The long-awaited live-action movie version of the classic online game Five Nights at Freddy’s or FNaF has excited fans. Unlike critics who do not understand the FNaF franchise, fans recognized how faithful the movie was to the franchise while developing its own identity. With that, it’s time for SPOILER TALK about the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie! For anyone who has not seen the FNaF film yet, you’ve been warned…

Touching upon an issue brought up earlier with my review of Five Nights at Freddy’s, some things should’ve had a little more explanation than they were given. The main reason I say this is because fans have a general idea of some characters and ideas, but to someone else, it’s a complete mystery that makes them think “Okay? So, what?” The prime culprit of this issue is none other than Golden Freddy. Sure, his spirit is very present in the movie, but the animatronic is only seen for three scenes and is never elaborated upon. That leaves me with many questions: how did he get to Abby’s house? Why is he so withered? Even if I have a general reason as to why, HOW is he still functional? Although he is only seen for two minutes, he still looks very good, and I’m very happy with the practical effects (no surprise there!).

To talk about cameos and Easter eggs, I am happy with the people they brought on! We all knew CoryxKenshin would be in the movie, playing as the taxi driver, but no one expected MatPat as a waiter, as he convinced us that the filmmakers treated him dirty. Both cameos were hilarious and I’m sure they’re both very happy that they were able to be included. The self-proclaimed “King of FNaF”, Markiplier, unfortunately had a planned cameo, but ultimately could not film a scene, as it conflicted with the filming of his own movie that is coincidentally also based on an indie horror game, Iron Lung. Talking about Easter eggs, I was genuinely shocked to see references to Five Nights at Freddy’s history in the movie. Sparky the Dog, the franchise’s first ever, fan-made hoax character had a diner named after him and possibly even an animatronic suit to himself. MatPat’s name tag also had “Ness” on it, which is a golden reference to one of his theories based off two whole different franchises where he argues that Sans from the indie game Undertale, was actually a Nintendo character named Ness from the Earthbound series. Only Scott Cawthon would be able to reference both another indie horror game AND Nintendo at the same time! I also really loved the opening credits for the music and the pixel art. They were both PERFECT for FNaF’s general vibe!

Let’s talk about secrete characters in this movie. Emma Tammi confirmed a couple of weeks ago in an interview that there was a character in the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie who was not seen in any promotional material. That begged the question, who was that character? I genuinely do not know which character it specifically was, as there were multiple featured characters. I have a list of possible characters she could’ve been talking about.

Shadow Freddy, who was seen in a hidden YouTube video made an appearance in the movie as the suit that babysitter Max gets stuffed inside after dying. I must admit I’m a little disappointed that he didn’t get any story relevance, but I probably should’ve expected that, as it probably would’ve been too early for him. Another character was Sparky the Dog (or possibly Fetch, the fan base is still working that part out). Yes, Sparky wasn’t seen in any advertising, but I think Emma would’ve been talking about a character that was important to the story, so this leaves me with two more culprits who I was able to predict in my last essay!

Balloon Boy was only seen on one of the children’s drawings, but we didn’t know if he actually would’ve made a physical appearance in the movie. Luckily, we now know the answer is yes, he appears as a troll character in the form of a mini figurine. Ironically, he was probably the character with the scariest jump scares in this entire movie, which only fuels my hate-fire for him. The last culprit, who still seems to be a mystery, is the Puppet, or sometimes referred to as the Marionette.

We have speculated that she would make an appearance in the movie, as she was the one to give the children the gift of resurrection after they were killed by William Afton, but it seems like she wasn’t included in the movie. That is until people noticed at the end of the amazing end credits that the same cryptic voice that would spell words in the FNaF 2 mini-games was included in the movie and spelled out something. I couldn’t make out what it said myself, but after close examination, (and Peacock’s subtitles), we know that it spelled “C-O-M-E F-I-N-D M-E”. As this was being spelled out, fans noticed the familiar theme of her music box playing in the background, implying the Puppet is directly speaking to Mike, prompting him to find her. This isn’t the end of this manhunt, however. After going through the movie, fans started noticing in certain scenes that you could barely make out shapes in the backgrounds that look very similar to the Puppet. The Puppet may be in the movie, but she is lurking in the background, usually on the ceilings.

