History Characters / MikesNewGhostlyFamily

* AdaptationalExpansion: Compared to the original game canon, where the matter was incredibly vague, with only a couple sound clips in-game to provide clues to build off of, William's overall relationship with his daughter Elizabeth is showcased in vastly thorough detail for the other characters(and the readers). To put ''extremely'' lightly, his relationship with her was '''FAR''' from ideal.
** It seemingly started off fine enough, with the confirmation from Liz herself that William never seemingly abused or mistreated Elizabeth at all when she was alive. An example also given by Liz is during her shopping session at the mall with Fritz, she explains to him during her childhood, William mostly bought fancy blouses and dress-skirts--similar to the attire she was wearing during her death--when it came to providing her with clothes. While that may ''seem'' a bit iffy, it's nowhere '''near''' as [[AxCrazy off-putting]] as what we know him to be capable of. However, there's still the obvious matter of Elizabeth getting killed by one of William's robots, and their connection only got infinitely worse from there.
** After Elizabeth was killed via getting scooped into Circus Baby, afterlife was nothing but Hell on Earth for the poor girl: There was no one to talk to, because the other Funtimes never saw her as their friend, leaving her completely alienated; Her body was gone, leaving her trapped in a cold, unfeeling metal body, unable to call out for help; And, worst of all, Circus Baby was built by William to kill, meaning Elizabeth's mind was ripe for infection and corruption from Baby's murderous programming for '''FIVE WHOLE YEARS'''. Elizabeth suffered psychologically in a fate far worse than death, one that her father was ''very well aware'' of had happened to his daughter, and he did not do ''anything'' to help her. At all. As Elizabeth rotted in there with every passing day, William only saw his supposed "dear daughter's" horrifying condition as a unique new opportunity to base his paranormal experiments on for the sake of furthering his progress towards ''his'' personal gain of the powers of immortality, and he never ONCE used his newly acquired knowledge or the resources at his disposal that he gained from his experimenting with Remnant to try and set his kid's soul free from her imprisonment within the trap HE created. He was completely neglectful towards even ''attempting'' to ease Elizabeth's agony or relieve her of some of the pain she was undeservedly forced into, as he did try to warn Elizabeth not to go near Baby, and this was his means of punishing her for disobeying him. The only thing William Afton ever did to even remotely save his daughter was send his oldest son, and by then only remaining living child, into CBEAR, where the Funtime animatronics were stored in order to go save her. But of course, he deliberately set that entire rescue operation up to fail, essentially dooming Michael to die and leaving Elizabeth to be unleashed onto the world as a monster with no one to guide or restore her from the damage that had been done to her mind and spirit.

* AmbiguousSituation: It's never directly explained exactly ''how'' William managed to figure out that the little kids that he murdered all those decades ago had returned to the living plane as a group of docile, peaceful spiritual entities, no longer thirsting for vengeance, nor is it explained how he further found out how those kids had been taken under Mike Schmidt's care following their rejection from Heaven, and that the old man was now raising them as his own foster sons and daughters. There's also no concrete reason provided for why William decided to base his bet with Nightmare on whether or not the demon could manipulate the ghosts into separating from each other and tearing their family apart from within, aside from trying to cut himself free of 1,000 years of torture, especially considering those children were already free from his grasp and there was literally nothing they could to hurt him. Well, that's what he thought anyway, until Mike himself stepped in.
** It's also unknown whether or not William knew that among the ghost children that Mike had adopted was his own former daughter, who was killed indirectly by him, and the same daughter whom he had lied to and feigned care for in order to force her to murder people for him. It's also never really made clear how he felt over the initial realization that Elizabeth--who was trying desperately to recover from the extensive depression and self-loathing his manipulations had caused her--had basically(and rightfully) abandoned him and his memory in favor of a new beginning with Mike as her father and the other children as her new siblings, nor is it made clear if he had any compunctions or concerns at all over sending a demon to torture the family with her in it, which meant Liz would get attacked by him as well, essentially putting her through even more pain. Considering what William said to Liz when he rejected his offer to join him again when he, as Nightmare Springtrap, attacked the Schmidt mansion, it can be safe to assume that he did know, and that he did not care. Speaking of family...
** It's eventually revealed that William's sheer disregard for all human life except for his own goes back far further than the early days of him helping Henry found the Fazbear franchise--he grew up with that mindset under the pressure of a totalitarian household owing to a monstrous father, who punished William for every folly he made as a child. The mindset in question that he developed was that the lives of those around you, no matter who they are, or how close they are to you, hold no meaning or value of any kind whatsoever, because the only person whom can truly be trusted to help you survive in this world is yourself. So, with an outlook on the world as twisted as THAT governing every decision he made as an adult, why the ''hell'' did decide to start a FAMILY? One consisting of three kids, no less? You know, starting a time in his life where he would have to put his selfish sociopathy aside in order to raise his children? Did William undergo some light change of heart and decide to try to start caring for others after escaping his horrible childhood, only for that kindness to be washed away by a relapse into darkness? Or did William just had kids so he could raise them to be cold-hearted monsters in their adulthoods too, making more people like him in the world? That seems unlikely, as Liz states that William never struck her like his father did and seemingly took just fine care of her before her death, but we end up seeing how easily he threw Evan away like trash when he find out William's plans. Did William perhaps plan to have his three kids play roles in his evil plans after he indoctrinated them? Well, again, he clearly had no trouble with leaving his kids for dead when they did something detrimental to his operations, if Evan is anything to go by, and he didn't see Michael as much more useful, because he left him to rot as well when he sent him to CBEAR. The child whom William made any real progress in his designs with was Elizabeth, whom he only betrayed right as Henry and Michael captured and killed them all. So, what was William thinking with starting a family? Speaking of Michael...
** Why did William not tell Michael about how dangerous the Funtimes were? He sent him down to the CBEAR facility where the Funtimes were in order to save Elizabeth, yet he never bothered to tell Michael that the animatronics would try to kill him in the process due to their hostile design. If William knew the danger his son was in, ''which he definitely did because he desinged them from the ground up to be killing machines'', why didn't he say anything to warn Michael? Even if he had no care or consideration for Michael's life, a warning at least would have helped him succeed in rescuing Elizabeth and contributing to his schemes. What would William have done if the Elizabeth-possessed Circus Baby and the other Funtime animatronics ended up killing Michael before even rescued his little sister? Did he have any backup plan at all? Oh, and speaking of deadly animatronics...
** Why did William sabotage Henry's animatronics? It's eventually revealed that the reason why Fredbear had enough bite-force to crush human skulls in the first place(i.e., the Bite of '83) is because William intentionally modified both him and Spring Bonnie to bite down that hard in their automations. Was that he because he was trying to solve an error within their systems, or was he was that just result of William editing their hardware? According to Evan, it's definitely not to help or fix the robots in any way, but to make them more dangerous and accident-prone. But for what reason would William want to use the restaurant's equipment to kill people ''now''? This was before Elizabeth died, therefore before William began his hunt for immortality, so for what reason would he sabotage his partner's work in an intentionally deadly way if it wouldn't benefit him? To make Henry look bad? Out of spite for Henry? We know William saw Henry as nothing more than a meddling fool, but is that because Henry never saw the horrifying potential of Remnant and the mascot characters the metal was powering like he did, or because Henry took great lengths to defeat him following his murder sprees, or for another reason that we never find out about? Knowing William though, it could've been that he gave Fredbear and Spring Bonnie a killing edge just because he wanted to.

