The entire cast of the fanfic Mike's New Ghostly Family, incluing how the fanfiction's depiction of canonical characters and Original Characters.

open/close all folders

The Schmidt Family

As a whole

The main characters of the fanfic, the Schmidt family is the titular new ghostly family of Mike Schmidt.

Berserk Button: Anything involving William Afton himself, for obvious reasons. Recently, with Help Wanted incorporated into the storyline, Fazbear Entertainment has become a more prominent one as well.
Children Are Innocent: Zigzagged. Though the ghost children act similiarly to how children normally act in the modern time, the numerous torments they have experienced and the sins they have committed means that they will never be truly innocent anymore.
Creepy Family: They are a family made up, for the most part, of the ghostly victims of Fazbear's tragedy, with Mike Schmidt being the only living person(and by extension, the only normal human being) in the household. Though they are friendly for the most part, the ghost children do not take kindly to any threats to their adoptive father's safety, whether they be real or perceived. Colm Duessel, a thief who broke into Mike's house, learns this the hard way (don't worry, he's still alive).
Dark and Troubled Past: All of them have suffered immensely throughout their lives and afterlives, something that the FNAF video game series can attest too. Mike didn't exactly have a happy childhood either.
Deadpan Snarker: All of them have developed a dry wit and snarky sense of humor, thanks to Mike's influence. Their individual levels of snarkiness and wit do vary from child to child, though
Extremely Protective Child: Despite the fact that Mike himself is a Badass Normal, the ghost children will go through any lengths to keep him safe and will react very poorly to any real or perceived threats towards him and his safety. Whenever they end up in a dangerous situation, they will form the primary lines of defense between that danger and Mike.
Friendly Ghost: The ghost kids are much friendlier and more approachable, especially when compared to their more vengeful years. Just don't do anything that would hurt Mike.
Happily Adopted: The ghost children are adopted by Mike and live happily under his care. Mike himself also enjoyed the pleasant years when he was adopted by Oskar Schmidt in his teenage years.
Haunted Technology: To allow them to interact with the physical world to a greater degree than in incorporeal forms, the ghost children were given the Rockstar animatronics to possess and control any time they'd like to. And since the Rockstar animatronics were built without any traces of Remnant, the ghosts won't be imprisoned inside the animatronic bodies like how they did in the past.
Jacob Marley Apparel: Downplayed; the ghost children wear the clothes they wore at the moments of their death (and can manifest the same injuries that were inflicted on them when they were murdered if they are agitated enough), but if they concentrate on a piece of apparel, they can change their wardrobe to whatever they'd like.
Mundane Utility: After being freed from their animatronic prisons, the ghost children find there are a lot of perks to being ghosts. They can levitate objects to clean up messes, phase through walls to travel where living people cannot go to, use Telepathy to silently communicate with each other, and possess their father Mike so they are able to taste foods they won't be able to eat otherwise.
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: After hearing that Eisensteel and Fazbear Entertainment were collaborating on a project to build animatronics, Mike Schmidt immediately moves to ensure Eisensteel knows about Fazbear Entertainment's misdeeds and have them break off the partnership with his kids fully supporting his decision. Nightmare appears, and while he does understand their feelings on the situation, he tells them they had made a grave mistake. Gabe realizes that if they had let Eistensteel handle Fazbear Entertainment's Animatronic project, the company would have ensured the animatronics' safety which Fazbear Entertainment would have to accept. By not letting that happen, Fazbear Entertainment looked for another robotics company that either does not care or have the power to ensure safety standards. This allowed Glitchtrap's host to reprogram the Animatronics to start attacking people.
Nightmare Face: While the ghosts normally look like how they did in life, they can transform their bodies' appearances into a decidedly more sinister form, complete with creepy black void-like eyes and the wounds that William Afton inflicted upon them. Needless to say, they do not use these forms normally. And Mike had Cassidy give him one of these when he was taking Susie's place during her attempt at One Night at Mike's.
Properly Paranoid: For all that they enjoy their new life together, Mike and the ghost kids are extremely careful about things like keeping their identity hidden from the public, and tend to react with just as much caution towards any real or perceived threats. Considering just how badly things went wrong for them in the past and how badly things could go wrong in the future if they're careless, their paranoia is pretty justified.
Quirky Household: They are an adoptive family of eccentric, playful ghost children, each with their own quirky personality, under the care of dry-witted and sarcastic ex-nightguard of Freddy's who is not without his childlike interests. Hijinks are bound to ensue.
Sir Swears-a-Lot: Mike Schmidt is known to swear like a sailor, and his colorful vocabulary was passed on to his ghost children. Justified, because they don't interact with the outside world and thus see no need in regulating their language, though some kids curse less when compared to others. When chatting with Mike, Old Man Consequences tells him that biological families of the ghost children in the afterlife are grateful that Mike is taking care of their relatives and that they didn't make a single bad comment about his parenting skills...except for his cursing.
Undead Child: The ghost children are ghosts of William Afton's murder victims, all of whom were children. To this day, they cannot age and remain children, mostly due to the fact that they did not mature during and after their entire tenure as possessed animatronics; Charlie being the sole exception, as her duties required her to mature up, which eventually resulted in a Plot-Relevant Age-Up, with her taking the form of a teenager to reflect her newfound maturity.
Undying Loyalty: They are completely loyal to each other and will stand by each other no matter what, even in the face of great danger. For the children alone, their group was the closest thing they had to a family after William tore their lives away, after all.

Mike Schmidt

The main protagonist and adoptive father of the murdered children. A former nightguard of the 1990's era Freddy Fazbear pizzeria, he is already well familiar with the horrors that went down at the pizzeria chain, and is now the final survivor of the Missing Children's hauntings. Upon learning the full story from Charlotte following the final razing of the franchise by Henry Emily, he takes her in, and later takes in Afton's other victims when their spirits arrive at his house one day. Determined to help the ghostly children reach eternal peace, Mike has dedicated the rest of his life to setting his new family on the road to redemption from the vengeful monsters they once were...and he will stand his ground against anything—or anyone—who threatens their newfound lives.

Adaptational Badass: In canon, very little is known about Mike Schmidt other that he's the nightguard who works at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, with his only skill being the reliance on his basic nightguard equipment. Hell, that might not even be relevant, since it's more or less confirmed that Mike Schmidt was just an alias for Michael Afton. Here? Not only is Mike Schmidt his own actual person entirely separate from Michael, but he's known by his friends and family to have Nerves of Steel, managed to become a secret millionaire, and several of his greatest feats include telling demon lords to piss off and tearing the demonically-empowered William Afton a new one when the latter dared to invade his mind.
Anti-Hero: While he's decidedly on the side of good and is more than willing to help others, he has absolutely no qualms about using tactics against the few people he considers his enemies that are more often associated with villains, including fighting dirty, vicious mockery, manipulation, blackmail, and even torture.
Badass Bookworm: As if being both an exceptionally talented survivalist and an amazing foster parent wasn't enough, he is incredibly smart when it comes to intellectual properties that he's passionate about. Not only was he able to respinsibly manage and sustain a fortune of five-million-plus dollars by himself for over twenty years before he adopted the ghost kids, but his talent with robotics is comparable to that of Henry Emily's or William Afton's. And as for his new family, he quickly had their new childhoods meticulously planned out in a way that properly prevented their public exposure with Charlotte's help.
Badass Normal: A simple human being without any supernatural powers, yet establishes himself as just as much of a badass as the rest of his children despite (or perhaps because of) his lack of powers. The "normal" part goes flying out the window in his own mental world, where his mastery and control over the world of his dreams allows him to reach Reality Warper and Physical God status.
Beware the Nice Ones: As friendly as he normally is, you do NOT want to piss him off. William Afton learns this the hard way, especially in chapters 81-82. What makes him notably dangerous in this regard is that he's normally quite adept in reigning in his contempt, and he can switch from polite and affable to spiteful and disrespectful at the drop of a hat.
Breaking the Cycle of Bad Parenting: Mike Schmidt did not have an easy life growing up after his mother died and his father became an abusive drunkard. But he still chose to rise above his dark past to become a well-adjusted and caring man. Even though he had no plans of actually raising a family when the ghost children showed up at his house, he is determined to be the good parent that he and the children were not able to have. Needless to say, he succeeded tremendously.
Celibate Hero: Possibly. Mike Schmidt is very close friends with Melody Park who is a girl. He confides in her all his secrets, takes her on one of his vacations to take her mind off things, and even soak in a hot tub with her. However, when asked about it, he denies that they are in love or anything. For the record, the author admits he is on the fence about whether Mike shows any romantic interest in anyone and could possibly be straight or aromantic.
Combat Pragmatist: He doesn't give a single flying fuck about fighting fairly against the few people he considers his enemies, and won't hesitate to pull out every dirty trick in the book. Best exemplified in his battle against Nightmare Springtrap in his mind, where he abuses his powers as a Reality Warper to the fullest advantage and runs rings around him from beginning to end.
Crazy-Prepared: Having learned the value of paranoia and careful planning in his younger years, Mike is extremely careful and has multiple plans and rules for important matters in his and his family's lives. This includes making sure the ghost kids remain hidden from society at large and even dealing with William Afton when the serial killer escapes Hell as Nightmare Springtrap.
Dark Is Not Evil: His fictional representation of himself that he draws for the kids, a shadowy reaper-like character with powers over darkness who is nevertheless firmly a hero like himself. He takes on this form when he duels William Afton in his own mind, though the latter stages and especially his demonic form are so horrific in appearance and brutal in action that they edge dangerously close towards Dark Is Evil.
Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: Even when the people he confronts are supernatural beings that drastically outmatch him in terms of power, he has zero qualms regarding telling them to piss off. Such is the case in his confrontations with Nightmare, demonically-empowered William Afton, and even the Heaven itself, should it prove itself to be a threat to his ghost children's happiness.
Fatal Flaw: Rage. While it's normally very hard to make him furious, but in rare cases when he does get mad, it causes him to act irrationally. His overwhelming hatred for William Afton caused him to viciously torture the killer, inadvertedly exposing Charlie to the gruesome imagery of his tortures, made worse by the sight of Mike Schmidt himself displaying such intense cruelty. He also ended up subjecting Glitchtrap, William Afton's soul fragment, to a similar gruesome beatdown, this time exposing the rest of his ghostly children to his inner malice, and when Charlie tried to stop him, her hands ended up getting burned because of Mike's Anathema Curse powers. And lastly, his absolute hatred for Fazbear Entertainment led to him telling Melody to convince Eisensteel to reject their partnership, an action Mike Schmidt insisted on doing simply because he couldn't bear the idea of Fazbear Entertainment leeching on the company he used to work for and loves to this very day, which eventually resulted in them finding a different robotics company to partner up with that cares less about the safety standards than Eisensteel, which culminated in one of their creations, a replica of Toy Bonnie, breaking his left arm and left leg. Charlie even directly confronted him about it, and Mike admitted that he knows just how much of a problem his rage is when not kept in check and promised to try and keep it under control.
Forgiveness: A central theme is Mike forgiving the ghost kids for trying to hunt him down and kill him during his teenage years in the 1993 pizzeria. He also forgave his birth father on his deathbed despite all the abuse he suffered from him, given how his father genuinely repented for it, and even forgave Nightmare for attacking his family when the demon lord ended up becoming the primary reason why they were able to fight off against the demonically-empowered Afton. Though as it turns out, Mike does have his limits when it comes to forgiveness, and the results are absolutely terrifying when William Afton crosses it.
Good Is Not Soft: When William tries to invade his mind to torture his soul, Mike absolutely wrecks him in a fight and brutally tortures him afterwards, showing that he is by no means a weakling. This completely catches Afton by surprise, because half the reason he was excited to kill Mike was because he thought it'd be an easy kill like the children he murdered, especially since Mike was just a mortal human, and he was a wicked spirit infused with demonic energy.
Good Parents: Even without any parenting experience, he still takes good care for his adoptive ghost children, willing to do anything to ensure their happiness while they're still on Earth. And he succeeds nearly every time, gaining the love and trust of the kids with every day that they spend with him.
Heal the Cutie: The entire goal of Mike Schmidt throughout the story is to let the ghostly victims of Fazbear Tragedy heal and recover from their scars, and just as much as the ghost kids are dedicated to becoming a family Mike never knew he wished to have, so, too, Mike is dedicated to ensure that they'll be happy for the rest of their afterlives on Earth.
Just Friends: Mike and Melody have very close chemistry with each other, but when asked about it, both of them insist that they are just friends and deny any implications of them being in love. Still doesn't stop the ghost children from believing that they may be closer than they think, with Susie and Cassidy outright hoping that they'll end up in a relationship.
Just Toying with Them: When he confronts William Afton-as-Nightmare Springtrap inside his mind, it initially appears that the two are evenly matched...until Mike reveals that he was actually just toying with Nightmare Springtrap the entire time. He was deliberately holding back a ton to make sure that Afton would believe that he has a winning chance, only to be proven dead wrong, as, inside his dreamscape, William Afton is completely and utterly powerless against Mike Schmidt.
Last of His Kind: It's strongly implied that Mike Schmidt is the final remaining person still walking this Earth out of all of the people who either became Fazbear night/security guards or were directly involved in the tragedies at Freddy's. As far as we know, Mike was the only nightguard who managed to figure out a means of breakdown a means of breaking down the ghost children's assaults on him, thus being able to stop them from killing him for twenty nightshifts in a row. Everyone else was either susceptible to their fear of what they were witnessing overcoming them, allowing the homicidal mascot machines to gruesomely mutilate them as a result, or—in Henry, Michael, Evan, and most certainly William's cases—has simply passed away by the razing of the final Pizza Place. While Charlie did stay in the mortal realm within the Puppet, Mike is the only still breathing person with extensive knowledge of everything that happened...which is what leads to the lost spirits haunting the restaurants coming to him.
Logical Weakness: Nightmare may have empowered Mike Schmidt with Anathema Curse, thus ensuring that William Afton would never be able to threaten him and his family ever again, but the curse works only on William Afton. When confronting anyone else, Mike Schmidt is just a human. For this reason, he can't confront Vanny head-on, since she won't trigger his Anathema Curse powers, and when confronted by Toy Bonnie, the animatronic ends up successfully breaking his arm and leg in spite of Mike's best efforts.
Misery Builds Character: In spite of how horrible his childhood and teenagerhood was, it actually helped him to become an independent, compassionate, and powerful man who has all the necessary positive characteristics he needs to raise a family of ghost children with shady pasts, and to deal with the likes of vile monsters such as Nightmare and William Afton.
Mama's Boy: Mike Schmidt truly loved his mother who raised him well with what little time she had and he deeply missed her when she died. She served as a role model for him in raising his ghost children. And in his darkest hour when he was torturing the bloody hell out of William Afton, she was the one who stopped him from going any further and silence his rage.
My God, What Have I Done?: Though, for a while, he relished in subjecting William Afton to a brutal Cold-Blooded Torture inside his mindscape as a punishment for his atrocities, but after his mother came down from Heaven to remind him that he isn't a torturer at heart, and the fact that Charlie ended up witnessing the full extent of his inner malice and brutality, he was left with crushing guilt. Said guilt also returned after he was brutalizing Glitchtrap in a similar manner with the help of Anathema Curse, which not only resulted in the rest of his ghost kids witnessing his brutality, but also resulted in Charlie getting physically burned by him, which served as a wake-up call that made him realize that, no matter how justified his rage and hatred for William is, it can still not only lead to his own damnation, but also hurt people close to him.
Nice Guy: He's generally a friendly and affable guy who will do anything for his ghost kids, and will also help his living friends out whenever he can.
No Full Name Given: Even though he goes by Mike Schmidt, he took the last name Schmidt as remembrance to his adoptive father Oskar. We never know his birth-surname.
Not Afraid to Die: His horrendously shitty childhood has made him completely unafraid of death, both as a teen at Freddy Fazbear's pizzeria and even as an adult many years later. Be they wayward spirits, Hell-born archdemons, guardians of the dead, a demonically-empowered undead serial killer, or even a supernatural sentient virus, Mike Schmidt will grit his teeth, stand his ground, march forward against any enemy who tries to kill him or hurt his family, and refuse to give them the satisfaction of his fear, no matter how easily they could end his life. And he will lead his children through all accompanying hardship all the while and inspire to shed their fears as well.
One of the Kids: He often acts this way whenever he and the kids are enjoying himself doing things like playing video games, but he does know when to put his foot down.
Papa Wolf: One of the few ways to easily piss him off or at least wipe away his good humor is to hurt his kids. Bring up their past in a way that hurts them? He'll give you a very stern talking to at best or verbally tear you to shreds at worst. Actively try and hurt them? You're fucked. Expectedly, a certain purple man never got that memo, and he payed dearly for it.
Pay Evil unto Evil: Deconstructed; after defeating him the Battle in the Center of the Mind, Mike subjects William Afton to an absolutely sadistic Cold-Blooded Torture. However, it's also made clear that, no matter how much the victim deserves it, torturing them while relishing in their pain and suffering is not the right thing to do at all, and Mike realizes that not only such cruelty can lead him to his own damnation, but also bring harm to people he cares about. After talking with Charlie and reflecting on his own actions, he decided to take steps to avoid such unnecessary cruelty.
"The Reason You Suck" Speech: Surprisingly excels at dishing these out, especially to William Afton.
The Runaway: He ran away from home at the age of 12 to escape from his drunk and abusive father, spending four years on the streets before being adopted by Oskar Schmidt.
Secretly Wealthy: He has about 5 million dollars on his bank account, which he was able to earn after receiving a Win 4 Life lottery ticket for the Ohio Lottery from a close friend of Oskar Schmidt, catapulting him out of his poverty and turning his life around. Despite his riches, apart from living in a small mansion of a house, he lives a normal down-to-earth lifestyle that included going to college and working as a robotics engineer for years, with only a small circle of his closest friends aware of his affluent status while the others have only heard rumors of his riches at best. In the present day, he mostly uses his wealth to get the ghost kids gifts and take them on vacations, which are not restricted at all by money thanks to his wealth.
Seen It All: Having seen way too much in his life than most people could even think of, and with the ghost kids adding even more weirdness, he tends to react to most situations with nonchalance and amusement.
Superpowered Evil Side: Subverted with Dark!Mike. Even though Dark!Mike represents all of Mike Schmidt's worst characteristics, rolled up into a dark persona, and equipped with powers that wouldn't look out of place coming from the Nightmares, it's made very clear that Mike is very much in control of himself throughout his entire battle between him and William Afton, and that he is unleashing all of his violence, cruelty, and hatred against Afton entirely of his own free will.
Tempting Fate: At numerous points throughout the fic, Mike strongly insists that William Afton, the monster who is directly responsible for every ounce of horror that his new children have been buried for the past 40-plus years, is now gone thanks to the efforts of Henry and Michael, and he will not be coming back, all as a means to reassure the ghost kids that they can enjoy their time on Earth without fear. Cue the very appropriately-named "William Afton Returns" arc, where Mike, in a desperate bid to protect himself and his new family from the killer's wrath, is forced to put his money where his mouth is.
Worth Living For: Mike Schmidt was bit of a Death Seeker in his youth, not caring whether he lived or died which is why he took the job in Fazbear's Pizza so that no one else would die. Afterwards, it has not been said whether he has been actually doing anything with his life besides hanging out in his mansion and playing video games. But after the ghost kids have shown up and they have been questioning what they could do for him, he realized they have become a family he never thought he could ask for. Now he has a reason to not solely exist, but to actually live life to the fullest as the father of six incredible children he cherishes with all his heart.

