Summary
Five Nights at Freddy’shas been host to many groundbreaking reviews in the last few months. Chief among these reveals wasFive Nights at Freddy’s: Security Breach RUIN’s merging of the book and video game chronologies canons.RUINrevealedThe Mimic, the primary focus and main antagonist of theTales from the Pizzaplexbook series, asFNAF’s true villain. Since then, theTalesseries has rapidly become a platform for creator Scott Cawthon to answer various longstanding mysteries from the series’ lore. In its final volume,B7-2, theTales from the Pizzaplexseries addresses perhaps the most persistent mystery in the entire series, as it answers an age-old question concerning victims' spirits and how they can peacefully move on.
Five Nights at Freddy’slore is endlessly complicated, as it tends to redefine itself with nearly every multimedia entry. The franchise’s games have always featured a disconnect between each entry, leaving fans with more questions than answers with each subsequent release. However, books have recently become a vital platform through which Cawthon appears to be setting the record straight. As the book and video game canons continue to combine key elements, particularly in the wake ofRUIN,FNAFis slowly, but surely, cementing its true lore.
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Tales from the Pizzaplex Reveals the Canonical Means of Freeing Victims' Spirits
No entry in any book series has revealed more critical information thanTales from the Pizzaplex: B7-2with every single short story directly addressing critical and longstanding questions. InAlone Together, Cawthon tells the story of Travis Hutchins, a shy seventh-grade student who struggles to connect with others following his mother’s departure, causing a schism between him and his dad. To fill the void, Travis becomes heavily involved in Woodshop class, where he feels he can truly lose himself in his work. The story begins as Travis' class is tasked with coming up with their end-of-semester projects.
Travis' teacher provides the class with a range of concepts for their projects, and Travis chooses one called the Mechanical Turk, a large cabinet with a humanoid mechanical figure attached, which can be made to play chess against a human opponent. Travis decides to base his project on Sun from Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzaplex’sSuperstar Daycare, which he has never seen in real life. Travis soon discovers that the origins of the Mechanical Turk is a stage illusion, in which a hidden operator works the figure from within the cabinet. As he gets to work, Travis experiences strange daydreams and flashes of deja vu, observing them from a third-person perspective, and notices that a new girl at school keeps staring at him.
The strange occurrences continue to escalate, as Travis attempts to repeatedly contact his grandmother for guidance, witnesses his father building his own Mechanical Turk, and seemingly terrifies the new girl at school. As he searches for information on building a Mechanical Turk, he finds all of therecommended source materialto be missing. Most significantly, he can’t seem to locate a library book invaluable to the process, despite finding evidence that it should be within the school. Travis' home life is just as confusing, as he overhears an emotional phone conversation between his dad and mom. When he attempts to speak with his father at dinner the next day, he goes ignored.
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Travis' strange experiences come to a head when Travis has a dream in which he is surrounded by suffocating darkness. Trapped within the seemingly complete cabinet withhis Sun figure, the Mechanical Turk asks Travis, “Why does it all seem so familiar?”. Soon after, Travis finally makes contact with his grandma, and she suggests that he is being haunted by a ghost. This revelation leads Travis to believe that the ghost may have died inside a similar Turk to his own and needs his help. His grandma agrees, ominously stating that in aiding the ghost he’ll find his answers just as she did.
Tales from the Pizzaplex’s Travisdecides that he needs to find the ghost’s body, and searches the school records for a missing student. Eventually, he discovers an image of the woodshop class from two years earlier, in which he identifies an unfinished Mechanical Turk with sunrays around the head, suggesting the haunting instilled the idea of a Sun figure in his head. Travis investigates the school’s storage areas, believing the Turk to be the key to finding the ghost’s body. All the while, Travis’ dad continues to build the same Mechanical Turk at home.