* BadBoss: It's implied by Nelson that William had a bad relationship with his co-workers and business representatives during his time as a businessman entrepreneur, with Nelson reporting to Mike and Charlie that William did not get along very well with his shareholders, and that played in him eventually losing an amount of control and authority over the Circus Baby franchise and even Afton Robotics as a whole, despite being the founder and CEO of the entire company and all it's properties. Being an egotistical murder-happy psychopath who held no true emotional connections or bonds towards ''anyone'' he ever met, William very likely would've thought absolutely nothing of abusing or berating his employees or directors, since he likely saw them all as beneath him. Plus, he had his workers build machines engineered to capture and kill children, with no one(worker, shareholder, manager or otherwise) in the entire company aside from Afton himself being the wiser, so it's confirmed that he would lie to and manipulate anyone who made a living within in his business on the regular. Honestly, as Nelson himself probably knows, William not getting along with shareholders would definitely be the '''

* BeyondRedemption: The story had already made it crystal clear from the opening chapters that William Afton was never going to be offered a second chance at life, largely because 1), Henry had already sent him freefalling face-first into The Pit of The Damned before the first chapter even began, and 2), literally every single character in the entire story unanimously agreed that he absolutely did not even slightly deserve any more chances at changing himself for the better at all. However, even besides that, William Afton himself outright shamelessly admits that he's an evil monster, therefore self-confirming that he has no regrets for anything he ever did, and by extension, certainly has no desire or interest in redemption, and refuses to even try to improve himself as a person. This becomes borderline Anvilicious during the "William Afton Returns" arc, where in one of Evan's flashbacks, Old Man Consequences, who was watching everything leading up to the events of the Fazbear tragedy, dead-ass says to Evan, out loud, wit no qualms, that even ''BEFORE'' he became a child murderer, William Afton's descent into depravity had already been "long in the making". For the record, Old Man Consequences says this while talking to Evan shortly after the young boy died from the Bite of '83...right before [[AndShowItToYou he shows to Evan that the real reason Evan died was because William unplugged his medical life support.]] [[KickTheDog And he was enjoying himself quite the lot while doing so, too.]] One particularly jarring aspect of this trope is that every named member of the Afton family each remain guilty of a list of sins, including Evan(but he saw the error of his ways almost immediately anyways)--and in Michael's and Liz/Elizabeth's cases, those crimes could've easily damned them along with William had they not repented or if they had been committed out of free will respectively--and yet, William Afton, the twisted father who caused it all, is the outlier amongst them who remains pure evil to the core from the beginning to the end, all the while openly, and crudely scoffing at the idea of taking responsibility when said family calls him out on his sheer wickedness. To really drive the whole point home, Mike Schmidt, after being given a front row seat to the revelations of what William did to Evan, audibly lampshades this when the two of them get together for the final battle in Mike's mindscape:

* BullyingADragon: After his attempt to destroy the Schmidt family by forcing them to confront the dark secrets that the children and their new father had been hiding failed, Afton did not take it well, and started lashing out at Nightmare, the demon in charge of his eternal damnation. Specifically, he argued that Nightmare did not try hard enough to inflict enough pain on the children when he could've tried harder. Completely ignoring the fact that Nightmare already looks down on humanity, thus likely already holding disdain towards the murderer by default, Nightmare tries to be reasonable(at least as much as he can be, considering who he's dealing with) and calmly explains to William that he never properly explained ''how'' Nightmare should carry out his attack on his targets. And considering how impulsive William Afton is demonstrated to be throughout this fic, it's incredibly likely that Nightmare isn't just fucking with him when he says this. The Purple Guy's response? Tell the immortal, misanthropic, super-powerful, mass-demon-murdering, reality-warping, infernal bear monster that he is on '''equal terms''' with him purely because they are "both evil monsters", meaning that Nightmare should be working with him willingly. Yeah, Nightmare '''''did not''''' appreciate Afton's analogy one bit, and promptly introduced his claws to the man's throat before tearing into him. The added factor of Nightmare despising this human in particular for everything he did in life wasn't exactly helping William's argument either.

