Game Theory: FNAF, The Secret Crimes of 1985

Race you to the ball pit!-Hey, that's no fair! I haven't got my shoes off yet! -Hysterical Laughter- -stuttering- Ahh -DUN- Made it.

Ozzy? Ozzy? Oz-Ozzy? OZZY! Hello internet, welcome to Game Theory! And the start to what will undoubtedly be a very FNAF-y new year because while everyone else in the games industry is concentrated on new consoles with ALL of the teraflops and none of the actual games, Five Nights at Freddy's is over here in the corner doing its own thing in releasing y'know, exciting and interesting stuff.

Last year's Help Wanted was a fantastic edition to the series which keeps updating itself with new and exciting lore all the time.

There's that new 80's inspired game coming out later this year.

The AR game is something I should probably talk about at some point since apparently that also has lore implications and most interestingly of all, we have ourselves the rollout of the new books series “Fazbear Frights”.

The first one released after Christmas and before the end of this year there'll be a total of (let me check my notes.

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) HOLY MOTHER OF ENNARD! FIVE?! Five installments in a new book series in a YEAR?! Ugggh.

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Looks like Scott's gone back to his roots of just MASS releasing stuff.

It's like he saw the Netflix model of binge watching a show and was like “I want that but for video games! And apparently books!” Jeez, if only mass drop lore reveals for us to binge understand we'd all be happier for it.

Anyway the reason I called these books out is that first off, they're just really good.

Did you ever read the Goosebumps books? I definitely did.

Every.

Single.

One.

Night of the Living Dummy and Ghost Next Door every day fam.

Well, Fazbear Frights is just a modern version of those with each book containing 3 short horror stories all set in the FNaF universe, and true to them being a part of the franchise they aren't afraid to get super bleak.

Today's episode is going to go into detail for the first three so if you want to read them blind consider this your spoiler warning.

Anyway, to give you a sense of tone, one story ends with a girl finding her severed body parts hidden away in plastic bags ONLY to then realize that she herself has been piece-by-piece replaced with a robotic body.

In another, a teenage girl is imprisoned and forced to choose the way in which she is gonna die, with options ranging from boiling alive to electrocution to decapitation.

She chooses the decapitat.

Dear FNAF tubers, I know we were all super worried about COPPA coming in and STRIKING us down, but when we're covering stories like these.

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I think we're pretty darn safe(!) But of course, I wouldn't be talking about all this on Game Theory if it wasn't for the lore.

These aren't just random horror stories.

Each one is connected back to characters and locations that we know from the original games.

The girl who wished to be beautiful and then is unknowingly hacked to pieces: well, the fairy godmother doin' the hacking is a red pigtailed clown robot with green eyes.

Does that description sound familiar to anyone? What about the girl who opts for decapitation? Well, I mentioned that she's in prison: what I left out was that she's actually trapped in the stomach of a white-and-pink bear with a twisted sense of humor and a thirst for *blood.

* And if all that's too subtle for ya, well, the first story outright has a guy in a golden bunny suit taking us to see six murdered kids in the back of a Freddy's Pizzeria in the year 1985! Pretty darn direct, but more on that later.

These stories matter because they're giving us more information about how the FNAF universe operates.

Sometimes in very direct ways: like giving us the exact number of murder victims and the date of their deaths, and sometimes in more indirect ways: by showing us that this is a canon where a girl can be rebuilt day by day, piece by piece as a human-robot hybrid, so realistic that no one, not even herself, realises it.

And so *that* is what we're covering today: what these stories show us about the FNAF universe, what they confirm and also what important new details they unlock.

Plus, they open up a big theory about the games, one that I actually got wrong late last year, that I'm very excited about now.

So with all that said, reader beware, you're in for a scare.

-DUN- Oh! And for those of you who've dismissed the stories as “non-canon”, I wouldn't be too quick to judge these books.

Each one of them has this in its official description, quote (read above), end quote.

“Different corners of the canon”, you say? Sounds to me like some stories are gonna be more aligned with the trilogy of books, some more so with the canon of the games, but still: all of them existing within the canon itself.

So ab-so-lutely worth our time to investigate.

The first story actually has a lot to cover, so I'm gonna just save that one for last and instead start with the second: “To Be Beautiful”.

