Game Theory - Why You HATE My Theories (FNAF)

Episode Date: October 23, 2023

Join Game Theory Host MatPat as he gives a State of The Union on FNAF theorizing and why things are so toxic. Credits: Writers: Matthew Patrick and Tom Robinson Editors: Dan "Cybert" Seibert, Jerika (NekoOnigiri), Alex "Sedge" Sedgwick, Gerardo Andrés Mejía Torres and Shannon (Bomb0i) Sound Designer: Yosi Berman

Hello internet, welcome to game theory, where today we're gonna be doing what we do on a lot of these days, talking about FNAF, but a little mix up today, we're doing it on the couch. And let me tell you, have I got a theory for you? It is a theory that you are absolutely guaranteed to hate. Get your pitchforks ready, my friends. I am prepared to get dragged all across Twitter and Reddit for this one. But then again, honestly, that's kind of to be expected at this point, because that's largely been the resource. to a lot of our FNAF theories lately. Any theory that I release at this point starts with this massive wave of comments like

Matt's theorizing has gone downhill at this point. His latest fnaf theories are lazy, proper research is not being done. He's clearly running out of material. I'm genuinely wondering if he's even passionate about this franchise anymore. There is a difference between telling theories and straight-up telling misinformation. Right? In fact, I don't know if you've noticed this, but pretty much every script that we do at this point, especially about this franchise always comes packaged with some sort of predetermined disclaimer right at the top cue the clip fair warning though the conclusions we've reached that solve security breach who they are controversial i feel good about them like i think that we've locked in on a lot of the answers here but uh

oh they're going to raise a lot of discussion let's just say that you're either going to love that episode or hate it i don't really think there's going to be much in between on that one and well we'll certainly get to my problems here in a minute let me just say i seem to be in good company It's not just me getting these sorts of responses. A lot of FNAF theorists are receiving the same sort of constructive criticism online. John from the channel FNAP, he has regularly told that, quote, his recent theories are horrible. Yes, I went to a printer and actually printed that out so I could read it. John lied about the contents of the most recent story.

And here's another one. I don't want to be rude, but the mimic and baby theory sucks. I don't want to be rude, huh? Well, you might want to look up the definition of what it means to be rude there, Frendo. And it's not just me and John. on either. Rye Toast, another FNAF theorist, also involved with this one. He was told that his theories massively whiff.

I mean, honestly, the list could go on and on here. The feedback is endless. But the TLDR of all of this is that I went down the line of FNAF theorists, and I just kept seeing the same thing over and over again. It's not just my theories that are getting all this hate. It's all theories. And that's weird.

So I figure that we should probably do a theory about that. Because I think I know why this is happening. And honestly, just like, With the FNAF lore, it's pretty darn complicated. But at this rate, if we don't actually stop to take the time and address it, I worry that it could actually end up harming this community and the whole FNAF franchise as a whole. First off, I think it's important that we set some context here. Every FNAF theory that we release at this point is met with the internet largely dismissing it as insane, or jumping the animatronic Felix the Shark. Such as Cassie Dad is Bonnie Bro.

It is the dumbest thing I've ever heard, says one commenter. Great. Daycare attendance endoskeleton teeth match the mimic. This one right here says, it is dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. Great to disagree on that one. We'll get to that in a second. Oh!

And this one here's a classic. Gregory's a robot. This theory is literal cancer. No, my friend. No, it's not. It is not a literal cancer. And if me suggesting that a fictional character in a Y-A-Murder Bunny game is a robot

is that bad to you, go touch grass. Anyway, you get the point. There is a varying degree here of these sorts of comments. But the main thing is that this is nothing new. When I suggested dream theory as the explanation for the first wave of games back in 2015, people were so mad.

They hated it. Because honestly, I was dismissing four games of story and beloved characters with the whole, ah, it was all just a dream trope. Honestly, I didn't love it either, but it felt like where the evidence was largely pointing at the time. And yet, it's only now all these years later that the sentiment has finally changed on that theory,

and people largely agree that dream theory was right at the time, and that Scott just pivoted the story later with sister location. Or at least it was right until then this new Tales of the PizzaPlex book is coming out and apparently it rewrites Nap 4 into some hallucinogenic gas creation. Thanks for that one, Scott. Couldn't even let me have that victory, could you? What do you want from me, Scott? I'm selling the books for you.

Speaking of the books, by the way, it also happened with those books. I started using the books seven years ago. I've been reading these things for seven. This is my literary contribution. Seven years of this book. I could be reading like War in Peace or Uncle Tom's Cabin or something, but no, I get to read Tales from the Pizza Plex 1 Lally's game. Great, this is how I enrich myself. To my knowledge, I was one of the first, if not the first person, to seriously use the books for overall theorizing.