* CardCarryingVillain: PlayedForHorror. He's fully aware that what he does is evil, and even outright admits without any doubt or remorse that he's an evil monster. When trying to suck up to Nightmare to avoid the tortures, he even tried to appeal to Nightmare's own evil nature by claiming that they should work together due to them both being evil monsters, only to be [[ColdBloodedTorture violently rejected]]. It definitely makes the subsequent session of the Nightmares tearing into him all the more satisfying, but he still entails that everything he HAS done in both life, death, and damnation includes seven-time child murder, with one of said children being his ''best friend's daughter'', another of said children being his '''''youngest son''''', and his killing spree irreparably crippling his best friend's entire franchise by the sheer tragedy, doing them all without flinching or caring. Not even because it for some greater good or some twisted "the ends justify the means" ideology--these sins were committed by a man who knew what he was doing was wrong and enjoyed it as such. And every single drop of sadness, pain, and terror that came from it all, too.
** That's disgusting enough, but his delight that he gains from recognizing his atrocities for what they are runs even deeper than that. If Afton's reaction to the condition his youngest son was in after the Bite of '83 is telling anything, the man takes great pride in the circumstances of people's pain, recognizing his pride as sadism, and allowing himself to laugh at their misery. This was brought up when he requested Evan to be taken off of life support, despite being informed that his wounds could have been healed; his reaction to this in question was to smile, gloat upon Evan's grave, and walk away. And later on, in a (seemingly) final attempt to ruin the happiness of the kids he killed, his deal with Nightmare was based of a desire to escape divine punishment for a millenia, but Nightmare would have to turn the family of ghosts against each other, which would include putting his (former) daughter through even more pain even after Henry and Michael sacrificed their lives to free her, and William, recognizing what this would do to the children, was perfectly fine with it. That's not even going into how he callously manipulated Elizabeth into becoming his undead servant and intentionally tried to psychologically warp her into a child-murdering sociopath just like himself throughout the final moments of their time on Earth, ''while knowing she was once(and still is in many senses) a child herself''. William probably already knew that his daughter was trying desperately to recover from the nightmare he'd caused her, but he simply didn't ''care'' when his arch-demonic tormentor starting tearing into her anyway. And that's not even considering the fact that, had the family actually turned each other, the children, which again, ''included his own daughter'', very likely could've blown their second chance and been '''''damned to hell with him.''''' There is nothing suggesting William didn't know this, either.
*** Overall, William consistently confirms himself to know that everything he did is exactly what earned him a permanent spot in the deepest, darkest pits of Hell. His claim that he and Nightmare are, in any way, on the same level is an alarmingly despicable display to the readers and Nightmare of just how indescribably sick in the head William Afton truly is, and it just continues to be a massive bout of FridgeHorror long after the true depths of William's utter depravity are revealed moving forward.
* ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: William is actually quite the addict to this, as his quest for immortality likely would not have gotten as far as it did he didn't put this trope into effect. With the sole exceptions of Mike and Nelson, The Purple Guy has a serious penchant to employ vile treachery and double-crossing on the people he targets to fulfill his desires, preferring to both metaphorically and literally strike down "friends", "loved ones", acquaintances, and enemies indiscriminately when they least expect it in order to endlessly further his petty and self-serving goals with no limits to who he'll betray in sight:
** First and foremost, William brutally betrayed his at-the-time-best friend and business partner, Henry Emily, '''twice-fold''', during their running of Fredbear's Family Diner, with him starting his life of crime by using the trust Henry had for him to watch over Fredbear's, and moving in to ''sabotage the diner's prized animatronic characters'' by over-enhancing their individual bite forces to the point where anyone who got too close to the character's mouths could have themselves seriously wounded by pure accident. This is directly what set up the Bite of '83, which caused Fredbear's to be permanently shut down, and very likely put Henry in danger due to his career and restaraunt being mortally damaged. But William's second backstabbing against Henry, however, was FAR more unforgivable and treacherous than the first--betraying him in the form of sadistically murdering Henry's daughter and only child, Charlotte Emily, likely because Henry trusted him enough to let him watch over his daughter while he was at a board meeting during her birthday, and leaving her bloody corpse in the dark, wet alley by the restaurant for Henry to later discover. After this, all William did was watch silently, smiling sadistically from the shadows as his so-called best friend's entire life fell into a smoldering ruin of grief and depression over the loss of his only child and his franchise for years, and possibly ''DECADES'' afterwards.
*** William also clearly betrayed Charlotte as well; considering the fact that Charlotte and Elizabeth were best friends while they were both still alive, Charlotte did trust William himself enough to even be on good terms with his daughter. So William took advantage of this when he found her locked out of Fredbear's that rainy night, and, seeing her helpless and vulnerable, snuck up behind her and killed her by stabbing her to death a knife. She was able to see through William's friendly disguise though, as seen by Michael describing his vision of Charlotte desperately banging on the pizzeria's doors for help, but it was tragically too late to save herself before her father's would-be best friend caught up to her and finished the job before Henry even knew she was gone, making her his first killing spree victim in this betrayal.
** And then you have the incredibly treacherous manner in which William committed the Missing Children Incident. He donned the Spring Bonnie costume, and for all five of the children, used their individual love of the character of Spring Bonnie and his mask of friendliness and fun-loving to get them all to follow him to the backrooms of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, where he was to slaughter the poor unsuspecting kids, who did not know any better and genuinely believed they were for a fun secret activity with a character from the franchise that they were all massive fans of, only to get stuffed into the animatronics suits afterwards. They only realized what they were in for right before The Purple Guy stabbed them to death, or whenever they saw their friends' corpse.(Shoutout to Cassidy, since the last SHE saw before she died were the mangled, bleeding, terrified-faced bodies of her four friends) but, again by then, Afton already had them where we wanted them.
** He didn't stop there. Not even the apparent love supposedly bonding his family was immune to Afton's bottomless capacity for weaponizing deception towards gaining more for himself. All three of his children were thrown under the bus in their own uniquely fucked up ways, without William Afton so much as batting an eye:
*** To start the horror show off, there was Elizabeth, who was killed not by William directly, but by one of his creations. William Afton had built the clown animatronic Circus Baby as the progenitor of the Funtime Animatronics... and as a "gift" for Elizabeth. This lead to Elizabeth developing a deep-seated love for Circus Baby, and she definitely trusted her father enough to trust Baby in this regard; she was his creation after all, and Elizabeth though the world of William for building her. This love and excitement for her father and his work is precisely what ruined her in the end, as she grew impatient, and, when Elizabeth finally got to meet Circus Baby up close and personal, Circus Baby ended up fulfilling her true purpose that William gave her--collecting the souls of targeted children via death by entrapment...which she carried out on Elizabeth. Elizabeth Afton's love and admiration for the character and father she so idolized in life was used against her in death, thanks to William Afton. While William did try to prevent this very situation by giving Elizabeth multiple explicit warnings to stay away from Circus Baby, since he KNEW what would happen to her, it '''does not''' change the fact that the whole reason Elizabeth died in the first place was directly because of her love for William and what he created for her. [[ManipulativeBastard And there's what he does to her after that...]]
*** Next up on the chopping block in the Afton household was Evan Afton, William's youngest child, and oh boy, this one's a bit of doozy. William's first slight against the Crying Child was a far more gradual case than most with this trope--during the majority of Evan's life, Michael ruthlessly bullied and mentally tormented Evan via constantly stalking his younger brother and jumpscaring the poor kid with his Foxy the Pirate mask. This left Evan in an extemly disturbed and fragile state psychologically for the rest of his short life, to the point where Evan was scared of his own ''SHADOW''. William was damn well aware of what was going between his two sons, and--[[SarcasmMode being the delightful family man he is]]--did absolutely nothing to help his son's situation but watch him suffer from a safe distance, thusly completely and knowingly ignoring his duties as a father in favor of his hobbies and work at Fredbear's Family Diner at the cost of his child's safety and mental health.
*** All that, though, was just the buildup to The Purple Guy's blackest sin against the Crying Child: When Evan was left in critical condition due to the extent of the damage dealt to his head from being bitten by Fredbear, William, under the mask of a kind and compassionate father, used his youngest son's love for him and the doctor's trust in him to convince said doctor to allow him to unplug Evan's life support, permanently killing the boy and shooting any chance of Evan recovering and living out the rest of his life right in the face. William Afton even caps this betrayal off by rubbing his joy towards no longer needing to worry about raising him in Evan's face as he dies.
*** Finally, last but not least, William's relationship with Michael Afton, his first son and oldest child, is one long painful case of this. It started with the fact that William knew that the Fredbear animatronic was dangerous (which is especially egregious because ''HE was the one who made it that way''), but he didn't care enough to warn Michael about that or even tell Michael to be careful around it before Michael shoved Evan's head up into the animatronics' jaw as a prank. Thanks to William, Michael ended up accidentally killing his own brother. [[CerebusRetcon Except, not really, because William had Evan's life support unplugged in the hospital, right after William told Michael that Evan was beyond saving, and Michael trusted his father enough to believe his lies.]] This immediately overwhelmed the grieving big brother with horror at what he had done to the point where left William alone in Evan's emergency room. Because he never, '''ever''' told Michael that ''he'' killed Evan off, Michael lived out the rest of his life full of self-hatred and extreme amounts of depression, believing that he was a monster who deserved all the pain he went through including his absolutely '''horrifying''' torment at the hands of the Nightmares, and getting scooped by the Elizabeth, because of his terrible abuse and eventual murder of his younger sibling. William was able to take advantage of his image as a loving father, which Michael had trusted and confided in during Evan's passing, to get away with leaving Michael to wallow, in spite of knowing exactly what Michael was going through.
*** Even though Michael had been warned by Evan(who had taken the form of the ghostly Shadow Freddy by that point), that William Afton was not the compassionate and kind father that they and Elizabeth had believed him to be, any love Michael had for him that William had previously abused finally burned out into well-deserved hatred when the purple scumbag used Michael's grief over his lost family to manipulate him into going into Circus Baby's Entertainment and Rental, where, as William put it, "Elizabeth was alive after all those years and was waiting for him." Despite this promise already seeming shaky to Michael, he still trusted his father ''just'' enough to go into the facility to go rescue his lost dear little sister. Unfortunately for Michael, William Afton stabbed his now only remaining child in the back ''yet again'', by withholding crucial information that the Circus Baby and the Funtime animatronics had turned hostile against their creator, and would mistake Michael for William, and try to kill him in his place. Sure enough, Elizabeth ended up driving the Funtimes to kill Michael via gutting him with the Scooper and wearing him as a meat suit. Because of William's cruel and selfish manipulations of his grief, Michael ended up as a walking, lifeless, Remnant-fueled corpse who barely ever had enough strength to move on his own for the rest of his days.

