott. Speaking of stories, last FNAF theory, I was at the lowest of lows. The survival logbook threw a lot of weird curveballs into the lore that I, and I don't think anyone was really expecting. Reveals like Michael Afton being the bite victim were interesting, but also really difficult to explain away. And that's where things sat, until now. With both the release of the final fnaf book, the fourth closet, and what seems to be the final fnaf game,

Super fnaf Brothers Ultimate, they're all here. And now with both these releases, we're finally in a position to see all the puzzle pieces we're working with, which means one last examination of the franchise from top to bottom, starting with Custom Night this week, and then next week, stepping back and looking across the entire timeline to see if we can wrap things up in a neat blood-soaked bow now that we can see all the events in key players. So step through the curtain, Fun Time Foxy, because the show's about to start. It's time for me to pull a candy cadet and tell you a story.

A story of anger that never dies. A story of never-ending suffering. And I'm not just talking about me trying to write these theories. Today, I tell you the story of how Ultimate Custom Night ends the FNAF franchise in the same place where it all began. As soon as you start playing Custom Night, you can tell that Scott's up to his usual tricks. Yeah, that. But beyond being gaming's biggest troll, I mean, Scott has clearly taken a game that most of us assumed was just a fun little add-on to capstone the series and has used it to deliver a full-on 100% canon addition to the franchise, complete with huge lore reveals mostly hidden in character dialogue once you die

Which is pretty nice considering you die a lot in this game a lot Oh yeah, I totally let Nightmarion kill me at 3 a.m. on purpose. I just really wanted to see what she would say in this case What, you guys don't believe me? Seriously, I'm gonna escape, I did it for the lore! I did it for the lore! Through these death lines, we can immediately start piecing together what exactly is going on here. The first set of lines reveals that we're powerless to escape. You and I will be making music together for a long, long time.

This is another beard. Seeing you powerless is like music to me. More voice lines indicate that not only are we trapped here, for all eternity, we also can't die. Or maybe more accurately, we can die, just over and over and over again. What a gift to relish, a victim that can't perish. Let's Teddy Spear. You won't get tired of dying, will you? By the way, for those of you who don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of every element of this franchise,

that toy chika line is actually a fun little callback to one of my favorite moments in the franchise. Foxy Fighters, update 1.2 for Fnaff World. You won't get tired of my voice, will you? So anyway, our character here is kind of screwed. Trapped for eternity in a never-ending cycle of torment and death. It should be pretty obvious what's going on here, but I think Jack O'Chicca really sums up the situation best. The fire within me burns eternal, and now you shall as well.

That's right, we're trapped in heck. H.E. double hockey sticks. Or toothpicks, like my family always said, since we valued proper capitalization. And from there, it's just a hop- skipping a karmic jump away from who we're playing as. None other than Springtrap himself, William Afton. Not only does a one-way ticket to hell follow up on the advice Henry gave us from FNAF 6.

Although for one of you, the darkest pit of hell has opened to swallow you whole, so don't keep the devil waiting friend. But more voice lines in Custom Night confirm our relationship to each of these characters. We know who our friends are, and you are not one of them. This is a callback to FNAF 4 as We're still your friends. Do you still believe that, but twist it on its head? If our character were someone like, say Michael Afton, aka the Crying Child, aka another character who can't die,

well then Fred Bear wouldn't single us out as not his friend. He's not an enemy to Michael because Michael never did anything to hurt him. William Afton killed Henry's daughter, who goes on to become the puppet. Nightmarion here is the dark reflection of the puppet, thereby confirming that we're playing as William Afton. Even Belora offers some clues that we're playing as William. Admit it, you wanted to let me in. Belora's song and sister location was all about William hiding behind walls in the aftermath of his child's death,

which left an empty room and an empty tomb in his life. All I see is an empty room. No more joy, an empty tomb. He shut everyone else out, but now that we're in William's personal hell, she's able to call him out for all his hidden feelings. William wanted to let the woman that Belora represents in, But he just couldn't do it thanks to his grief. Hence her calling him out for his real desires,

You Wanted to Let Me In. So, where a murderer trapped in a personal hell of our own creation forced to deal with the sins of our past for all eternity. Sound familiar? It should! It was my first ever FNAF theory. No joke! Way back in episode one of the Fnaf series, I predicted it was a game about someone trapped in purgatory,

tormented by their crimes for all eternity. Granted, the series had only just begun of the theory tied everything back to a real-life string of murders, but it's actually really awesome to think that we've come full circle. That, from a theory standpoint at least, these videos have circled back around to where it all began. It's poetic. A beautiful, horrific, child murdery bookend of a story. So thanks, Scott. I have no doubt that you structured your franchise's final send-off that way, just so I could have an I told you so moment at the very end after years of getting thwarted by your twisting story. It's very nice of you to throw me a bone.

