dualityinjest | FNaF fandom info/theories for 4thwalling purposes

My duo here are from an AU, not FNaF canon!

...But if the FNaF franchise exists within your character's canon, the way it does IRL (or you're just here for a crash-course in FNaF stuff!) this page is for you! :D

Easier than you think

The FNaF fandom is huge! Game Theory pretty much blew up because of it, and do you know how many other FNaF-focused theory-and-info creators and channels are out there? So many. Dawko, RyeToast, FuhNaff, ID's Fantasy, Notrealname Notatall, She's Always Nervous, Twisted Animatronic, Dual Process Theory, DMuted, Hyper Droid, Candi Buunny, and so many others, I'm not even going to attempt to list them all. It'll probably be outdated in a month anyway.

One would think that with a canon and fandom that launched in 2014, it would be an endless ocean of things to have to deep-dive, to know what the heck you're talking about, to effectively 4th-wall some characters from that canon, right? SURPRISE! That's actually not the case!

The "amazing, deep lore" you've probably heard about... kinda isn't. It's a few clues and tidbits, some incredibly obscure, in fact, scattered throughout these actually rather small games, that've been driving everyone into a frenzy, because no one can figure it all out. It's not that there's an encyclopedia's worth of info, it's that everyone's been extensively debating on what the name of a kid haunting Golden Freddy is since game one. I'm not even joking. Those weeks' worth of lore and theory videos are basically all weeks' worth of videos of people over-analyzing what the meaning of the particular color of that text there is, and the phrasing of that one line in the newspaper article you might get to see on the wall in passing really meant, and trying to math the numbers regarding the pay on the paycheck you get at the end of a run in those earlier games, to figure out what year it might take place in. Stuff like that.

Let me make it exceptionally simple: it kinda all comes down to about an index card's worth of info, and knowing, in general, what questions are driving the fandom mouth-frothingly batty, lol. You can go as deep on that as you please. In fact, I'm going to hand it to you!

In very brief sum: Some of the bots (if not all?) are haunted by dead kids, who were killed by William Afton/Springtrap. The timeline of when which games happened (if they did happen) is unclear. Everything's a mess because the creator of this canon was writing it all on the fly, and hasn't confirmed diddly, because letting the fandom overthink everything is great PR and keeps up interest. XD And then the Help Wanted game declared that all the previous games were an IC publicity stunt. (Yes, seriously.)

ACTUAL INFO -- what's probably the most "important", or at least most prominent:

There are both games and books. Some things are different between them. The games seem to mostly form one canon, and the books are uh. well, they sure are something, all right. Most people agree they're not game-canon. There's a series of novels (the Silver Eyes series) and a bunch of short-story collection books that're akin to the Goosebumps books. I'm going to focus on the games.

The games

Everything up to and including Ultimate Custom Night is considered "early"/Scott/Clickteam-era FNaF.
These are (mostly all) the games where you're in one spot, watching security cameras, and you have to keep the bots from reaching you by closing doors, shining flashlights at them, putting on a mask to fool them, etc....

FNaF 1
FNaF 2
FNaF 3
FNaF 4
FNaF World
FNaF: Sister Location (FNaF 5)
Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator (FNaF 6)
Ultimate Custom Night (FNaF 7)

FNaF: Help Wanted and everything after it is "modern"/Steel Wool-era FNaF.
These games often have a much higher bar for what sorts of systems they'll run on than the earlier games. They're usually in full 3D, and may even use (or rely on) VR setups. The earlier mechanics may or may not have even been completely abandoned in favor of other gameplay styles.

FNaF: Help Wanted (FNaF 8)
FNaF: Special Delivery
Freddy in Space 2
Security Breach: Fury's Rage
FNaF: Security Breach (FNaF 9)
FNAF: Security Breach: Ruin DLC
Freddy in Space 3: Chica in Space
FNaF: Help Wanted 2 (FNaF 10)
FNaF: Into the Pit
Five Laps at Freddy's

etc....