Charlie Schmidt

The ghost who possessed the Marionette. The former daughter of Henry, she was William's first murder victim, but her soul was taken in by the animatronic puppet that her father built. For forty years since that day, she's dedicated her existence to hunting William down out of vengeance, and also protecting the Missing Children to guide them to a more peaceful rest. After coming out of Henry's fire as the sole survivor, she met Mike and was adopted by him, her duties now fulfilled...until the children were sent back down from Heaven. In the newfound family's redemption mission, Charlie aptly retains her position as the most mature and level-headed of the group.

Adaptational Heroism: Big Good or not, Charlie's ghost/the Marionette in canon game series was still as vengeful as all other ghosts, indiscriminately killing any nightguard she came across, and while she did seem to cool off between the events of FNaF 1 and FNaF 3, but by the time of Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator, she immediately went back to killing the resident nightguard/manager (who was heavily implied to be Michael Afton). In the fanfic, however, she realized earlier than the rest that she was killing innocent nightguards, and even though she already claimed two victims, she still managed to stop herself before she'd completely succumb to thirst for revenge. Also, in the fic's take on Pizzeria Simulator, she made no attempts on Michael's life whatsoever, instead assisting him in stopping the other, more malicious animatronics from the shadows.
Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: In the canon, there was no implication that Charlie and Elizabeth even knew each other, while in the novel trilogy, they were enemies, with Elizabeth wishing to murder Charlie for the fact that William Afton was more interested in her instead of herself. In the fanfic, however, besides the fact that they became adoptive sisters to each other, it was revealed in Chapter 36 that they were best friends back when they were alive.
Be Careful What You Wish For: For a very long time, she wanted William Afton to pay dearly for all the suffering he put her and her siblings through. Eventually, her wish was granted when William Afton was defeated by Mike in the Battle in the Center of the Mind, and the Cold-Blooded Torture that followed afterwards, but the absolutely gruesome sight made her feel sickened and horrified, and left her shaken for many months to come. Nightmare Fredbear even rubbed it in by pointing out that Charlie was the one who wished to see William Afton suffer, and that Mike was simply giving his kids what they want.
Child Mage: She's the only ghost child who has a significant arsenal of magical powers and capabilities beyond the standard ghost powers such as telekinesis and invisibility. Shadow Bonnie and Shadow Freddy were the ones who taught her how to access these powers.
Cool Big Sis: She acts like an older sister figure to the rest of the ghost kids, always taking care of them, handling their problems, assisting them in adapting to the physical world as ghosts, and so on.
Everyone Has Standards: No matter how much she hates William Afton and wishes him to suffer, Charlie learns it the hard way that even she has her limits when it comes to how much suffering he can be put through that she can stomach, and that threshold gets crossed when she witnesses Mike Schmidt subjecting William Afton to downright sadistic Cold-Blooded Torture in his mindscape, with her even feeling the faintest trace of pity for her murderer as she witnesses his suffering.
The Gadfly: While kind and caring, she's not without her mischievous side; when she was still in the Marionette's body, she never told Mike her true name and instead allowed him to call her "Mary" for almost a year, simply because she thought it was funny, and she also helped Gabe to prank the other ghost kids in Minecraft by blowing up their in-game houses with craptons of TNT.
Given Name Reveal: For a very long time, she was referred as "Mary", a nickname Mike gave her when she was still the Marionette. Her actual name was not revealed until Chapter 35, when Henry's ghost visited her in her dreams, referring to her as Charlie.
Haunted Technology: Up until Chapter 51, she constantly possessed the Marionette (due to the fact that the Remnant kept her confined to the body), thus being the only ghost to have a physical body. After the Marionette was irrepairably damaged by Electrobab and burned on a pyre, Charlie was freed, allowing her to become a proper ghost. To compensate, she was given a Security Puppet to possess any time at her leisure. She also has Lefty as an alternate body to possess, but she doesn't use it often.
New Parent Nomenclature Problem: Despite the fact that Mike basically became her new father, she didn't refer to him as "Dad" or any other variation thereof unlike the rest of her ghostly adoptive siblings until Chapter 35. The reason why was because unlike the others, who forgot their biological parents (while Liz does not want to associate herself with her monster of a father at all), Charlie still remembered Henry and didn't want to replace him with Mike, believing that she would disrespect his memory. It was only when Henry himself, having visited her in her dreams, told her not to shy away from calling Mike "Dad" when she started referring to him as such.
Nice Girl: To anyone who doesn't seek to harm her family, Charlie is a kind, caring and compassionate soul who always seeks to help those in need. She was also the only one who realized earlier on that she and her siblings were trying to murder innocent Night Guards, and while she tried and failed to stop the others, she did stop attacking the nightguards at all in the 1993 pizzeria.
Not So Above It All: While she's way more mature than the rest of ghost children, sometimes she does join in on the antics of the others, the main example being the Minecraft prank.
Number Two: Among the Schmidt family, she's the second in terms of authority, assisting Mike in handling the ghost children's problems he cannot handle by himself, taking care of them when he's unavailable, and so on.
Only Known by Their Nickname: Before Chapter 35, she was always known as "Mary", a nickname Mike gave her when she was still in the Marionette's body. The nickname was dropped after Chapter 35, where her actual name was revealed to be Charlie.
Plot-Relevant Age-Up: When she was freed from her Puppet body, her ghost form was revealed to be that of a young girl no older than 5. However, in the next chapter, she immediately grows up with some Explosive Results after trying to experiment with her magic, thus having her physical appearance permanently change into that of a teenager. Her age-up was handwaved away with statements that her new form reflects the maturity she was forced to gain due to the huge responsibility she had during the time she spent inside the Marionette.
Sole Survivor: She's the only one of the 6 characters in this fic to survive the fire in Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator.
Team Mom: Having acted as the ghost kids' guardian for decades, she sometimes takes on a more motherly role than a sisterly role to them.

Gabe Schmidt

The ghost who possessed Freddy and the leader of the group when Mike or Charlie aren't around.

Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: He's the responsible sibling compared to his younger siblings such as Fritz, though Charlie still edges him out in that particular category.
Glowing Eyes of Doom: Can actually light up his eyes and mouth in an unearthly glow, similar to Freddy (and even with the Toreador March playing in the background).
Haunted Technology: He was given the Rockstar Freddy animatronic to possess any time at his leisure to allow him to interact with the physical world.
The Smart Guy: A strong candidate for the most intelligent sibling apart from Charlie.
Wise Beyond Their Years: Despite the fact that he was somewhere around 10-11 years old at the moment of death (which sticks since the ghosts don't age), he is still noted to be smarter and more mature than the rest of the ghost children, and serves as a leader to the rest of MCI victims' ghosts.

Jeremy Schmidt

The ghost who possessed Bonnie. He's quite even-tempered, though not as mature as Gabe or Charlie.

Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: He leans a little more to the responsible side, being calmer and more collected than his younger siblings like Fritz or Cassidy, but not as much as his older siblings Gabe or Charlie.
Gut Feeling: Jeremy has a keener sense on gut feelings when compared to the rest of his siblings. He has a flashback to his gruesome murder when he approaches the end of the Pizza Party level during the Help Wanted arc and, noting the similarities between Glitchtrap and William Afton in the Spring Bonnie suit, decides to shut the game off and get the hell out of there instead of following Glitchtrap behind the curtain. As players of the game already know and Nightmare later confirms, he dodged a huge bullet there.
Haunted Technology: He was given the Rockstar Bonnie animatronic to possess any time at his leisure to allow him to interact with the physical world.
Nature Lover: Really enjoys the outdoors and things like camping.

Susie Schmidt

The ghost who possessed Chica. She has the most skill when it comes to cooking.

Animal Lover: She has a strong fascination with animals, and used to own a dog, a golden retriever puppy named Oliver, back when she was alive. Sadly, Oliver was ran over by a car, and William Afton was able to exploit her naivety by promising to reunite her with him, which was how he was able to kill her.
Character Development: She is the first to suggest that the ghost children as a whole should let go of their hatred for William Afton and stop trying to make him suffer after seeing what that hatred and rage does to Mike during his encounter with Glitchtrap.
Genki Girl: While not as much as Cassidy, she's still very upbeat and energetic.
Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: She has blonde hair and is a much nicer person than she was as Chica.
Haunted Technology: She was given the Rockstar Chica animatronic to possess any time at her leisure to allow her to interact with the physical world.
Shipper with an Agenda: Susie wishes that Mike and Melody would end up together, and always expresses mischievous delight when seeing them act as a couple, but the primary reason why she wants them to hook up is because she wants to have a mom, seeing Melody as a perfect mother figure.
Supreme Chef: Cooking was Susie's passion even before she became a ghost, and she still retained her skill even after she became a ghost, and she was able to cook even when she was trapped in Chica's body. Mike even noted that she makes breakfast better than he does, and even contemplated to allow her to make breakfast for him.
Trademark Favorite Food: Susie really likes pizza, to the point that she's made pizzas in the kitchen as Chica during the nightshifts at Freddy's while the others were hunting down night guards. The fact that she's a ghost hasn't dulled that in the slightest, though now she's more composed about it (not that her ghostly siblings would live her pizza obsession in her Chica's days down).

Fritz Schmidt

The ghost who possessed Foxy. He is a loose cannon much like the animatronic he possessed and is prone to getting himself into trouble.

Big Brother Instinct: He's fiercely protective of Liz and is willing to do anything to ensure that she won't suffer any further than she did in the past.
Butt-Monkey: He's BY FAR the most prone to getting himself into trouble, a lot of it due to his own fault.
The Chew Toy: He constantly suffers all kinds of comical misfortune, whether it be receiving heavy strokes of bad luck in video/board games, being on the receiving end of his sisters' anger, getting chewed out for his cooking skills, among other things.
Fiery Redhead: A redhaired ghost child, and easily the most rambunctious of the bunch.
Haunted Technology: He was given the Rockstar Foxy animatronic to possess any time at his leisure to allow him to interact with the physical world.
Lethal Chef: He once tried to cook breakfast for Mike to prove that he's as capable of making breakfast as his sisters are. However, given that his idea of cooking was just "stuff everything on the pan", including fish bones and pork grease, the "meal" he cooked turned out to be a disgusting, bad-smelling sludge that no sane person would even try to bring any inch closer to their mouth. To this day, even despite the fact that it was the only instance of his cooking, Fritz still cannot shake off the reputation of being a disastrous chef.
"That was one time! ONE TIME!"
Odd Friendship: Ends up forming the closest relationship to Liz, who is a much quieter and more solemn girl in comparison to his rambunctious and hotheaded personality. This is because Fritz eavesdropped on her first meeting with Mike and Charlie and ended up developing a strong sympathy for her after seeing how broken and miserable she was, and so he decided to personally help her become a part of family and adapt to her new life, eventually developing a strong bond with the girl.

Cassidy Schmidt

The ghost who possessed Golden Freddy. The youngest of the children.

Adaptational Nice Guy: Certainly compared to almost EVERY fanon version of the character, this Cassidy is much, MUCH friendlier and more approachable and reasonable than how she's portrayed in the games and most FNAF fanfics. In canon, Cassidy is an extensively vengeful entity who is so determined to see William Afton eternally suffer for what he did to her, that she DENIES entrance to Heaven when Henry gives it to her, and becomes a hate-filled being whose entire existence is governed by rage. Many fanon versions take this even further, where Cassidy's revenge takes priority over the happiness of the other Missing Children, and sometimes even using them as means to further torture William. To keep it brief, she is often portrayed as a sociopathic creepy Undead Child who chooses Revenge Before Reason and is usually the Token Evil Teammate of the Missing Children. None of that applies to Cassidy in this fic. Actually, she's just like the rest of the children here—grateful that's she's finally free from Golden Freddy, happy to be enjoying life with her friends, and she treats everyone around her with respect. She has no desire or focus for vengeance; she just focuses on the love she has for her new father and adopted siblings. And in contrast to canon, she's also very appreciative of Henry's and Michael's actions, and is joyfully affable towards the two of them when they meet. This can be explained away, though, by the fact that this story was created before UCN came out, the game that first revealed just what kind of person Cassidy was.
Adaptational Wimp: Downplayed. Due to taking basically nothing from her canon counterpart, she comparatively lacks the immense spiritual power that Cassidy held over Afton in the games. When UCN came out, there was evidence of Cassidy trapping William in his own mind, turning it into an eternal nightmare, where imaginary versions of the haunted animatronics could be manipulated to endlessly kill William as Cassidy desired. Again, nothing applies here. But Cass does retain her teleportation and hallucination casting, abilities that no other ghost has, and, to her credit, she's clearly adept at using them.
The Baby of the Bunch: She's the youngest and the most childlike of the ghost children, and is seen as the "baby sister" by her siblings. This unfortunately gets used against her by Nightmare, who capitalizes on her mental vulnerability to place onto her a curse tha forces her to relive the trauma of being murdered by the Purple Man. Cass is unable to handle it thanks to her mind's inability to process such horrors, reducing to her a desperate nervous wreck for a short amount of time.
Canon Foreigner: The Rockstar animatronic that corresponds to her is Rockstar Golden Freddy, an animatronic that doesn't exist in canon in any capacity.
Genki Girl: She tends to be the most excitable of the bunch whenever the family experiences something new, like visiting an amusement park. She sometimes becomes so energetic when in new places, her older siblings have to step in and reign her in, lest she exposes herself to the public. There's even a Running Gag later in the fic where she repeatedly asks Mike if the family can go to Disneyland.
Haunted Technology: She was given the Rockstar Golden Freddy animatronic to possess any time at her leisure to allow her to interact with the physical world.
Master of Illusion: Has the ability to conjure up illusions, a lot of them being on the creepier side. She gets to use this ability to full effect during one of the more recent games of One Night at Mike's, where she casts a horrifying Nightmare Face imaginary visage on Mike to scare the shit out of Susie...and she straight-up weaponizes it against Nightmare Springtrap, first fooling him with an illusion of Mike so the ghosts can ambush him, and she contributes to the battle by repeatedly blasting his vision with hallucinations to scramble his mind.
- She's so powerful with false images that she can cause extreme physical pain to her target, such as the aformentioned Nightmare Springtrap, and it's so potent that she can do it by accident; i.e. during her extreme psychological breakdown following a Nightmare-induced PTSD flashback, she expels enough negative energy from her being to bombard Mike with a flurry of bloody Purple Guy visages just because he was in her vicinity.
Red Eyes, Take Warning: Just like her siblings, she can involuntarily cause her eyes to blacken with ichor when she becomes extremely angry, but she sports a tiny, fiery red pinprick of light illuminating the darkness in each of her eyes...they are, in fact, the same eyes she bore as Golden Freddy. Mike notes Cassidy to be especially terrifying when she looks like this, due to how it contrasts her usual kindness.
Shipper with an Agenda: Similarly to Susie, Cassidy wishes that Mike and Melody would hook up, and also, just like Susie, due to wishing that Melody would become their mom.
Teleportation: The only ghost child who can outright teleport from one location to another. According to Charlie, she gained this ability from Charlie herself, at the cost of the Puppet losing teleportation(not that Charlie minds)when she passed this ability to the Golden Freddy suit due to Cassidy's inability to move because the suit lacked an endoskeleton. This also extends to Rockstar Golden Freddy when she's possessing him.