* DemonOfHumanOrigin: He cooperated with Vucarik, another demon lord who is the sworn enemy of the Nightmare Clan, and with Vucarik's help, William stole some power from the Nightmares' unholy children to become Nightmare Springtrap, a demonic version of the animatronic suit that defined his undeath. This happened because he had been weakened to a state where he could not execute his revenge against Mike due to Nightmare's torture of him sapping him of all his strength, in which being infused with his tormentors unholy power gave him more than enough revitalization to carry out his wretched fantasies against the ghost kids' foster father. Though Nightmare Springtrap is much weaker when compared to other Nightmares, but compared to a human or average ghost, [[NormalFishInATinyPond he greatly outpowers them all]]. Much like the Nightmares, Nightmare Springtrap's powers revolve around infernal-pyrokinesis, being able to summon Hellfire and use his newfound claws, fangs, and beast-like superhuman strength to deal serious damage to both humans, animatronics, and even ''ghosts'', which is what forces the ghost children to retreat from battle any time Afton tears down the Rockstar animatronic they're currently possessing. Worse, owing to his nature as a Nightmare(albeit a false imitation of one), he now possesses a demonic healing factor that he is more than happy to abuse. Even the three former Afton children, when working as a team, are still vulnerable due to their ghostly nature, yet they, through their cunning coordination and striking of William's weak spots, are still able to deal blows of hard, genuine pain to the false Nightmare's form when the Missing Children could not. Eventually, to the children's, Mike's, and everyone else's despair and horror, and to William's delight, the Satanic energy fueling the murderers' wicked spirit proves too much for them to handle, eventually bringing them down as well, with Liz taking a near-lethal amount of damage to her soul from her vile faux father's merciless beatings, and Michael and Evan having to give up their offense against the demon in favor of caring for their beloved, now-endangered sister. [[TheWorfEffect It's a real darn shame,]] [[AssholeVictim well, for him, anyway,]] that all that power ended up meaning jack diddly squat under the command of someone who did not care enough to use it properly or more intricately beyond [[AttackAttackAttack wildly swinging and flailing his weight around like a spaz at anyone who comes at him,]] which was extremely effective during his initial attack on the Schmidt household...until Afton's primary target, Mike, turned out to be someone who was able to work around his brute strength and sheer aggression effectively.

