Retronauts - 635: Five Nights at Freddy's

Episode Date: September 2, 2024

Nadia and guest Mat Bradley-Tschirgi talk about the 10th anniversary of the animatronic animal horror game phenomenon Five Nights at Freddy's. Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

This week on Retronauts, follow the white rabbit if you want, but follow the yellow rabbit at your own peril. I'm your host for this week, Nadia Oxford. I need you to fetch the sogiest, saddest, sloppiest piece of pizza you can think of, the most disgusting pieces you've ever touched in your life, because I'm going to talk about the horror sensation game of the tens, if you want to call them the tens, that is Five Nights at Freddy's. And yes, it is retro, according to our, the Retron's Rulebook. I guess, I don't know if we have one, but let's just say that we do.

The point is, Five Nights of Freddy's is old, and you should feel old. And that goes double for anyone who has kids, including my guest this week, fellow writer and FNAF fan over 13 years old, Matt Bradley Shurgie. Hey, Matt, thanks for coming. Absolutely, happy to be here. Yeah, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? Sure. I think you've been on the show before. I have it.

It was a few years ago with Jeremy Parrish and someone else. I can't remember who I used to do sequelcast 2 and Friends, which was a movie and video game podcast that was part of the Greenlit Network, a podcast network a while ago, but you can find those at SQLcast2.com. But I write books. I'm based out of Portland, Oregon. I recently came out with Star Trek Video Games and unofficial guide to the Final Frontier. I spoke on a Star Trek video games panel just a few weeks ago at Star Trek to Las Vegas at the Rio, which was really cool as part of the Inglorious Trexperts stage, which they're a podcast and they had programming all four days of the show, which is crazy, but it was pretty cool. And I also recently was an editor on Uvebo's memoir in English, Uveo Raw, A Memoir.

Oh, nice. I have to read that one. Yeah, it just came out. Infamous name. Yes. I mean, it covers his life and the movies, and I think the stuff about his life might surprise people. Yeah, I bet a few things about that guy would surprise us, but that sounds really cool. Have you ever met, I don't even remember she'd be podcasted with Kat Bailey at all or met her?

Yes, she was on, I think all three of us were on a, Acts of the Blood God talking about Dragon Quest 5 That's right, yes. That's a great episode. Actually, I think it's available a la carte. If you want to go to anyone listening to this wants to go to our Acts of Blood God Patreon and buy that for a few bucks. Yeah, Kat, of course, is humongous Star Trek nerd. So if you talked to her about like... I interviewed her for the book. So, yeah, she was a lot of fine.

Oh, she must have had plenty to say. Yeah, she's like so huge. Especially Star Trek online, she was really Yeah. She was, I think that was her, like we all have our MMOs and that was hers for a very long time, she said, and she describes it all the time on Acts of the Blog Guide. Yeah, she's a, she's a super fan, right? She's a real trekkie. I mean, I've been listening to her stuff since, you know, the oneup.com days like 20-something

years ago, so wherever long ago. Oh, my God, active time babble and all of that? Yes, yes. What a great name. It is, yep. Yeah. Spoiler alert. We were actually thinking of naming Acts of the Blood God that if we weren't able to get the Blood God name rights after U.S. Gamer shut down. But thankfully, they gave us the rights. And that was actually quite nice of them. But how was Las Vegas, by the way? When I went there for Fan Fest, for Final Fantasy 14 Fan Fest, I nearly died. The weather was just too hot for me. Yeah, I mean, it was in August. So, and it was my first time speaking at a convention outside of Oregon, which that part was cool. And I got to take my wife as a plus one, which they don't.

always do at conventions anymore and that was great that's very true that's very nice of them um but anyhow i mean it was like got up to 109 degrees we did not stay at the rio because my dad had a time share at the flamingo and you could take a taxi for like 10 bucks or something so uh that was a better option but just even at night it felt like you were boiling i happen to like the heat like i was fine with it um but my friends i was with not so much no i'm a i'm a very soft canadian but But it was really cool. I mean, I got to see, you forget how many people guessed it on Star Trek. Like, Ray Wise was there, the dad from Twin Peaks.

Like, to see them in person kind of blew my mind. And just a lot of cool people. The merch was, like, quite expensive, too. I was the most expensive thing. It was very expensive at Conn's days. I saw it was like a painting of from the original four Star Trek shows. So Star Trek, Next Generation, DS9, and Voyager of different characters. And it had maybe 30 signatures on that I seen.

verified, and it was going for 4,500. Wow. I don't know if it's sold, but I wouldn't spend that much on it, but I think some people would. Well, even though we're here to talk about FNAF, actually, I have to tell you, I'm sure you've heard this story before, or maybe you haven't, but did you hear my story about the time William Schatner was in my backyard? No, I haven't heard that one.

Okay, that was actually really funny. I grew up in a house that backed onto the parking lot of a indoor hockey rink, and it It was a pretty significant hockey rink, like the Maple Leafs used to practice there and whatnot. And one day, my mom just looks out the window over our backyard and says, that's William Shatner. Like, there's a movie set there. And William Shatner is sitting there. So my brother and his friend and I, we go over and William Shatner just sitting there. Yeah, he was filming Tech War.

Do you remember Tech War? Yes, I do. And I've read some of the books. The video game I haven't played, but I should probably try to stream it sometimes. I didn't know there's a game. It has full motion videos with him and character. And it's by Capstone. It's got a pretty awful reputation, but that makes me more interesting in it.

I know the show lasted a few episodes, maybe. And the scene, there's a scene where like an android is in a hockey rink, and he throws a hockey stick. And I actually got to watch that be filmed because he let us come in and watch it be filmed. And yeah, my brother had a signature on just like a piece of paper. It's pretty cool. Yeah, I met Chattner briefly with my wife and I have done the Star Trek cruise a few times, which is a lot. a lot of fun. And when we got the picture taken with him, he was sort of

tired, which is expected. But like the people I understand. The guy behind us got on his hands and knees in front of Shatner. Photo lines are great for people watching. He got his hands and knees and bowed to them. And I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. And I'm sure Shatner's seen it all. He was a

real pro. But like, you know, when people see their idols in person, they can react in funny ways. They really can. That's a little creepy. I would be a little bit squicked out if someone did that to me. But as he said, Shattner's probably an old pro by this point, and he's seen it all. oh goodness star trek fandom in general and fandom is actually something that's a big part of fnaf which again we are talking about today i promise you matt um why don't you tell us a little bit about why you even know anything about five nights at freddies uh i know that most people who have kids or had kids at that point in time know something about these animatronics right i don't have kids and i'm 42 the reason why i know about it Okay, I love this because it's an adult FNAF fan podcast. We're good.