Liz Schmidt / Elizabeth Afton (unmarked early spoilers)

The ghost who possessed Circus Baby/Scrap Baby. She born and raised under William Afton's care, becoming the middle child of the Afton family. Despite the...expectations one would have for being parented by such a man, Elizabeth lived life as a genuinely happy girl who knew nothing but love for her father and two brothers...until she was killed by Circus Baby, becoming the ghost who haunted her daddy's greatest creation. This tragic demise kickstarted a long, and extremely painful road of events that climaxed with her finally seeing William for what he truly is. Following her second death at Henry's hands, her soul remained stranded on Earth; Mike Schmidt and the Marionette becoming her final hope for guidance to rebuilding herself from the psychological damage dealt to her by Afton and the trauma he caused her. After being adopted, she took the name "Liz Schmidt" to both move on from her past as a psychotic murderer--and ''especially'' to distance herself from her monster of a birth father ''as far as humanely possible''

Adaptational Heroism: Even moreso than the other ghost children; in the original game series, Elizabeth Afton was Daddy's Little Villain who wanted to follow in his footsteps as child-murdering serial killer as Scrap Baby. In this fanfic, however, Elizabeth (who now goes by Liz Schmidt) is a much nobler and more heroic figure, whose evil actions were explained to be a result of Circus Baby's malevolent programming and William Afton corrupting her into evil; without their influence and after being Happily Adopted by Mike, she became determined to atone for the evil she tried to commit as Circus/Scrap Baby.
Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: In the canon, there was no implication that Elizabeth and Charlie even knew each other, while in the novel trilogy, they were enemies, with Elizabeth wishing to murder Charlie for the fact that William Afton was more interested in her instead of herself. In the fanfic, however, besides the fact that they became adoptive sisters to each other, it was revealed in Chapter 36 that they were best friends back when they were alive.
Adaptational Sympathy: Elizabeth is indeed far more sympathetic than her video game counterpart, which is really saying something considering how much a Tragic Villain she already was in canon. In this continuity, Elizabeth's mind was infected by Circus Baby's programming following her entrapment within the robot, and she put up an endless mental battle against the machine's murderous coding for decades just to prevent Circus Baby from killing people, something that was never hinted at in canon, as it was simply implied her mind and Circus Baby's just merged together from the get-go. It wasn't enough, though, as following her ejection from Ennard, she was left in state in horrific pain and weakness, which Springtrap was eager to feed on. William, sensing his daughter's desperation for emotional support, convinced Elizabeth to obey him in his quest resume his killing sprees, and by doing so, she would become his "good little girl" once again. Only then, when she was reduced to a state of waking agony, lonliness, and in serious need for help from anyone who could, did Elizabeth Afton fall into villainy, reemerging as Scrap Baby, the infamous lackey of Scraptrap in the original games. In the present, it is made very clear that she feels immense regret for her crimes, and she genuinely wants to change for the better—so much so, in fact, that the back of her mind is locked in a nigh-unmovable sense of self-loathing which undermines her ability to enjoy her new afterlife with the rest of her birth father's victims for much of the first third of the entire fanfic. The author even agrees that out of all the horrifying stories of the innocents whose lives were claimed by the Fazbear tragedy, Elizabeth Afton's story is by far the most depressing, even in the original canon, and you can absolutely feel that in the fic itself.
Because You Were Nice to Me: The primary reason why she and Fritz are so close to each other was because Fritz accepted her into the family when even more mature and rational ghosts like Gabe and Jeremy were distrustful of her. And considering that Fritz was known to be the toughest judge of character of all ghost children, she ended up becoming really grateful for him accepting her as part of the family when most people, Liz included, would've expected him to reject her. By lesser extent, the love and support her new family showed to her are primary reasons why she chose to remain loyal to her new siblings and their adoptive father Mike Schmidt, and why she permanently swore off William Afton as her father, something she made very clear when he tried to coax her onto his side.
Berserk Button: Anything involving the Plushbabies from the VR game. Their level proves to be invokedso ridiculously difficult, just like in the real life version of the game, that it's enough to leave the normally solemn and even-tempered girl in a frothing rage.
The Big Girl: Her Scrap Baby form makes her, for the lack of better word, "physically" strongest member of her family, best shown with how she uses her claw to snap the door locks open and break off the Scooper in CBEAR or destroy Electrobab.
Break the Cutie: The poor girl gets even more emotionally broken than the rest of her siblings, including a personal "The Reason You Suck" Speech from Nightmare as the demon ripped into her past sins, revealing that the man she scooped and wore body of as skinsuit was her own brother Michael, and also accusing her of betraying her own brother as she sided with William Afton even though Michael did his best to put an end to his evil.
Creepy Good: Her Scrap Baby form looks as intimidating as it was back when it was a physical animatronic, but nowadays she uses it firmly to defend Mike from threats.
Darkand Troubled Past: Exaggerated, especially compared to other ghosts.
Daddy's Girl: As Gabriel puts it, following Nightmare's attack, Liz has always been a daddy's girl even before she became Baby, always wishing to please whoever she sees as her father. This is one of the primary reasons why she eventually succumbed to villainy and became Daddy's Little Villain (the other being Circus Baby's malicious programming driving her to murder children) before the Scrap Baby was burned down in a fire. She still retained her "daddy's girl" mindset even after being freed from Baby, but since she shifted her attention to Mike, this allowed her personality to change for the better and greatly strengthened her moral compass.
Deconstructed Character Archetype: Liz's entire character takes a sledgehammer to the Daddy's Little Villain 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, 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 villainy...and the only thing she came out of it all was shame.
Glowing Eyes of Doom: Her eyes start glowing with a Sickly Green Glow whenever she gets particularly agitated, or when she takes form of Scrap Baby. The first time she does this is when she's trying to avoid shapeshifting into Scrap Baby out of pure rage towards Mike's birth father upon of he badly abused Mike when he was a child—she didn't want to reveal this ability to her new family yet—and Mike found it genuinely disturbing to behold. He and the other children do eventually get used to this though.
Hates Their Parent: She utterly despises her birth father, William Afton. Considering that William tried to cajole her into becoming a child murderer by exploiting her fragile mental state, allowed her to die for selfish reasons and showed no care about her whatsoever, seeing her as a tool for his evil, and even made her murder her own brother Michael with her not knowing better, who can blame her?
Haunted Technology: Unlike the other ghosts, she wasn't initially given a proper animatronic body to possess, but Charlie allowed her to borrow Lefty to use as a physical body. Eventually, Mike gave her a recreated Circus Baby, devoid of Remnant and malicious programming and machinery, to serve as a physical body for her.
I Hate Past Me: Even after her family helps her mental status recover, she thoroughly despises her past self for following her old father's evil ways, and considers her past self an imbecile for falling for William Afton's lies.
Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: For all of her guilt over becoming a psychotic murderer like her father, she actually has the smallest kill count of the children, being responsible for only 3 deaths during her time as Circus Baby. 2 of which were more the other Funtime Animatronics than her, and the last of them, her brother Micheal Afton, only dying because he let her kill him. Her tenure as Scrap Baby is even more underwhelming, being led into a death trap by mindlessly following her father's lead. William himself, with his usual degree of decorum, outright lampshades that trying to make her a monster like him was a terrible idea in retrospect.
William: YOU ARE JUST AS USELESS AS YOU WERE OVER A YEAR AGO. I SHOULD HAVE JUST LEFT YOU TO ROT IN CIRCUS BABY'S. IF ONLY I HAD KNOWN HOW MUCH OF A WASTE OF TIME YOU TRULY WERE!
My God, What Have I Done?: She feels even more guilt from her her past actions than the other ghost kids, since she was the only one who was actively malevolent at one point. She even has a despairing breakdown when she learns from Nightmare that she betrayed and murdered her own brother in Circus Baby's Entertainment and Rental.
Odd Friendship: She ends up forming a close bond with the Fiery Redhead Fritz, whose personality highly contrasts her own quieter and more solemn personality, given how Fritz ensured that she would be accepted into a new family of ghosts and chose to trust her completely when even more mature ghosts like Gabe and Jeremy were skeptical about accepting her.
That Man Is Dead: To distance herself from her malevolent past when she was following her child-murdering birth father, she abandoned her birth name of Elizabeth Afton in favor of 'Liz Schmidt', and is much happier with her new identity.
Trauma Conga Line: Dying and being reborn into a cold, alienated existence because of her evil father's greatest creation, being forced to defend herself being brainwashed by said creation's murder programming, being forced to kill someone, while having to dismantle her own body just to wear her victim's corpse as a meat suit, and then being banished from Ennard following the corpse's inevitable decomposition, being left to rot in her bodiless pain, and pressured under the temptation of killing people from the programming's voices, being manipulated by William to fully embrace evil, directly leading to her second and final death after trying to murder someone at the latest Fazbear pizzeria, only for Henry to come along an burn her and her father to ashes—Liz had to go through nightmares on top of nightmares to get to the happy place amongst the Schmidts she's in now.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: She can transform herself into a ghostly version of Scrap Baby at will, being the only ghost who can transform into an animatronic form. She actually hates this form at first, seeing it as a permanent Mark of Shame on her soul for following her birth father, until some guidance from her adoptive father and siblings, and even her birth siblings, helps her get over it.
Walking Spoiler: Her role as one of the children Mike adopts and as a major character in the fic overall is kept as a surprise until the end of Chapter 4, and with her arrival, she ends up bringing a slew of new questions regarding how the fic will interpret certain events of the original FNAF canon, and not only do the answers to those questions end up revolving around her in some way, but they end up revealing some startling information regarding this fic's version of the FNAF timeline, some of which are incredibly game-changing towards both Liz's character development and cause massive after-effects upon the trials the family as a whole find themselves going through moving forward. The greatest examples of this being that Elizabeth's death and afterlife as Circus Baby are revealed to have played pivotal roles in the true machinations behind Michael Afton's death, the reason why Evan Afton was so scared of Fredbear and Spring Bonnie(along with the true reason as to why he died), and, easily the biggest unmasking of them all, why William Afton murdered the children in the first place all across different points in the fic, making for several massively spoiler-filled connections.
"Well Done, Daughter!" Girl: Besides the fact that her mind was corrupted by Circus Baby's malicious programming, the main reason why she gave in to William Afton's temptations into murdering children was because she wanted to earn his approval, and it was only when she died (for a second time) in a fire, with her malicious programming burning away, when she realized that William Afton never cared for her at all. After being adopted by Mike Schmidt and shifting her devotion to him, she ended up growing out of this mindset, as he already gave her all love and approval she needed.

Allies and Neutral Characters

Living humans

Ryan Marshall

A close friend of Mike Schmidt and a father of Alex and Meghan.

Good Parents: He's this to Meghan and Alex.
Nice Guy
Reasonable Authority Figure: He has no problems with allowing his children to make friends with the ghost kids. He also understandably expresses concern when he learns that the ghost kids are responsible for murdering innocent night guards during the years of the Fazbear tragedy. Mike recognizes that his concerns are entirely valid, which is why the conversation just barely avoids triggering the full extent of his rage.
Secret-Keeper: He's one of the few who is aware of Mike Schmidt's secret wealth and is also one of the few living individuals who knows about the ghost children's existence, willing to keep it all a secret.

Alex and Meghan Marshalls

The children of Ryan Marshall and the ghost children's closest friends and playmates in the world of the living. Alex is the older sibling, while Meghan is two years younger.

Annoying Younger Sibling: Meghan often enjoys getting on her older brother Alex's nerves such as teasing him about how he gave Charlie odd looks after seeing her teenager form, implying that he's attracted to her, and having him do the invokedPlushbaby levels in "Freddy Fazbear Virtual Experience" in her place, jokingly "thanking" him for doing these levels for her.
Muggle Best Friend: They are the ghost children's closest friends in the world of the living, always willing to hang out with each other whenever an opportunity presents itself and are willing to keep their existences a secret from the rest of the world.
Secret-Keeper: Both of them are some of the few people who know about Mike's secret wealth, and some of the few living people who are aware of the existence of the ghost children, and are willing to keep it all a secret.
Those Two Guys: They are the secondary characters who frequently make appearances together, hanging out with the ghost children and providing occasional commentary on the fanfic's events (such as Help Wanted-related arcs and its conclusions), and are never seen apart.

Melody Park

A Korean woman and another close friend of Mike Schmidt who inherited his position as a chief engineer of Eisensteel after his retirement.

Asian and Nerdy: She's a woman of Korean descent and is a very skilled engineer, inheriting Mike's position as a head engineer in Eisensteel after his retirement.
Despair Event Horizon: Briefly crosses this when a fire breaks out in Eisensteel and destroys all of her projects. The Schmidt family helps break her out of this by taking her with them to their next vacation.
Just Friends: Melody and Mike have very close chemistry with each other, but when asked about it, both of them insist that they are just friends and deny any implications of them being in love. Still doesn't stop the ghost children from believing that they may be closer than they think, with Susie and Cassidy outright hoping that they'll end up in a relationship.
Nice Girl: By all accounts a very friendly and kindhearted woman, a loyal friend to Mike, and doesn't hold the ghost children's bloody past against them.
Passing the Torch: Melody used to work as Mike Schmidt's intern in Eisensteel, but after Mike's retirement, she took up his mantle as a head engineer, with no small amount of influence in Eisensteel.
Secret-Keeper: She's one of the very few people who knows about Mike's darker past and his secret wealth, and also one of the only living individuals who knows about the ghost kids, willing to keep it all a secret.

Scott Cawthon

Another friend of Mike Schmidt, he's an indie game developer who created Five Nights at Freddy's horror game trilogy to tell the world about Fazbear's tragedy through fictional medium when Mike and the Marionette informed him about it.

Adapted Out: Not him nor his family, but apparently, Scott only made Five Nights at Freddy's 1-3, so this version of Scott's franchise from Five Nights 4 and beyond doesn’t exist here. Justified as Scott would not have any knowledge of the Nightmare animatronics and almost nothing is known to the wider public about Circus Baby and Elizabeth.
Adaptational Heroism: Possibly. We have no idea if the Indie Developer in the canon universe knew about Fazbear Entertainment's intentions to discredit its tragic past through its VR game or whether he willingly went along with them or not. Here, however, it's made very clear that Scott was forced into doing so under the threat of harsh lawsuit penalties, and that he only conceded because he had no choice.
Composite Character: Canonically, the Indie Developer isn't Scott Cawthon. Here, they are the same character.

Colm Duessel

A thief who broke into the Schmidts' house one day to steal some money...only to end up being terrorized by the ghost children. He reappears much later as a bodyguard for Mike Schmidt as the latter gets employed by Fazbear Entertainment.

The Bus Came Back: Originally, he appeared as a one-shot thief character who broke into Mike's house and tried to steal some money, only to end up being terrorized by the ghost children after his break-in, and then be given money and sent away. Come about a hundred chapters later, Colm returns later to work as a bodyguard for Mike Schmidt, protecting him from threats that may come while he works at Fazbear Entertainment's robotics facility.
Justified Criminal: The reason he broke into Mike Schmidt's house was that because he wanted to steal some money to provide for his wife and children. And the reason he chose Mike's house in particular was because he heard rumors about Mike's riches so he decided to steal a small, but still sizable portion of his money. Mike sympathized with his goals and willingly gave him 5000 dollars (which was much more than what he intended to steal), but in exchange, he forced him to remain silent about the ghost children's existences, blackmailing him with the camera evidence of his break-in.
Mistaken for Murderer: When Colm broke into Mike's house, he brought the drill with him to drill into the safe's lock. However, the ghost children perceived the drill he carried in the pocket as a murder weapon and accused him of trying to murder Mike, which only fueled their desire to collectively terrorize the man.
Shout-Out: Colm Duessel's first and last names are derived from the two characters from Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones. To reinforce the reference, Colm is a thief and he shares the first name with the thief character.

Nelson MacGregor

A former Fazbear Entertainment executive and a close friend of late Henry Emily, entrusted with safeguarding all secrets Henry kept hidden.

Cassandra Truth: Way back then when Fredbear's Family Diner was still operating, he was the only one who noticed something was wrong with William Afton when he was working with Henry Emily. However, he could not find any evidence to convince his friend to break away from him. Even now, he laments how much of a fool he was for letting William Afton get away with so much.
Life Will Kill You: In his first appearance, he seems to be in pretty good health for an old person. However, come nearly 200 chapters later, he has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer which gives him precious little time left with the Schmidt family attending his funeral.
Mr. Exposition: His primary role in his debut chapter was to provide exposition for the way Remnant works and how Charlie was able to give the ghosts a new life as animatronics (or rather, greatly accelerate the process of ghosts taking control of their animatronic bodies).
Only Sane Employee: He was the one of the only Fazbear Entertainment's executives disgusted by his fellow executives' greedy and amoral practices, to the point that he outright quit the corporation out of disgust. In the present, he ended up exposing his past company's malpractices to the world, severely damaging its present incarnation's reputation and forcing them to adopt better policies.
Sacrificial Lion: Despite making small appearances throughout the story, he plays some significant roles such as providing valuable information on Remnant and the Animatronics as well as assisting the family's crusade against Fazbear Entertainment from behind the scenes. He ends up being the first member of the cast to die in the present day after having been befallen with a terrible illness.
Secret-Keeper: He guards all secrets Henry Emily kept hidden from the world and is one of the few living people who knows about the ghost children on Earth.
The Watson: Besides serving as an exposition for Remnant's properties, his role in his debut chapter was also to ask Charlie questions to invite an exposition on how she was able to gain magical powers and about how she and Henry worked together to undo William Afton's evil.

Hector Armads

A friend of Colm Duessel who was introduced to Mike Schmidt to serve as a second bodyguard during his tenure at Fazbear Entertainment's robotics facility.

Jumped at the Call: When Mike Schmidt offered him a bodyguarding job, he, in spite of all the risks, accepted with little hesitation.
Not Afraid to Die: When signing up for a bodyguarding job for Mike Schmidt, he reveals that he doesn't fear death; while he doesn't intend to die, he doesn't object to it, believing that he'd at least be Together in Death with his late wife if he gets killed early.
Shout-Out: His name is a reference to Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade. Hector is the name of one of the main protagonist Lords in that game, and Armads is his unique signature end-game weapon.

Deceased humans

Oskar Schmidt

A retired war colonel who adopted Mike Schmidt in his teenager years, taking care for him as long as he could before he passed away from old age.

Cool Old Guy: A wise and kindhearted elderly retired colonel who was remembered fondly by those who served in military alongside him, and adopted a teenager who saved his life, raising him as his own son in the last moments of his life. He is one of Mike's main role models alongside his own mother Serene for how to be a parent.
Happily Adopted: He adopted Mike and treated him like his own kid.
Old Soldier: He's an elderly man who used to serve in military as a colonel.
Parental Substitute: Adopted Mike and treated him FAR better than his birth father did.
Retired Badass: He was a retired colonel who took part in many battles and was remembered very fondly by those who served alongside him.