This movie is its own universe, which means it can have its own identity outside of the canon timeline of the FNaF games. However, it still gives massive lore drops for the games themselves. Thanks to this movie, we now know what Michael’s little brother’s name is. The fan base has always referred to this person as simply “The Crying Child” based on his appearance, but his name is Garrett. It has been theorized that Garrett may be possessing the Puppet rather than Charlie, Henry’s daughter.

Who is Henry? Henry founded Fazbear Entertainment with William Afton and was the one who designed the animatronic mascots. After finding out his daughter had gone missing, he seemed to have disappeared in grief, leaving Afton to continue his murderous spree. Later in the game’s timeline, he lures Afton and the remaining souls who haven’t been put to rest into a decoy restaurant that was actually made as a labyrinth to trap them in the maze, burn them to set the souls free, and banishing Afton to Golden Freddy’s personal hell. This would also explain why Golden Freddy’s spirit in the movie is very aggressive and is the last character to watch Afton slowly die because he holds the most rage of the murdered children.

As a part of the FNaF fan community, our favorite pastimes is theorizing, so buckle in folks, we’re about to put our thinking caps on. After having time to think over all of it, I believe I know what Blumhouse Productions is trying to do with the whole family drama issues we have with the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie. You see, everyone thought Mike and Abby would’ve been Afton’s children, but after watching the movie, this surprisingly doesn’t seem to be the case. Also, Vanessa the cop who helps Mike is revealed to be Afton’s daughter and is seemingly manipulated into helping Afton continue his murder spree. What is going on here? I think I have an answer.

I think that they did a switch-around of the families. Simply put, rather than William Afton having two sons and a daughter and Henry having one daughter who tragically died because of Afton, Henry has two sons (one of which died due to Afton) and a daughter.  While Afton has a daughter who probably wasn’t his biologically, it explains why she seems to be interested in Mike’s family life. She never got to experience any of that herself, so she longs for that feeling of belonging. This would also make Henry and William’s rivalry stronger, as even though Afton killed Henry’s child, that child’s sibling makes it his life mission to stop Afton at all cost, which eventually leads to his final downfall. It’s a satisfying case of the butterfly effect, sort of.

I am also surprised as to how much Five Nights at Freddy’s borrows from the novels, as basically the whole ending sequence was straight from the books. I absolutely was not expecting the cupcake to be the one to set off the springlocks that do in Afton; that dessert was a MENACE this movie, and I couldn’t be happier. I am genuinely happy they leaned into the souls of the children and how they’ve been manipulated to be aggressive by Afton and they still have a sliver of innocence that is unfortunately used as a drive for evil. Speaking of which, those children were terrifying in this movie, and Foxy’s soul, Fritz, has the most unsettling jump scare in the entire movie.

To wrap things up, Five Nights at Freddy’s is a must watch for diehard FNaF fans and should still be watched by everyone. As you can see, I am very passionate about this franchise, so seeing this movie come to fruition was a dream come true for me. Matthew Lillard, who plays William Afton aka Scott Raglan, has said that he has signed for a contract with Blumhouse that includes three FNaF movies! This means that they probably have a rough outline of where the story would go from here if they were to continue making more FNaF movies, which is certain given its huge opening numbers, and that makes me very excited; there are even rumors that they’ve already started preproduction for the next movie! No matter how many movies Scott Cawthon and Blumhouse make together, I will make sure to watch all of them, no matter what. To commemorate this moment, I will be promoting both the official FNaF song playlist by Blumhouse and my own project, an animation made to celebrate the movie and the franchise as a whole, I would appreciate if you all checked it out!

PLAYLIST:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DX9ES6W0ExTX9?si=01cd70b12f424720

ANIMATION: