Lore Speculation

We play as William Afton in FNAF 2!

There are some game theories out there that fly in the face of what is commonly accepted to be true and often the first instinct on reading them is to dismiss them out of hand and assume the person presenting them hasn’t done their research or is a bit weird. For this theory all I ask of you is to give it a chance and hear it out. I assure you, I have thought about this theory endlessly and the more I’ve considered it the more robust it has become.

Even if in the end you disagree, I think that it’s a compelling concept that really deepens the impact of this game.

A Story

Before we even go into details and facts, I want to entertain a sequence of events.

Two brilliant men decide to begin a family restaurant together. They uncover more than just animatronics along the way, researching things that will shake the world. One of them is more willing to give up everything to attain it. There’s an accident but it seems like what they found could put it right. But they need more. The disaster grows until it spirals into horrific murders. They both walk away from the accusations free but changed men and in the process, they lose the empire they built together.

One of the men, William, slithers away to try and rebuild everything he lost, unable to let go of the ambition that drove him to murder in the first place. With his son – who obeys his orders because he feels like he was responsible for the death of his sibling – at his side, he has an unwitting accomplice in this task. He is poor and is working pathetic night jobs to keep himself afloat with nothing but rage to sustain him. However, what he sees on television and billboards incenses him further. The corporation are bringing back HIS company and they’ve created parodies of everything he and his partner built (using quite critical energy he created to craft their mockeries of his partner and his designs while quite openly boasting that he could never bypass their security. Arrogant and proud, he decides to leave a lasting message and destroy the empire for good, and he’ll make very that sure they know who did it. He knows the building; he knows the tricks. He makes it through.

Once its all over though, he knows that he needs to return one last time to collect the emotional energy that now powers and infuses the machines. The only thing is they also know who he is, and they are very, very angry at him.

This is the scene as I see it at the outset of FNAF2

The Missing Location

One thing to bear in mind as we go through this theory is the presence of what I mentally call “The missing location”, this is the Freddy Fazbear’s franchise where the murders took place with the original animatronics still in place. This location is classed as “missing” to me only as we do not see it portrayed in any of the ScottGames games.

The animatronics we see in FNAF1 are not the original animatronics but a faithful recreation of these originals using salvaged components (though there’s a possibility that there are some differences such as Bonnie being a different colour and Chica losing theoretical wings)

We might see this location appear in the books or Help Wanted, but I can’t prove this is what we see. Just, for the moment keep this concept in mind as we go through what Phone Guy has to say.

Known Locations

As of FNAF 2, the locations we are aware of are as follows.

Fredbear’s Family Diner – Mentioned by Phone Guy on Night 5 as the “original restaurant” owned by an individual the company have lost contact with.

The Missing Location – Theorised Freddy’s location where the initial missing children incident happened.

The New Freddy’s – The location FNAF 2 takes place in. It is possible this location opened, a murder incident occurred, it was closed down and we are seeing the last gasp attempt at a “grand re-opening” before our player “Jeremy Fitzgerald” puts the final nail in its coffin.

FNAF 1 – A later location with restored versions of the original four animatronics almost exactly how they once were.

Phone Guy

So how did I come to this overall theory? I’ll lead you through my own sequence of discoveries in the order that I considered them in the hopes this illuminates my reasoning. I just want to clarify at this point that though I (Cathures) am taking you through my own discoveries, shockburnt also was impossibly important to this theory and it is a dual effort with every detail pored over by both of us. Shock also contributed to this article.

The most immediate narrative element we are faced with in FNAF 2 is phone guy. The fact he returns at all in this game raised some questions as the player almost certainly heard him die at the end of FNAF 1. Immediately this has the player asking themselves if this game is a prequel to the first. It certainly is, but this also poses its own questions. Why are there so many animatronics? Why was the older location far larger than this one? Why are the animatronics so hostile? The stark difference between this location and the location portrayed here is impossible to dismiss. Why then are there posters declaring this location to be a “new” one? All this falls into place when you consider the whole game and its place within the timeline.

So, lets go through Phone Guy’s calls one by one. You can pull them up to read here as I won’t post them all in full just for space reasons. We have six calls from six nights, and they all pose their own questions.