Let me tell you, people hated it at the time. They despise it. They're like, why would you do that? Why would you talk about the books? But those theories actually helped me predict that William Afton was going to be the villain, that Charlie was going to be revealed to be the puppet. that sister location was buried under the Afton House and that Michael Afton was the Foxy Bro. And that's just a few of the conclusions they help me reach. And now, here we are a whopping seven years later.

I've got a couple of gray hairs and the pendulum is swung it completely in the other direction. Now, the community holds me and all the other FNAFTAier is hostage if we're not looking at the books. Or if we're looking at them improperly and not treating them as 100% canon to the events of the game. Long story short, time is a powerful thing. In this franchise especially, it is super powerful, considering that Scott repeatedly has said that he uses both the games and books in the future to clarify the events of the past. Or, you know, that's just his shorthand way of saying that he uses those future things to just ultimately pick the direction that he wanted to go the entire time. The long and short of it is that sometimes the craziest theories in the moment become the correct theories a year or two years or even five years down the line as more details solidify around the story. For a great example of this, let's just take a look at everyone's favorite Gregory as a robot theory,

where I propose that Gregory is indeed the robotic reincarnation of the crying child. When I look online, this is often the one that people point to as the point where Matt Pat fell off, where he literally lost the thread of the games, and to this day, it has entered the hallowed pantheon of theories that get memeed to death, right alongside Luigi's eggplant height, weight, his girth, Luigi's girth. It's a girthy boy! And of course, the Lord above all, Sanz's Nest, the king that rules them all, right? And more often than not, that robot theory gets boiled down to this singular graphic right here, so much so that we actually started to meme on it ourselves.

And you know, when it gets to us meming something, it is definitely dead. We are so cringe that we make your dad's jokes look cool. But here's the thing. Gregory as a robot is now a theory that has spawned over four other theories and constitutes over 15,000 words. And so dismiss it as purely. white kid in striped shirt go brr Isn't that you just falling into the same trap that you the internet accusers have leveled at me?

You say that I ignore evidence that I don't do my research, that I ignore key details just to forward my intended narrative But isn't that exactly what you're doing there? I mean look at the facts and for the sake of clarity and for the sake of your screenshots I'll try to keep it all on a singular page since I know that you all love to boil my theories down to one image. So how else my friends would you explain that Gregory looks like the crying child? I'll try to keep it all on a singular page since I know that you all love to boil my theories down to one image. So how else my friends would you explain that Gregory looks like the crying child? I'll That he is colored in purple, which connects him to the Afton family. That he's taken a bite out of a golden Freddy head ice cream cone, just like the crying child got bit. That he's being called Broken, which parallels the final line said to the crying child. His vision getting all staticky when Banny skips past him in the Pizza Plex,

and him looking differently when Freddy gets Roxy's eyes. I don't know about you, but that right there, that seems to me like a lot of important evidence. So who's really ignoring evidence to forward their intended narrative here? Me, the person trying to concoct a theory to explain all of those details, or anyone online who continues to insist that Gregory, you know, he's just a normal kid. And just like with dream theory and book theory, more evidence for this has just started to stack up. Since the release of security breach, the tales from the PizzaPlex books, which many are now considering to be a hundred percent canon to the games, these books have repeatedly included over and over again, story after story of kids, either becoming robots, always being robots, or being to be able to be.

taken over by robots. You don't even have to read the stories in the books to know this. I mean, just look at the theme of these covers, right? Robot humanoid kid, robot humanoid. This one doesn't count. Robot humanoid. Like, the last book in the series that's coming out, like, right now as this episode releases,

it is literally about a kid who turned himself into a robot. Yeah, look at, he's got human fingers and everything. Another one of those stories, this time G-GY, it focuses on a boy named Gregory, sounds familiar, who sets high scores in the Pizza Plex, again, should sound familiar, he disappears multiple school counselors, similar, and he goes by the name Dr. Rabbit. This story right here is basically shouting in our faces

the fact that Gregory is patient 46, confirming that, regardless of how you feel about Gregory as a protagonist, he's a bad dude. He is killing people off, or at the very least, he's making him disappear to protect whatever secret he has. Something that, again, we predicted as part of that Robot Gregory series, and something that people at the time, really didn't like. Plus, you can't ignore the fact that he's calling himself Dr. Rabbit,

which again is yet another connection over to the Afton family. And while it doesn't ever explicitly say that Gregory is a robot, it does write him with some very oddly robotic characteristics. Quote from here, Greg returned the wave. He smiled, then he cocked his head and studied Tony for several seconds. It's weird, right? It's written in a very specific way. It's an odd detail that signaled my theorist senses, and Honestly, it feels to me like he's written like an AI, stopping to learn, study human behavior to grow and operate. And that sort of AI connection actually returns when we go back to security breach. Here, I'd like to direct your attention to the wall code from the secret sister location room found near the end of that game.