In it, Sarah, a 14-year-old girl rescues a red-pigtailed clown animatronic from the trunk of a car that she finds in the scrapyard.

Grateful to be saved, the robot, who calls herself “Eleanor”, but is probably better described as “Giraffe Baby” based on the cut illustrations from the books, says that she'll grant any wish.

Sarah wishes to be beautiful, and Baby, like a twisted fairy godmother, makes it happen.

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by putting Sarah to sleep every night and hacking off sections of her body while she's unconscious, replacing them with robotic junk.

Quote(above): Hey, if pizzerias never work out for ya, Baby, Beverly Hills plastic surgeon is a GREAT backup career(!) The only stipulation is that Sarah must wear a special necklace to keep the illusion alive.

When the necklace inevitably falls off, Sarah's new junk body is exposed and falls apart.

She dies, surrounded by her own severed body parts as she's forced to watch Baby walk out into the world having stolen her old look and identity.

Quote again (above): Great story to read to the kids at night, by the way: “Good night, sleep tight, don't let the shapeshifting robot slice off your face and STEAL IT! Anyway, as I mentioned before, Sarah's Extreme Makeover confirms that in the FNAF canon, humans can be partly, or fully, robotic, without ever knowing it.

We've seen it before in the original trilogy of books, where “The Fourth Closet” revealed that protagonist Charlie was a highly advanced robot and we're seeing it again happening here: a normal, human Sarah, unknowingly being remade into a robot.

The fact that this is now a recurring element of the series, goes to support the idea that Michael, the Crying Child of FNAF 4, after getting bitten, could have been “put back together” in a much more literal way than any of us were expecting all those years ago.

He was “put together” as a machine.

He grew up without knowing it, and was only able to figure it all out once he miraculously survived being scooped at the end of Sister Location.

[Michael speaking] Does this little short story outright confirm any of it? No, certainly not, but, third time IS a charm, Michael.

The third story about a girl named Millie trapped inside Funtime Freddy's stomach doesn't really tell us a whole lot.

But instead it just confirms what we already suspected: that the Funtime robots were designed to be large enough to capture kids, and either kill 'em off, or transport 'em to underground testing facilities.

Moving on to the end of the book, there's a little teaser like a Marvel movie but with 100% less Nick Fury, where we get a preview of a seemingly new monster.

Two cops are discussing a hooded figure raiding the neighborhood's dumpsters.

They call it “The Stitchwraith”.

Quote: End quote.

To me, the Stitchwraith is just a cooler name for Ennard.

I mean, you got yourself a creature that has a white mask with a missing, blacked-out eye, sharp, potentially bloody teeth and a lurching walk? Definitely similar to the way he's shown in the games.

Ennard's obsession with trash would also be appropriate for the Stitchwraith, I mean, it's just a mask and some wires, it needs something like a mannequin torso to give it form.

We actually see the same thing with Scrap Baby's design from FNAF 6.

Between games, she clearly assimilated any and all garbage into her form to be more passable and “human”.

To me, I gotta be honest, I just think this Stitchwraith story is cool because it shows the outside world's reaction to the Freddy creatures that we all know.

It starts to show what happened to them after the events of the game, it connects the dots for the story after the credits finished rolling.

To know that Ennard, after he escapes from Sister Location, to the in-universe people going about their daily lives, is just this urban legend named The Stitchwraith.

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I guess, that's just pretty interesting to me.

I think it's fun.

And anyway, it's also worth noting here that the teaser attributes five dead bodies to Ennard, quote: End quote.

So it appears that Ennard, after leaving Michael's body, tried to skinsuit five or so other people.

Notice that it says “withered bodies”.

These are bodies that have clearly decayed, just like we saw with Michael's at the end of Sister Location.

And the mode of death, them crying black? It's just the body leaking oil, as Ennard needs to go and find another skinsuit to possess.

So that's pretty much everything else, but what I REALLY wanna focus on now and in a follow-up mini-theory, is the first story of this bunch; the story where the book gets its name: In it, a video-game loving, anime obsessed ten-year-old boy named Oswald is forced to spend most of his summer in an old, run-down restaurant named Jeff's Pizza.

One day, wanting to pull a prank on his father, he finds himself in a, wait for this.

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time travelling ball pit(!) that takes him to 1985, the day where six murders have just happened at Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria.