DAY 1

The first discrepancy we see in Phone Guy’s phone calls is his opening line to us. He greets us to our new summer job; this seems innocent enough until you check the dates of the pay slips that we receive. The slips in the name of “Jeremy Fitzgerald” are dated 11-12-1987 and 11-13-1987 which is WINTER. Neither of these slips are for a “summer job”. This must be intentional, Scott very, very rarely dates anything in the series without considering the implications.

(also note the triumphant posing of this payslip with the newspaper showing that Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza is closing, a mission accomplished)

So, we know from the first line of his recording that phone guy here cannot be speaking to the player. Whoever we are playing in FNAF2 is someone returning to the location after the time these calls were recorded, almost certainly by several months as two seasons have come and gone.

He goes on to discuss rumours about an “old location” that was left to rot for a while before being picked up again, the company as of this call has invested in improving the technology from this original location to augment the animatronics with facial recognition from “some kind of criminal database”. William Afton was never actually convicted of the murders (or he’d be in jail), so he wouldn’t appear in a normal criminal database, the implication here is that is possibly a Fazbear internal database. They are afraid of him and possibly Henry is the impression I feel we get here.

Phone guy offers us interesting information at this point, he discusses a first guard who worked the night shift and complained about the animatronics coming after him and was moved onto the day shift.

He also mentions the music box at this point and that its important to keep it wound to keep one animatronic in place, this is a mechanics guide, but also implies subtly that the most significant culprit for trying to get into the office on that first night was very possibly the marionette.

The player is notified of the Freddy head too and its ability to fool the animatronics into assuming that we are “one of them” to make them leave. Again, the implication here must be that whoever worked the first night figured this out or understood the mechanics of the animatronics well enough to come up with it. Phone guy hasn’t worked there before.

DAY 2

Night two begins with phone guy telling us that we are a natural and warning us of the “older models” in the back room. He describes these as being from the “previous location” and that they were used for parts now (remember “now” in this call is not the present, these are pre-recorded older calls). He describes them as ugly and says they have a truly terrible smell.

Now this part is typically where people assume that phone guy is talking about the Withered animatronics which are now housed in that same back room. It seems logical to do so at first, until you consider that if you are operating based on phone guy referring to the present day and the current player that this means Fazbear was using the missing parts for their newer set of animatronics. The “new” animatronics in the present day are the Toys.

Where exactly was Withered Bonnie’s face used on Toy Bonnie? The answer ultimately is that the withered animatronics are not cross compatible with the toys. It is not used. Their shells are completely incompatible, their proportions are different and they are obviously different colours.

Phone guy is not referring to the withered animatronics in this call. He is referring instead to the ORIGINAL animatronics. Freddy, Chica, Bonnie, and Foxy from the original location where the murders first happened. This call actually took place at the point when Fazbear was CREATING the set of animatronics now known as the Withereds, when they were whole and complete and some absolute madman at Fazbear Entertainment thought they were less ugly alternatives to the original designs.

This nod to the originals being ugly might even be a nod from Scott to the way people called his original designs ugly (the reason that FNAF1 even existed!)

Phone guy even tells us that the older designs (in this case the originals) shouldn’t be able to walk around and as far as we know this is true. Whenever we see the original animatronics depicted (for instance in the novels) they are bolted to the stage

“Lamar! Something’s wrong!” Jessica cried. Bonnie’s foot jerked upward with a sound like a gunshot, yanking free the bolt that anchored him to the stage.

Breed-Wrisley, Kira; Scott Cawthon. The Silver Eyes: Five Nights at Freddy’s (Original Trilogy Book 1) (Five Nights At Freddy’s) (p. 224)

Phone guy warns the player about Foxy and advises of the flashlight in the eyes glitch and how this works on Foxy in lieu of the Freddy head trick. The fact that the head doesn’t work is important, Foxy has some unique feature or knowledge which means that he of all the original animatronics knows that their enemy sometimes hides behind a mask.

He pointedly mentions that the glitch in question has carried to newer models. This is important as it explains why the flashlight works on withered foxy. However, again please note that if we apply this same statement to the present day, it doesn’t work! Withered foxy reacts to the flashlight, but “toy foxy” i.e. Mangle is still fooled by the Freddy mask!