Very quickly, the FNAF community figured out that this chunk of wall code right there read as follows. Dodge, duck, flash, shoot, crawl, run, crush the vile band. Who is the only character to do all of those actions? It's Gregory. He's flashing fas cams. He's shooting fazzas lasers. He is literally crushing the band. So this room, an Afton room, mind you, is in some ways trying to speak to Gregory. But why would it be written in such a weird language?

Well, honestly, we had no way of knowing it at the time. It wasn't until a year later when this book finally came out again. This is the same one with GGI, but this time it had a tale called The Storyteller. This one is a tale all about a genius roboticist who speaks to his AI creations in a very specific way. Quote again from this book, Every sheet of paper was covered with odd stick drawings and strange symbols that were not at all familiar to Mr. Burroughs. Squiggles, squares, loops, triangles within triangles. The code is the language of the mimic.

The mimic, being an AI program designed to copy those it watched. All signs point to Gregory being a robot built as part of this AI system. So throw that one over there onto that one pager screen grab from earlier. Oh yeah, and don't forget the fact that we also discovered that Robot Kid heads were found down in the sister location bunker, showing that Afton was working on Robot Kid projects way sooner than any of us ever expected. That should actually be on there too. And overall, you look at that one screen grab, it's pretty crowded in there, right? And even if Gregory isn't a robot, it feels pretty darn clear that someone in this franchise probably is at this point.

Here's the thing. I'm not bringing all this up to try and convince you the internet critics out there of this theory. There are some dead horses that I just want to leave alone, believe it or not. And honestly, I don't care if you believe this theory or not. I do not care in the slightest. I have no horse in this race, though apparently I have a lot of horse analogies to make, which is weird. I am here having fun in my little corner of the internet trying to solve silly video game mysteries with a cool team around me and an awesome community of theorists.

I would love you internet critics to join us. That would be awesome. We are an open-minded community. We are welcoming. We embrace you with open arms in the most fan-friendly way possible, but not in a way that's going to get us canceled. But for the people over on Reddit and Twitter who accuse me and all the other theorists of ignoring important information

for the sake of forwarding our own version of a narrative, just because we don't care about this franchise, ask yourself honestly, who's really the closed-minded ones here? We're the ones pointing out this information. We're the ones who are trying to solve what all this means. To ignore it, that actually feels disrespectful to the franchise. While we're being honest about all this, let's also be honest about our standards for clue hunting. I have been raked over the coals a lot across recent theories for making visual connections between characters and objects.

My last theory, great example of this. I drew parallels between the daycare attendant and the mimic because both of them have very unique teeth, where each individual tooth is independently operated. It's a completely unique design for an endoskeleton, only shared by the those two characters, and yet a lot of people were quick to dismiss the entire idea is just surface level. Oh, it's only a coincidence. But do you remember what franchise we're talking about here, friends? We started with counting animatronic toes and buttons.

But the reason that I bring that up is that while many dismissed that specific connection, I saw those exact same conversations happening around the mimic's hand with its clawed fingers. Oh my gosh, clawed fingers, just like Burntrap or the Glamrock's hands. you do realize that you're doing the exact same thing that you were criticizing me for, right? I mean, if you're allowed to compare sharp, pointy hands, then I can compare independently moving teeth, right? In the end, well, things have certainly gotten more sophisticated

in the theorizing space, and we have higher standards for our evidence, and we should always be looking for more evidence to support any of our conclusions. Simple observations, like fingers or teeth, they're easy ones to build off of. They're easy ones to start exploring, and hey, where they lead to,

can be some really awesome cool directions. We as humans are pre-programmed to seek closure in whatever we're doing. And it makes us feel secure and brings a sense of satisfaction of closure, right? There's actually an entire brand of psychology dedicated to this very fact. So naturally, when we're faced with a series

that doesn't give us any sort of clean or definitive answers, it's easy for us to want to find the simplest solution or cling on to certain details like they're indisputable facts, because it's better to be really wrong than to be uncertain. And SNAF makes that hard, because it's a story that's built on shifting sand. It went from souls possessing animatronics to liquid soul metal to digital consciousness transfer,