Okay, great. Fantastic. Yeah. The thing is, like, I followed game news like a nut since I was a kid and had a subscription to like PC gamer and Nintendo Power. And so these sites like Kataku just wouldn't shut up about Five Night at Freddy. So Steam had a bundle of, I think, the first four games and the sister, whatever, one. Sister location. Yeah. Thank you.

And I downloaded it and played it. And we talked about this a bit in the chat before. we started the show but like I grew up going to showbiz pizza and chucky cheese and what fascinates me about five nights as Fridays is like those things don't really exist anymore especially after COVID and yet like the movie was still really popular so you have a game based on a real location that the kid that the audience never went to or experienced in the same way as someone very good point yeah right and like arcade back when arcade games looked much better than stuff at home.

Yeah, for sure. I did, like, where did you grow up? Did you go up in the South? I grew up in Latin America for six years as a kid because my dad worked for the government. And then we moved to the South in Atlanta, or Marietta, Georgia, which is near Atlanta. But we, for a time there, we lived with my grandma in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. And I think over in Pittsburgh, you could go down the mountain and go to those pizza places.

So it was maybe, you know, like seven or something the first time I went. Yeah. There was never a showbiz pizza in Canada that I know of, but was I, am I thinking wrong? Or were those like kind of more southern, maybe slightly religious themed pizza places? I believe you're right. I recall a Noah's Ark game that was a piece of shit where you just run around and select two animals, go back in the Ark and go like, I don't remember the mascot animal characters being religious necessarily, but I think you're right. And I'd only been to the, when I was very little, and then later it got replaced to a Chuckie cheese. And even as a kid, I didn't like change. And I was like, this is bullshit. I want Chuckie, you know, I want the showbiz pizza.

The pizza, like, tasted largely the same. I'm not sure if they're run by the same company, but I think so. I think now they might be, but yeah. I had a friend who worked in a showbiz pizza, and I never forgot. She described how she had to destroy tickets that weren't being used or whatever. And it did so by taking a big bucket of water and pour it. They're just putting the tickets in there and he had to mush them around and her hands were dyed up to her elbows all the summer. I got a good Chucky Cheese story.

Do you mind if it get a little gross? Oh, of course. We're all about gross here at Retronauts by Nadia. Retronauts was going to call Retro Gross at one point. But yeah, so a friend of mine worked at Chuckie Cheese in the South and he was actually Chuckie Cheese at some point. And he said kids would kick him in the nuts constantly. And so on his last day, in the last day he was so fed up with it, he took a shit in the mask in the head. of Tucky Cheese and left it and locked in the closet on like a hot day just to really get back at them.

And I told that story in one of my writer's groups and like the guys thought it was amazing and like some of the women were just disgusted. And the reaction just depends on the kind of humor of the people. But it was very telling. As you can tell, I broke up laughing, especially since FNAF. We'll get into the lore a bit later. But yeah, there is a very specific point about bad smells coming from the suits in the game. That's right. Oh, good.

No one took his shit. It's just murdered kids. We'll, okay, we're fine. No, I, as I said, I never want to show this pizza. That Noah's Ark game that you mentioned, it does exist. It's by Wisdom Tree. It's, of course, a, it's like an illegal NES game, I think. It's a different game, actually.

The one in the arcade was Overhead, like Zelda perspective. Oh. But same idea, though. I've played the Wisdom Tree NES game. And, but anyhow, yeah, it's same kind of idea. It wasn't very good. No, I'm actually fascinated. And I think if it's like Bible quotes on the screen, you know, between levels, they would always sneak those in.

You know, you could make a really metal game about the Bible. And, I mean, that's something that Scott Coth and the creator of Five Nights of Freddy's he tried to do. That's right. And again, I'll get into that in a moment, but I just want to say my specific Chuck E. Cheese memory and why maybe it's part of the reason I was just so attracted to this weirdness in the first place. Like you, I'm old enough to remember these places. As I said, there was no showbiz pizza, but we did go to Chuck E. Cheese a few times for my brother's birthday. And even then, those places, something about them smelled so weird and run down. And the ball pit swallowed children.

And it was kind of a fascinating, almost scary place, but I adored it for that reason. Like, my location had these little mouse holes that you crawl into. And one time they were closed because there was a bunch of broken glass in them. And that just fascinated me. Like, wow, broken glass at Chucky Cheese. How could that exist? As you can tell, I was always a chaotic little child. So just the veneer, if I'm using the right word here, of happiness and songs and friends over what's really kind of a ill-maintained pizza place full of animatronics that don't really work properly.

Yeah, of course, Cawthon went this way. We've got it together with you. We've got it together forever. It's great to be together. It's really quite a pleasure. Only together. I think we got it. Yeah.

Yeah. And the Chucky Cheese stuff, it was such a part of the culture that, like, in the 90s, they changed them from being kind of like a plump mouse to being skinny and writing skateboards and having a backwards hat. So they changed the mascot a bit with the time. Yeah, but I remember that kind of charmingly lame-ass Chuckie Cheese with the hat and all of that. But I'm not sure exactly when they started to take animatronics out of Chuckie Cheese. I feel like they've been in and out of the establishment. But I could see the reason why kids were so fascinated with Five Nights at Freddy's.

One reason is because, yeah, maybe their parents told them about these places. Maybe they even experienced them for themselves. But as you said, COVID, like, just kind of annihilated the rock of fire experience, I suppose. In one last Chucky Cheese story, and I swear we'll get to Five Nights at Freddy's. Oh, absolutely. I love Chuck. When COVID started, there was, you know, everyone was ordering food at home. And in some places, this happened here in Portland, Oregon, there is a place on, like, the Grubhubb called Pusquallis.

And that was actually Chuck Echese, delivering their pizza, stealthily. Delivery-esque-esque. Yeah. Nice, yeah. That's how they, like, barely stayed in business, and they had to close the one. But we used to take my nephew a lot, and I felt so old seeing a lot of the arcade games were just like phone games. They had, like, a temple run. Yeah.