Serene

Mike Schmidt's birth mother, she was a kindhearted and noble soul, and was Mike's main role model for good parenting. She was caught in a crossfire between two rivaling criminal gangs and died from the gun wounds in the hospital.

Absurdly Youthful Mother: Since she retains her youthful form from when she died, she serves as a very youthful mother to Mike and also an absurdly youthful (adopted) grandmother to the ghost kids.
Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Ends up utterly embarrassing Mike when she interacts with the ghost kids for the first time after Nightmare Springtrap's attack is stopped by telling stories about Mike when he was a child, much to their amusement.
Good Parents: Was this to Mike, and is one of his main role models alongside Oskar for how to be a parent.
Healing Hands: After the crisis with William Afton is resolved, she takes the time to heal the wounds inflicted on Liz's Scrap Baby form by her former father with her hands.
Light Is Good: Her arrival in Mike's mental world is heralded with a brilliant light, and she is undoubtedly one of the purest and most noble souls featured in the entire fic. She also has healing capabilities that none of the other supernatural characters have exhibited so far.
The Lost Lenore: Her death served as a primary catalyst for her husband's descent into darkness, with his grief and alcoholism resulting in him abusing his son for years, which was just the beginning of Mike Schmidt's Dark and Troubled Past.
Morality Chain: Ends up being a Downplayed case to Mike. While her son was certainly not in danger of becoming evil, she stops him from going too far in torturing and finishing off William Afton once the murderer is defeated and his mutilated spirit is completely at her son's mercy.

Mike's birth father

Mike Schmidt's biological father. He started out as stern, but fair man, but when Serene died, he started drinking, and in alcohol-induced rage, started venting his frustrations on Mike before the child ran away from home. Years later, he died in a hospital from old age, spending his last moments apologizing to his son for the suffering he forced him through.

Abusive Parents: Ever since Serene died and he got addicted to the alcohol, he ended up horribly abusing Mike, beating him up for the most minor provocations, more often than not leaving bloodied wounds and even reopening the old scars before they could heal. It continued for six years until Mike decided to run away from him.
Alcoholic Parent: He is Mike Schmidt's birth father and, after Serene's death, got addicted to alcoholism that twisted him so much he started brutally beating up Mike for the slightest provocations.
Drowning My Sorrows: When his wife died, he started drinking to drown his sorrows, succumbing to alcoholism that twisted him into violent, abusive madman.
Heel Realization: When Mike ran away from home, he realized how horrible he was to his son, outright claiming that he was a monster, and made no effort to chase after him, not wishing to put him through any more abuse. On his deathbed, he tearfully apologized to his son for all abuse he put him through in his childhood and asked him to promise not to repeat his mistakes if he'll ever have children. Mike forgave him, and his repentance allowed him to pass on to Heaven (though it didn't come without punishment, as Serene slapped him repeatedly during their reunion, and he was forbidden from reuniting with Mike until his days on Earth will be over, unlike with Serene and Oskar).
My God, What Have I Done?: He realized how horrible he was when Mike ran away from home, tearfully apologizing to him for all abuse he put him through on his deathbed years later.
No Name Given: He's never referred in the fic by name. Only "Dad", "father", "husband" (by Serene), "[Mike's] birth father", or whatever insults Mike's ghost children called him.
Posthumous Character: He died a long time before events of the fic took place. And unlike Serene and Oskar, he doesn't even return as a ghost because Heaven forbade him from reuniting with Mike as he still must face punishment for abuse he put him through in the past even if he repented.

Henry Emily

Charlie's biological father and the founder of Fredbear's Family Diner, a precursor for Fazbear's franchise. Died in the flaming trap pizzeria to destroy all that's left of Afton's and his own tainted legacy.

Greater-Scope Paragon:
Hero of Another Story:
I Let Gwen Stacy Die: Well, replace "Gwen Stacy" with "my daughter", and Henry basically has this trope down pat. His entire life went completely downhill after Charlie died at Fredbear's, and he apparently wallowed in despair and regret for years, possibly decades, afterwards before taking action. Even in death, after succeeding in destroying his daughter's killer, and achieving eternal rest in Heaven, he still holds an amount of self-loathing for not being able to stop the tragedy from unfolding in the first place.
My Greatest Failure: He considers his inability to protect Charlie from William Afton, as well as failing to see Afton for the monster he truly was, to be his personal greatest failures in his life. In fact, when he visited Charlie in her dreams and advised her to not hesitate to call Mike "Dad", he outright admitted that her doing so won't disrespect his memory because, in his eyes, he failed her as a father and believes Mike to be a much better parent to her than himself.
Small Role, Big Impact: Though appearing sparse in this fic, he's basically the one that caused the story to begin with by causing FNAF6's location to burn to the ground.
Spirit Advisor: Acts as this a few times to the ghost kids, most notably Charlie.

Michael Afton

The biological older brother of Elizabeth, the firstborn of the Afton family and the one who ended Afton's evil for good, releasing the ghost children from their metal prisons. Died with Henry in the flaming trap pizzeria.

13 Is Unlucky: Apparently, according to Nightmare Chica, Michael was around 13 years old when he killed Evan, which is what directly led to both the Nightmare Clan assaulting him in his dreams, and the ruination of his life.
Adaptational Nice Guy: In the original game series, the most we knew about Michael was that he had gone to CBEAR under William's order to save Elizabeth, and afterwards he became hellbent on tracking down his father for unknown reasons, possibly to see him pay for his crimes. It was also unknown if he continued to feel sorry for murdering his little brother on accident after the incident. In this fic, Michael is MUCH more selfless and kindhearted, as he was actively going out his way to liberate the souls of the dead children during his many shifts across the Fazbear pizzerias, and he admits to being extremely sorrowful over the deaths of both of his siblings(with his desire to make up with Evan being the driving force behind his rise to heroism, and not only did he fall for William's trick of going into CBEAR out of a desire to save his little sister, he ended up DELIBERATELY GIVING HIS BODY TO HER when she scooped him and wore him as a meatsuit as Ennard), which confirms that he absolutely did care for the two of them.
Antagonistic Offspring: He is William Afton's firstborn and eldest son, and arguably has the most in common with him. Completely despite this, Michael holds an immutable grudge against his dad for his crimes against the children of Freddy Fazbear's and against himself that has long snuffed out any and all love the son once did have for his father. He dedicated the whole of his adulthood to tracking down William and spending his numerous jobs as a Fazbear night/security job to stopping the aftereffects of William's murder sprees. With Henry's help, Michael did eventually find his parent and happily oversaw his final execution. Though, considering the specific type of person this father is, alongside the unforgivable crimes he committed against not just the victimized children, but also against Michael and both of his younger siblings, the son's deadly rebelliousness is beyond justified.
The Atoner: The primary reason why he dedicated his entire quest to save the children's souls and undo his father's evil was because he wanted to atone for the Accidental Murder of his younger brother.
Devious Daggers: When fighting William Afton-as-Nightmare Springtrap, he uses a golden-hilted and light-bladed dagger, compensating for his fragility with swift and quick attacks.
Greater-Scope Paragon: He, alongside Henry, is the man responsible for William Afton's ultimate defeat and the true liberation of the ghost children from the nightmare of the Freddy Fazbear franchise.
Heroic Self-Deprecation: While he doesn't admit it to anyone, he does not think of himself as a hero, outright admitting that his acts were not out of heroism, but an atonement for killing his younger brother.
Hero of Another Story: He served as the main character of FNaF 2, FNaF 3, FNaF 4, Sister Location and Pizzeria Simulator in the fic (and even lived through events of FNaF 1 before Mike did), dedicating his entire quest to undoing his father's evil and freeing the ghosts' souls. Though he's no longer alive by the time events of the fanfic take place, it was thanks to him that the ghost children were freed from their metal prisons.
My God, What Have I Done?: To say that Michael felt disgusted with himself after accidentally crippling his younger brother would be the understatement of the eon.
I Hate Past Me: He is utterly repulsed by his past self and his treatment of Evan, and even outright admits that he was a horrible person in the past. This is the primary reason why he doesn't hate Liz for killing and scooping him—because it would be utterly hypocritical of him to condemn Liz for something not unlike what he did to his own younger brother, especially given that, unlike with Liz, there was no external corrupting factor to motivate his bullying.
Significant Name Overlap: The name he chose when he was infiltrating the 1993 Freddy Fazbear's Pizza location was also Mike Schmidt, the actual Mike Schmidt started his shifts right after his. Michael Afton noted the coincidence with amusement, given how he, the one who freed the ghost children's souls, ended up sharing the name with the one who gave them a new home and second chance in life.
Strong Family Resemblance: He is noted to look very similar to his father, to the point that he even got mistaken for William Afton on more than one occasion. Fritz even mistook him for a Purple Guy at first before Henry corrected him.
Fritz: That's the Purple Guy!
Michael (facepalming): Damn my father and my similar appearance to him.

Shadow Freddy (unmarked spoilers for his true identity)

Evan Afton, the youngest of Afton siblings. After the Bite of '83 and his subsequent death, he was turned into Shadow Freddy by Old Man Consequences, serving as Michael's guide in stopping their father's evil.

Ascended Extra: Shadow Freddy had true importance only in the third game while the Bite Victim was only a flashback character in the fourth. Here, he plays a much more prominent role in cleaning up the mess left by William Afton.
Composite Character: While Shadow Freddy and the Bite Victim had no confirmed or even implied connection to each other, in this fic, they are the one and the same, Shadow Freddy being Evan's ghost turned into a shadowy version of Fredbear by Old Man Consequences.
Dark Is Not Evil: Despite his sinister and unnatural appearance, he's not malevolent in the slightest.
Decomposite Character: If one buys into a popular theory that Nightmare and Shadow Freddy (with the former being the latter's alternate, horrifying form) are the same character, then they're definitely this. With Shadow Freddy being the soul of the Crying Child transformed into a dark purple version of Fredbear while Nightmare is some form of demon from hell.
Named by the Adaptation: No Name Given canonically, although some recent sources have implied that his name may be Evan, which is his name in this fic.
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: He guided the original animatronics over to William (as seen in the cutscenes of FNaF3) so that William would unwittingly free the ghosts by destroying their bodies, after which they could finally get revenge on William and be at peace afterwards. Unfortunately, that plan didn't pan out as expected, and he needed to call on his older brother's help again to fix the consequences.
"The Reason You Suck" Speech: Gives a brutal one to William Afton for leaving him to die in the hospital bed after the Bite. William could have let him survive, but chose to let him die since he didn't want to be burdened with a broken and wounded son. Needless to say, he's not happy about this.
Secret-Keeper: Guides Liz and Mike over to the abandoned, rotted bodies of the murdered children, and later picks up some spare blueprints of Baby to give to Mike so he can make Liz a new animatronic body like the rest of her siblings.
Spirit Advisor: Acted as a guide for his older brother Michael while he tried to undo their fathers' crimes. He also acts as an advisor for Liz and to a lesser degree Mike in the present day.
Stone Wall: His new supernatural form as Shadow Freddy is much more durable than either of his siblings', although he's not really capable of fighting back by himself. When the three Afton children fight against their father as Nightmare Springtrap, he tries to intercept, and more often than not takes attacks from him while his siblings lay on the actual attacks. It's particularly ironic, given how weak and frail he was as a child.
Took a Level in Badass: More like several. Not only does he go from being a weak, perpetually scared child into a supernatural shadow-like being who is far more durable than any of the ghosts, but he is also much more assertive, confident, plays a major if hidden role in the defeat of William Afton during the events of the games, and is not afraid of his now-demonic father whatsoever.
Walking Spoiler: His entire nature as Evan Afton, a.k.a. the Bite Victim, is a massive load of spoilers.
Wham Line: In Chapter 75, Evan asks Charlie just how many of his father's victims are currently in Mike's house, and his follow-up is arguably the most chilling line in the entire fic:
Evan: No Lizzie... not six. Seven.

Ms. Afton

Clara Afton the wife of William Afton and the mother of the Afton children Elizabeth, Evan, and Michael. For several (real-time) years and hundreds of chapters, very few details are given about her other than she exists. That is until she finally shows up one New Year's Eve on the Schmidt Family's doorstep to shine some light on William Afton's past as well as give something to the children.

Ambiguously Absent Parent: FINALLY Averted for the first time in years since the Franchise's conception.
Death by Childbirth: The reason why she was not there for her children's childhood or to see William Afton's Start of Darkness? She has died giving birth to Evan. One can wonder whether William Afton let Evan die from his bite for causing his mother's death or because he just could not bother caring for him after his mother's death. The Schmidt family firmly believes it does not matter either way.
Even Evil Can Be Loved: She is probably the one person in the entire series among the living and the dead who still has feelings for William Afton. While she is fully accepting of the fact that her former husband is a total monster who rightfully earned his place in Hell to be tortured for all eternity, she tries to explain that he was not always like that and there was a time when he was a decent human being and father or at least acted very convincingly as one.
Morality Pet: Probably the single person in William Afton's life he loves (or at least someone like William Afton can claim to love in his own way.) Clara Afton admits he has never done anything to harm her and, even when William Afton got obsessed with running the Pizzaria and building the Animatronics, he still did his best to satisfy her needs. After her sudden death, the slightest redeeming qualities in William Afton withered away or maybe he just stopped bothering with the mask of a human being anymore.
Mr. Exposition: She is there to shine some light on William Afton's past and the kind of person he was when she was alive.
Sympathy for the Devil: She is likely the only person with even the faintest sense of pity for her husband William Afton who would be tortured mercilessly for all eternity. Of course, she does not deny that her husband completely deserved it after everything he has done.
Unseen No More: After years of speculation and scant mentions indicating her existence, she finally appears in the flesh (figuratively speaking as she is a ghost) after 200 chapters.
Walking Spoiler: The mere fact that she appears in person in the fanfic when she is the Ambiguously Absent Parent in Canon makes her this by default.

Animatronics

Bonnet (unmarked minor spoilers)

A pink bunny hand puppet animatronic, designed with the same murderous purposes as the other Funtime animatronics. After being shown mercy, she pleaded to be freed from CBEAR and was rescued from the facility before its destruction. With her murderous programming removed, she was given to Melody as a gift, quickly bonding with the woman.

Cute Machines: In-universe, she is considered to be very adorable by the characters, with Melody immediately gushing over her at first sight.
Heel–Face Turn: After being given a second chance, she joins with the family, has her evil programming taken out of her, and is later given to Melody as a gift, getting along quite well with her.
Redemption Equals Life: The only animatronic to survive the destruction of Circus Baby's Entertainment and Rental, and the only one to turn good.
Robot Buddy: After having her murderous programming removed, she ended up becoming a new companion to the Schmidt family. Afterwards, she was given to Melody as a gift and now provides her with companionship.
Sole Survivor: She is the only animatronic to survive the destruction of Circus Baby's Entertainment and Rental when the Schmidt family burned down the facility.

Helpy

A small white-and-purple bear animatronic, designed by Henry Emily to be an A.I. companion and playmate for Charlie and assistant to Michael Afton, but was never made...until his blueprints were found by Mike Schmidt who brought Henry's project to life, to serve as companion for his ghost children.

Benevolent A.I.: Helpy lacks any malicious undertones associated with other Fazbear-related animatronics, instead being a genuinely friendly and helpful companion to Mike and his family.
Cute Machines: After he was built by Mike and introduced to a family, every single ghost child immediately started gushing over Helpy's innocent and adorable appearance and mannerisms.
Out of Focus: Despite the fact that he was made to serve as a companion for the family to play with, he was not given a lot of focus, and that's likely because he made his debut in the final filler chapter before the darkest arc in the entire series kicked off, and eventually was Put on a Bus.
Put on a Bus: Helpy was eventually given by the Schmidt family to Melody to serve as another companion besides Bonnet.
Robot Buddy: He was designed by Henry to serve as a companion for Charlie and an assistant to Michael, and now serves as a companion for the ghost children (and, later, to Melody).

Supernatural beings

The Nightmares

As a whole

A clan of demons who rules over the lowest circles of Hell, all of whom take forms of monstrous animatronics for their own amusement.

Adaptational Badass: In the original FNaF series, the Nightmare animatronics were purely physical threats at worst. Here, they are one of Hell's most powerful demon clans who have great expertise in torture, both physical and psychological. They are also much stronger in terms of physical strength and durability, and are very proficient with magic. And that's when they are still in their monstrous animatronic forms, which is when they are being Willfully Weak. When they shed their animatronic forms, they become nigh-unstoppable menaces.
Adaptational Intelligence: The Nightmare animatronics in the original canon were purely physical threats, and only developed speaking lines in the Ultimate Custom Night. Here, they're much more intelligent, especially Nightmare, and are very proficient in psychological torture just as much as in physical torture.
Adaptation Name Change: The Lesser Nightmares' "Jack-O-animatronic" forms were renamed to "Infernal animatronics", given that their connotations to Halloween theme of the Halloween Edition of Five Nights at Freddy's 4 were omitted in the fic. They do "reclaim" their canon names in the "Curse of Dreadbear" arc, where they adopt the "Jack-O-animatronic" naming convention to disguise their true infernal nature and fictionalize it under the guise of "Halloween-based additions".
Adaptation Species Change: The Nightmare animatronics in the original FNaF series were either hallucinations, animatronics created by William Afton, or just, well, nightmares in either Crying Child or Michael's head, with or without William Afton's input, depending on the theory you believe in. Here, they're demons from Hell, who are merely taking on the forms of ghoulish, monstrous animatronics for their own amusement.
Dark Is Evil: They are demons from Hell taking form of monstrous animatronics that are very proficient in dark magic.
Eldritch Abomination: Their true forms are stated to be horrible abominations that would drive any mortal who'd look at them mad and would instill fear even into the heart of a seasoned demon lord from upper Hell circles. They don't even have described appearances (except for Nightmare), leaving only the reader to guess what they would look like.
Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Though they would never flat-out admit it to anyone, the Nightmares genuinely care for each other as a family, a stark contrast to how William Afton treats his children, which is one of the primary reasons why they genuinely despise him.
Jerkass: The Nightmares are known to be very crass, mocking and disrespectful to others, especially to mortals, best shown with Nightmare Freddy and Nightmare Foxy viciously mocking the ghost children whenever they lose in Curse of Dreadbear DLC levels, with few rare cases of giving them some slack here and there. In fact, one of their ways to entertain themselves is by deliberately introducing some bad luck to the games of humans on Earth, ruining their game experiences For the Lulz. Even Nightmarionne, one of the friendliest Nightmares, would not resist screwing over some poor human for kicks and giggles.
Lesser of Two Evils: Despite literally being demons from Hell, the Nightmares are frequently acknowledged as a lesser evil (at least functionally) when compared to the likes of William Afton or Fazbear Entertainment, as they (especially their leader Nightmare) are reliable enough to not anger Heaven by committing needless acts of evil or backstabbing those who they are working with. They have also displayed several positive qualities that put them on a higher pedestal with regards to both morality and competence compared to those they fight against. As such, the Schmidt family doesn't have too many issues cooperating with the demon clan, even if it means that Nightmares would gain something for themselves.
Gabe: Out of all the evil or incompetent people wrapped up in the Fazbear tragedy, I should NOT be liking the LITERAL DEMONS FROM HELL the most.
Our Demons Are Different: The Nightmares are the powerful clan of demons that rules over the lower circles of Hell, with all of the clan's members taking forms of nightmarish Fazbear's animatronics for their own amusement. Their true forms were actually stated to be horrible Eldritch Abominations that would drive any mortal mind insane and even the stronger demons would still feel fear from looking at them.
Playing with Fire: They all have power over Hellfire, with all four Lesser Nightmares capable of taking alternate forms that closely reflect their infernal nature.