Quote: End quote.

Way to take the mystery out of it there, guys! I was all ready to cross-reference all the arcade cabinets that you saw in the pizzeria, the allusions to the Smurfs and other popular media at the time to find the date, but you just had to go and TAKE that all away from me! Thanks for.

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saving me the research, I guess? But no thanks for taking away my deserving YouTube watch minutes! And here's the first big mind-blow of this book series: first because I think there are actually two in this one story In this story we get ourselves clear, indisputable evidence that in 1985, six kids were killed.

Quote: End quote.

On one hand, it's incredible to FINALLY get ourselves a date and a firm number of dead children! [children cheering] But, get ready to change your Facebook status, because it is complicated.

You see, 1985 has never once been an important date in this series.

1983? Absolutely, that's FNAF 4.

1987? Ya betcha, that's FNAF 2.

We''ve got ourselves 80's representation EVERYWHERE.

Mullets and Oingo Boingo for days, but never, not ONCE has there ever been a mention of 1985! And, well, it might be easy to immediately write that off as a typo or some non-canon event, it's definitely not.

Far from it.

In fact, for as whacko as it seems, this time travelling ball pit from a short story in a spinoff series of books, takes Oswald back to a pizzeria that we've never seen before, but one that we have ABSOLUTELY known to have existed since the SECOND GAME IN THIS SERIES As proof, lemme pull up a clip from my SECOND EVER episode on FNAF Back when Purple Guy was actually Phone Guy.

Ahh, those were the days.

Every way to Sunday, this game.

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is a prequel.

Posters everywhere in Five Nights 2 welcome you to this “new location”, implying that there was another Freddy Fazbear's Pizza somewhere before this one.

Additionally, the Phone Guy makes reference to it on Night 1, mentioning the old location and how it was left to rot.

So let me recap: There's the restaurant from the first game, which is the last in the timeline.

The one that you're currently working at, in 1987, in Five Nights 2.

An older location of Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria left to rot, and the original Fredbear's Diner.

In FNAF 2 we're presented with newspaper clippings that outright says that this location is having a “Grand Re-Opening”.

But we knew, even way back then, five years ago, that the events of FNAF 1 took place after FNAF 2.

It was a prequel-sequel.

So there had to have been a Freddy Fazbear's Pizza that existed prior to FNAF 2, that got the franchise shut down in the first place! We also know that it WASN'T Fredbear's Family Diner because Phone Guy calls that restaurant out separately.

So in this one, random little scene from Fazbear Frights, we uncover a pivotal piece of the timeline that's been missing for the last 5 years! A mystery pizzeria that's been gone since the very beginning of this franchise! A pizzeria that looks to be home to the first six actual murders of the Fazbear story.

In fact, I can actually do you one better: I believe this to be the six dead kids that we end up reuniting in the “Happiest Day” minigame from FNAF 3 – notice that detail about all of them wearing party hats.

These were kids, all taken from the same party.

And the “Happiest Day” minigame from FNAF 3 has us reuniting them to finally finish the birthday party that got prematurely and gruesomely cut short.

This is HUGE information here, guys! However, true to form, as it always is with this story, not everything lines up.

With this being chronologically the earliest set of murders that we see at a pizzeria, set before 1987, then we should be seeing the animatronics get possessed here It's something that we've never actually seen in the games.

This SHOULD BE the Missing Children's Incident, where the victims' bodies are shoved into the suits, never to be found, but it's clearly not – the book makes it VERY OBVIOUS that these bodies were CLEARLY out and visible.

Quote again: End quote.

The bunny had laid out all his victims for everyone to see.

A far cry from the bodies being shoved into the suits and then not being discovered for years on end, hence the “Missing Children's” incident.

And we know that the Missing Children's incident is most likely where the animatronics got possessed because, you know, their bodies are in the suits, along with the metal, and so the metal and the souls fused together to create living animatronics, roll into FNAF 2, 1987, oh my gosh, look, there's living animatronics roaming around this pizzeria! Oh, and we installed security devices just because we know a MURDERER came around the last time! Aargh, there's a reason I stopped talking about the timeline of these things! Additionally, there are six children dead, and the Missing Children's incident only had itself five.

That, in and of itself would be okay, right? Since FNAF 6, six children has always been the magic number.