and then to goo that literally tries to steal your identity. And while that's frustrating, honestly, it's also what makes the franchise so fun, taking the small little puzzle pieces and extrapolating possible answers. But that extrapolation, honestly, I think is where we're rubbing people the wrong way. A few weeks ago, I asked a bunch of you online to take the mind Myers-Briggs personality test. Now this is a really fun assessment that breaks you down into one of 16 different personality types based on letters. Are you an E an extrovert who likes just being out with people? Or are you an I introvert who likes your quiet alone time? Are you a structured and organized J for judging or you a go with the flow for perceiving P? Do you prefer logic and thinking? T or do you like to go with your gut and your feelings F? But for this particular debate I actually wanted to focus on two letters. S and N. Now these two letters focus on how you process information. The F

S stands for sensing. This means that you take the information from the world around you and you take it at face value You use your five senses to determine what is real and factual It often means that you look at the world in a very literal way and on the other hand stands for intuition It's not the cleanest of lettering systems but they'd already use the eye Anyway if you're an N it means that you interpret information in more abstract ways rather than just relying on exactly what's in front of you physically you take that information and then you go a couple of You make connections between things in interesting ways to go beyond just your five senses. So how does this relate to theorizing?

Well, the vast, vast majority of this channel subscribers are ends. They're taking information not at face value, but building more abstract connections to find solutions. In fact, almost everyone who works at Team Theorist here is an end purely by coincidence. It's not like you can actively screen for something like that. It just works out this way because the way we do things here requires a certain mindset. mindset, a mindset that only about 25% of the population is innately comfortable with. Is Mario a villain? No, of course not.

There are so many examples of him being a hero. But you also can't ignore little details like the time he chained up Donkey Kong or the time that he stomped on his little brother's toe. And that right there yields some pretty interesting conclusions if you connect all those dots, leading to, hey, Mario is a villain. That's not to say that you can't also theorize as an ass. You absolutely can. In fact, our creative director Tom and FNAF theorist John were both in town a couple months ago,

and they showcased this exact difference in mindset. They probably best showed it with how to interpret Michael's ending monologue from sister location. Tom's an N. John is an S. John used the literal words being said to inform his interpretation. Well, Tom was more focused on how the words were said to imply meaning. Fun fact, by the way, after we shot this video, we got into contact with John, and we asked him to take this test again. And since he first visited, his Myers-Briggs has actually shifted.

to more of an N-type. Remember, the Myers-Briggs test isn't just black and white, it's a spectrum. John was originally 59% S, but now that shrunk down to 32%. That doesn't mean that he now has no more S tendencies, it's just that his exposure to the wonderful world of FNAF theorizing has led him to look at things differently, to link the obscure, to make connections from small details, and to imply meaning through more abstract means rather than the more literal ways that he might have done a couple years ago. And that right there, that is the fundamental difference that's happening in the fan base right now.

I think a lot of the newer fans of the franchise are S's. And when you look at our survey results, you can actually see this playing out, with almost 25% of S's joining during either the FNAF VR, AR, or Security Breach era. Compare that to ENs where only 18% joined during that era. And so when evidence needs to be interpreted with an end mentality, it's making them uncomfortable, or even outright mad. Take for instance this clip from our most recent episode. But secondly, and more importantly, Cassie actually knows the truth about what happened to Glam Rock Bonnie.

She knows that it was Monty Gator who eliminated him from the picture. A lot of people were quick to point out that on the description of the Glamrock Bonnie plush, it says, quote, Dad wouldn't tell me why they replaced Bonnie. In fact, this was one of those moments where people outright accused me of lying about the evidence, saying that I was ignoring the text, that I was literally showing on the screen. That would be really dumb of me if that was what I was doing, but let's actually take a closer look at that specific line. Dad wouldn't tell me why they replaced Bonnie. Typically speaking, someone that's an ass would look at that

line and take it literally. Her dad wouldn't tell her what happened, therefore she doesn't know what happened. However, as an end, I'm not just taking those words at face value, nor was I willfully ignoring them. I was just interpreting them differently. Her dad wouldn't tell her what happened. That doesn't necessarily mean she doesn't know what happened. Your parents might not tell you how to cook a meal, but that doesn't mean that you don't have ways of finding out how to cook. Same thing applies to this other line from the same portion of our video, this one about the Monty, AR Plushy. Quote again, it's hard to look at.