Phone guy also mentions the puppet as something he has “never liked”, this implies that the marionette was present at the original location, the one I’ve been referring to as the “missing location” setting it apart from what we see in FNAF 1 later. It has a particular vendetta against the night guard we play as here and the individual who had just been a night guard at the time of the phone calls.

We find out in this game (and later games) which character is associated with the puppet and who they might bear a grudge against.

DAY 3

The next phone guy call refers specifically to Mangle. This would seem at first to conflict with what we have decided about these phone calls if you have decided that Mangle is a “toy animatronic” and was created alongside toy bonnie, toy freddy and toy chica. However, this is not exactly the case. Mangle may be part of a toy animatronic set designed by William and Henry, but it was built long before its peers.

Mangle as a character was created exactly as phone guy said, as a revision of Foxy, the ORIGINAL Foxy who we know at one point in history was rendered out of order. The Kid’s Cove he refers to in his phone call is not the Kid’s Cove in the location we find ourselves in, but back in the original “missing location”. It is very possible that Mangle was built ahead of the other toys, back in the original location because Foxy himself was deemed “out of order” and they needed a replacement. The others did not need replacing at that time.

Phone guy goes from speaking in past tense to then referring to “kids these days” regarding Mangle which brings his statement forward to the point of the creation of the Withereds and a more modern iteration of Mangle. It is very possible that as they tried to “retrofit” Mangle with the “new technology” referred to in night 1’s call that this is where Mangle obtained a second head and the ENDO 02 parts we see it with at this point. After all, toddlers are never going to be able to rebuild a full size animatronic, but technicians trying to bring it onto new technology certainly could.

This explains why Mangle looks the way it does and why it has too many limbs to ever really be reassembled from the parts that it does have, while also explaining why its earliest iteration “Funtime Foxy” as seen in FNAF world, has a hook.

We clearly see this version of Foxy in the cove with the classic version of Foxy in the teaser for FNAF 2 itself, bolstering the concept that they certainly did exist together at some point.

Further support for my assertion that Mangle is a generation 1 or “Original” animatronic can be found in the trilogy of novels where only the original Charlie murder and missing children murders happened. The marionette is nowhere to be found as Charlie herself is heavily featured in the twist and storyline of the novel, but the original animatronics are. Freddy, Bonnie, Chica and Foxy appear in the trilogy clearly.

And Mangle works for William Afton. Mangle exists in this timeline, a timeline that never progressed to the point of the toy animatronics.

Mangle also appears in the FNAF 4 flashbacks with the crying child in Afton’s home once again backdating Mangle’s design and marketing as a gimmick toy that kids could put back together to at LEAST 1983 and very likely earlier.

So, to me, this mention of Mangle does not weaken but only strengthen this tie to the original location and first four animatronics.

Back in the modern day (or at least the time of the phone recordings themselves!) Phone guy moves on to try and butter up the guard in question and smooth over their worries about something that is going on in the world outside.

He mentions something “tragic”, which immediately evokes the idea of kidnappings, harm or murder, but immediately follows it up with the assurance that it is nothing to do with Fazbear itself, saying it is all “rumour and speculation”. To me this immediately dispels any suspicion that this is related to “the bite” that people theorise. It would be impossible to handwave any kind of animatronic attack as “unrelated” to the company with the same flippancy. There is no reason to assume the animatronics are hostile in any way at this exact juncture.

To me it implies there are disappearances happening again and following this implication up with the mention of the day guard who says everything is completely fine is intentional and meant to point suspicion at him. I think it is fairly prudent to assume at this point that the day guard at the time of the recording of this phone call was William Afton.

DAY 4

On night four, phone guy sounds outright worried and the bulk of the focus of his call is on soothing the guard about things that are going on.

He says there’s an investigation being carried out, which clearly implies that the “tragic” event of the previous day has now escalated. He says they might have to close for some time and wheedles that Fazbear Entertainment “denies any wrongdoing”. At this point it becomes clearer that events that are unfolding outside of the location are likely starting to follow an old pattern that is drawing sharp attention to the company again. It certainly feels like the actions of someone who wants to bring every bit of negative press to their door.