And I'm like, man, it's, it's different. But, like, out here we have Portland Retro Game Expo, and we have a good arcade scene out here, and I'm just thankful for that. Yeah, Chuck E. Zee can do better. Actually, I'd love to go to Portland Retro. I just came back from Long Island Retro, and that was a lot of fun, except for... That one's great. Oh, it's great, but I had massive flight delay, so I missed a whole day, and, yeah, that sucked. But it's still great.

Like, what a great venue. Had fun. The original Flymaster Freddy's, it was a horror game that hit Steam in August of 2014. It was also around the same time YouTube really became a prominent way for people to build their personalities as they played games and yelled about them and kind of started with Let's Play's Before streaming really took off But you had some really big-name YouTubers

Rising around the same time as SNAF like Marketplayer And Jack Septuagai and Matt Pat Who used to dissect the lore of a five nights of Freddy's. I bet that's going to send the revenue he got from that is probably going to send his kids to college with no problem whatsoever.

You probably can each other and PhDs from the money he gets from that. Like it's just crazy. Like the popularity is quite something. I got a hand to Matt Pat though. Like the fact he just retired like a normal human being from YouTube, like that's actually very commendable. When you look at people who

try to make it on YouTube, some of them through Five Nats of Freddy's and they just break down, they burn out, they get destroyed. very hard to cross that finished line as a human being and Matt Pat despite some of his

big F-ups like give well I don't know what did you call an F-up when he gave undertale to the Pope

I think so but I mean why not if you're going to give it the undertale to something why not the Pope? Well I give it to the Pope

I once saw a parody of like the Pope's steam deck sorry steam profile and it says he's playing undertale and he's just like what is this shit

how do I kill my mom and I thought that was pretty funny yeah I mean Looking here at Five Nights at Freddy's, it was developed with something called Click Team, Click Team Fusion. And I've never used that, but I did grow up with something called like Game Maker and Maxis had a French thing.

And I think it's along the same lines of like a low code game design development. I have the 2005 Bachelor's of Fine Arts in Interactive Design and Game Development from Savannah College Art and Design. Oh, cool. And so I'm not a great programmer, but I've done game development. And most recently, I did the closed beta test for Ken, Roberta Williams remake of Colossal Cave Adventure. Oh, nice. That's awesome.

Cool to work with them. But anyhow, you know, point being, he could pump out these games so quickly because he was using one of these drag and drop game maker things. And some people complain. And I've made a stuff with, I made a game an RPG maker that people really complained about, oh, it's RPG maker. You can make a game at a weekend. And it's like, you could. It won't be a good game. Game development takes so long that, like, unless you've done.

that you don't really understand. And it's really commendable that Scott Cothorn made something that was a hit and then was able to make sequels that were just as successful. Like, it's a miracle any game gets finished. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, going by the thought that this is around the time that YouTube less plays rose into prominence. This was also the time of, as you said, drag and drop game development.

It feels like this is really when Indies started to take off and diversify things. Thanks to two years later, for example, with GameMaker, we'd be getting Undertale, which, yeah, is incredible. So, like, in college, an RPG maker, one of the things, assignments we got was work in a team and make a game off an existing IP, and we didn't have to have the rights to it. So I did the Japanese film Better Royale, and we used RPG Maker 2002, which wasn't legally in the state. So I had to download a Japanese to Russian to English translation. and we got it working somehow, even though, you know, most of the buttons were labeled and jibberish, and you could figure it out. But, like, RPG Maker on the computer was so much easier than I had the PS1 version. And, like, that was pretty much unusable unless you had the keyboard and the mouse.

And even then, I wouldn't recommend designing a game with the controller unless you have a lot of time on your hands. Yeah, I used to kind of look at the reviews for RPG maker, because I was mildly interested in game development, I suppose, like any kid at that age. at that age, but we had nothing at the time except maybe for RPG Maker. And I remember reading reviews saying it was kind of complicated to use but as time went on, I started to notice that

we were getting some pretty good games coming out of RPG Maker and then again we got what was the name of the engine that Scott used again? It is Click Team Fusion 2.5. Yes, I've never heard of that, but it sounds like the kind of thing that if you, you know, as you said,

even if you know, you think you know something about game development. You don't quite know anything about game development. I mean, I couldn't go in there and make a great game, drag and drop or not, especially not one with the appeal of Five Nets at Freddy's, but I think part of the appeal there is also almost by accident because Scott Cothin tried many, many times who develop RPGs based on biblical content, like a game based on the 17th century Christian novel, Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. They weren't great games, but Neither were they like the broken digital slop that usually gets pitched at Christian bookstores.

Like Matt, you mentioned that Noah's Ark crap. Yeah. Oh, I mean, the amount of Christian stores in the South for listeners that don't know, like you can throw a brick and hit five of them. I mean, we would go there just to get, we would go there with my friends in high school just to get chick tracks and leave. Yes. Oh, I call like chick tracks. I love those lovely comics. But I believe one of these games that Scott did was the Chipper and Sun's Lumber Company, like Jim Sterling made a big video making fun.

of it that got a lot of attention. Yeah. I think Jim goes by Stephanie now. I'm sorry. Yeah, but you're right. She did actually, oh, it's some problem. She did actually review or look at Cothons, one of the games that Cawthon put on Steam Greenlight, which was Chipper and Sons, which is a resource management game. But if you look at the character designs, they are so terrifying.

And really, this guy was in the right place, no, in the right time, but in the wrong place completely like. his plane was taking off across the airport, and he was over here, and the terminal, like, just the wrong terminal completely. Sure. And, I mean, you could kind of call Chipper and Sons Lumber Company five nights at Freddy's zero in a way, I think, because the design of those characters, I really feel inspired. They really do, yeah. Some of the creature designs in Freddy's. I think that Chipper has made guest appearances in some games, at least, by Scott. But what I find very interesting about Scott's games is, again, they weren't exactly. Like, as I said, that Christian bookstore slop, my theory, my belief is that if you are going to make a game based on Christian slash biblical content, by all means, do it.