After multiple days of searching, including a trip toFreddy Fazbear’s Mega Pizzaplexand a local park, Travis returns home to find the Mechanical Turk completely destroyed, leading him to believe that his preoccupation with searching has further strained his relationship with his dad. Travis decides to change his approach, investigating the school’s sheds, before locating one that has been hidden away. Inside, Travis finally discovers the Mechanical Sun. Climbing inside, all he sees is a book. The door locks behind Travis, plunging him into darkness, and he discovers the ghost’s body, which, to his horror, is his own.
Upon Travis finding his body,Tales from the Pizzaplexbegins to unravel one ofthe greatest mysteries in theFNAFuniverse: the experience and release of a child victim’s spirit. Travis’ memories flood back, revealing the full story. Two years ago, Travis had chosen to build the Mechanical Turk project, depicting the figure within as Sun. However, Travis had accidentally cut the wood too precisely, leading the door to become stuck when he tested the near-complete cabinet, and he suffocated to death. Reeling from the loss, his parents separated, with his father processing his grief through an attempt to complete Travis’ project. His grandma passed on soon after, leading him to be able to finally contact her, and the girl at school, for some reason, was able to see his ghost. But none of that mattered to Travis anymore, as finding his body and memories caused him to feel relieved for the first time in so very long. Reunited with his body, Travis finally found peace.
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What Alone Together’s Reveal Means for FNAF’s Lore
FNAFfans have long wondered why the children’s spirits from each game don’t simply move on, and whether they are aware that they are dead to begin with. InAlone Together,Scott Cawthonseems to confirm that they do not remember they are dead, and therefore keep to their routines. Travis was only made aware of his death and posthumous experiences after being led back to his body, which allowed him to find peace. Just as Travis continues to wander around and attempt to make contact with those in his environment, so too do the spirits of Afton’s child victims. Most interestingly, this revelation both parallels and emboldens an original lore element from theFive Nights at Freddy’smovie, in which the animatronics turn on Afton, upon being led to the realization that their bodies were killed and placed into the animatronic suits.
The precedent set forth byAlone Togetheralso re-contextualizes one of the key sources of earlyFNAFlore, from which many fans have derived the supposed relationship between victims' bodies and their spirits. InFive Nights at Freddy’s 2’s “Give Gifts, Give Life” minigame, players take on the role ofthe Puppet, as it gives gifts to four small figures that resemble dead children. Once finished, the player returns to the middle of the room, and the on-screen text changes to “Give Life”. Returning to the children, the puppet places one of the four original animatronics' masks on their heads, which fans have long believed to imply that the Puppet gave life by stuffing the children’s bodies into the animatronics. However, Travis’ story opens the door to a different interpretation.
Alone Togetherseemingly refutes the longstanding belief that stuffing bodies into animatronic suits brings their spirits to life. Rather, the Puppet’s role inthe “Give Gifts, Give Life” minigamecould depict the Puppet leading the ghosts to their bodies within the animatronics. In doing so, the figure could give them back the memories of the life they had lost and bring them to peace. With theFNAFseries’ two most recent releases,B7-2and the film, seemingly introducing the very same core concept to the franchise’s overarching universe, it is likely that future entries in the franchise will continue to explore the relationship between victims' bodies and their restless spirits.
While the latestTales from the PizzaplexconcludesFNAF’s novel releases, for now, it is possible thatFive Nights at Freddy’sfans could see the concept explored in greater detail. A brand-new video game,FNAF: Help Wanted 2, is due to arrive next month. While its developer, Steel Wool Studios, hasn’t shared many details, various stories fromB7-2seemingly set the stage for its central concepts. In particular, the title appears to have an incredibly significant impact onFive Nights at Freddy’slore and timeline. With the rules set forth byAlone Together, some fans are even speculating that the game will see players take on the role of a spirit exploring theSister Locationfacility.
Five Nights at Freddy’s
Five Nights at Freddy’s is a first-person survival horror and resource management game from Scott Cawthorn that raced to popularity thanks to its creepy animatronic enemies and its array of panic-inducing jumpscares. Bringing life to a cavalcade of well-known characters like Freddy Fazbear, Chica, Foxy, Bonnie, and more, Five Nights at Freddy’s has seen immense success, spinoffs, and fan games.