He warns the guard not to make eye contact with the animatronics based on what they are now seeing on the day shift. The animatronics apparently interact with children fine at this point but are “almost aggressive” towards the staff, stopping and staring at them. This raises three possibilities, that someone has meddled with the database, that the animatronics know who the kidnapper is and are annoyed at all adults as a result or that they were staring at /one adult in particular on the day shift/.

DAY 5

On night five the night guard who received these phone calls is informed that the building they are in is on lockdown and specifically informed that there’s a suspicion against previous employees.

He directly references that the day shift position is now available which informs us indirectly that whichever previous employee that was on the day shift was responsible for the tragedy they are dealing with and has now vanished. This gives us a view on what happened during this “summer incident” we are hearing the calls for.

Phone guy asserts that they are trying to contact the original restaurant owner, giving us the first time in the series that we hear of “Fredbear’s Family Diner”. He mentions it has been closed for years and they doubt they’ll find anyone.

It has always been interesting to me that Golden Freddy only becomes active after night five, when they intentionally seem to go looking for the original owner of the franchise.

This mention of looking for Henry (the original owner) to me also always implied that they suspect that William is hiding somewhere in the building itself, but they don’t know where he is. Only the original owners would know where any secret rooms might lie, or if the location was built on top of anything older than the current owners realise.

DAY 6

Night six as a call is very important. It does not follow the same pattern of the previous five nights which were all preceded by phone guy reminding us of exactly what night we are on. This removes this call from the chronology of the other phone guy calls and opens it up to the possibility that it is immediate and happening right now to the player, as a live call instead of a pre-recorded one. There is a certain ambiguity to this call, but I mostly would stress that it doesn’t matter when this call falls, it works in both locations on the timeline and the information does not pertain directly to the animatronics.

Phone guy sounds horrified and shocked that the person he’s speaking to is at the location and seems convinced that its unsafe for them to try to leave. He assures them if they make it out, they will be working a final birthday the next day.

When you look at it as an individual call, it outlines some information we didn’t have previously along with some contradictions. He states that the location is shut down right before stating that there’s one last event to deal with.

The player also learns that someone used one of the suits, mentioning a yellow spare from the back of the location. Looking at this from a modern FNAF perspective we might assume this is spring bonnie that phone guy is talking about, but I think that it is very likely he’s referring to Fredbear/Golden Freddy who becomes active on this night. William does not always wear the Spring Bonnie suit but has worn his counterpart in various places in the series. Spring Bonnie is just his favourite.

The last thing phone guy says is that he will take the night shift himself whenever the location opens again.

This opens two potential interpretations of this call.

NIGHT 6 – VERSION 1

The first is that this call – and only this call – is at the end of the timeline, implying that when the next Freddy’s opens that it is the FNAF 1 location, and he keeps his word.

Um, I actually worked in that office before you. I’m finishing up my last week now, as a matter of fact

FNAF 1 Night 1

We are possibly hearing phone guy speaking directly to “Jeremy Fitzgerald” for the first time with the implication that the night guard in question should not be there at all. It might even be that they didn’t expect to have any kind of night shift left on duty at this point (remember, he said to the previous night guard that he’d move him to day shift, he didn’t mention a replacement for the night time)

If this call is sent to William Afton on his sixth night intruding on the modern location, accidentally assuming he was the old night guard and promising him access to a party the next day with his history with birthday parties it is extremely, extremely ominous.

NIGHT 6 – VERSON 2

The other possibility for this call is that we are still hearing the recorded calls from the “Summer Incident” and that this is phone guy, now in possession of all the facts and aware that they still haven’t found the culprit for the tragedies (Afton) and suspecting he is still in the building.

He’s telling the summer night guard that he will be moved to the day shift for the big party and that when the location reopens that he will cover the night shift.