Nightmare

Ruler and patriarch of the Nightmares, Nightmare is a powerful demon lord who relishes in preying on humanity's fears and black truths that humans dread. Despite this, he still possesses slivers of honor and morality, and genuinely cares for his demonic family, which are the primary reasons why he despises William Afton.

The Archmage: A supernatural entity who rules over the darkest parts of Hell itself with nothing but his family by his side, and his own iron fist, Nightmare is NOT to be taken lightly in the magic department, especially in a duel involving the Dark Arts. Case in point, the literal very first thing he does upon entering Mike's home is absolutely trounce Charlie in a magic confrontation when she tries to stop him. Granted it does happen offscreen, but the resulting display—with Nightmare standing absolutely unfettered and Charlie not only rendered completely immobile from exhaustion, but also trapped helplessly in the demon's clutches—sets up his place as a magic user of near unmatchable power.
Adaptational Badass: While we don't know just what Nightmare is in the original series, the worst he can be is the manifestation of William's evil. In this fic, he's one of Hell's most powerful demon lords. And he's a force of evil FAR more capable than the Purple Guy ever was.
Adaptational Intelligence: This version of Nightmare is far more intelligent than the original, and is just as much of an expert in psychological torture as he is in physical torture.
Animalistic Abomination: In his base "corruption of Fazbear" form.
Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: More than once, Nightmare has showed up to finish off a villain even worse than himself, such as William Afton, Glitchtrap, and Vucarik. Nightmare himself doesn't have any problem whatsoever with this role, since he hates all of these characters so much that he is perfectly willing to advance the cause of good by removing their evil out of spite, revenge, or pragmatism.
Benevolent Boss: He actually treats the Nightmares remarkably well. He lets them get first dibs on torturing damned souls instead of hogging that sport to himself, clearly cares for their well-being, and has only ever physically assaulted them in cases of outright betrayal (something which is implied to have not happened for a long time). The worst that he ever does to the Nightmares is verbally insult them, which is pretty much par for the course when it comes to demons of Hell. This is one of the reasons why he despises William Afton so much.
Break Them by Talking: His favorite tactic for destroying the hope and morale of his victims, often with brutally accurate and valid points to boot.
Brutal Honesty: Emphasis on brutal.
The Comically Serious: Whenever he's not being played seriously and isn't directly taking part in the Black Comedy, he's usually this.
Dark Is Evil: Duh. It helps that he has the most black within his general color scheme out of all the characters in the entire fic.
Demon Lords and Archdevils: He's the lord of the Nightmares, and most likely one of the most powerful demonic beings in all of Hell in his true form.
Enraged by Idiocy: He is not happy with the idiocy demonstrated by Fazbear Entertainment to put it mildly.
Even Evil Has Standards: Nightmare utterly despises William Afton for how he abused and manipulated his own family for his own selfish and murderous desires. Tellingly, the demon lord isn't being a Hypocrite in this regard, as he treats his fellow Nightmares remarkably well for a demon lord.
- His dressing down of Liz also shows this, his gleeful malice giving way to legitimately disdainful fury as he verbally flays her for murdering her brother, inadvertently spitting on his sacrifice by joining forces with her father, and trying to murder Michael again in the FNAF 6 location.
Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Subverted; in spite of being one of the darkest and most powerful demon lords who rules over the deepest circles of Hell, Nightmare actually understands the virtues of goodness, and respects those who hold onto these values. During his first encounter with the Schmidt family, after arriving into their household and revealing all their dark secrets to each other to fulfill the conditions of the wager against William Afton, he relied on two outcomes in mind: either the family breaking apart, or staying loyal to each other, with their bonds strengthened to the point of inseparability. And in his wager against William Afton, he actually placed his bet on the latter, understanding that they most likely won't be torn apart. And while he considered Mike Schmidt's inner darkness to be very impressive, and believed that he'd make a genuinely good ally when corrupted, he understands that Mike has too many moral anchors that would prevent him from succumbing to evil, and, after witnessing him torturing Nightmare Springtrap in his mindscape, he points out that the man's hatred wouldn't have been as powerful if not for his love for his family. And, after the Schmidt family turned down his latest offer to witness the suffering of William Afton in the "Ultimate Custom Night" torture after admitting that they want to move past their desire to see William Afton suffer and be tortured, he understood their decision and didn't press the issue (even if he was a bit condescending about their preference to choose rightful path over hatred).
- A small Double Subversion shows itself in the Glitchtrap arc, however. After hearing how Mike, one of the very few humans he respected, had nearly been killed by a Glitchtrap-hacked Fazbear bot, Nightmare goes out of his way to torture the Fazbear Entertainment executives in their nightmares for accidentally creating Glitchtrap in the first place and generally being corrupt to the point of being Lethally Stupid, demanding they clean up their act or face further punishment and eventual damnation. However, he is then completely blindsided by one of said executives confessing to Mike nearly getting killed by the Toy Bonnie and resigning on live TV, not only inadvertently screwing up Mike's plans to blackmail Fazbear Entertainment into cooperation, but also risking the corporation itself going under from yet another scandal and Glitchtrap's possession victim disappearing into obscurity to commit further murders. This is especially notable considering Nightmare very much did think this torture session through. He went out of his way to ensure they didn't shut down Fazbear Entertainment entirely by only torturing half of the executives, forbidding those he tortured from saying what happened to even others that suffered under Nightmare so those not in the know wouldn't suspect a possible conspiracy, and saw any attempts from Averus to blackmail Mike back a mile away. And yet Culpo owning up to his mistake and leaving the corrupt company behind was something he never saw coming. This rather bluntly shows that while Nightmare is fully aware that there are good people in the world and why they choose to be good, he very much considers them the exception, not the norm. Most of the time he expects most people to do things out of personal gain and self-preservation, even when it's a terrible idea.
Nightmare: I didn't think that this would be a possibility, given how notoriously greedy and corrupt Fazbear Entertainment's leadership were. I didn't foresee that, either through a crisis of conscience or out of pure fear, that one of my victims last night would go out of there way to confess to the public and send in their immediate resignation. (The demon lord let out a growl of frustration.) I can't even torture him anymore since technically he did the right thing and I didn't forbid him from his confession.
Evil Is Bigger: During his first appearance in the fic, he's noted to be even larger than the original animatronic mascots that made up Freddy Fazbear's band, and he is the proud bearer of one of the most heinous standards in the entire setting. Meaning that he absolutely towers over Mike and all other humans, the Marionette(being big enough to her in one hand, and even Liz's Scrap Baby form, let along the other ghost children.
- 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 a demonic army of damned souls and Hellspawns just by walking over them. To give 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.
Faux Affably Evil: Can switch between this and Affably Evil depending on how much he respects you, whether or not he's trying to destroy your morale with a speech, and how sinister his motives are, along with how much you deserve his vices or at the very least, had it coming.
I Have Many Names: When he introduces himself to Mike Schmidt and his family, he states that he is known under many names, all of them feared across the Hell's depths, with Nightmare being merely his personal favorite name, which he agrees to primarily go by.
Karma Houdini: So far, he has suffered no consequences from his original attack on the family when they first meet. Justified in that he is far too powerful for anybody in the family to even think about retaliating, and outside of his first appearance he really doesn't do anything to harm the family. It could also be implied that God allowed the attack to happen as a test for the Schmidt family, given that He could very easily have punished Nightmare for his actions if they were truly against His will.
Not So Above It All: While he's a serious character for the most part, having few comedic moments and generally being regarded with fear due to being, well, a feared demon lord from Hell, he still has a plenty of silly moments, such as indulging in the same silly antics as his fellow Nightmares, playing/hosting games or messing with mortal lives by occasionally ruining their days on a small scope by giving them strokes of bad luck, or expressing exasperation when he had to deal with tons of paperwork after thwarting Vucarik's rebellion and Afton's escape attempt. He also admits to the Schmidts that, in times between torturing damned souls non-stop, he was actually dabbling in various mundane activities as hobbies, even admitting that he found video game programming to be one of the most interesting hobbies he had as of lately.
Pet the Dog: Even though he is one of the darkest characters in the fic and one of the most sinister demon lords in Hell, he can still show acts of benevolence to those who warrant it.
- He was outraged upon hearing from Susie about how Mike was badly injured by an animatronic attack due to Glitchtrap hacking the robots, he then set forth to torment the Fazbear Entertainment executives with nightmares for their incompetence and apathy which led to one of the few humans he respected getting harmed.
- He does not torment humans any more than he has to if they are cooperative with him such as what he did with Benedict Culpo, one of the Fazbear Executives who resigned from the board after the previous torment. The demon paid him a visit in human form, just so he tell him to send Mike an important email without laying a claw on him whatsoever. Although the human was still very uneasy by his presence and Nightmare made it clear he was not asking him.
Pragmatic Villainy: His entire modus operandi. In increasingly stark contrast to the very man he spends the fic tormenting, he refuses to commit unnecessary, stupid, or egregiously heinous acts of evil, because he is one of the very few demons who has enough goodwill with Heaven to be allowed to roam the Earth from time to time, and he has absolutely no intention of ruining it through one petty act. He has nothing but contempt for those who are Stupid Evil.
Starter Villain: He's the first major threat that the Schmidt family ever faces. And although he ceases to directly threaten the family after his first appearance (and indeed, becomes more of an ally than an enemy in his later appearances), he's the first villain that makes it clear that the Schmidt family won't necessarily be able to simply live in peace, and that they will still have threats to deal with even after the end of the Fazbear tragedy. Ironically, he's also one of the most powerful entities in the story.
- Starter Villain Stays: He would fall under this trope too, despite being the first malicious encounter of the Schmidt Family, he plays a large role in future events in the story afterwards. Helps that he's a powerful demon lord.
This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: When demonically-empowered William Afton invaded Mike Schmidt's mind, Nightmare and his second-in-commands have arrived to help. However, when Nightmare saw how Mike was able to successfully fend off against William Afton, he decided to not interfere in the fight, rationalizing it that, as a warrior, he considers it to be a grave insult to interfere in another warrior's duel, especially the one as personal as the duel between Mike Schmidt and William Afton. Furthermore, Mike Schmidt had proven throughout the entire fight that he does not even need Nightmare's help; in fact, William Afton would've been better off if Nightmare did interfere.
"The Reason You Suck" Speech: He gleefully revels in destroying the hope and morale of his victims by reminding them of their past crimes and sins and telling them exactly why they are terrible people who don't deserve any sort of happiness. Special mention goes to Liz Schmidt, William Afton, and Michael Afton.
Villain Has a Point: What makes his breaking speeches so devastating is that, at their core, they are based on a foundation of truth and his victims can't deny their sins and crimes.
Villain Respect: Comes to genuinely respect Mike throughout their encounters, and even gives him a Warrior's salute after seeing him absolutely slaughter and brutalize William Afton in the world of his own mind.
Walking Spoiler:

Nightmarionne

One of Nightmare's second-in-commands, Nightmarionne is a Greater Nightmare that manifests himself as a demonic version of the Marionette. Compared to other Nightmares, he possesses a much more eccentric, humorous and affable personality, with his malevolence (while still very much present) directed more towards their damned torture victims and those who have made an enemy of the Nightmares.

Affably Evil: A genuinely cheerful, humorous, and friendly demon who enjoys playing games (and no, not in a twisted, sadistic way). Doesn't change the fact that he's still a powerful demon lord who enjoys torturing souls just like the rest of them.
Beware the Silly Ones: He has a carefree personality that is borderline goofy at times. Doesn't make him any less dangerous in the slightest.
Co-Dragons: He and Nightmare Fredbear both share the second-in-command position with Nightmare.
Combat Tentacles: Uses them both for battling and for torture.
Even Evil Has Standards: Played for Laughs; when he arranged and helped to referee a hardcore Pokémon tournament inside Mike Schmidt's mind, he frequently comments on how he considers Mike Schmidt's utter refusal to hold back during the Pokémon match to be evil even by his standards.
Foil: To Charlie. Though they both play similar roles as the second in authority to their respective families, Charlie to Mike and Nightmarionne to Nightmare, Charlie is firmly a good and kind person while Nightmarionne is, well, a demon. In addition, while Charlie is a responsible and mature young woman who is often the voice of reason, Nightmarionne is a playful and humorous character whose personality is most similar to Fritz of all people (though he doesn't suffer the same Butt-Monkey status that Fritz does).
Go-Karting with Bowser: He joins the kids in Mike's mental world to play Trivia Murder Party 2, just to play a fun game and without any malevolent intentions whatsoever. Likewise, he also joins them to arrange a hardcore Pokémon battle inside of Mike's mindscape; again, just for the sake of a good entertainment, with no hidden malevolent agenda whatsoever.
Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: One of his favorite ways to use his Combat Tentacles.
Villain Teleportation: He exhibits teleporting capabilities and can seemingly phase in and out at will to ambush his enemies. He appears to be the only Nightmare capable of this.

Nightmare Fredbear

One of Nightmare's second-in-commands, Nightmare Fredbear is a Greater Nightmare that manifests himself as a demonic version of Fredbear. Of all three Greater Nightmares, Nightmare Fredbear appears to be the most malevolent, with any of his affability being forced at best, blatantly insincere at worst, though he does acknowledge Mike as worthy of his brother's respect.

Bright Is Not Good: Unlike his black-colored brothers, he is brightly gold-colored, and appears to be the most malevolent of the three Greater Nightmares.
Co-Dragons: He and Nightmarionne both share the second-in-command position with Nightmare.
Fair-Play Villain: Seems to display this trait despite his otherwise malicious personality. When he plays poker against Mike in his human form while they're in Las Vegas, he does not make any attempt to cheat and subtly makes his disdain for cheating known. While he does manipulate luck to create more functional poker hands, he does this to everyone playing and accepts his ultimate defeat to Mike without any complaints.
Faux Affably Evil: He acts in a polite manner that does nothing to hide his malicious nature, just like Nightmare. And unlike Nightmare or Nightmarionne, he hasn't shown any Affably Evil qualities so far.
"The Reason You Suck" Speech: Gives a unique one to Michael Afton during Night 5 of his nightmare sequence.
Sadist: Par for the course as a Nightmare, and it's a lot more prominent since he doesn't show any friendly or humorous aspects to his character compared to the other Greater Nightmares.
Worthy Opponent: Eventually comes to respect Mike like his brother does, minus the sense of camaraderie that develops between Mike and Nightmare.

Nightmare Freddy / Infernal Freddy / Dreadbear

A Lesser Nightmare that manifests himself as demonic version of Freddy Fazbear. One of the most methodical Lesser Nightmares; also Freddles' father.

Canon Foreigner: In the fic, he has his own "Jack-O-form", even though in canon FNaF series, there is no "Jack-O-Freddy" or even a close approximation of it to speak of.
Composite Character: In this fic, Dreadbear is the same character as Nightmare Freddy, with his Dreadbear form being explained to be a Goofy Suit he was forced to wear for losing a game of Yu-Gi-Oh! against Nightmare Bonnie.
Even Evil Has Standards: Played for Laughs; even he thinks the invokedPlushbaby levels are too evil.
Laughably Evil: Mainly in the Game Over screen of the Curse of Dreadbear DLC, alongside Grimm Foxy.
No Sympathy: Generally played straight, whether it's towards William Afton in Hell or towards the ghost kids while they're playing the Curse of Dreadbear DLC levels, although he does show a few moments of sympathy and even help in the latter case (mainly with regards to the Plushbabies).
Papa Wolf: Nightmare Freddy is very protective of the Freddles and is furious to find out if they are hurt.
Playing with Fire: He can directly tape into his hellfire powers and take an alternate, fire-based form known as Infernal Freddy. However, unlike the others, he does not manifest this form in the Curse of Dreadbear DLC, given that he was only allowed to manifest as Nightmare Freddy and Dreadbear due to losing a game of Yu-Gi-Oh!.
Related in the Adaptation: It is ambiguous on what exact relationship Nightmare Freddy has with Freddles in canon. In this fanfic, though, the Freddles are his sons.
Those Two Guys: He and Grimm Foxy serve as this out of all people in the Game Over screens of the Curse of Dreadbear DLC.