Like, I actually love the idea of a game based on Pilgrim's Progress. And if you look at the game itself, even though it doesn't play extremely well, the demon designs that Cawthon makes, they're pretty good. You can absolutely see why he became famous for his horrible animatronic design. minds, especially some of the later ones that you get in the later games. He's not bad at designing these things, but unfortunately, ironically, I don't know if the people who kind of like that kind of, who like Christian games and whatnot are necessarily interested in playing ones that are cool and they sound like demons and stuff like that. I love the idea of being in an RPG where you fight like, you know, Beelzebub and the representation of regret and sin,

and that's pretty cool. I like that. You could do the angels with a thousand eyes on them, right? Like you could do things with those designs. Biblically accurate angels. Yeah, absolutely. He'd nail that for sure. Yeah, so we talked about how his breakthrough came with Chipper and Sons, and Stephanie Sterling said, oh, God, what the hell. And Scott got pretty depressed after that.

But then he said, you know, he was depressed but not defeated. He had a lightbulb moment with the help of God and leaned into this weird talent for modeling childlike terrors by he developed a horror. game that became a pop culture touchstone for millennials. And yeah, and as we said, it became a hit thanks to so many scream-filled play-throughs by aforementioned YouTubers because I guess the Lord works in a mysterious ways.

Indeed. And part of what impresses me about Five Nights at Freddy's is how minimalist it is. It is. You're in that little room. It's first person. It's really limited what you can do. And the storytelling is environmental. Like, it's not

terribly didactic. You do have the I'm sure the guy has a name, but like that nerdy guy at the beginning, you know, kind of talking about, oh, phone guy. Yeah, people get their head chopped off here. You better watch out. Yeah. Which I think was Scott Cawthor, is that right? That was him. That was his voice, yeah.

Yeah. So, I mean, I need a good performance with that. But other than that, the game is like an older game and that it kind of doesn't do a tutorial, doesn't ease you into it. It just kind of kicks you down the stairs and hopes you make it at the end. Yeah, absolutely. Sink or swim. The premise is also so it's, Scott has a. a very dry sense of humor I find. And actually, one thing I like about his work is you will find references to really retro games like in the later games that he makes. He often includes mini games that use Atari style graphics. And that's the stuff that I initially played with. So I always kind of have a fondness when I look at those, even though they're often included in terrible, terrible cutscenes where let's just say that Cawthon is really good at hiding violence by.

kind of scaling down the images, if you know what I mean, like kind of utilizing that Atari aesthetic really effectively for that sort of thing. And I think it makes it more effective by doing so, because you're not expecting that eight-bit aesthetic to be sort of bloody or surprising. And when you imply violence, like the mind can imagine something much worse than whatever you can see on screen if it's just like a gore hound, Fangoria kind of close up. Yeah. I don't think that there's any kind of of Atari-style retrographics in the first game. I will say, though, there was a very short-lived RPG that Scott took down.

I think he was ashamed of it because he thought it was so bad. But it did contain a quote from Goldbez from Final Fantasy 4, so I'll appreciate it for that. I didn't think it was that bad. It wasn't that good either. It was kind of run-of-the-mill, but to see those characters in a kind of Pokemon knockoff was not a terrible idea. Yeah. It was free. It was on HGL, I think. So it's not like we were paying for it. Scott was always pretty good about realizing, yeah, this isn't like Zell's Breath of the Wild. These are pretty, you know, simple games in many ways, which is why he could get away with releasing so many in such a short time. Like we got like God, I think by the time, within a year, less than a year, we had five after Freddy's four. So the series did draw some criticism for being so having like so many games in such a short span of time. But given how small these games were and how they linked together, I think it's, it never bothered me that there was like such a blunderbuss at the time.

Yeah, and it wasn't like he was charging $70 a piece for them either. Oh, they're like $10. Right. I think they helped with the popularity because, you know, a kid goes to their mom, hey, can I buy this computer game? It's $10. They'll probably say yes. Yeah. And another thing to mention also is this is around the time, like Scott couldn't have time this better because this is around the time also the rise of iPhone gaming.

And five nights of Friday's, to my knowledge, is still on the charts as, like, one of the most popular paid for apps. Like, 99 cents got you five nights of Freddy's, nine and cents got you FNAF two, three, four, five, whatever else came. So it really, really took off thanks to Steam and iOS. Yeah, and like I was just, for research, I was just streaming FNAF three last night. And I think I sent you the clip of me like screaming when I got scared. And it really, like, the sound design is something that gets overlooked in these games. I agree. It's really effective.

It's a bit like a David Lynch film, a lot of low rumbling and weird noises you can't identify. And that helps kind of draw the player into the monitor. And then something jumps out. And I mean, you're right. The YouTube Let's Play React stuff was huge in getting these games popular because it's fun to see people get scared. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting you bring up the sound design because I totally agree.

I know that Scott often used, you know, free samples, free library stuff, but he was really good at matching those sounds to certain movements. Like, I know in Five Master Freddy's two, Foxy makes a very specific sound when he moves around in the vents. And that sound, to this day, like people use it in TikToks and YouTube videos where they want to have a startling, creepy sound and indicate, oh, something bad's about to happen. And, yeah, usually in the game, if you heard that sound, Foxy was about to jump out at you. but what a great sound. And, like, when you hear it, you recognize it instantly, like, oh, that's five minutes at Freddy's. Like, and I don't think Scott made that sound or anything like that. It's just he used it so effectively.

That actually goes for the world for the first game to the way that one of the way that one of the creepiest things that can happen to you in that game is when you run out of power Again, this is a weird-ass premise where you are surrounded by angry animatronics for reasons that become obvious in games down the line. And if you run out of power by using too many safety implements, like closing your doors and turning on your lights and whatnot, all of everything will run out at once. And the office just powers down with this really ominous hum. and even the fan, which was such a constant that whole time, you didn't even realize that that power's down. You truly have that silence that you only get when you lose the power in your house or wherever.