The animatronics

Easy: Do you know which one is a Freddy vs a Bonnie, etc?
Rule of thumb:

Freddy the bear (he's usually brown)
Bonnie the rabbit (he's usually blue or purple)
Chica the chicken (she's usually yellow)
Foxy the fox (he's usually reddish-brown)

...And almost every other character is just a variation of one of those, with a handful of exceptions. :)

You'll also want to note Golden Freddy and Springtrap: they're gold-colored versions of Freddy and Bonnie, respectively, and significant to the story in a few ways. They're among the very first, oldest animatronics, but also able to be used as suits, wearable by humans! Unfortunately, they're incredibly dangerous to wear. If their springlock mechanisms fail, the animatronic pieces would snap into place, which would be Super Bad News for anyone inside. Currently: Golden Freddy is basically a haunted phantom stuck in limp suit mode, and Spring Bonnie is generally referred to as (something)-trap (as in, Springtrap, Scraptrap, Burntrap, etc) because the Big Bad of the early games died in it and became what amounts to a fur-suited undead menace.

An "endo" (endoskeleton) is an animatronic skeleton -- a bot without a costume on.

There's also Puppet the sock-monkey-looking mime-type marionette doll animatronic, and Balloon Boy the child-looking saboteur animatronic that only ever laughs and says "hello" and "hi", both from FNaF 2.

And "(the) Mangle" is a pink-and-white mess of a bot that was a Foxy and a second endo, but got cobbled together, and whether they're male or female is a constant ongoing joke, not just in the fandom, but in the games themselves... to the point that the series' creator referred to them as both a he and a she in the same paragraph, in the game Ultimate Custom Night.

Hard(er): In pretty much every game, there's a new themed set of these characters, sometimes more than one. Sometimes games include new characters altogether, like the Funtime line/series, in Sister Location (FNaF 5), which includes a Freddy with a Bonnie hand-puppet, a Foxy, Ballora (a human-based ballerina), Circus Baby (a giant child-looking girl with pigtails), and miniature minions for both of the latter two. Ennard is another distinct character from Sister Location: a mess of wires and coils formed by the insides of the Funtimes, twisted up into a single humanoid amalgamation, wearing a clown mask.

Some lines/series of characters are phantoms, or nightmares, or hallucinations. Some aren't even diegetic, but are merely fun reskins for the players' entertainment. Others are, in-universe, actual animatronics.

And then there's the Mimic which is a whole 'nother nefarious bot that's just been introduced in the latest games....

It's kind of a rabbit hole, and is likely best explored in a wiki. :)

The humans

This list is a lot more sane!

Early FNaf:

William Afton (aka "Purple Guy" due to the Atari-like minigame sprites, later Springtrap the nasty old gold rabbit bot) is the Big Bad of the (early) series, who killed kids and chased immortality.

He's a robotics engineer, involved in designing and building a lot of the animatronics for the Freddy Fazbear IP. He's pretty explicitly the one who built the Funtimes as nefarious kid-hunting bots, and consensus is that some of the fallout of his actions are accidents (see: his daughter), and some were deliberate attempts to experiment with haunting-stuff (see: remnant and agony) and trying to figure out immortality. Earlier in the timeline, he'd wear the Gold Bonnie springlock suit to lure kids away and end them. He died when he was in that suit, and was confronted by the ghosts of some of his victims. The springlocks went off, leaving him to bleed to death in a hidden room in one of the Fazbear locations. He was excavated and mistaken for a normal animatronic by some idiot, for the FNaF 3 game, and he's been out and about causing problems between then and the end of Pizzeria Simulator. He's rather certainly the player character for Ultimate Custom Night: all the characters ganging up on him endlessly is his eternal punishment. His exact motives, much like the FNaF timeline, are always under debate. Known for saying "I always come back!" Has a British accent.

Michael Afton is the oldest son of William Afton, and interestingly, a good guy.

When he was younger, he wore a Foxy mask ("Foxy-bro") and tormented his younger brother. With his friends, he shoved the kid's head into a Freddy's mouth (Golden Freddy or the yellow Fredbear, I'm not sure offhand) and the bear's mouth was uh. Stronger than the kids anticipated. Michael may actually be the protagonist of most of the earlier FNaF games (was confirmedly the playerchar of Sister Location), posing under fake names to pick up security guard positions (hence the animatronics mis-identifying him as his father William Afton and trying to murder him/the player) to... investigate and/or clean up William's mess, presumably, and end the crud going on. May or may not have been working for/under William's direction, when it came to Circus Baby/Elizabeth... so he's basically a reformed antagonist/antihero sort, having come to his senses and turned against his dad. Enjoys watching the soap opera, "The Immortal and the Restless" while eating popcorn. Is also undead, thanks to the events of Sister Location (was injected with Remnant, so he's now haunting his own mummy) but is probably dead-dead as of the end of Pizzeria Simulator. Also has a British accent.

