Game Theory!

Fnaf's Scariest Monster Is You!

Trigger Warnings:

Animatronics

Missing Children

Gore Descriptions (not bad, but still kinda there)

Hauntings

In-game murders

Real-life murders

Hello internet, welcome to game theory, where fear is our middle name! "Matthew Fear Patrick" 

It's a very strange name...

Okay! I'll admit, I didn't give Five Night's at Freddy's enough credit when it first came out. A few jumpscares from that... ehh, aren't that scary. People overreacting to it on Youtube, meh, pass. But then when I asked you about it, you showed overwhelming support for an episode on the game. So I began to dig deeper, and deeper, and what I found was some of THE most interesting story-telling, most intriguing mysteries, and most disturbing events I've read about in a long time.

Now if you were just t play the game straight through, five days, the story would come across as pretty superficial. You're the new night guard watching the security cameras at a "Chuck-E-Cheese style restaurant called Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. Four animatronics roam the halls at night because the owners don't want their servos to lock up. The bad news is; you can't let them near you or else they'll kill you on the spot because you look like a naked endoskeleton. One of them bit someone back in '87, presumably 1987. The past guard leaves you recorded phone messages to act as your tutorial... that is, as much as he could record before he got himself killed. And that's it! Stay five nights, collect your paycheck, done! Game over! Play something new.
But playing it that way is doing the game a HUGE disservice because that's not even scratching the surface. If you're observant, you start to unravel the layers of mysteries around this place. You find that there's a fifth animatronic, that posters on the wall will change randomly, that news clippings appear and disappear telling the dark secrets of this twisted place... putting it all together, here's the rest of the story.

 

Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, once a popular restaurant; fell into hard times when five children went missing there, after being lured to a "backroom" by a man dressed in a character costume. Though a suspect was caught and convicted, the bodies of the children were never recovered. The pizzeria was also threatened with shut down due to sanitation complaints, as foul odors started to come from the animatronics, blood, and mucus oozing from their eyes and mouths. The last article, written years after the incident, states that the pizzeria would finally be closed by year-end. In addition to the core four robots of Chica, Bonnie, Freddy, and Foxy, there's also a fifth. Unofficially referred to as "Golden Freddy". Ignoring the rules of physics, Golden Freddy appears and disappears at will, can inexplicably travel through doors, wherever, causing strange hallucinations. And when he attacks you, you're not taken to the typical Game Over screen - your game crashes. So... that's unsettling. And there are also strange messages appearing on the walls repeating the words, "It's me". According to the game's creator, the place is indeed haunted by what we can only assume to be the spirits... of the five lost ghosts.

So that's the gist of it! Murder, missing children, foul odors, killer robots... and pizza! But that story leaves, a LOT of lingering questions. Who is your character? How's he fit in? Why does he stay for five nights when he's very clearly confronting the possibility of death? What more can we know about this terrifying Golden Freddy? And most importantly... what IS the complete story behind Five Night's At Freddy's? They're all good questions about a delightfully incomplete and mysterious story with just enough threads to keep you theorizing. So now, if you'll indulge me, let me reciprocate that story with one of my own. I think you'll find it... interesting...
December 1993; Aurora, Colorado. 10 PM Tuesday at a local Chuck E. Cheese. After a family birthday party runs long, Manager Margaret Kohlberg and teenage employees Sylvia Crowell, Ben Grant, Colleen O'Connor, and Bobby Stevens are forced to stay late to close up shop. But as Margaret tallies receipts in the back, Bobby scrubs down the kitchen and the other three work outside the main arcade, unknown to any of the five, there's a sixth person locked in the building with them. Waiting silently in the darkened restrooms - a 19-year-old named Nathon Dunlap. Earlier that year, Nathan had begun working there as a cook: Dough Master, before getting fired in July after a disagreement over his hours. Now, five months later, he was back. At 10:05 (pm) he left the bathroom, pulled out a small-caliber handgun, and proceeded to execute everyone in the building. First Sylvia, then Ben, then Colleen. Dunlap then moved to the kitchen where he surprised Booby Stephens. The bullet entered Bobby's jaw sending him sprawling onto the ground. Then finally, Nathan moved to the back - the office, where Margaret opened the safe before Nathan shot her twice, proceeded the grab her bag; filling it with $1600 in cash, arcade tokens, and keychains. Spurred on by the building security footage, police were at his home a few hours later, where he was promptly arrested. Eventually, he was tried, and sentenced to death. But his story reentered the news just recently (2014), as his punishment has been postponed, leading people to debate whether he's able to sleep soundly, knowing that his execution has been delayed.  This... is a tragic story. A disgusting waste of human life, and one I won't joke about or make fun of in any way. But I want to address it because I have a strong suspicion that this story is the one that inspired Five Nights At Freddy's. Let's look at the facts.