Well, S's would read that and interpret it that maybe it's bright, it's shiny. It is physically hard to look at because it's an AR object, so maybe that's why. But ENS would read that line and probably read it differently. Nothing else Cassie says about the other AR objects in the game imply that they're difficult to look at, at least from a physical perspective. So what makes the Monty AR thing so different? Well, maybe because it's not physically difficult to look at, but emotionally difficult to look at.

It's hard to look at because she knows the truth of what Monty did to Glam Rock Bonnie. But here's the big one and this is the one that honestly has divided the fan base for the better part of the last year. It is this line used to market the new Tales from the Pizza Plex books. Quote, a collection of new Five Nights at Freddy's short stories set in the world of the newest game. This one line has been used time and time again to say that these, these tales from the Pizzaplex books, they are a hundred percent canon one for one with the game's stories. That right there, that is a very S

interpretation, a literal interpretation of what's being said. But there's also the N interpretation of that line. You can be set in a world without it being the same world. I think Rai Toast actually said this one best. This Super Mario Bros. movie that just came out. That's set in the Mario Brothers universe 100%. But it's not canon to the games. Hey, Ry, your end's showing.

But that's always how the books have operated. And so many, myself included, have treated these new books in the same way. And as a result, we've gotten lots of hate for it. I mean, it's not an invalid interpretation, it's just a different, less literal interpretation than one that many of you on Reddit are familiar with. And it's one that honestly is more in line with statements that Scott has made in the past about the books. Though, can we all be honest with ourselves here?

That line was cut from all the marketing. It's gone. It doesn't exist anymore. You have to dig up like historical websites to find it. It's now been replaced with this line that is published across all the books. Scott Cawthon spins three sinister novella length tales from uncharted corners of this series is canon. And again, that right there, that is even more vague and non-specific,

because look, we're talking about areas that are uncharted, never explored before, which honestly, even if you're choosing to read that line with a literal interpretation, feels like it's even more support for them not being 100% canon with the games. Since we have charted a lot of the topics that you see in some of these stories, like the Gregory story, great example.

We know how he acts in the game, it is slightly different than how he acts in the books. It's not one for one. It cannot be literal. I'm just pointing it out it is a difficult position to defend. And all of that is without me even pointing out the differences between the books and the games, like the fact that there isn't a giant baobab tree

in the middle of the pizzaplex. The fact that the pizzaplex is not shaped like a giant pizza slice in the game, as it is in the books. The fact that there isn't a giant VR AR dome that's turning people in the Fasgoo and that there's no roller coaster that's running through the center of the restaurant.

And those are just some of the differences that popped to the top of my head. I have seen people online picking and choosing certain stories to be canon and certain stories to not be canon. And again, I have to call out. Isn't that just picking and choosing certain evidence pieces to forward your intended narrative? And do you see the irony of that? Those of you who are convinced that the books are canon are doing exactly the same thing that you criticize online theorists of. You have an answer that you're committed to, and so every theory is based on a core assumption. And if it's okay for you,

then it has to be okay for us too. In the end, here's the important. thing to remember. We're all on the same team. We're all working towards the same goal. We are trying to solve this franchise together as completely as possible using the most satisfying evidence-based answers we can. Because we all love this franchise. We all love a good mystery and we all want the answers. And the way that we get to those answers is by being open to all ideas. All ideas, no matter where or what personality type they're coming from. And even when we do get things right, it's okay. And it's also important to occasionally revisit. it those answers. Because guess what? This franchise changes. It evolves. It adds more lore in places

that you least expect. So when someone makes a big old swing, don't be quick to write them off. I mean, I suspected that Chica was a mediocre melody just out of the blue and that Mr. Hippo was at 1.1 of the core animatronic lineup. Both things that at the time seemed like pretty big swings back in the day, but both things that at this point actually have a lot of evidence to back them up. So sometimes those big risk theories actually yield some pretty big rewards. In the end, remember, it's easy to point at someone else's ideas and find the holes, but it's actually a lot harder to then offer up your own solutions. It takes guts to put yourself out there and concoct a theory, so be nice to other people's ideas,

because that's the way we learn. That's the way we grow. We do it by asking questions and making mistakes. If every theory were perfect the first time out, well, let's be honest. There wouldn't be any mystery to this, right? The games wouldn't be as fun. It would be kind of boring. And honestly, it wouldn't have spawned this incredible franchise that we have today. Let's bury the hatchet, shall we? There's a movie coming, there's a new game, the book series is wrapping up.

Let us move forward together as a united family of FNAF theorists. Ends, S's, and every letter in between. All of us united in our love of mystery and our collective hatred of Fasgu. But hey, that's just a theory. A game theory! Thanks for watching!