* EvilCounterpart: To Henry Emily and his son Michael.
* EvilBrit: Just like in the games, William is noted by Liz to have a heavy British accent when speaking, and it's worth noting that he is far more villainous in this fic than his said game counterpart.

* FaceMonsterTurn: William already experienced this in canon, with his transformation into human corpse-animatronic suit hybrid Springtrap and all his subsequent other forms acting as reflections of him paying for his crimes in the most karmic manner possible--it doesn't get much more karmic then literally being killed by the same suit you used in your own murders, after all. But this fic's version of the character takes this aspect of him and kicks it up a serious notch during the "William Afton Returns" arc: '''''NIGHTMARE''''' '''SPRINGTRAP''', an infernal, devilish recreation of William Afton's form as Springtrap, powered by the harvested eldritch life blood of the Nightmare Clan's children that Afton absorbed into his soul after Vucarik gifted the power to him. A false nightmare, this new manifestation is complete with snarling mouths filled with deadly sets of fangs like his original mouth opening all over the warped, twisted, and rotten metal that makes up the majority of his undead body. And to top it all off, his new unholy nature grants William the power to manipulate the literal fires of HELL, as well as the other powers demonstrated by virtue of being a spirit. What really sets this incarnation of The Purple Guy apart from the others is that Nightmare Springtrap does ''not'' serve a stiff, heavy walking prison of nightmarish amounts of hurt and zombified suffering designed to eternally punish William Afton for the rest of his days, like Springtrap or even Scraptrap was. THIS is a representation of the inhumane, laughing mad, purely vile beast in human skin, without any more than a hint of genuine goodness or honor, that William always was in his life, his death, and his damnation in the closest manner possible to the wholly evil will as the story knows it.
* FalseFriend: During their time as business partners running the Fazbear franchise, Henry genuinely trusted William and saw him as a reliable companion in the robotics field and a good friend. Nelson even tells Mike and Charlie that William and Henry worked ''incredibly well'' together, to the point where even when he knew something was wrong with William, he could not convince Henry to stop working with him, simply because he got along with him THAT well. That decision ended up allowing William to commit his crimes of serial child murder, desecration of their corpses and Fazbear's animatronic property, and grand theft animarium all behind Henry's back, going completely unpunished for over a decade, which cost poor old Henry the life of his daughter and the well-being of his entire company and all of it's properties and trust in the public, and sending the original founder of Fredbear's into critical amounts of depression for the rest of his life. While Henry wallowed in unfathomable shame and regret, William lived as a happy, free man furthering his progress towards eternal life for himself using his creations and what he built using Henry's trust in him. Other than that, it's made very clear William Afton only ever saw Henry Emily as a weak, childish fool and scapegoat to take the fall for his crimes at best, and an annoying, meddling obstacle in his way towards immortality and satisfying his bloodlust to be destroyed at worst.