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it's weird to mention a “magic number” when talking about murdered children, but y'know what, this series desensitizes ya to a lot.

Our list is Susie, Fritz, Gabriel, Jeremy, Cassidy and Charlotte: the core four animatronics, Golden Freddy and the Puppet.

Six.

The problem is, Charlotte, the Puppet, always seems to have a separate death outside of the building.

Outside of the realm of the other five children.

So having her suddenly lined up with all the rest of the kids at the same time just doesn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense.

I don't know, maybe I just need to think on it more, because everything else lines up: we have ourselves a golden bunny leading kids down a hallway into a back room, just like those original newspaper clippings described.

He's also very clearly visible, which means he'd likely be taken into custody.

Again, just like those original newspaper clippings describe.

As it always is with this series, so many items line up, but there's just one or two little details, little sticking points, that make the pieces fit a little awkwardly.

I honestly think though, that this isn't the last time that we're gonna be seeing this pizzeria.

Remember earlier when I mentioned that new FNAF game that's coming out in 2020? Little bit later this year, probably titled “Into Madness”? Well, that one is set in a mall with a very 80's theme.

Again, we've been talking about the Rockstar Animatronics for a couple of episodes now, and that's the one where they get revealed, it wouldn't be surprising for me to see that game be the one where we finally step foot inside the first-ever Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria and witness all the events that Oswald just saw for ourselves.

So, there you have it, my friends, the first major, and a couple of minor reveals that this instalment had in store for us.

However! There is one final mystery that this story might help us solve.

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Not only does it give us a new set of murders to think about – crimes that are now chronologically the earliest that we see in the timeline – but also, Into the Pit may just be giving us the identity of the person behind all of this.

I don't mean behind the child murders, I mean the mystery of the man behind the games.

What do I mean by that? What evidence do I have to prove it? That, my friends, is a theory unto itself, for next week.

So in the meantime, subscribe, ring the bell, and most importantly remember, it's all just a theory.

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A GAME THEORY! Thanks for stickin' around to the end! I know these FNAF episodes tend to dive pretty deep sometimes but even after all the games and books and shades of purple, I gotta say, I still find them fun.

That said, if this episode leaves ya wanting more, well, you could always dive into the books themselves with the help of today's sponsor, Audible.

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(If you have hearing problems and with to support Game Theory, go buy some merch!) Because Audible is a audio book service, you can literally play FNAF games, while you listen to the latest FNAF books in the series! It's like the ultimate funzone for your mind! Audible has an awesome selection of FNAF books just waiting for you to listen! Including that brand-new Fazbear Frights series, look, Into the Pit, it is right there, ready to tickle your eardrums for free, during a trial month with Audible.

Using the link (onscreen): M-A-T-P-A-T, or heck, if you're on a mobile device, text MATPAT, M-A-T-P-A-T, to 500500.

You can also already preorder Fetch, book two of the Fazbear Frights series, in preparation for even more animatronic spoopiness! That one's coming out as soon as March, which is just incredibly soon, I told ya he's rolling these things out at a fast pace.

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Then again, if you're tired of FNAF but you still want some creepy, YA genre goodness, then I'd highly recommend diving into Audible's library of Goosebumps titles, I mean, I told you earlier, but I absolutely devoured these things as a kid and teenager, and even now as an adult they hold up really well as fun, easy books to listen to when you're not looking to wrack your brain.

So Audible has all the classic Goosebumps I loved growing up, including the two I mentioned earlier, Night of the Living Dummy, so creepy, and Say Cheese and Die! I mean, these things are classic.

So if you've read 'em already and want a nostalgia hit, BOOM! Audible's got ya covered! If you have never read Goosebumps before and you like FNAF, you are gonna love this series.

I guarantee it.

So get going! Your first month is free and includes any free audiobook of your choice plus two Audible originals.

Audible works on any connected devices, so it goes with you from work to school to your car to your local time travelling ball pit! Just kidding! It will go to a ball pit, but you really should stay out of those things.

Truly icky, icky places.

So many germs.

Anyway, my advice for you today: go listen to audiobooks, and stay out of ball pits.

Audible.

com/MATPAT I'll be back in short order with a mini-theory, also about Fazbear Fright.

I think I may have found the guy who's actually the programmer of all these games.

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More on that soon.

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