And then you hear the Torador march and you see these flickering eyes coming down the hallway. And that is very much your get your affairs an order moment because Freddie's coming for you. But if you are a few seconds away from 6 a.m. because he got a last from 12 a.m. to 6 a.m., you can still find salvation. You can still win. And I think Markiplier did that at least once in his play-thrus. And, of course, his elated screaming was very contagious. And if you like the Toriador March, you can purchase Christopher Lee's final album. He sings it on there as a track. It's called Metal Knight, and it's a heavy metal arrangement. Oh, no kidding. Yeah, there was a lot of great fan stuff that came out of the Five Nights at Freddy's phenomenon, like the Living Tombstones and their songs.

songs, which I think they had one at the end of the Five Mr. Freddy's movie, didn't they? They did. They used for the credits. I mean, the movie I felt sort of mixed on. They spent a long time trying to make it. Originally, Chris Columbus was going to direct it. I remember that, yeah. Scott Thorne had full approval, and they went with him over Chris Columbus, the director

of the first few Harry Potter movies. Right. So, but when it came out, like, it was really successful. People were kind of pooing it. I think it premiered a peacock on the first. same time or if not like pretty damn close to it. Yeah. And it did well anyway, so. Yeah, it did quite well. It actually made, uh, at, as of this date, over, uh, 300 million worldwide, which is not bad at all. And I watched it on the plane to, I don't know where I was going, but I watched

part of it on the plane there and part of it on the play back, so it was a short trip. But, uh, yeah, I actually kind of like the movie. I didn't hate it by any means, but you're, yeah, it could have had, um, more. animatronics for sure. The work on those were fantastic. Right. Blumhouse Films keeps the budgets low, which I think is pretty smart, but sometimes you can tell, and I think that was the case in this one. But I really liked Matthew Lillard. I thought it was really fun stunt casting, and I think he did a really good job. Yeah, he did. I think maybe one of the reasons why people were like, you know, why is this

movie so popular? What is even this all about? Is because, again, that premise of Five Nights at Freddy's just like, why would it be a security guard in a place where everything's trying to kill you, and he keep coming back to it. And in my mind, the joke of the game, because again, I think Scott has a very dry sense of humor, is that, well, don't we all kind of drag ourselves to jobs that destroy body and soul day after day for a really crummy paycheck? Yeah. Think about it. Actually, I think it was just being funny, but it was pretty funny. It's a funny. It's scary, and the game had, or the movie had some of that as well. Yeah, the one thing that the movie did, but that was really smart, is it really leaned into

the classic animatronics, which is, of course, Freddie Fasbear himself. You have Bonnie the rabbit, Chica, the chicken, and Foxy the Fox. And did I forget, I'm sure I forgot some poor bastard. Yeah. And I mean, speaking of those characters, did you know they came out with an official tie-in five-nights at Freddy's cookbook? And if you're going to do a tie-in cookbook, five-nights at Freddy's is perfect for it. Like, it totally makes sense for that kind of a product. I could see having, like, a lot of fun party foods and, like, name them sad things, like, my best day and other things that dead children might name their food. Right.

I can't remember the YouTuber, but someone did a video of, like, he complained that the recipes in the book were not lore heavy enough, so he invented some. And he had, like, the one of the purple guy as, like, a food. And it was kind of funny if you Google that. Yeah, that all ties into, like, it's funny that someone would go to a pizza book and say, but where's the lore? But that is extremely five nights at Freddy's. Like, I think what really drew people into the game to begin with was not just the mechanics themselves and the jump scares, as well as visuals, but maybe all of that combined with the story that Scott had entwined in this game from day one. and there's a lot of hidden lore hints and story bits in FNAF games and people have a great time just rooting for it and, you know, just digging up that stuff, finding what they can find in those, like, sometimes there's something in it. Sometimes it's really well hidden, like, people have to glitch out some random wall in five minutes at Freddy's and they'll find, like, what they were looking for.

But the first game kept things quite simple. what would happen is, as you're looking around these security cameras, trying to keep tabs on where the animatronics are and what they're doing, you would occasionally see the scenery change, and something like a wall that had like a posting of rules for the establishment would suddenly be filled with articles, with headlines that said, like, you know, serial killer on the loose, children missing, blah, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, it basically comes to, you come to realize,

in time, if you can put everything together, that somebody in this bad pizza place once killed a bunch of children and hid their bodies in the suits of the animatronic animals. And in the later games, he kind of learned that one of the reasons these animatronics

want to kill you is they just don't like adults for obvious reasons. And that obvious reason would be the purple guy, aka William Afton, aka the serial murder, who just oft a bunch of kids, and still does, to this day he is in the movie spoiler alert

he is and I mean that's one thing about the movie not knowing much of the lore that kind of threw me off is the beginning is like one of the main characters beating up a guy for kidnapping a kid in a mall and I'm like what kind of movie is this is what I eventually you know they kind of explain it but it's a strange way to be one of the first scenes of the movie and that the element with the children I think adds a bit of melancholy to it and that the game isn't explicit about the plot that it's environmental kind of like we were saying earlier, it gets people talking about it, right? It's like, yeah, they go like, oh, what about the, I think it means this. Oh, I think it means this. And you, well, you know,

the creator of the game, Scott Cothorn, excuse me, has his interpretation. Once you release it to the public, the public has their interpretation. Absolutely. Yeah, definitely death of the author stuff going on there. It probably doesn't help that there are so many Five Nets at Freddy's cannons. Like there's all these different timelines, all these, like, they, like, they The games have one timeline. The movies is another timeline. There's a lot of books and graphic novels. Have you read the Five Night of Freddy's books, the novels at all?

I've tried to depend to them. I couldn't get into them, but I appreciate that they're there. And we have a bookstore out here in Portland, Oregon, called Powell's City of Books, and it's five stories tall. And in the sci-fi section, or the media tie-in section, Five Nights at Freddy's is like a whole shelf. And when I saw that, I felt, one, I felt old. Because I didn't know really what it was at the time. And two, I was just really impressed. Because, you know, you might see, I think there was like two Metal Gear solid novels and that's it.

Or the video game novelizations are not huge. I think I had the Mario Brothers Choose New York Adventure stuff as a kid. Oh, my God. I have those. They do. Yeah, those were fun. But did they do a Five Nights at Freddy's Choose Your Own Adventure? I mean, that would make sense, right?