* {{Fingore}}: As part of the cherry-on-top for the punishment he was inflicting on William following his losing of their already-bloody battle of psyches, Mike, no longer holding back, imagines Withered Chica--the broken-down version of the walking prison Susie was trapped in following her murder--and then has the raging robo-chicken stomp on William's hands repeatedly until all of his fingers were reduced to mounds of bloody red broken bone and muscle mush, which extended from the fingertips all the down to the carpals. Much like the face removal Mike performed within seconds of this sequence(further detail below), this is deliberately meant by Mike to be a karmic reaction to William himself callously condemning Susie to a breathless, soundless existence as Chica The Chicken, where she had to deal with getting her arms mutilated and her hands ripped off her body for Toy Chica's parts. Mike goes the extra mile with this, though, by having the Withered Chica simulacrum give the save treatment to William's feet. Afton's reaction to all this is...pretty much exactly as you'd expect.

* ItsAllAboutMe: William Afton is '''''very''''' self-centered and egotistic. He chose to live his life entirely seeing every single life except his own as absolutely worthless. And, no the lives of his own three children are not an exception. In fact, the primary reason why he craved eternal life so much was so that he'd be able to do anything he wants without the fear of consequences. As it turns out, he developed this mindset because the "lesson" he learned from living through his father's abuse was, quoted verbatim, "what value is there in the lives of others when the only person you can truly rely to care about you is yourself".
* KickTheDog: This man cannot, for both the life ''AND'' death of him, walk past a metaphorical(and possibly literal) dog without allowing his monumental cruelty streak ro take over. William Afton is simply, factually, and objectively incapable of resisting '''any''' opportunity to be the worst possible human being he can be.
* KnightOfCerebus: In a story centered around a group of murder victims trying as hard as they possibly can to recover from a 42-year-long tragedy forced on to them due to the natures of their deaths by being provided the experiences, memories, and opportunities to enjoy lives on Earth as the innocent, happy children they once were, the murderer solely responsible for those lives being abruptly ripped away, causing every bit of despair, misery, and agony that followed is pretty much inevitably fated to fit this trope. In an overall lightheartedly heartwarming fic built around the comforts of family and the power of love, William Afton is befittingly always treated with genuine disgust and hatred from both the characters and the story itself, and is by far the darkest character in the entire setting. He contrasts just about everyone else--in a cast largely made up of characters trying to redeem themselves and repent for their past mistakes--with his complete lack of redeeming qualities. Just about every single time the subject of William Afton is brought up, the moment at hand will lose it's feel of comfort, and comedy or levity in favor of a hard veer towards a much more solemn, chilling, sinister, and silently terrifying mood. This often darkens the story and forces every member of the Schmidt family(save for Mike) to reflect on what William has done to them. William Afton's actions and the impact the man left on the kids he killed are always taken dead seriously with almost no exception. It's suspiciously telling that even ''Nightmare'', who is a literal Hellspawn who delights in mentally torturing damned humans and demons alike, finds himself giving more contentment to the story's mood than William does, due to his (albeit limited) morality and deep-seated sense of honor, and even having several [[TheComicallySerious comically serious moments]], all of which are qualities that the serial killer blatantly lacks.
** It's definitely no coincidence that the story arc that stars the man behind the slaughter himself as him reprising his canon role as the main antagonist proves to be the most ''chilling'' arc of the entire fanfic by quite the wide margin, with only Nightmare's debut, Michael's retelling of his quest to defeat William to Liz, and Glitchtrap's rise coming even ''remotely'' close. The very reveal of William's escape from Hell immediately skyrockets the story's tension to maximum levels, filling Gabe, Jeremy, Susie, Fritz, and Cassidy with a humorless sense of sheer dread, and terrifying Mike, Charlie, and especially Liz, and the arc maintains this gloomy atmosphere from beginning till end with William Afton's very presence stripping the narrative of any of the happy ending vibes that previously supported the chapters prior. Being the walking, snarling embodiment of the living Hell that Mike spends the entire fic trying to help Charlie, Liz, and the other Missing Children recover from, and the perfect antithesis of the happy ending this story tries to accomplish with the main characters, William Afton proves himself to be a character where there is '''no''' blissfulness, humor, or fun, not even ironically, to be found.

* TheManBehindTheMan: William's bet with Nightmare is what motivates the demon's attack on the Missing Children, kickstarted by believing that if Nightmare terrorized the family of ghosts enough to get them to turn against each other, then he, as Nightmare's prisoner, would gain a millenia free of torture because the spirit family falling apart would mean he won said bet against Nightmare. This means that William is indirectly responsible for the suffering Mike, Liz, and the Missing Children endured during the "Nightmare Attacks" arc. It's worth noting that Nightmare himself would've never come to bother them under literally any other circumstances.