Assuming this is the case and this is simply another night on the end of the previous ones, this would mean that when the location re-opened that Phone guy himself took the first shift and possibly left us the recordings. This lines up with the pink slips which shows that Jeremy Fitzgerald is employee 02 (with Fritz Smith being employee 03)

As you can see, this lines up regardless, and would leave our night guard in the past working the birthday shift, if he was allied with William Afton, this would mean there were essentially no guards on duty that day. Not good.

Who are the guards?

So, given all of this information that we are able to obtain from the phone guy calls, who are the guards? Let me give you my thoughts on who these are.

For clarity we’ll look at the time of the phone calls – The “summer incident” and the present day of FNAF2 “current day” separately as there are different guards for both incidents, but you’ll see why it makes sense as we go along.

Summer Incident

Night Guard 1/Day Guard 1William Afton – This individual starts out on the night shift but complains about it until they get moved onto the day shift, this frees up space for his replacement to move into the night shift guard role. I think that this is William for the obvious reason that he is the prime suspect for the tragic events that unfold and disappears soon after.

Night Guard 2Michael Afton – The guard receiving the calls that we hear in the game, this guard “is a natural” and makes it through the week intact and without much by way of suspicion. He is possibly moved to the day shift once Afton goes missing. Fritz is also fired for exactly the same reasons as Mike in FNAF1, Odor and Tampering with Animatronics.

Current Day

Night Guard 1Phone Guy – We can assume that phone guy took the first shift for the grand re-opening of the location as he states that he will at the close of the phone calls. This makes him employee 01 if this is the case, if it’s not phone guy it can only be assumed to be a random individual who we receive no information on.

Night Guard 2“Jeremy Fitzgerald” – William Afton – William swoops in as the second night guard and the one we play as in FNAF2. His name is a portmanteau that I will explain later.

Night Guard 3“Fritz Smith” – Michael Afton – Working custom night and fired for tampering with the animatronics, I think that Michael is sent in to retrieve the remnant for his father in the wake of events.

So, in summation, I think that the main characters in FNAF 2 are William and Michael Afton.

Let me just stress here that I don’t think that Michael murdered anyone, but I do think that he was in a position where he was helping to facilitate whatever mysterious things his father was getting up to, this included holding work positions for him and tampering with animatronics.

At the end of night 5,6 and 7, a specific song known as Les Cloches Du Monastère plays. This is also the triumphant song that Glitchtrap dances to at the end of Help Wanted. It is a theme associated with a triumphant William Afton wether you assume this is the mimic pretending to be him or not.

Why don’t they notice how they look?

In the novels we see that most of the people in the FNAF world are completely oblivious to a haircut and a bit of weight loss in identifying notorious criminals, but this aside, it is very possible that William has the illusion disc technology that is presented to us in the novels at this point and can disguise his appearance as needed.

Jeremy Fitzgerald

William Afton is no stranger to donning new names and personas and though many people assume the first time we see him do this is in The Silver Eyes trilogy, I’m of the opinion that he has been doing it the whole time in FNAF2. Jeremy Fitzgerald is an alias, and a horrible one at that. Not content only to control his victim’s souls and eventually melt them all together into a prison they cannot escape, he foreshadows this by merging even their names together.

Jeremy, Fritz, Gabriel and Susie are the names of the children lost in that original missing children incident, and between himself and Mike, William covers a sneaky nod to all of them.

At time of writing, it appears that William is going to use yet another false name in the FNAF movie, going by Steve Raglan this time too. It is not surprising for William to use a cover name in any way shape or form, the only surprising part is that more people haven’t questioned it sooner.

Fritz Smith

Mike goes by the name Fritz Smith, short like his name but still nodding to those missing children. It is unknown if he chose this name or was given it, but he was around at the time and had to have remembered little Fritz going missing back then. Choosing a name like this implies at least some degree of complacency in what they are doing.

Smith also very very roughly resembles Shmidt and sounds similar if you say it aloud, whether this is intentional or not is debatable.

Minigames – A burden of guilt

FNAF2 features numerous between night cutscenes and Atari style minigames, these are also incredibly important to understanding this game.

Firstly, I want to raise the concept that the throughline that links all of these is William Afton. Not only does he appear in several of them himself as “purple guy”, but they also tell us the rough details of several different sets of murders.

We can go through these in order though, just to make sure that it all hangs together.