That would make a lot of sense, but I have never heard of one. I would probably play that. Do you like the books? Or what do you think of them? they're honestly not bad um coffin has this really weird thing where he writes in a very young adult style i don't really mean that in a depressive way i just mean like you know he writes in a way that's easy for young readers to understand then he'll just once in a while break out this brilliant line or description that makes me say like wow that's a that's pretty

cool that i read that but they're they're fine they're good for what they are they're very strange they make no sense whatsoever so they're more canon uh Yeah, they're good. I like them. I read the new ones that come out. I read the graphic novels sometimes when they come out. Some of the story collections are pretty good, actually, which is what most of the novels are these days. I'll have to check those out. One of the games I think I played a little bit was the Pizzeria simulator. Yeah, yeah. That was, shoot, that was sister location, I think, and that was really fun because, yeah, Scott Cawtham released this game, I think it was 2016, called Fred. Freddie Fazzar's Pizza Simulator, and at first, when you load it up on Steam, I didn't play it on iOS, but when you load it up on Steam, yeah, it looks like a standard, like, again, Scott Cawthon parody Atari game, and you're Freddie feeding pizza to the children, yay, and then as you play, it glitches out and turned into an actual five nights at Freddy's game, and I thought that was a really interesting start. And especially since I liked this game, because it had some really, had a lot of contributions from fans. And it also gave us a little bit of backstory, what I think is supposed to be a backstory on why the purple guy is psychotic. And if you play this, if you play this

driving game, it seems like a standard driving arcade game, again, one of the mini games that you get in a Five Nights at Freddy's game. But there's a secret exit you can take. And if you take the secret exit, you play as this orange guy who is kicked out of a bar, goes to a house and it's a really sad house full of sad-looking Atari characters and it insinuates that this orange guy is the father

of purple guy who is abusive alcoholic and that's the reason why purple guy is the way he is but that is 50% interpretation so take it as you will people say different things but I think that's just a

again a really interesting bit of storytelling that you're not going to find easily you got to look for it it. And that's, when you mix kids and YouTube and things that they can get obsessed about, kids get really obsessed by things very easily. So I could say why Finanauter Freddy's really hit a nerve with them. And you and I, Nadia, didn't grow up with YouTube. It wasn't around when we were kids. And so I think we have a different relationship to it to people that, um, that did. I mean, at your fingertips, you have more video than you can watch in a lifetime. Yeah, absolutely. And you used to have to work. You have to, you know, drive to restore and get a video and drive it back. I mean, The idea now is, like, absurd, but that was how everyone did it back then. Or you'd rent a game, right?

Yeah. But I guess even then when we had just VHSs, we were still like, oh, let's find the secret messages in these Disney movies. Oh, look, this tower looks like a penis. Therefore, we were very bored. That's right. Yeah, so what in the Lion King? I think it says sex or something. It says sex.

Or apparently, apparently, like, no, it says SFX. Yeah, sure it does. But, yeah, it was infamous that animators who got. bored, especially background animators, they would sometimes, you know, put little messages in the stuff they made. And the thing I remember most is it was popular to rent, was it either the rescuers down under or just the rescuers. And it was on VHS and you paused at a specific moment to see a picture of a naked woman in their boobs. It was so silly. The first one. First one, yeah, yeah. But that was the kind of lore that we hunted for back in the day. So the desire was always there. Scott, often in five minutes of Friday, he's just kind of really offered it up to kids in a way that was easy for them to consume and understand and have fun with. Is there a genre you'd like to see Five Nights at Freddy's games, do? Oh, that is a good question.

It might be, like, I would actually like to see, like to see another RPG attempt from Scott. Like, who knows? Five Nights of Freddy's Times RPG. That'd be an interesting mix. I like any RPG that can give me unsettling images and sounds. So, yeah, that would go well with me. How about yourself?

I think I would, you know, building on the simulator idea, make it like a real business simulator with spreadsheets, but then it would increasingly glitch out and get weird. I like that. And maybe people would die and you'd have to cover up the people. getting killed. Like, I'm not sure how you'd pull that off, and I don't even know if it would be that popular, but I like the idea of you're trying to run a business while children are being murdered and still trying to keep the happy, happy fun time, like veneer on the front.

I think there's something there about exploring it from a different angle. I like that, yeah. As it stands, the FNAF lore tends to center around Michael, the son of William Afton and in most games you get the impression that Michael is trying to clean up his father's sins to his great detriment at the end as it turns out he is kind of a sad ending actually have you played a sister location like you didn't really finish sister location right or see the ending no no I didn't what's the ending of it it's very interesting the thing about five nights of Freddy's is that yes they had all these murders in this piece of parlor that was owned in part by some someone named, I think it was Henry or Harry, who owned the store alongside William Afton, and came to realize what was going on. And so the whole premise of sister location you learn is that it's a false version of Five Nights of Freddy's that was created to lure in Purple Guy, who is now kind of ensnared by the rabbit suit springtrap, barely alive, barely but not dead either. and basically Michael was used as a tool to buy Henry to get him into that store and so he can set everything on fire, which he does, and everyone burns up, including Michael, who apparently wants to die because everything is so screwed up with his father. It's really kind of a messy story, but really dark.

Like, there's a lot going on there about abuse and whatnot. That's quite nice. You know, I do think Five Nights at Freddy inspired this indie game that people overlooked from 2022 called Not for Broadcast. I'm going to paste a link in the chat here And the idea is you're directing a live television show But based on how you do the live editing It influences whether one politician wins Or the other one does

And it has like fake commercials It was done in England A lot of full motion video It was made during the pandemic And like it's really bizarre I've never seen anything quite like it But that you're in one room And then stuff keeps breaking

Like maybe there's electricity or a thunderstorm And the machines don't work there's something about that perspective that made me think of Five Nights of Freddy's might have inspired this game a bit. Yeah, I like that, especially because as we are pointing out by talking about this game in the first place, the people who grew up with Five Nights of Fridays are making their own games now. And they have kids probably. Yeah. I just kind of, it's funny, I just assumed that you were into Five Nights of Fridays because you had kids.

So many people are like Diamond Fight, who's, of course, with Retronauts. they said their kids are kind of into it and we're really into the movie. So I just kind of assume that's if there was an adult who's into Five Nighter of Freddy's just because they had kids, not because they're a weirdo like me. Like I actually wrote a lore guide for Five Nights at Freddy's, like kind of explaining what order to the games we're in, what happens in each one, who the purple guy is, you know, who's this, who's that, what's the point of this? And I think I actually helped people keep things straight. It was a popular guide. I think it's still on VG 24-7. I think it was archived there.

So it probably still gets some decent traffic because I'm sure there's still parents who are like, what the hell is my kid talking about? When I was a kid, I wrote a fan fiction about the Kappa from Final Fantasy 6. Oh, my. That's so cute. But I don't think it exists, and I'm kind of glad it doesn't. But I did get to visit Japan in 2006 and visit Tono Valley, which has tons of Kappa Valley statues. Oh, nice.