Elizabeth Afton is/was the daughter of William Afton, and a victim.

Her voice-lines indicate that William built Circus Baby "for [her]" but forbid her from playing with/going near that clown, especially while alone. Well, she was alone with Circus Baby one day, and uh. The predictable happened, and she ended up haunting Circus Baby. The animatronic's eyes changed from blue to green when this happened. Like the rest of her family, has a British accent.

Dave Afton, name long-debated based on the Security Logbook's clues, so don't be surprised if people use "Evan" from an earlier guess. This is the little brother Michael and his friends accidentally killed.

He's depicted as a timid little child, always crying, and easily jumpscared. He's afraid of the Fazbear animatronics, and it's speculated that he might've witnessed something traumatic related to his father's child-murdering ways, prompting his aversions. Almost certainly died from his injuries, but few things in this canon are 100% confirmed. May have been the playerchar in FNaF 4. Didn't have any voice-lines to confirm a British accent, but it would make sense if he had one.

???? Afton, the kids' mom. We have no solid info on her. She seems not to be present.

Maybe she divorced and left William? Maybe she died? We just don't know. Speculated by fandom to be the inspiration for Ballora.

Henry Emily, William's once-friend, now-enemy, a hero in the series, and pretty awesome in his own right.

First name may actually be something else; last name unconfirmed. We're kinda going off the books' info for that, plus game-filename clues. Also a skilled robot-maker, William's old BFF who worked with him on their earlier ventures. Was previously unaware of William's awful nature. By the end of Pizzeria Simulator, proved himself to be a kind of trap-laying mastermind set on revenge and cleaning up/ending William's mess, and he and Michael (without directly agreeing to outright) had basically teamed up against William, and burned everything to the ground, themselves included. Has an American accent. Delivered the speech at the end of Pizzeria Simulator -- and oh boy was it a great one.

Charlie Emily, name taken from the books. Henry's kid. Victim. Haunts the Puppet.

Was killed as a bitty girl (by William) and left to die in the alley outside one of the pizzerias. Puppet (a security bot) followed her out there in the rain and "died" also, over her, then became possessed by her, which gave it its tear-streak markings. In Pizzeria Simulator, Puppet was contained inside the Lefty (bear) animatronic.

Phone Guy, long-time Fazbear employee, currently deceased.

Probably named "Ralph" as per one of the books ("The Week Before"). Previous security guard at the Freddy's diners. Recorded their training tapes, messages for other guards (the player-character). Is your unreliable tutorial voiceover in the first two games. Alive during FNaF 2. Definitely deceased before Pizzeria Simulator, maybe even prior to FNaF 1 (per "The Week Before"), which implies that FNaF 1 takes place after FNaF 2 does. (See: the endless debates over the timeline of the games' events.)

Other notable names, generally accepted as dead kids' names: Suzy (haunting Chica; "I was the first"), Cassidy, Fritz, Jeremy, etc...

Modern FNaF:

Vanessa A., last name unknown. Appears in Security Breach. Antagonist, victim. Head of security at the Mega Pizzaplex. Is the human inside the Vanny (white rabbit) costume.

Seems to be under the control of the Glitchtrap program/virus (yes, despite being human.) Was likely the player-character of Help Wanted. May now be free of Glitchtrap's influence.

Gregory if that even is his real name. So many question marks around this kid and so much suspicon, omg. Player-character of Security Breach.

Probably an unreliable narrator. May be an exceptionally skilled hacker and manipulator. For all we know, he's actually an antagonist. According to one of SB's endings, he may be homeless. Also might have stolen Glamrock Freddy (and may have only taken his head, at that). Didn't have to do the things he did in that game, except he did them anyway, including wrecking the other animatronics, which adds to the speculation about him being a possible villain still. Definitely a liar and opportunist.

Cassie/Cassidy, a legitimately sweet little girl, and player-character of SB: Ruin DLC.