Nightmare Bonnie / Infernal Bonnie / Jack-O-Bonnie

A Lesser Nightmare that manifests himself as demonic version of Bonnie. A mad scientist of the group.

Composite Character: In this fic, Nightmare Bonnie and Jack-O-Bonnie (as Infernal Bonnie) are explicitly stated to be two different forms of the same character.
Kill It with Fire: One of his security protocols for his lab is to set it on Hellfire.
Mad Scientist: Appears to be one, given how Nightmare orders him to perform (likely horrific) experiments on Glitchtrap.
Mr. Exposition: After he finishes conducting his experiments on Glitchtrap, he gives both Nightmare and the Schmidt family a detailed explanation on the true nature of Glitchtrap, how Glitchtrap's corruption works, and what can be done to reverse it.
Playing with Fire: He can directly tape into his hellfire powers and take an alternate, fire-based form known as Infernal Bonnie, a.k.a. Jack-O-Bonnie.

Nightmare Chica / Infernal Chica / Jack-O-Chica

A Lesser Nightmare that manifests herself as demonic version of Chica. The only female member of the clan, and appears to be a healer of the group.

Composite Character: In this fic, Nightmare Chica and Jack-O-Chica (as Infernal Chica) are explicitly stated to be two different forms of the same character.
Dark Action Girl: She's just as vicious and bloodthirsty in a fight as the male Nightmares.
Healing Hands: She can heal her fellow Nightmares with dark incantations. Humorously, she tried to reflect her role in Nightmare's Dungeons & Dragons campaign by playing as cleric, but was outraged when she found out that evil clerics can't heal.
Nightmare Chica: AND WHAT IS THIS GARBAGE ABOUT EVIL CLERICS NOT BEING ABLE TO HEAL? THAT IS DISCRIMINATION AND BIGOTRY! AND I THOUGHT WE WERE SUPPOSED TO BE THE EVIL ONES!
Playing with Fire: She can directly tape into her hellfire powers and take an alternate, fire-based form known as Infernal Chica, a.k.a. Jack-O-Chica.
The Smurfette Principle: She is the only female among the Nightmares.

Nightmare Foxy / Infernal Foxy / Grimm Foxy

A Lesser Nightmare that manifests himself as demonic version of Foxy the Pirate. Less of a thinker, more of a bloodthirsty berserker.

The Berserker: As shown in the battle in Hell, Nightmare Foxy is a raging berserker of the group, attacking quickly, viciously and indiscriminantly, without any planning or tactics. And the smell of blood drives him further into battle frenzy, making him attack more brutally and ferociously.
Composite Character: In this fic, Nightmare Foxy and Grimm Foxy (also known as Infernal Foxy) are explicitly stated to be two different forms of the same character.
Final Boss: Averted. Instead of being the main enemy in the Corn Maze level who relentless hunts down the player, Grimm Foxy not only doesn't hinder Mike in any way, but actually goes out of his way to help him find the four keys and the hidden secret of Vanny's mask. Though it's also made abundantly clear that he's only doing this because of Nightmare's alliance with Mike, and afterwards he would behave as normal.
Hidden Depths: He demonstrates a surprisingly philosophical side when conversing with Mike Schmidt in the Corn Maze level.
Laughably Evil: Mainly in the Game Over screen of the Curse of Dreadbear DLC, alongside Dreadbear.
Playing with Fire: He can directly tape into his hellfire powers and take an alternate, fire-based form known as Infernal Foxy, a.k.a. Grimm Foxy.
Talk Like a Pirate: In the Game Over screens, he leans into the roleplaying for being a demonic fox pirate, despite that merely being a form he assumes.
Those Two Guys: He and Dreadbear serve as this out of all people in the Game Over screens of the Curse of Dreadbear DLC.

The Freddles

Triplet sons of Nightmare Freddy who frequently accompany him and assist him in torturing damned souls. They are some of the younger Nightmares who would make up the next generation of their bloodline, taking forms of miniature Nightmare Freddies.

Enfant Terrible: Though they are children, they are still demons, and they are as vicious as their older brethren. If Nightmare Freddy asking Nightmare to let them devour Afton from inside out is any indication, they even enjoy feasting on damned souls' flesh and organs.
Out of Focus: Unlike the other Nightmares, none of them receive a sufficient focus. In fact, they don't even get any speaking lines.
Related in the Adaptation: While in canon their relationship with Nightmare Freddy is ambiguous, in this fanfic, Freddles are Nightmare Freddy's sons.

Plushtrap

A younger Nightmare who took form of demonic Spring Bonnie plushie. Noted to be a prankster who either amuses or annoys his demonic peers, depending on the day.

Adaptational Species Change: While the original Plushtrap was (most likely) a plush toy of Spring Bonnie sold with No Product Safety Standards taken into account, in this fanfic, Plushtrap is a demon from Hell (albeit a younger one) masquerading as an animatronic, just like the other Nightmares.
Bearer of Bad News: In his first appearance proper, he arrives to Nightmare to inform him and the others about the fact that Vucarik invaded their base and attacked them, injuring the Nightmare children and stealing their essences, before he passes out from his wounds.
Enfant Terrible: He's a child by demon standards, but he's still a demon, and he's as vicious as the rest of his kin.
Related in the Adaptation: Depends. While in canon, it's not clear whether Plushtrap is an actual hazardous plush toy or a nightmarish manifestation of it, but in the fanfic, Plushtrap is clearly one of the Nightmares.
Sibling Rivalry: He appears to have a rivalry with Nightmare B.B., as, when beaten by Jeremy in "Fun with Plushtrap" game on the first try, he complains that Nightmare B.B. won't let him hear the end of this.

Nightmare B.B.

A younger Nightmare who took form of demonic version of Balloon Boy. A mischievous gremlin who appears to have a rivalry with Plushtrap.

Enfant Terrible: By demon standards, he's a child, but he's still a demon and is as vicious as the rest of his demonic peers.
Pet the Dog: He showed Jeremy a secret regarding the Faz-Token in his level as a token of gratitude for entertaining him with beating Plushtrap's level on the first try (and, subsequently, making Plushtrap rage about his loss).
Sibling Rivalry: He and Plushtrap appear to have a rivalry with each other, with Plushtrap complaining about how he would never live it down about how Jeremy beat him on the first try, with Nightmare B.B. being clearly amused by how Plushtrap bitched and moaned about being beaten on the first try.

Nightmare Mangle

A bestial Nightmare created by Nightmarionne who takes form of demonic version of the Mangle. It is a hellhound that serves as Nightmares' pet.

All Animals Are Dogs: Despite the fact that it takes form of a monstrous version of the Mangle, which is supposed to be a fox animatronic, it still acts like a dog behavior-wise, licking its masters' faces to express its fondness of them and eagerly accepting their orders.
Ambiguous Gender: Its gender is never made clear, and it is referred only with "it" pronouns to indicate its status as a non-sapient beast.
Hellhound: It is a hellhound created with Nightmare's essence by Nightmarionne, meant to serve as the Nightmares' new pet. It even acts like a dog, complete with face-licking and eagerly accepting orders from its masters.
"It" Is Dehumanizing: Unlike the other Nightmares, Nightmare Mangle is referred only with "it" pronouns to indicate that, unlike the others, it's a non-sapient beast, and also to obscure its true gender.
Team Pet: The only Nightmare to be shown as non-sapient and acts as a pet dog for the rest of the Nightmares.

Others

Shadow Bonnie

An enigmatic being of unknown origin resembling a shadowy Toy Bonnie that safeguards the corpses of Missing Children Incident's victims and serves as a messenger for Old Man Consequences.

Ambiguous Situation: Unlike his counterpart Shadow Freddy, there is no explanation given to his true nature whatsoever, though, if his first conversation with Mike and Liz is anything to go by (with his statement that his true name is incomprehensible to the minds of mortals), he's definitely not human in origin.
Dark Is Not Evil: Like Shadow Freddy, he doesn't have any malevolent intentions towards the Schmidts.
Mouth of Sauron: He appears to serve Old Man Consequences as a messenger or ambassador. At one point, he appears in Nightmare's court and relays the entity's order to Nightmare to present himself to the Crimson Lake, an order that Nightmare immediately obeys without hesitation.
Secret-Keeper: Similarly to Shadow Freddy, he guards over the abandoned, rotted bodies of the murdered children in the 80's Freddy Fazbear's Pizza place.

Old Man Consequences (UNMARKED SPOILERS)

A mysterious guardian of the Crimson Lake who serves as a spiritual advisor for various characters.

All-Powerful Bystander: Despite the fact that he is extremely powerful, exceeding even Nightmare in terms of power, he simply observes the world from afar in the Crimson Lake, never interfering directly. At best, he can guide the others into doing the job, but his duties prevent him from directly interfering with the affairs of the world of the living.
Always a Bigger Fish: Whatever he is, he's so high up on the supernatural totem pole in terms of power and authority that he blows Nightmare of all people out of the water. To put this in perspective, Nightmare at this point has shown himself to be powerful enough to effortlessly slaughter entire armies of demons single-handedly with just a few spells, yet obeys Old Man Consequence's summons to the Crimson Lake without question and considers disobeying his commands to be tantamount to suicide.
Ambiguous Situation: Unlike most of the other supernatural characters in this fic, his true nature (so far) has never been revealed. He could be a repentant Satan who is merely guarding the entrance to Hell and manages evil more than he rules it, or simply another powerful demon lord who is guarding the lake as penance. Or he could be neither an angel nor a demon, but something else entirely. Either way, nobody knows who or what he exactly is.
Gate Guardian: He serves as the guardian the lake in the Afterlife Antechamber, which is all but stated to be the portal to the afterlife (both Heaven and Hell.)
Good Is Not Soft: In spite of his benevolence, he won't hesitate to be ruthless and harsh if the situation calls it; best shown when he scolds Evan Afton for wishing his brother to suffer...by granting his wish and sending the Nightmares to viciously torture him, and he allows them to torture Michael further so that the teen would develop the characteristics that would help him in ending William Afton's evil. He also threatens Nightmare with horrific punishments to prevent him from going rogue when assigning him with important missions.
Humanoid Abomination: Looks more humanoid than most of the supernatural characters, a fisherman with a crocodile's head. But he is almost certainly not human by any sense of the definition.
Non-Human Head: He looks exactly like a human fisherman, except for the fact that his head is crocodile's head.
Spirit Advisor: He serves as a supernatural advisor to several characters both in the past and present, ranging from the Bite Victim and Mike to Nightmare.
Walking Spoiler: Everything about his existence and his true role is a spoiler.

Antagonists

William Afton (MASSIVE UNMARKED SPOILERS)

The man behind the slaughter himself, he's the instigator of the entire Fazbear tragedy, directly responsible for the children's suffering. Though long-dead by the time the fanfic begins, and deservingly condemned to eternal suffering in Hell, he still manages to threaten the children's newfound happiness, whether it be indirectly...or directly.