But of course it wouldn't be fnaf if things were just that simple. No, it's not good enough for William to be held in a perpetual state of agony. There's something keeping us here. Looking through all the voice lines, there's one other entity that's mentioned over and over again. The one you should not have killed. I am remade, but not by you, by the one you should not have killed. Greetings for the fire what you shouldn't? Excuse me, what?

The one I shouldn't have killed. You mean Voldemort? Oh, sorry. Got him confused with you. not be named. But seriously, the one I shouldn't have killed in a franchise piled high with underage bodies. Okay, yeah, sure. All those other kids, nah, they deserved it, but that one, that one right there. Yep, shouldn't have touched him, now you're damned for all eternity. Sucks to be you. Anyway, this is the big mystery of the game. Who are they talking about? Well, by picking apart clues from all sorts of different locations, we can start piecing together who this one who must stay vague for lore purposes actually is. First, from the rest of the voice lines, we can identify that this character is a male. I have seen him, the one you shouldn't have killed. He's here and always lucky, the one you soon have killed.

Notice how both of them use the pronouns he and him. We also know that this guy specifically has a vendetta against us. To understand that, we have to turn our attention to the true stars of Ultimate Custom Night, the mediocre Melodies. Without question, this crew of duct-crawling rejects steal the spotlight and Ultimate Custom Night. Going from WTF-F-R-T-F-R-F-R-T-F-Rae-F-F-N-F-X to break out meme stars in Custom Night, Orville Elephant and the gang not only provide important life lessons... He proceeded to pour me a glass of just ice-cold lemonade.

Ooh, you ever mix it with iced tea? You do like, a little half lemonade, ha-well, it's so... You should try it something. Well, you can't, because you're dead. They also deliver on huge lore reveals. For the most part, their lines are... pretty disposable, but very rarely you'll get a line from them that feels just a bit out of character. We've only just begun. I will never let you leave. I will never let you rest. And if you listen closely, you'll hear a female voice echoing back what they're saying,

almost as if they're puppets under someone else's control. This is how it feels, and you get to experience it over and over and over again. Forever. I will never let you leave. Now, this voice could be baby. Not only does she sound similar. I guess you forgot about me. But a clue may also come from the merch. The Funco action figurines of the characters from FNAF 6 all contain one piece of scrap baby. Collect all the figurines, collect all the pieces to form the character.

Which might seem like just a random detail until you consider that they did the same thing with every character and sister location, who would then go on to form Enard. Each one contained a piece that helped to create what would eventually form the larger hole. Just like Enard himself, a bunch of the other animatronics all rolled into one entity. This is especially important when you consider that a key reveal from the final FNAF novel, The Fourth Closet, is that William Afton created the living sister location Fun Time animatronics by extracting remnant from the melted conglomeration of all the OG animatronics and injecting the new robots with it.

Thus, all the new robots were, alive and sharing a piece of the same set of souls, just like if the pieces of baby slash entered had been repurposed to form happy frog and her friends. That's why baby's voice would be heard across all of them. Does that make sense? Good. Now throw it away because there's another explanation here that this is the voice of the one you should not have killed. As you can tell at this point, Ultimate Custom Night had a huge amount of voice acting and the nice thing about voice acting is that you need to hire, you know, actors, which means job posting. So of course, for this game, Scott needed to make a ton of casting calls on the site Voices.com, all identifying the roles that the actors would be playing. Some of the roles were obvious. Nightmare Balloon Boy, Pig Patch, Withered Chica, etc., etc., all characters that we're familiar with. Other casting calls, though, were a bit more vague. Monster, character and whisper, little girl, annoying girl, vengeful spirits.

Now, if you track all of the job postings, you can actually identify every single role by who played Monster is Jack O'Chicca. Character in Whisper is trash in the gang. Little girl is the puppet. Annoying girl is Dee Dee. Scott kept him vague so as not to ruin any surprises. You can actually identify each and every role Except for one. Benjful Spirit, played by Tabitha Skames. It's the only one that doesn't match up to any explicit character in the game. But we know for a fact it exists since Scott himself left Tabitha an excellent review. Five stars! Well done, Tabitha. So what is the? a vengeful spirit. Well, according to the casting call, quote, This is for the voice of a young child who speaks in a whisper from the shadows.