And when we left, the Japanese villagers all gathered and gave us fruit covered in mochi, it felt like something out of the Miyazaki movie, and it was very bizarre to happen in real life, I think, because they didn't get many tourists at the time. Nobody likes Kappa? Yay. Everyone goes to visit the Fox Shrines. That's right. I would see the Kappa. That's really cool. Why did you decide to write a fan fiction about a Kappa in the first place?

I thought the character in Final Fantasy Six, the Kappa just looked really cute looking. He is kind of cute looking, isn't it? And so I kind of had him be kind, not knowing the lore of the Coppa, I had him be mischievous and pervy, and that ended up being accurate. Yes. Yeah, I think they pull your guts out of your butthole. They're kind of nasty, which is probably why they don't get many tourists in that village you just told me about. Right. And let me take this for my shelf.

Hold on one second. I mean, this isn't good for a podcast, but I still want to see. I have this from my 2006 trip still. Oh, I love it. that. Is he wearing like an inner tube? He is. And he's drinking beer and he has pickled cucumbers. And it says, don't mind. I don't know what the Japanese says because my Japanese is pretty bad. But I think I paid a thousand yen for it. That's awesome. I might get a tattoo of this guy. I don't know. He looks cool. He looks really chill. Yeah. You can't see this on the podcast, obviously. But yeah, there's just this Kappa, sit and chill and drinking a beer with an intertube. Anytime I get too stressed out, I look at the little don't mind Kappa. So just, uh, in, inherit his traits. Be cool. Drink beer. Float. Yeah, so I think another thing that has made Five Nights at Freddy's stand out and stand the test of time over the years is that it's not true. just the jump scares, and it's not even like the lore, well, it is, but the way that the

animatronics sneak around and kind of taunt you as you try to keep your body together can be genuinely terrifying. Like, there's a moment I recall very, well, probably recall for the rest of my life, where I was looking through the cameras, and I looked at the kitchen, because of course the animatronics are always clanging around. in there. There's that sound design again. And Bonnie, the bunny, was just staring at me with like these pinprick white pupil eyes lost and a void of luck. And I'm like, holy shit. I'm never sleeping again. Jesus Christ. And that's actually, like, I think Scott Cothan's Christian background ironically helped him with like really, you know, seal the scares in Five Night to Fridays. Like seal their, like what they were like. Because obviously, as a Christian developer, he's not going to make kids games full of blood and gore. As he said earlier, there is definitely the suggestion of dead children. And, you know, to be honest, that does surprise me a little bit, given Coffin's morals and whatnot.

But, yeah, there's not a whole lot you can object to in terms of blood, bad words, sex, anything like that. It's just not exactly G, but it certainly doesn't go over PG-13. the movie was PG-13, if I'm not mistaken. PG-13, I think I'd say a pretty soft one. I mean, one can only hope Peter Jackson gets his turn to do a Meet the Feebles version of Five Nights at Freddy's. Oh, man, I love

that. Or Del Toro? I'd love to see a... That'd be cool. Del Toro, a version of Five Nights at Freddy's. I don't know if he's a fan, though. So, I'm so waiting on that Hobbit movie. Man, I wish they'd do his version as a comic or something. I don't know. I think that would have been really something. Yeah, I would absolutely I would absolutely consume that

from beginning to end and yeah it's a rather short game I will give it that so it's probably why there's not a whole lot to say about it beyond like the fact that it has survived so long as a meme

and kids nowadays I call them kids even though they're not kids anymore but say someone was 10 when they grew up with Fine and Seth Freddy's now they're 20 now they're like us looking back and saying oh I'm so old and I tell you to shut up

because you're 20 years old But I understand the sentiment, which is the staying power of Five Nights at Fridays. We have not had a game in a little bit, except for the new one that came out, which was Help Wanted 2. Sorry, that was actually 2003. So that wasn't very long ago after all. But I think that was actually a VR2 launch as well. Yeah. So it's hanging in there.

Yeah, it looks like the second Five Nights at Freddy's movie comes out in December 5th, 2025. Okay. So where it goes with the lore, like, who knows, there's a lot of places it can go and with all the fan-made games. And I think it's going to be around for a while, even though it's not in its heyday. Yeah, just the, it's funny, the, as you said, Chuck E.Chi is all but dead. And I see it getting deader as time goes on. But I think that just the aesthetic of, oh, my God, machines out of control in a pizza. parlor is just an enduring, it's almost like the campground that you have, like a classic

slasher area or the school, another classic slasher movie area, but, or, you know, slumber party. So now you have the haunted pizza parlor kind of up there with them. And what's funny about that is, I don't know, have you ever watched Gravity Falls? Man, been a long time, but a little bit. Yeah, there was an episode. You may or may not remember it because it was very vivid where Seuss had a digital girlfriend who turned a bunch of pizza parlor. animatronics into murderers.

And yeah, that was like very wifu energy because Seuss, of course, is a gamer and not an insale. He's a very sweet guy, but he's not exactly unawkward. So, yeah, you had these animatronics in this pizza parlor being controlled by

this girl animated by Sprite animator Paul Robinson, who is incredible at what he does. But this came out like weeks, maybe days before Five Mentor Freddy's really took off. So people used to ask Alex Hirsch, the creator of the show, like, was this episode inspired by Finance and Freddie? He said, no, it's just a coincidence that it happened. So it's just funny that you had two ideas rising at the same time. And it was all based on animatronics and video games that can be taking control of very easily and will turn into murderous monsters. Yeah. And it's always sunny in Philadelphia in one of the recent seasons had something set like in a Chucky cheese.

I actually, I'm only just starting to watch. It's always sunny, so I haven't gotten there yet. That sounds pretty funny. Right. So, I mean, there's all the YouTube videos of, I forget the name of the groups, but they'll take the old animatronics and then make them play other music. Yes. I've seen that done.

There's actually a music video where someone did alongside to Neighborhood Number 1 by Arcade Fire, which is a very melancholy song about the apocalypse. and they spliced it with footage of, what movie was it, the day after tomorrow, which is the nuclear disaster movie, so there's spliced, like, footage of this gorilla playing piano and the singing bear alongside, like, nuclear explosions and Minuteman missiles taking off and going to Russia. It's a pretty great music video, very suitable for its source song, I think. Yeah, My mind Yeah, so Matt, I think we've gone over Almost everything that Five Nets at Freddy's has to offer.