Abusive Parents:
- His interactions with his children in the present, as well as the stories told of what he has done to them from Michael's, Evan's, and most certainly Liz's perspectives just SCREAM this trope. In stark contrast to Mike and even Nightmare, William Afton's treatment of his family leaves so much to be desired. Besides sending Michael to die in CBEAR in his stead just like in canon, he coldly dismisses Liz as worthless when he finally encounters her again, making it clear he saw her as nothing more than a pawn (and that's even before it was revealed that he intentionally left her to rot alone in CBEAR, her soul trapped in Baby's body, and even had guts to claim that she got what she deserved for not heeding his warnings), and allowed Evan (a.k.a. the Bite Victim) to die for petty, selfish reasons.
- The third "Ultimate Custom Night" chapter reveals that he himself suffered under the hands of an abusive father, explaining how he turned out to be evil.
Adaptational Badass: Downplayed.
Adaptational Expansion:
- And it just gets so much worse. See Manipulative Bastard below.
Adaptational Villainy: Manages to be even worse in this fanfic than in canon, since here he deliberately pulled the plug on the Bite Victim and allowed him to die so that he wouldn't spill the beans on seeing Circus Baby murder Liz and so that he wouldn't have to "waste time taking care of a broken son." It's also made abundantly clear that he never genuinely loved Liz, and merely saw her as a tool to carry out his murderous legacy.
Adaptational Wimp: Downplayed.
Ambiguous Situation:
Arch-Enemy: While William Afton made many enemies in life and death alike, thanks to his abhorrent nature and a massive repsheet of atrocities, no one, not even Henry or Michael, ended up bearing as much vitriol and sheer animalistic hatred for him as Mike Schmidt himself. As the foster father of the ghosts of the children whom Afton had callously murdered and had their souls imprisoned inside the animatronic bodies for decades, followed up by Afton trying to make their afterlives even worse while rotting in the depths of Hell, Mike Schmidt is now hell-bent on making The Purple Guy suffer for every single atrocity that he had committed. He is so dead set on punishing him in any way available that he willingly gave Nightmare suggestions on how to worsen his tortures. The feeling became mutual when William had learned that it was Mike who provided suggestions on how to make his tortures in Hell worse, and immediately jumps at an opportunity to escape from Hell and claim revenge on the man when Vucarik presents it to him. The former night guard even muses that it must be fate that the two would encounter each other when they face off in a 1v1 battle to the death in the depths of Mike's mindscape, and throughout the entire confrontation, Mike makes it clear how personal this confrontation is for him while humiliating and torturing William inside his mind.
Archnemesis Dad: He's a personal nemesis to his own children. All three of them. Liz hates him due to how he corrupted her into becoming a murderer, Michael hates him due to how William sent him to die in CBEAR (and that's even before he learned the true extent of his crimes), and Evan, a.k.a. the Bite Victim or Shadow Freddy, hates him not just for all of his atrocities, but for how William did nothing to stop Michael from bullying him and was directly responsible for his death by unplugging his life support. "Sins of the father" doesn't even begin to describe this man.
Arc Villain: He's the main antagonist of the "William Afton Returns" arc.
Asshole Victim: Given how much of a horrifyingly sociopathic douchebag he is, he absolutely deserves every bit of suffering he has coming to him. Whether it's at the hands of the Nightmares or a demonic aspect of Mike's darkest personality traits. If at any point the reader believes that the treatment he receives is excessive, they are bound to be proven dead wrong by the end of the fic. With every beating he takes, you will be smiling, no matter how horrific it is...or how loudly William's screams for mercy are.
Ax-Crazy: Oh, sweet baby Jesus, this fucker lives on this trope.
Bad Boss:
Bad People Abuse Animals: Possibly. During the "Vacation to Korea" arc, Susie opens up to Melody about how she used to have a pet dog when she was a living human whom she named "Oliver". Melody is interested, and Susie goes on to explain about how much she deeply loved Oliver with her heart and soul, and saw him as a precious companion whom she loved to spend time playing and romping around the house she was growing up in with. However, as Susie goes into the more somber end of her story where Oliver was killed by a car one day, Mike immediately remembers the time when Charlie told him about how William had used the tainted, deceitful promise of Oliver actually being alive and well that whole time, and that Susie would get to see him again, to gain the poor little girl's trust and lure her to the pizzeria's backrooms. Mike, still as hateful towards William Afton as ever, comes to see the implications that point towards William himself being the one driving the car that ran Oliver over. Mike also believes he probably would've gone through with killing the dog just to have something to use against Susie when the time came to murder her. Mike quickly shakes this off as just a dark theory, but either way, just for William's lies to Susie alone, it's just another level of hate Mike can heap onto him.
Batman Gambit: Whether or not his deal with Nightmare would succeed entirely teetered on if Nightmare could force the family of ghosts to turning against each other. He was one step away from gaining 1,000 years free of torture at Nightmare's hands, and all he needed was the children's familial bonds to prove weak and shatter. This ends up being a Deconstruction, however, as William never bothered to give Nightmare any specific instructions on how to best attack them, didn't realize that Nightmare wasn't all that interested in actually breaking up the family, and he never gave consideration to the idea that their new guardian would have a strategic enough mind to counter Nightmare's methods. So, the gambit utterly fails, and William ends losing Heaven's protections against the Nightmares for 1,000 years instead.
Battle In The Centerof The Mind: This is the nature of his first and final battle with Mike Schmidt. His entire goal during his attack on the Schmidt household was to corner Mike, possess him, and enter his mind so he could mutilate his soul and psychologically cripple him. He succeeds in entering his mind, but he ends up in a mental plain of existence representing Mike's mind, and if he wants to tear the man down, he'll have to duke it out an avatar of Mike Schmidt's soul and beat him in a one-on-one. Nightmare Springtrap engages his enemy in a fierce, bloody battle of imagination and pure wills, something that Mike proves to be the superior of throughout the fight, and no matter what William Afton tries, Mike is completely ready to take complete advantage of the setting naturally being in his domain, and the killer just can't keep up.
Beyond Redemption:
Mike: You know, I never truly understood just how much of an evil piece of shit you truly were. I thought my own father was a nasty piece of work. And then, I saw what you did to Liz, heard about how you left Evan to die...your soul died long before my kids stuffed you into that bunny suit, didn't it?
William: TRYING TO STALL, ARE YOU? DO YOU THINK I GIVE THE SLIGHTEST DAMN ABOUT YOUR OPINION? HOW FITTING THAT YOU WOULD CHOOSE HERE OF ALL PLACES FOR YOUR TOMB, FOR I WILL SUCCEED WHERE THOSE ANIMATRONICS FAILED LONG AGO.
* Big Bad: After 69 chapters of being the overarching antagonist, or just being a shadow in the background from Mike's and the ghost's perspective, William finally reclaims the reins of the main villain role and becomes the biggest current threat during chapters 70 through 86, where he emerges from the depths of Hell as a demon for one last big showdown with the Schmidt family.
Big Bad Wannabe: Given how much of a Narcissist he is, his ego greatly outstrips his achievements, even in spite of the fact that he's the prime instigator of the Fazbear tragedy. He genuinely believes that he and Nightmare are equals, which Nightmare quickly disproves on the grounds of greatly surpassing him in standards, power, and cunning. And while he does come off as intimidating when he fights the ghost children, as well as the ghostly Afton siblings who also had a bone to pick with him, before defeating them all, but when it comes to fighting Mike Schmidt himself in the Battle in the Center of the Mind, the tables get turned against him, as Mike continuously ends up gaining the upper hand. Afterwards, it's ultimately revealed that he had zero chance of winning the moment he entered Mike Schmidt's mindscape, and the sole reason why the battle went for so long because Mike was deliberately making William believe that he had a victory chance when he never had one to begin with, before subjecting him to a Cold-Blooded Torture session that made even Nightmare, Nightmare Fredbear, and Nightmarionne themselves speechless, reducing him from yelling death threats at Mike to begging Mike for mercy. Furthermore, he didn't know that Nightmare was watching the entire fight and had established to Charlie(and the audience) that, even if William had gained the upper hand over Mike and put him in a critical, life-threatening position, he would've swooped in and crushed Afton the moment he gained any sort of advantage over Mike, thus rendering William's victory chances nigh-completely non-existent.
Blaming the Victim: He storms into Mike's home with the intent to take his anger out on the man because he made his tortures in Hell worse, but the only reason Mike did that to Afton was because Afton sent a dream demon after his kids in an attempt to destroy their way of life from the inside, and Mike just wanted to keep his family safe. William Afton struck first, yet when someone(i.e., Mike Schmidt) is given means to fight back, the evil former engineer throws a massive tirade of hatred, and repeatedly yells at Mike that he has taken the former nightguard's retaliation as "defiance" and demands that Mike be punished for it as inhumanely and violently as possible.
- When Evan comes back from the dead in the form of Shadow Freddy to delay William's attack on Mike, William tries to manipulate him into joining his evil crusade, but Evan expectedly refuses. When William angrily demands why, Evan proceeds to go into how, during his life, he was endlessly victimized by William's neglectfulness towards his well-being, as William not watching over him is what allowed Michael to bully Evan without relent, and he never did anything to help his son's phobia of Fredbear and Friends. At this, William retorts that Michael is responsible for Evan's protection, not him, and that Evan should be ashamed of himself, because he was simply too weak to stand up for himself when his older brother tormented him. He goes as far to say that taking care of Evan was a waste of time, seeing his youngest child as a "worthless, whiny brat", when he brings up his issues with Fredbear's. Afton completely fucks over his duties as Evan's father in an attempt to viciously break down the boy's arguments.
Blood Knight: Even though he never fought any real battles until the Battle in the Center of the Mind against Mike Schmidt, he was still positively delighted when Mike started displaying active resistance and was not a "pathetic weakling", referring his victims and his own children(since they also stood against him earlier) as such, and said that it would make killing the former nightguard much more satisfying. Needless to say, he quickly changed his tune once he realized how powerful Mike was.
Broken Pedestal: On the receiving end. Liz Schmidt, formerly Elizabeth Afton, used to idolize her father. She saw his skills as a robotics creator(i.e. Circus Baby), and absolutely thought the world of him. Even when she was reduced to scrap, following her ejection from Ennard, when Springtrap came along, Elizabeth saw him as the one person he could trust to fix her. You would very hard-pressed to believe that the current Liz and that past Elizabeth are the same person at this point.
Bullying a Dragon: 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 angrily started lashing out at Nightmare, the demon in charge of his eternal damnation, and the monster whom he had sent to destroy the newfound family in his vile wager. 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.
Butt-Monkey: Between getting chased down by the children he killed, being horrifically mutilated by springlocks and left to rot in an irreparable state of insurmountable anguish within an abandoned Freddy Fazbear's pizzeria backroom with no contact with the outside world for 30 years, escaping said imprisonment just to get burned in a fire a week later, surviving, only get burned and killed by a second fire(the first being caused by his rebellious son, and the second one being caused by the best friend that he betrayed decades ago), falling into Hell, getting tortured by demons, trying and failing to win a wager to free himself from torture for a thousand years, resulting in his punishment becoming exponentially worse, and escaping from Hell only to be beaten into a bloody pulp, and then thrown into Hell AGAIN, Afton takes a fat load of general losses in this fic. And none of them could've happened to a nicer man.
Card-Carrying Villain: Played for Horror. 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 violently rejected.
Chronic Backstabbing Disorder:
- Oh, and there's also the matter of Scraptrap trying to kill Michael with his bare hands within Henry's trap pizzeria. And he brought Elizabeth/Scrap Baby after turning her against her older brother along to help him do so. Need we say more?
Cold-Blooded Torture: He's a regular victim of unrestrained tortures in Hell as a victim of the Nightmares. It only infinitely worse from there when he lost his wager against the Schmidt family with Nightmare, a failure which cost the damned serial killer the minimal protections from Heaven that all damned souls come to Hell have, which were literally the only measures protecting The Purple Guy from the full, unrestricted brunt of Nightmare and his family's unholy wrath and true, limitless capacity for mental, physical, and spiritual demolition. Such methods of said demolition include but are not limited to: Recreating William's first death within the Spring Bonnie suit in the most agonizing(and fiery) manner imaginable, ripping the bastard's tongue straight out of his mouth—repeatedly—while keeping him conscious, and forcing him to listen to the song "Black Friday" by Rebecca, with the headphones sealed to his ears with spikes and lava. Upon coming to fully realize(through the endless amounts of pain he's been put through by his tormentors) that Mike Schmidt, the man who had adopted the dead children he killed and continued to antagonize after damnation, gave some of said suggestions and was the reason he lost the bet in the first place, William attempts to get revenge on Mike by invading his mind and torturing his very soul, only for Mike to eventually completely flip it around and brutally torture HIM instead. As William Afton found out the hard way, Mike is incredibly knowledgeable in the art of flaying, eye-gouging, and bodily immolation, and thanks to Mike having his imagination on his side against Afton due to the nature of their confrontation, he had an unlimited amount of tools and resources at the drop of a hat to carry these tortures out against his most detested foe. In fact, Mike absolutely THRASHES William in his mindscape to such an insane degree, that when he saw that Nightmare was there in Mike's mind with the two of them, he started begging and screaming out his chief tormentor to take him back to Hell, as he was now terrified of his would-be victim's unrelenting wrath and wanted Nightmare to take him back down to the Inferno for his eternal punishment, all if it meant getting away from Mike. Unfortunately for him, Nightmare was enjoying watching Mike work.
Composite Character: 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 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.
Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of the Asshole Victim. Afton is a despicable bastard with a kill count of AT LEAST half a dozen (likely far more if you count lives the animatronics he made), a rep sheet that sickens and infuriates actual demon lords, and no desire or interest to repent or apologize in any shape of form. His petty, short-sighted, reasons for said evil strips him of any dignity or respect. His Knight of Cerebus status revokes him of even any possible Laughably Evil moments he could have had. And the sheer amount of damage he caused resulted in Mike spending a good chunk of the story cleaning up his messes even discounting the children he killed, despite himself not appearing in most of the fic. The man had become a personal Berserk Button for both the Schimdt and Nightmare families, and for good reason. On paper, seeing this man suffer should be catharsis incarnate. And it was...for a time. While the Nightmares had no qualms on making William suffer as much as possible, problems arose when Mike started helping. Him merely suggesting ways on how to torture William visibly freaked out his kids. And while subjecting William Afton to a brutal Cold-Blooded Torture bit inside his mindscape was very enjoyable for him, the fact that he was enjoying it, and going as far as he did with it, is a clear factor that his hatred for the man was overtaking him, as Serene states. Not to mention the whole reason that the ghosts Mike adopted needed a second chance in the first place was them hunting down nightguards in the vain pursuit of William.
- This hits its zenith when Mike first meets a Glitchtrap, which is, only in the most abstract and barebones manner possible, another case of William "cheating death". He at first starts tearing the monster apart with extreme prejudice with the help of his gifted Anathema Curse, but this led to not only the rest of his ghost kids witnessing his brutality, but it also resulted in Charlie getting physically burned by the sheer hate he was radiating. After reflecting on his own actions, the family decided to take steps to move past their desire to see William Afton suffer, outright saying as much to Nightmare during the third Ultimate Custom Night. In the end, as horrible as people like William Afton are, there's a certain point where they simply aren't worth the emotional energy, or potential collateral damage and damnation, required to give them their just desserts.
Demon of Human Origin: 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, he greatly outpowers them all.
Demonic Possession: 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.
Determinator: As just like in the original canon games and even the book trilogy, and mentioned above, one of the ONLY positive things that can be said about William Afton is his utter refusal to give up. The level of indomitable persistence that this man displays whenever he wants something is unbelieveable and would be highly admirable and even respectable...if it was literally anyone else we're talking about. When the Purple Guy has a goal, he will not stop until he achieves it, a testament to this quality of him being that he took very drastic and immoral measures to achieve immortality, being immovably focuses on murdering anyone he comes across even with his body trapped in damaged and rotten Spring Bonnie suit that causes him unspeakable agony and makes him highly susceptible to audio lures, and eventually being determined enough to '''escape Hell'' to track down and claim personal revenge against Mike Schmidt for worsening his tortures. Even when he was in Mike's clutches, with his defeat completely assured, he still tried to be Defiant to the End, trying to make Mike's victory as irritating as possible (though his efforts weren't met with any success).
Didn't Think This Through: In both his life and after his death, this was and still is William Afton's biggest hindrance as a person. A result of being a narcissistic, egomaniacal, power-hungry, sociopathic sadist who gets a psychotic thrill out of hurting and killing others is that William's mind is locked in a state of nigh-permanent self-arrogance, constantly believing himself to be an unstoppable genius whom no one should ever defy, free to trample over and ruin the lives of everyone around him without care or any hit of remorse, who can't ever be truly defeated by anyone...which is precisely what makes him think it's perfectly okay to go around and take insane leaps in logic and reason in order to get out of a dangerous situation(which he often finds himself in due to his own shortcomings), or to get one step closer to succeeding whatever he's put his mind to as quickly as humanely possible. Every time he does this, it backfires on him in increasingly messy and life-crippling ways. William's four biggest instances of this throughout the fic are the direct causes of his four biggest failures to lead to his doom:
Dirty Coward: William Afton is a man who is guilty of many sins, cowardice very much included on that long list. Besides the fact that he sought to murder only defenseless children incapable of fighting back for his Remnant experiments, and only when he wore a Spring Bonnie suit as armor, he also tried to ruin said now-ghostly children's happy ending by trying to turn them and their adoptive father against each other just so that he alone would be freed of torture for a thousand years. And when he tried to have revenge on Mike Schmidt, he used every single dirty tactic just to gain an advantage over his enemy, including summoning The Legions of Hell into Mike's mind, and when Mike responded by casting a spell that instantly destroyed an army, he just rushed to hide behind the pillar, uncaring about the destruction of his army, even throwing some into the radius of spell's attack if they ended up standing between him and his safety. Lastly, when he learned that he never had a victory chance to begin with and his defeat at the hands of Mike was a Foregone Conclusion, he tried to escape from Mike's mindscape, and when that fails and he was no longer able to keep up his bravado, he was reduced to begging for mercy, even trying to apologize for his actions just as a way to appeal to Mike's more compassionate side (which was predictably unsuccessful). Furthermore, the reason why he wanted immortality in the first place back when he was alive was because he just wanted to do anything he wants and not be burdened by fear of facing the consequences.
Disc-One Final Boss: William Afton was set up as the major adversary for the Schmidt family, as the one who killed the children who would become ghosts, and turned Freddy Fazbear's Pizza into one long unending nightmare. Ultimately, he managed to escape from Hell and rushed in to claim his revenge against Mike Schmidt and his family, before he was defeated in the long Battle in the Center of the Mind, subjected to a Cold-Blooded Torture, and then casted down back into Hell. Afterwards, he gets progressively written out of the story, and eventually, the Schmidt family stops caring about him entirely, currently focusing on the threat posed by Glitchtrap and Fazbear Entertainment.
Dragged Off to Hell: 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.
Dude, Where's My Respect?: An incredibly exaggerated and very justified example of this trope.
Escaped from Hell: Thanks to cooperating with another demon lord, he was able to escape from Hell, and disgrace the world of the living once more with his presence. Immediately, he began a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against Mike Schmidt, hoping to torture him and make the ghost children suffer more through his pain, which is what kickstarts the "William Afton Returns" arc.
Eternal Villain: Played with.
Evil Counterpart: To Henry Emily, and even to his own son, Michael. As the story goes on though, he steadily turns out to be the abhorrent opposite of Mike Schmidt himself as well.
Evil Brit: 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 than his said game counterpart.
Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Slowly but surely deconstructed and eventually, mercilessly subverted.
Evil Is Petty: Making animatronics capable of murder before finding out about Remnant's soul-binding properties, letting Evan die to ensure he would never blab about Elizabeth's death, murdering children himself to obtain immortality, only wanting immortality in the first place for the sake doing whatever he wanted without consequences, sending his last living son to die in CBEAR while letting Elizabeth rot there for over half a decade, making a bet with Nightmare to destroy the happy ending of the now-ghostly children he killed (Technically he did that for a thousand years free of torture, but fact that he singled out the children he already killed implies he wanted them to suffer anyway.), to breaking out of hell not even to come back to life(which is especially jarring considering his lust for immortality is what led to all this), but to torture Mike specifically due to his role in Afton losing that bet. Afton is the epitome of this trope.
Face–Monster Turn: 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.
False Friend: 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, who exists for the sole purpose of providing him with the means to carry out his disgusting plans at best, and as an annoying, meddling obstacle in his path towards immortality and satisfying his bloodlust to be destroyed at worst.
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...
Fatal Flaw:
- Bloodlust. Ever since he became Springtrap, his thirst for murder ended up completely overwhelming him to the point that he came to Henry's trap pizzeria despite knowing that it was a lie, which ended in his final death as Scraptrap, and when trying to have revenge on Mike Schmidt, he specifically decided to go extra mile in being as cruel as possible, deciding to attack his soul directly by possessing him and entering his mind...which turned out to be a massive mistake, given that Mike Schmidt is a lucid dreamer, thus making him a full-fledged Reality Warper in his dreams. William's lust for Mike's agony directly led to Mike being in a position where he could keep William imprisoned inside his own mind to subject him to a vicious Cold-Blooded Torture session.
- He also retains his canon self's original flaw of lack of foresight. Besides forgetting about how accident-prone springlock suits are, which resulted in his first death, and him rushing into the trap pizzeria despite sensing that something was amiss, he never once questioned why Mike was drawing his attention to him or whether there could be a hidden trap, instead charging right ahead into his mind for the immediate gratification of viciously torturing the man's soul. This ends up backfiring on him spectacularly.
Failure Is the Only Option: What his final battle with Mike eventually amounts to.
Fingore:
Foil: A large source of the ire that The Purple Madman earns from everyone else stems from just how drastically he contrasts and contradicts all of his enemies in just about every way conceivable, and often in all the worst possible ways too.
- To start with what is possibly the most obvious and most foremost example in the fanfic, William Afton completely contrasts Henry Emily in just every direct and indirect manner that Charlotte or Michael can come up with from what we've been told in the fic's backstory. They are both the men who are behind the creation of Fazbear Entertainment, and they are both extremely gifted in the art of robotic engineering, with Henry having built the original Fazbear animatronics for Fredbear's Family Diner and the other early pizzerias in the Freddy Fazbear restaurant chain, and William having built/overseen the construction of the Funtime animatronics for Circus Baby's Pizza World. And to cap the similarities off, they are(or rather, were) proud family men who each fathered children in the past. Heck, William more or less exceeded Henry in this regard, as Henry had a lovely little girl named Charlotte Emily as an only child, while William had a family of three children by the time Fredbear's opened: a tween named Michael Afton as his firstborn and oldest child, a girl named Elizabeth Afton as his middle child, and his youngest boy named Evan Afton as the baby of the Afton family. The most impactful difference between them lies in their creations; Henry founded the Fazbear brand, the entire franchise, because he wanted to entertain kids and give them a good time to have fun at—his animatronic characters, ranging from Fredbear and Spring Bonnie to the earliest versions of the original four-band of Freddy and his friends were all created for this purpose of making children smile and possibly give their parents an opportunity to make good memories with the franchise too. William, through his creations, as the Funtimes take Henry's idea of appealing to kids with mascot characters and twisting it to a horrifying degree:
Of course, the greatest walking antithesis to everything William Afton is and what he stands for within the whole fanfic by a massive landslide is none other than Mike Schmidt. As the story goes on, and their individual characters are further and further explored, Mike Schmidt and William Afton are two people who are complete opposites in just about every single way:
- From their very origins, Mike and William immediately contradict each other. Mike and William both had very messed up childhoods, the source of their individual misery sourcing from abusive fathers who, for some reason or another, ruthlessly beat up their children for little to no reason on a near-constant basis, instilling a great amount of endless physical and psychological trauma on the two that dominated their lives while they were growing up. However, the differences start with how Mike and William handled their situations.
Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: The third "Ultimate Custom Night" chapter reveals that he used to have an abusive father, thus explaining what kickstarted his descent into darkness. However, as the recreation of Dark!Mike points out, many people who suffered under Abusive Parents did not turn out to be evil nor did they repeat the mistakes of their parents (notably bringing up how even Mike Schmidt himself suffered from an abusive father), and even those who did succumb to their pain and ended up continuing the vicious cycle did not fall into the depths of depravity as much as William Afton did.
Hair-Trigger Temper: As of his return from Hell, he is shown to get highly angry and frustrated very easily. A prime example of this is when he tries to convince Liz, his former golden child, to join him in his rampage against Mike Schmidt, because, as he says, by doing so, she will make him proud, which is what Liz always wanted. However, Much to William's surprise, Liz sharply rejects him, telling him that she sees how much of a manipulative, lying piece of shit he is, and that after experiencing the life of a true family, something he never gave her, she will never listen to him again. William Afton only takes a second or two to comprehend this before absolutely snapping at her, yelling out to her face that she was always useless to him and visibly raising an arm full of extremely sharp talons at the phantom girl in a death threat to beat her, his once proud daughter, into the ground, all out of furious anger towards Liz for her "betrayal". From there, he completely loses his composure, giving into blind rage while tearing into his own children when they intervene until he finally finds Mike. This is confirmed to be result of his Sanity Slippage caused by the horrors he was forced through on a daily basis in the Inferno.
Harmless Villain: 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.
- But then, later on down the line...
Hate Sink: William's portrayal in the fanfic shows how much of a sadistic monster and horrendous parent he is due to being responsible for so many tragedies, both directly and indirectly.
Hated by All: A lot of the fic's characters do personally know or knew William Afton, or at least know of him and what he's done, and they all share pretty little in common and have a lot of differences. Those characters being humans, ghosts of the deceased, and even demons who hail from Hell itself. Despite their many, many altercations with each other, they do all share one thing in common. Every single person who does know William Afton, ranging from Mike Schmidt, the ghost children(A.K.A. the victims of William's killing spree), William Afton's own children(all three of them, mind you), his former friend and original business partner Henry Emily, Henry's own friend Nelson, to even the Nightmares(ESPECIALLY Nightmare himself), who are the demons in charge of torturing him, are all united, no matter the situation at hand, by one shared, unanimous agreement: They all utterly hate William's guts for being a self-absorbed, blood-lusting, morally void, child-murdering psychopath and an absolutely horrible parent. The only exception is his wife, and even she believes the man deserved to be tortured for all eternity.
The Heavy: Despite being long dead and gone, his influence is still the most commonly felt out of all the posthumous characters in the fic. Time after time, the family(usually starting with with Mike Schmidt) will learn information regarded or unexpectedly come across something new that embodies a different remaining piece of the massive mess of William left behind. And every single time, the Schmidts will go out of their way to clean that mess up. The most upfront instance is when after the CBEAR facility is confirmed to be shut down, the first thing the family does is sneak into the factory to destroy any remaining Remnant material, which does take immensely high priority, as Remnant was precisely the tool Afton used to keep a stranglehold over the souls of his victims after he slaughtered them. Undoing the evil of the Purple Guy will always be another step taken towards ensuring that the Fazbear tragedy will never have a chance to repeat, and with Mike's leadership(and sometimes even WITHOUT it) the ghost kids will happily step in. In fact, William Afton's legacy is more or less an entire overarching theme of the fic, because every single action and/or decision Mike makes is to give back the happiness of life to those whom were brutally denied it by the monstrous killer in the bunny suit. So when William comes knocking down Mike's front door for one final rampage, Mike and his adopted children are already beyond prepared to mount a defense, in no small part thanks to their sheer familiarity with the man, what he is like, what he does, and what he's capable of.
Hidden Depths: Played with to an extreme.
His Own Worst Enemy: No matter how many times he blames others, it's not the fault of Charlotte, the Missing Children, Michael, or even Henry Emily OR Mike Schmidt that he fell so far in the end—the Purple Guy consistently fails to realize and/or refuses to admit or believe that everything that got him to where he is that this point in his existence were after-effects stemming from his decisions and choices, and his alone. His low-functioning, deep-seated sociopathic nature, complete and utter lack of standards or self-imposed limits when it comes to morality and who he is willing to hurt to reach his goal, and sheer eagerness to thoughtlessly betray anyone who looks up to/depends on/or genuinely trust him all end up repeatedly coming back to bite him square in the ass, each time making his situation exponentially worse than the last, and it's this factor that ultimately costs him his chance at winning immortality and pushes him head-first into the fate he so desperately sought to avoid, and then some.
Hoist by His Own Petard: He attempted to invade/possess Mike's mind in order to torture and break his soul, only for Mike to completely turn the tables on him and viciously torture HIM instead.
Hypocrite: At an early point during the climactic final battle with Mike, Nightmare Springtrap gets increasingly frustrated that Mike is taking advantage of his imagination by summoning up random tricks and power moves with his lucid dreaming to keep him at bay, consistently barring the demonic serial killer from his greatly desired revenge. Eventually, he belts out into Mike's face an accusation that he is fighting dishonorably. This is incredibly rich coming from a man who built his entire life aspirations off of both literally and metaphorically backstabbing people, the most notable victims being his own children, and treated the lives of everyone who ever trusted him and their own loved ones like breaking toys and tools beyond repair, never feeling any slivers of remorse while doing so. Between how he killed the six children by taking advantage of their trust, and him leaving his own family for dead once they proved either useless or detrimental, William's tactics are FAR more underhanded than what Mike has ever done, even in his most dickish moments, and Mike knows this, and happily points this out while shutting Nightmare Springtrap up.
Immortals Fear Death: Implied. It's explicitly described via narration in Chapter 70 that William knew that from the moment the Nightmares found him following his true death and descent into Satan's kingdom, that infinite and unrelenting horror and pain would be all that he had to look forward for all eternity. That said, it is not unreasonable that William Afton knew that he'd be doomed to Hell should his quest for immortality fail and he died or was killed as a consequence. Taking his Card-Carrying Villain nature into account, this is very likely to be the case.
Immortality Immorality: Ever since he learned that Elizabeth possessed Circus Baby, he decided to find out how a soul could persist after death, hoping to uncover the secrets of immortality, and all of it was purely for his own self-benefit. In his pursuits, he murdered six children and tried to get them to possess the animatronics, condemning them to agonizing existences trapped inside prisons of metal, and had Funtime animatronics created with Remnant to intentionally trap any of their potential victims' souls inside.
It's All About Me: William Afton is very self-centered and egotistic. He chose to live his life entirely seeing every single person he met, associated with, or encountered, as absolutely worthless compared to him. And, no the lives of his own three children were not, and are still 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 being burdened by 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".
Kick the Dog: 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 to take over. William Afton is simply, factually, and objectively incapable of resisting any opportunity to be the worst possible human being he can be.
Knight of Cerebus:
Lack of Empathy: Yes. William Afton is a man whose soul is defined by sadism and self-preservation above absolutely all else, so feeling anything for others and what they're going through is strictly forbidden in his eyes. He always focuses on the problems HE faces and how they make HIM feel, and will not spare a shit's worth of his time towards what happens to anyone else involved. "If the children I killed are trapped in eternal suffering from being ensnared within the Freddy animatronics, then that's just proof that immortality via Remnant soul merging is possible. That gives me permission to let them rot away into obscurity, because that's all they were ever good for." "Oh, my son is mourning the fact that he accidentally killed his own brother. Well, it's his own fault, since he wasn't being responsible and he can deal with the consequences. Plus, that's one less loose end taken care of." This gets taken to a logical extreme when all of children come back from death and end up confronting him by telling him that everything that went wrong with the family is his fault, that he ended up killing them all through his negligence and irresponsibility, William's only response is to angrily order his children to shut up and reiterate that their horrifying fates are their own faults owing to their nature as "stupid, whiny, worthless, and ungrateful brats" who were never worth his time at all. In other words, William less so lacks empathy and more so vehemently refuses to even acknowledge or comprehend feeling it for anyone.
Laser-Guided Karma: He gets shot in the foot by this a grand total of four times:
Loves the Sound of Screaming: During Chapter 17, we see the dreaded Missing Children Incident unfold from Cassidy's perspective in a PTSD flashback. At the end of the sequence, Cassidy is forced to behold the corpses of the other children William had already murdered shortly beforehand, as he had decided to save her for last. The sight of her four best friends lying dead on the backroom's floor, their bodies having been gutted like fish, and their blood splattered everywhere, painting the ground and the wall a crimson rouge, understandably causes Cassidy to break into a fit of hysterical screaming and crying out for help. William, who is absolutely RELISHING in the six-year-old girl's fear, can't stop himself from smiling ear to ear as he taunts Cassidy while cornering her with a razor-sharp knife in hand. What makes this even more horrifying is that Cassidy clearly saw that her friends, despite being dead, had expressions of horror, confusion, shock from "Spring Bonnie's" betrayal on their faces, meaning William was most certainly basking in everything his other victims had to say right he ended their lives too.
The Man Behind the Man: 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, but very much deliberately, responsible for the completely undeserved psychological torture that 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.
Moral Myopia: As he is begging Nightmare to take him back to Hell, following his loss of the fight against Mike, William directly refers to Mike as a "monster" for torturing him. How convenient of him to just ignore the fact that he murdered seven children and knowingly allowed his entire family to die whenever it was good for him and his plans. Not to mention the only reason Mike is torturing him is because he attacked Mike first in the hopes of tearing his soul to pieces in the exact same way. What makes William's accusation of Mike stand out over most instances of this trope is that William is aware that he himself is a monster from knowing the wrongfulness of his above-mentioned crimes and is proud of it. He calls Mike a monster only because Mike is giving him exactly what he deserves.
No-Holds-Barred Beatdown:
One-Winged Angel: 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 beast 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 much 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.
Out of Focus: Rather shockingly, when his canon counterpart was nearly the direct opposite, but it makes sense seeing as this fic takes place following the events in canon where William Afton was supposed to die for good, and here, he definitively did. He is very scarcely used in the story itself, never making a single physical appearance throughout 90% of the entire fic, and out of all the officially canon FNAF characters, he is among the ones with the least amount of screen time. As the majority of the chapters are about the family formed from his victims just living life and enjoying themselves, William Afton hardly ever gets a direct mention by the characters, most of those namedrops coming from the outside narrative, and even during the more serious, emotionally intense moments where the family is dealing with the aftermath of the events of the FNAF storyline, it's more a matter of dealing with the mess that William Afton left behind, rather than the actual man.
Pet the Dog: Subverted.
Prefer Jail to the Protagonist: Played for Horror; the Cold-Blooded Torture Mike Schmidt had subjected to him after his own attempt to torture his soul had failed ended up leaving William with crippling fear of Mike Schmidt, to the point that he ended up begging Nightmare to take him back to Hell. Nightmare only laughed into his face and left Afton at Mike's mercy, taking him back only when Mike's mother placated him and prevented him from continuing his tortures. And even then, Nightmare decided to torment him further by recreating Mike Schmidt's inner dark side as his tormentor, ensuring that even in his prison in Hell, William won't be safe from Mike.
Purple Is Powerful: As the "Purple Guy", he is associated with purple only 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 when he tries one final time to destroy Mike's life and ruin his family.
Sadist: Anytime Afton hurts someone or causes someone pain, he spends every second of it relishing in his victim's cries of anguish, often finding himself unable to stop smiling as he looks down at the damage he has done. What really gets him going is when his target in question is aware that he is coming to get them, and by the time he corners them, whoever he's coming for already has the fear of God oozing from their faces, and they start squealing and begging for mercy as he lunges for the kill. In fact, this is the primary reason why Nightmare Springtrap was so bloody excited to turn Mike into his newest plaything—aside from revenge—was because he couldn't wait to see the horror that Mike would feel from witnessing the same killer who ruined his adopted kids come to destroy his life as well. Nightmare notes to Mike that William's plans go beyond just killing him and into tearing him apart in a way that will ensure that he lives the rest of his life in as painful of a way as inhumanely possible, possibly in a way that is deliberately similar to his entrapment of the Missing Children. When Mike shows no fear at the madman's arrival and declaration that he's going to make him wish for death, only scoffing at William's attempts to be threatening, it seriously riles him up like nothing else.
The Sociopath: Whoo, boy. He makes the freaking Nightmares look like absolute saints by comparison.
Rage Breaking Point: While the point itself happened offscreen, it is undeniably obvious that from the moment he lost his wager with Nightmare at the beginning of the fic, every waking moment of his existence has been dominated by hate-drenched anger. When he learned Mike Schmidt's name, he fell into a never-ending tantrum because he had been "ruined" after death by his interference, and he was unable to get back at Mike due to his damnation. But once Vucarik freed him, and gave him demonic powers to boot, William let out every last drop of his rage out on every single person who stood in his path. He tore through the Rockstars when the Missing Children tried to protect Mike, and molly-whopped all three of his own kids to near-erasure when they intervened...all because it meant coming closer to getting even with the man who had defied that day the wager was ruined all those years ago. His fury finally reached it's peak when he finally met Mike face-to-face, to the point where he was unable to feel anything but despised sadism in the man's presence.
Revenge Myopia: Hates Mike and broke out of hell for the specific purpose of torturing his soul into oblivion and making his children suffer through him because he gave Nightmare some personal suggestions on how to make him suffer...ignoring that the only reason Mike did so was because he made a bet with Nightmare that if Mike and the kids learned about each other's secrets, they would tear each other apart. Hell, neither Mike nor any of the kids even knew William was involved until after he had already lost the bet and Nightmare outright told them.
"Shaggy Dog" Story: A very well-deserved example, which is extremely rare for this trope.
Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Happens to him multiples throughout the narrative, and he had every single of those shots coming.
Sore Loser: To say that William was upset upon losing his bet with Nightmare against Mike and the phantom children is quite possibly the most redundant thing you could ever say about the man. Admittedly, this was justified considering what the price of losing to the demon was.
- He turns this trope into a art form of unfiltered catharsis when Mike starts going to town on him after William seemingly wins during their battle to the death 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.
This Cannot Be!: 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 irreversibly cut off, and his old partner successfully ending his life as Scraptrap, finally condemning him to Hell, was similar to this. Funny, considering he went into that place knowing it was a set-up.
Tear Off Your Face:
Took a Level in Badass: Downplayed, and eventually downright Subverted.
Ungrateful Bastard: Following the reveal of his loss to Nightmare in their bet against the Schmidt family, William initially refused with great adamancy that the secrets that Nightmare had forcibly revealed to the Mike and his adopted ghost children simply had not set in them, and the love and kindness that the children continued to display towards each other and their father was only a temporary reprieve, and eventually the pressure would break those bonds and the family would separate, which is what William was hoping for in the first place when he struck this wager with Nightmare. When he saw with his own two eyes, through the Nightmare Clan's magical crystal ball, that his desired outcome had (predictably) not come to pass, and due to the fact that, thanks to Nightmare, that outcome was very likely never going to happen, the murderer almost immediately tears into his satanic tormentor because the black bear demon apparently did not try hard enough to break the children's bonds apart. Considering how much Nightmare is quickly revealed to hate William on nearly every level conceivable, he should've considered himself lucky that Nightmare was even remotely willing to associate with him at all. And Nightmare clearly does not appreciate Afton's attitude.
Unskilled, but Strong: As Nightmare Springtrap, he greatly outmatches the others in terms of raw strength and overwhelming demonic powers and fights like a frenzied beast, but as his battle against Dark!Mike in the depths of Mike's mind shows, he doesn't have any skill to utilize his powers properly. And that's even without taking it into consideration that Dark!Mike completely outclasses him in both skill AND strength or that was merely toying with him the entire time. Mike even lampshades it by pointing out how William Afton was always a killer, but never a fighter.
Villain Respect: Heavily downplayed.
"Well Done, Son" Guy: A very minor, yet ridiculously dark example, especially when you factor in his general apathy towards treating his children as cattle to be eventually slaughtered in the wake of his crimes.