That sounds a lot like the voice that's whispering in the background of our merry band of rejects. This child is in control and is toying with the player who's helpless to change their situation or prevent their inevitable end. Yeah, while being trapped in Aegee double hockey sticks will do that to ya. The gender should not be immediately clear. It should work as either a young boy or a young girl. And you're welcome to do readings leaning one way or another. Ding, ding, ding, ladies and gentlemen, we have our winner. A puppeteer that's manipulating things from the shadows. A spirit who's out for revenge.

A spirit who just so happens to occasionally show its face during game over screens. Yes! That creepy image of a face that's been haunting thumbnails of Ultimate Custom Night, that is the face of our vengeful spirit. A spirit who, based on its last line, has an axe to grind and intends to enact revenge by keeping us tormented for all eternity. He tried to release you. He tried to release us, but I'm not gonna let that happen. I will hold you here.

I will keep you here, no matter how many times they burn us. He tried to release you, but I'm not gonna let that happen. I will hold you here? Yikes! Somebody's gotta get themselves a new hobby. But this is an important line, since by now, many of you have probably seen the Old Man Consequences Easter egg. If you set the character Old Man Consequences to level one difficulty and then complete

as mini-game, you get taken through a glitch to Old Man Consequences pawn. A character from Fnaff World who encourages the spirit to quote, leave the demon to his demons. Rest your own soul. There's nothing else. He's encouraging the angry spirit to finally rest, to give it up, to move on, instead of just chasing down the demon William Afton and spending eternity enacting revenge. But that all leads to the question, who is this vengeful spirit? The one William should not have killed. Well, it's Golden Freddy. For proof, look no further, than the final cutscene of the game. If you manage to get the nearly impossible score of 9,800. 49 animatronics at full difficulty, you see Golden Freddy in his Fnaf 1 form twitching. He's twitching just like Springtrap did in the trailers to Fnaf 3, someone else who refused to give up to pass on, someone who always comes back. And just to dispel any confusion here, Golden Freddy isn't the crying child. This confirms it. Golden Freddy is actually a victim that we've never actually seen.

outside of the FNAF 3 minigames, nor we'll ever see outside of that face in the vent. Golden Freddy is the soul that's still trapped, one that refuses to let go of his hate, his rage. We even hear it in his line. He tried to release us, but I'm not gonna let that happen, no matter how many times they burn us. In Fnaf 3, the puppet tried to release everyone through the happiest day mini game. Basbear Fright was burned down in an attempt to cleanse Freddy's. Pizzeria Simulator was burned to the ground. None of it has worked. The spirit of revenge is and always will be there until he chooses to let go. That's why he's still twitching as he fades into the darkness.

That's why his eyes are still white as he disappears. He is choosing to remain here, to continue tormenting William, to ignore old man consequences encouraging him to move on to the next life. You know, this might be what Scott truly meant when he said that 50-20 mode in this game was impossible. Not just that it would be unbelievably difficult to overcome, which, let's face it, it is, but that there's no victory here. That no matter how good of a player you are, there is no winning this game

because there is no escape. That even if you play it perfectly, William is trapped, and there is no happy ending for Golden Freddy. In fact, you playing the game is continuing Golden Freddy's cycle of revenge. Old Man Consequences' message might be for Golden Freddy. Absolutely, rest your soul, there is nothing else,

but it's also probably directed at us. I mean, we play and play and play this game for hours upon hours upon, Achieving higher and higher and higher stats in a game that's incredibly difficult and what do we get from it? A cutscene that's kind of underwhelming, actually. Perhaps Old Man Consequences message was for Golden Freddy, sure, but also for us. Rest your own soul. There is nothing else. There is no deeper ending here. There is no satisfaction. This is it! And by choosing to play, we keep William's cycle of torment alive.

We are literally Golden Freddy forcing William through this over and over and over and over. again, refusing to move on, refusing to accept that there is nothing else. It's perhaps the most satisfying, unsatisfying conclusion in all of gaming. And as far as your gameplay affecting character decisions, well, it doesn't get any more seamless than that. In the end, the truth is as plain as day. You are Golden Freddy. And most importantly of all, remember, that's just a theory. A game theory! Thanks for proving me right for a change, Scott.