* NoHoldsBarredBeatdown: This is really the only proper way to comprehensibly describe the endgame of his encounter with Mike Schmidt, at least the only other summarization than ColdBloodedTorture. The inside of Mike's mind was bathed in blood, and the amount of pain that was given would be felt for years to come, if the damage sustained was even possible to recover from. Once the beating started, the protections granted by virtue of the mindscape were quickly reduced to little more than a paper-thin shield for enduring the mutilation of it all, and by the end of it, the soul was blanketed in wounds that would make a seasoned war veteran sick, the weakness exposed for all to see. ...Oh, were not talking about Mike here, by the way.
* OneWingedAngel: At the end of a long line of rotten rabbits, the final form he takes after coming back from death for a third time is a giant bipedal monster hare whose flesh is made of warped metal, conjoined together by beastly maws appearing all over his body, each full of fangs and teeth, and his very essence is tainted in the powers he stole from the Nightmare children. He becomes infernal in nature, now brimming with the power of Hellfire in his orange, orb-like eyes and his body now resembles that of an inhuman beast mush more than that of an evil human. To top it all off, his hands and feet are raked with deadly, animalistic claws. This new form is appropriately dubbed "Nightmare Springtrap", and it is by far the most threatening and visually terrifying version of William Afton to ever exist.

* PurpleIsPowerful: As the "Purple Guy", he is often associated with purple by virtue of his aformetioned nickname, and he is the most influential character in the story by an impressive margin. He even voluntarily transforms into an undead demonic entity strong enough to temporarily destroy human souls with ease courtesy of Vucarik's interference in a scheme to destroy Mike's life and ruin his family.

** He turns this trope into a art form of unfiltered catharsis when Mike starts going to town on him after William seemingly kills him during their battle in Mike's mind. William even tries to retaliate via spitting his fire breath powers in Mike's face--emphasis on ''tries''. His refusal to accept defeat is even MORE justified, because Mike is feeling even '''less''' merciful towards him than Nightmare usually is.
* ThisCannotBe: It's strongly implied that his reaction to falling victim to Henry's last trap, with all means of him escaping from the false pizzeria being irreverisibly cut off, and his old partner successfully ending his life as Scraptrap, finally condemning him to Hell, was similar to this. Ironic, considering he went into that place knowing it was a set-up.
* TearOffYourFace: One of the final parts of Mike's brutalization of William within the former's mindscape following the latter's defeat is Mike, after simmering up all of his sheer, unrestrained animosity towards the former serial killer on behalf of what he did to his new children, imagines/conjures the mental simulacrum of Bonnie the Bunny--the animatronic that Jeremy possessed after William stuffed his bloody corpse into said animatronic. Under Mike's black and seething mental commands, the recreation of Bonnie grabs William's demonic form of Nightmare Springtrap, holds him down to the floor...and slowly and painfully rips the Springtrap-esque face of William's form all the way off, revealing only the once-proud evil robotics entrepreneur's mangled, ruined facial shade beneath. According to Mike, it's meant to be an act of karma--since Jeremy, who, following his transformation into Bonnie, was forced through the debilitating pain of lacking a physical face, during his afterlife trapped within Bonnie while the haunted suit wandered the 80's pizzeria's hallways as Withered Bonnie, it's only natural that the monster responsible for his transformation should experience that same type of hurt. It is by far the most insufferably agonizing moment William Afton suffers at Mike Schmidt's hands by that point in the entire fic, and he absolutely does not plan on stopping there...

* WellDoneSonGuy: A very minor, yet ridiculously dark and insanely detestable example.

* DeconstructedCharacterArchetype: Liz's entire character takes a ''sledgehammer'' to the DaddysLittleVillain trope. She absolutely never wanted to participate in her old father's schemes of ''killing people'', she just wanted to love and adore him because she thought he was a wonderful parent and a great person, nothing more. Because of this, she was victimized by the faith she naturally had that William would save her from her entrapment within Circus Baby; a faith that William would thoughtlessly tear to fucking pieces when he left her to ROT in his murder machine[[spoiler:, which was an active attempt to break down his own child's mental state by leaving Baby's murder code to infect her mind like a virus, which drove to her to ''kill her older brother without ever even realizing it.'' ]]Even then, she still just wanted to help her fellow Funtime animatronics, which backfired because her father deliberately sabotaged her plans to actually help people, ''and then those hopes were crushed'' by William, when he emotionally manipulated her into believing that the only thing she was ever good for anymore was "being '''his''' good little girl". In her broken state everything she went through, Elizabeth Afton was groomed by the father the loved throughout her whole childhood into becoming a monster, because feeding his sociopathic tendencies was the only William Afton had not callously condemned her from doing. He had made her desperate, blocked her from seeing what was wrong with her, locking her into full-blown villiany...and the only thing she came out of it all was '''''shame'''''.

* DraggedOfftoHell: This happened to him before the events of the fic thanks to Henry burning him to death in the Freddy Fazbear's Pizza Place, with William falling into an eternity of damnation as punishment for spending his life causing untold suffering and pain in his wake. This trope become exaggerated later in the story, when following his escape from Hell, and his eventual defeat by Mike, William gets cast into the fiery pit '''again''', and it's made sure by Mike, his ghostly family, Old Man Consequences, and the Nightmares that he does not get back out again.