You mentioned the second movie. I am looking forward to that. I might watch it on a plane, but I will watch it. And I do wonder if it will continue the storyline that the movie started or if Scott Cawthon is going to start everything all over again. I don't know. I think maybe we'll find a – well, the movie will have links to the first movie, but it will seem totally different at first glance, which is kind of the nature of Five Nights of Freddy's games. And maybe with Scott Cothords's religious influences, and since it is done by Blumhouse, maybe it'll be a crossover with their Exorcist reboots they're doing. Oh, that would be really awesome.

Like, can you imagine, like, the Exorcist, but you have to get kids spirits out of the animatronics? It's not totally unlike what the stories go for. That's true. Do it. Just hire me, Scott Cosas. Hire me to write it. I will write it.

But for now, that is it for this week on Retronaut. Thank you so much for joining me at this plastic tablecloth printed with happy animal musicians. If you like what we do, please support us on Patreon at patreon. Patreon. at patreon.com forward slash retronauts. A monthly pledge of $3 gets you episodes a week early and ad-free. A monthly pledge of $5 gets you all of that plus two exclusive episodes a month, extra episodes.

We do have a $64 tier, $64 tier as a Nintendo 64. And if you are a member of that tier for six months, you get your choice of topic. You can suggest a topic. But right now, as of this recording, all those spaces are filled. So you snooze, you lose. Keep an eye out. And maybe the tier spot will open up again. For now, Matt, where the heck can we find you?

Yeah, if you go to MATWBT.com or if you go on Twitter and look up MATWBT, you can find my stuff. I also have a substack called the film Flam Man at MATWBT. That's substack.com where I review kind of, you know, genre movies and do interviews, which is a lot of fun. I'm currently working on a book about the Doom video game and movies. That's D-O-O-O-M, not D-U-N-E. Doom. Right, Doom. And as, you know, I've just sort of started doing interviews for it, and I was really shocked at QuakeCon, they re-released Doom 1 and 2 yet again with like two brand new campaigns.

That's awesome. Along with modern quality of life improvements. doom will never die. Doom can run on a pregnancy test. I don't know if that's true or not. I can't remember if that was a shit post, but it's probably true. I think so. And I also will plug the Uve-Bull's memoir that I was an editor on and wrote the foreword for. Look up Uve-Bol book on Amazon. Right. It's called, and he, if you like him, he has a podcast called Uve-Bull Raw. It does episodes in English and in German that are on different topics. So depending on how much Uve-Bull you want to take, there's an option out there for you. I was really, you know, with his memoir, and then I'll shut up about Uve-Bull. I was really blown away by the blurbs we got for it.

The one we have on the cover is from Amanda Plummer, who worked on his latest film. and she says I would work with Uvee Bull on a drop of a dime I love him He was a very outspoken guy when it came to his kind of bad films at the time

Yes And anyhow You know It's cool that he's back In filmmaking again After doing restaurant stuff And Anyway I'll keep on

You know writing video game books I think partially because They didn't exist when I was a kid You could find movie books You could find music books The first one I The first two I ever read were Stephen L. Kent's the first quarter. I think it was later changed to Ultimate History of Video Games.

And, oh, I can't remember the guy's name, but it was, I think, called Game Over A History of, like, Nintendo by David Chef, I think. David Sheff, yeah, that was, like, the only thing we had for a very long time. That was the history book. And so I think we've gotten, do you think we've gotten more of video game books over the years? I think we have. Like, I think it'll continue some more. I might be working on one, just saying.

Oh, okay. Yeah, you know, I brought up at work that I did. a Star Trek video games book and some older people said why would you do a book about video games but why not? Right well who cares and like and then when I did my presentation at Star Trek to Las Vegas

my hardcover sales in one of the categories jumped up from 330 to 30 so it shows I think there is a market for it and there's more video games out there that will continue to be made

and I picked the the topic of Star Trek video games because it's Star Trek, it's popular, and they'll be making those games for a long time. Absolutely, yeah. I agree with you, and I mean, this whole episode has been about a niche

that is, you know, seems like who the hell is going to want to be so obsessive about a game about Chucky Cheese, but there you go. And speaking about books, this series has a lot of books attached to it. Is there a book he'd recommend in particular? Oh, that's a good question.

there are so many and they're so scattered that it's really hard to say yes you said some of the short ones right there's like short stories or something yes that's right there are like short story collections um of course I can't remember the name of them off the top of my head I just kind of go on Kindle and buy them but also there's graphic novels of those story collections so if you want to like read faster that's a good way to do it so but I find that the the books they're not just written by Scott they're written by several people and um some of the prose is pretty good there's a couple of really good uh it kind of reminds you me, I remember when you were a kid and you'd read like scary stories for kids and to read in the dark or whatever it was called, the series. Yeah. Oh, man, the one I loved was Captain N. the Game Master, which does not hold up. But I think I'll do a book about it one day because it was like media of different franchises crossing over in really, you know, inaccurate ways with Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops doing Mother Brain or Mega Man with a Smoker's Coff and he's green. God, that was motherbrain. voiced by Levi Strauss, I think it was. Stubbs. Sorry, Strubs.

The same voice of Audrey II, yeah, from Little Shopper. Who's just an incredible, just an incredible performer. Well, missed very, very much. Yeah, one of my sound design professors was, as a kid, really good at Alto Sax, so he got to tour at the Four Tops for a summer. Oh, I'm jealous. That's really cool. He said it was extraordinary, and, like, they were just, like, machines and knew their stuff

backwards and forward, but you had to know the whole songbook, because they would change things last minute to see if you could keep up with them. That's awesome. That's a market of talent right there. Just like, you know what, I'm going to screw with this. Keep up or don't. I don't care. Speaking of keeping up, you can keep up with me at Nadia Oxford on the social medias. I am also the co-host of the Axe of Blood God podcast. We cover RPG's old and new Eastern and Western. We just had a big stream for a trans lifeline. We raised $18,000 and we have all kinds of crazy promises that we're going to fulfill now. So please join us at patreon.com for us slash blogod pod.

We want to see you on our Discord, so make sure you support us. But until next time, if you don't want to hook in your eye, you best not be peeking behind Foxy's Curtain. Arr. Why do you want to be? I just don't get it. Why do you want to stay the announces babies?

Is this what you want to be? I just don't get it. Why do you want to stay? The answer is ready. You know,