She came into the destroyed Mega Pizzaplex, lured in to try helping Gregory. Actually showed kindness and empathy to the bots, including rebooting the jester as Sun requested, when Moon was tormenting him, gave Chica her voicebox back... and her sobbing after she had to deactivate Roxy was nothing short of heartbreaking. :(

Cassie's dad, accepted to be the player-char of Help Wanted 2. Fazbear service/maintenance technician. We think his name is Jeremy, and that he was Bonnie-bro.

As in, that he used to be friends with Michael Afton as a teenager, and was the one wearing the rabbit mask when they shoved Dave into Fredbear's mouth. Not a ton known about him. He may be deceased as of the end of HW2, which was just before Ruin DLC.

Misc trivia

Remnant and Agony, oversimplified: they're spirit-energy stuff.

Remnant is positive (or neutral?), has to do with souls, and is metallic... and might be destroyed by high enough temperatures? Agony is what it sounds like on the tin, nasty haunting-energy, also capable of animating stuff, but it generally turns out malevolent. This info is primarily from the books, but it was very blatantly brought up in FNaF: Special Delivery, the AR mobile game, too. Safe to assume it's game-canon.

People are still trying to hunt down all the minutia, like the actual titles and composers of the background music used in the FNaF3 minigames. (Because stock music sites aren't always the best about those sorts of records, for older music box compositions, go figure.)

FNaF 1 Freddy's Music box plays the Toreador March.

The Fazbear company in basically every iteration is cartoonishly shady AF and may or may not actually be evil.

It's company policy to cover up murders on their premises, more or less. They will deny, deny, deny any wrongdoing, slip in all sorts of wild disclaimers that indicate that they know (or at least entirely suspect) that things are far, far more dangerous than should ever be allowable, and then continue to deny said danger. They also neglect and (in the most recent games, heavily implied, all but outright stated directly) mistreat their own (plainly sapient) animatronics. Overall, the games use them to poke fun at corporations in general, and it lends itself toward a very "Bread, Eggs, Milk, and Squick" style humor throughout the games, with horrible things being transparently downplayed on a regular basis.

According to Help Wanted, the earlier FNaF games are in-universe games.

To quote: “We know that Fazbear Entertainment has developed something of a bad reputation over the last few decades, and while it's true that some stories associated with our name were loosely based on actual events, the majority of them were total fabrications from the mind of a complete lunatic (lawsuits pending), but we aren't above laughing at ourselves, ha ha ha.” Speculation here includes that they're actually covering up what really happened by burying that info under search results for the games and their similar plot elements/characters, all while denying, denying, denying -- which would be entirely on-brand for them.

Fan-theory videos almost always purport in the titles to "SOLVE" or have "EXPLAINED" something/everything. But it's always just more theorizing.

In fact, it's usually yet more theorizing based on something like the exact wording of this line of dialog here, or how many toes that particular animatronic has, or the style of those other animatronics' jaw hinges. I'm not kidding. 99% of this fandom's discourse boils down to "varying degrees of wild speculation and over-analysis, based sometimes on what seems from the outside to be extraordinarily minor details".

You don't need to know all the fandom theories. In fact, why not make up your own!

No, seriously. There have been some wild takes on things. Everything's been thrown at the wall at this point, it seems like, from "Gregory is actually also a robot", to "there are two child spirits in Golden Freddy", to "okay, but what if FNaF 1-3 are the FNaF 4 child protagonist's nightmares/dreams?", to "Glamrock Freddy is haunted by/is the reincarnation of Michael Afton".

The books are even more bonkers and their various series are kinda their own canons. Maybe.

They may or may not even be part of any canon. Apparently there's something going on with ~presenting ideas in different ways~ and retelling the same themes with different characters and plot points and... it's one of those things where people keep referring back to the books and hunting for symbolism and trying so hard to fit ideas from this book-story or that book-story into the games. There's a novel series (The Silver Eyes) and there's the Fazbear Frights books, there's Tales From The Pizzaplex, there's the Security Logbook, there's-- I'm not going to hurt my head trying to remember. But apparently the Security Logbook might actually be game-canon? Which books are game-canon, which are just game-inspired, which ones are just one-shots, or their own things, all of that is debated too. It doesn't help that a lot of them, particularly Fazbear Frights and Tales From The Pizzaplex are all basically Fazbear-flavored Goosebumps kinds of stories, which include everything from body horror to time travel and parallel universes. It's... definitely something, all right.

...And honestly, I think I'll leave it there: it's a mess. A ridiculous mess. :)