-->'''Excerpt from William's journal entries detailing Remnant and how it could be the key to eternal life:''' Those childish mascots in my fool of a partner's pizzeria chain...\\

* HarmlessVillian: Zigzagged. He spends the vast majority of the fic in a position where he is completely unable to do the main characters(or anyone at all, for that matter) any true harm, allowing them to live happily as a family. However, there was one major instance near the beginning of the story where William, in a bid to win a bet with Nightmare, sent the latter up to Earth and after the Schmidts in an attempt to indirectly destroy their peace, which did cause serious harm to everyone both in the moment and for a while afterwards. His gambit failed, though, and Nightmare went back to dealing with William, keeping him down in Hell, and the ghosts and their father, now triumphant with their bonds now stronger than ever, were able to swiftly pick up where they had left off, and resume their time on Earth as a functioning family making happy memories together.

* VillianRespect: ''Heavily'' downplayed.

* DemonicPossesion: Once William and Mike finally meet face-to-face for the first time, William with his aformentioned Hellspawn abilities, moves forward in his plan to ruin Mike Schmidt's life: Possess the man, get into his mind, and tear apart his very ''soul'' from the inside. He does this by transforming into a black and red cloud of sentient spiritual energy, brimming with all of William's pure malice, and channeling himself into Mike's brain landing himself inside of his target's conscious on a metaphysical level. This knocks Mike out in the real world, and with the abstract form of Mike's thought process/his very being and the ungodly spirit of William Afton simultaneously active in the found father's dreams, the climax of the entire arc and the Schmidt family's struggle to truly break free of their killer finally starts.

* CompositeCharacter: Despite being based on the story of the murderer from the original [=ScottGames=] era of FNAF, this version of the character leans more heavily into the story of the Five Night's At Freddy Graphic Novel/book trilogy in a few areas, particularly in terms of motivation and even characterization. Essentially, the way Afton is characterized in this story is that he maintains his sociopathic, manipulative sadist tendencies and ability to work from the shadows while getting up to extremely unnatural and life-and-death-law-violating [[Mad Scientist]] experiments under the guise of a robotics engineer and mechanic from the games, while combining them with his habit of ruthlessly abusing and verbally harassing his children and resorting to bloody violence to solve his problems, and even every he does being motivated by a desire to become immortal, which are elements of his character originating from the books. His origin story, however, of growing up under a household of indescribably vitrolic belittlement and chastisement due to his own father being a horrible abuser, which is what turned him into the monster he is today, is from neither, but is rather based off a theory from the games, where some fans believe that William Afton is the son of the Orange Guy from the "Midnight Motorist" minigame in FNAF 6.

* CompositeCharcter: Despite being based on the story of the murderer from the original ScottGames era of FNAF, this version of the character leans more heavily into the story of the Five Night's At Freddy Graphic Novel/book trilogy in a few areas, particularly in terms of motivation and even characterization. Essentially, the way Afton is characterized in this story is that he maintains his sociopathic, manipulative sadist tendencies and ability to work from the shadows while getting up to extremely unnatural and life-and-death-law-violating [[Mad Scientist]] experiments under the guise of a robotics engineer and mechanic from the games, while combining them with his habit of ruthlessly abusing and verbally harassing his children and resorting to bloody violence to solve his problems, and even every he does being motivated by a desire to become immortal, which are elements of his character originating from the books. His origin story, however, of growing up under a household of indescribably vitrolic belittlement and chastisement due to his own father being a horrible abuser, which is what turned him into the monster he is today, is from neither, but is rather based off a theory from the games, where some fans believe that William Afton is the son of the Orange Guy from the "Midnight Motorist" minigame in FNAF 6.

* BadBoss: It's implied by Nelson that William had a bad relationship with his co-workers and business representatives during his time as a businessman entrepreneur, with Nelson reporting to Mike and Charlie that William did not get along very well with his shareholders, and that played in him eventually losing an amount of control and authority over the Circus Baby franchise and even Afton Robotics as a whole, despite being the founder and CEO of the entire company and all it's properties. Being an egotistical murder-happy psychopath who held no true emotional connections or bonds towards ''anyone'' he ever met, William very likely would've thought absolutely nothing of abusing or berating his employees or directors, since he likely saw them all as beneath him. Plus, he had his workers build machines engineered to capture and kill children, with no one(worker, shareholder, manager or otherwise) in the entire company aside from Afton himself being the wiser, so it's confirmed that he would lie to and manipulate anyone who made a living within in his business on the regular. Honestly, as Nelson himself probably knows, William not getting along with shareholders would definitely be the '''''LEAST''''' of his problems.

* VillainTeleportation: He exhibits teleporting capabilities and can seemingly faze in and out at will to ambush his enemies. He appears to be the only Nightmare capable of this.

** [[spoiler:And that's just his base "corruption of Fazbear" form. Come Vucarik's coup against Lucifer for the position of Supreme Lord of the Inferno, Nightmare arrives to the battlefield after the rest of his clan and immediately assumes his ''true'' form: an absolutely monumental, blazing, skyscraping beast clad in a suit of vantablack armor, who is tall enough to cross a Hell-circle-spanning battlefield in seconds with a few strides, and giant enough to deal irremediably widespread damage to an demonic army of damned souls and Hellspawns just by walking over them. To the reader an idea precisely HOW big Nightmare is in this form, his hands and arms are noted to be large enough to eclipse and crush multiple averagely-sized city buildings. And he's just as evil as he's always been, if not more so, given the...unique circumstances.]]