End of Night Hallucinations

When first booting up the game, and at the end of nights 2, 3 and 4 we find ourselves shown a fixed view of the party room, only able to swivel our view from side to side with a robotic whirr. We can hear children laughing in the background of this scene. It can be assumed from the nose we can see and the view that we are disguised as Freddy at this point.After some time, there is a distorted noise and the view cuts out, showing the word “err” in the corner of the screen. In nights two and four, the screen cuts to the words “its me.” In the corner.The first scene we see shows what appears to be classic Bonnie and Chica either side of us, not looking at us, standing as they normally would on the stage. This is immediately significant, as if this game is a prequel (it is) then it would not make sense for someone to be glimpsing the “future“ versions of the animatronics UNLESS – as I have stated in this theory – that these versions of the animatronics existed previously.

The second scene, both characters are now staring sidelong at us, as though realising something is off.

In the third scene, both Chica and Bonnie are looking at the character in question with an air of hostility while Freddy stands in front of them, confirming that though we are standing in his spot, we are not Freddy.

In the final scene, Bonnie and Chica have returned to their oblivious state but the Puppet is directly in our view and moves with us. We cannot escape its gaze.

I think that these scenes are quite clearly directed at William. Who else would face such malevolence from the animatronics and especially the marionette who seems quite hell bent on stopping him from carrying out his plans. The slow realisation over the course of days about what they are dealing with would also coincide with the increased hostility that William faces over the course of the week.

These scenes are called “hallucinations” in the ultimate guide, and I’m inclined to agree on this point, I think that we are seeing William experiences flashes of nightmare borne of the sheer anger and agony of his animatronic victims.

Death Games

When the player dies in FNAF2 there is a chance to witness one of four arcade style games that the player can interact with to a degree, these have become some of the most debated scenes in FNAF but I think that in the context of this theory, they make more sense. I think that it is possible that these scenes are witnessed through the minds and memories of the animatronics themselves, but all of them pertain to William Afton.

Retro game 1 – SAVE THEM

This game has us walking as Freddy, following the puppet through a locations absolutely saturated with death bodies and blood. Rarely, we will encounter purple guy himself as we go, and when he ends the game, we see a flash of text saying “you can’t”

To me this minigame is portraying the carnage around the events of the game, possibly the events just prior to William’s shift. Phone guy might well have been the guard at that point, and we have seen his policy of deaths later in FNAF 1

“Fazbear Entertainment is not responsible for damage to property or person. Upon discovering that damage or death has occurred, a missing person report will be filed within 90 days, or as soon property and premises have been thoroughly cleaned and bleached, and the carpets have been replaced.”

Retro game 2 – Take Cake to the Children

This game has a single (markedly different than later scenes) Freddy bringing cake to some distressed children, while outside William stops his car and kills a child who is outside. At least this is the assumption I make about what we see in this scene. The puppet jumpscares us at the end of this. This story is why it is angry.

I think that the difference in Freddy’s appearance here is down to this location being the older one. He could also be Fredbear, neither option impacts this theory. What matters is that William witnessed this and it is once again directly linked to his murders.

Retro game 3 – Foxy Go Go Go!

This game has Foxy run into a room repeatedly full of excited children, with party poppers firing off as he arrives. However, the last time he does, he passes the wildly grinning purple guy. When Foxy arrives at the party room, everyone is dead, and it ends with a Foxy jump scare.

To me this is a possible explanation we have as to why Foxy seems to have it in for William. It’s very plausible in my opinion that a “malfunction” on Foxy’s part left him as a suspect for this scene and he knows that William was there and responsible.

Retro game 4 – Give Gifts, Give Life

In this game we see the puppet bringing gifts to dead children, followed by “giving life” by placing the head of the animatronics on top of them. The words HELP THEM are spelled out.

This scene I think is showing us directly the scene where the puppet gave the children some of her own life energy to permit them to reanimate the animatronics.

The most interesting scene of this game is the instant at the end where there is a fifth child in the centre of the room who flashes into view right before we are jumpscared by Golden Freddy. William had another victim or spirit associated with him who was brought back by this giving gifts and giving life.

Animatronics

Just to clarify further what we have been talking about, I want to give a quick one line summary of the different “generations” of animatronics as we understand them from this theory. Shock did some great illustrations of these to help sum them up. We are excluding Fredbear’s from this list just for brevity (this is so long already!)

The Original Animatronics – These were the first set of “Freddy’s” animatronics created. These bear many of Henry’s design hallmarks.

The Summer Animatronics – These are the rotten old half refurbished Originals, the animatronics known later as the Withereds are new at this point. Mangle appeared at some unspecified point between the Original animatronics and this point in time. The Withereds do not look like William or Henry’s designs. They feel a lot like bootlegs (which makes it hilarious Withered Freddy in the real world appears on so many bootleg plushies) Golden Freddy also has a Withered iteration which implied they “ported” Fredbear, it seems to be this suit that William used to kill people with, the “yellow suit”.

Grand Re-Opening Animatronics – These are the now-rotten Withereds and the Toys are now the new kids on the block. The toys bear many of William’s design hallmarks and were likely early designs he made himself (since they match Mangle in theme and materials). So he’d be EXTRA mad about these.

The Remades – The remake of the animatronics back to their more original form. This was very possibly someone’s attempt to “restore” them to a previous state after the scrapping at the end of FNAF2.

Logbook Chica

Logbook Chica refers to an image of Chica at the back of the Security Logbook. This image is the “missing link” image that we spent a long time waiting to find.

It depicts nothing short of an original (and ruined Chica) in the process of being retrofitted with new tech. This is a state we never see ANY Chica in in the games and proves that there was a ruined and withered looking point in the lifespan of the Original animatronics from that elusive missing location before their later restoration.

A Quick Timeline Summary

Fredbear’s Family Diner – Happens at some point, this is the first restaurant.

The Missing Location – This location opens, has some success and then is closed by the MCI, somewhere in here, Fazbear Entertainment ousts or loses track of William and Henry, the original founders.

The New Location – The new location opens, tries to use the salvaged Originals, hates the smell and look of them and decides to go in a new direction with the characters. The pristine, new version of the Withereds appears here.

The Summer Incident – Something horrible happens in summer and presumably a lot of people die. The location is closed for a bit but Fazbear never gives up and denies everything fervently.

Possible Second Incident – Just ahead of the grand re-opening in November, Fazbear are forced to cover up another incident, this might well have included some teens looking to break into the closed location and getting murdered. It is possible that William stole parts from the Withereds at this point, that might have been why he was there at all.

The Grand Re-Opening – The location opens once more, and this time Fazbear wheels out another set of animatronics, bringing the Toys out to the floor while being forced to put the now wrecked Withered animatronics into storage in the backroom. The events of this further William intrusion closes the location and the animatronics are scrapped.

FNAF1 – A mysterious benefactor (possibly Henry) saves and restores the oldest animatronics and gives all of the souls somewhere to be housed and safe that resembles a happy place for them.

The Drawings

In FNAF 2 we see posters drawn by the children which depict the Withered animatronics from before they were ruined, these are on posters marked “My Day at the NEW Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza.” These had to have been drawn prior to the events of the game clearly, and they link the “repaired” withered to this initial opening of the new Freddy’s location.

Original Cupcake

It appears that the Original cupcake for whatever reason was never actually destroyed or ruined with the others. If we didn’t assume there was an original set of animatronics, him appearing on the desk as an unlockable would be incredibly anachronistic. Toy chica has a cupcake and it looks nothing like him. It is very possible that the remade Chica was just given this cupcake.

We know the cupcake on the table is an Original style design as his eye caps match the Remades so therefore would also match the Originals.

The plushies on the desk also depict the originals, including golden Freddy who has his whisker dots and distinctive bow tie. These plushies would also be out of place if we didn’t already know that they existed before this point.

In Conclusion

Thank you so much for reading this far. We have a TON more evidence about this theory but we wanted to keep it as brief as possible (it still ended up super long!) but its one that we could talk about for days. There aren’t a lot of theories I feel very sure about, but this is one of them. For me it untangled so much about this dense and excellent game and added a motivation for why everything is so rough here!