Glitchtrap (unmarked spoilers)

A digital reincarnation of William Afton, brought to life by scanning Springtrap's circuit boards, tainted with the Remnant that contained particles of Afton's soul.

Appropriated Appellation: When Mike declares to him that he's ready for his arrival, he directly refers to Afton's soul fragment as Glitchtrap, a nickname Gabe came up to refer to him. Glitchtrap not only doesn't mind, but directly uses a nickname when he reveals that he's "not the only Glitchtrap to exist".
Big Bad Ensemble: Along with Fazbear Entertainment, Glitchtrap serves as one of the fanfic's two new Big Bads, with Glitchtrap focusing on working behind the scenes to sabotage Fazbear Entertainment's projects for the sake of his own malevolent murderous agendas, while Fazbear Entertainment continues their greedy, immoral, and criminally negligent practices.
Cessation of Existence: Since Glitchtrap is not an actual soul, but merely a Soul Fragment given form, he does not share the souls' indestructible nature, meaning that he can be destroyed completely and will just cease to be.
Decomposite Character: Downplayed; Glitchtrap in this fic is a separate entity from William Afton, as opposed to being his alternate form. However, he's still a Soul Fragment of William Afton given form that shares some of his personality and most of his memories prior to his final death in Henry's trap pizzeria, so it's not entirely incorrect to consider Glitchtrap to be a resurfacing of William Afton himself in some way, shape, or form. One could in fact argue that this version of Glitchtrap leans moreso into being a walking, talking symbol of William Afton's influence remaining on Earth long after the murderer's demise.
Demonic Possession: He can possess the player and merge with their soul, corrupting them into doing their bidding. One instance of Glitchtrap had already done so with one person, said person turning out to be Vanessa, a.k.a. Vanny.
Digital Abomination: The scanning of Remnant-coated circuit boards of Springtrap resulted in the creation of Glitchtrap, a malicious being that is something in-between the spirit and the Computer Virus, but not completely either things. He was even described by Infernal Bonnie as an unnatural abomination, and his true form outright looks like an eldritch and formless roiling mass of shadows.
Dirty Coward: Being William Afton's Soul Fragment, he inherited his cowardice and self-serving nature; when he was left at Anathema Curse-empowered Mike Schmidt's mercy and discovers that Mike was about to destroy him, Glitchtrap is reduced to frantically begging for mercy, promising to share everything he knows with Mike, and even though he managed to ruin Mike's victory by realization that he's just one of the many Glitchtraps spread around the VR game's copies, he was still panicking and begging for mercy when Mike decided to destroy him anyway.
Grand Theft Me: He can swap places with the player's soul in the Pizza Party, the final level of "Freddy Fazbear Virtual Experience". Alternately, Nightmare theorizes that, if the Tape Girl's instructions on how to destroy Glitchtrap were followed, he could've also swapped places with and trapped the player's soul in the remote corner of the game. Fortunately, because majority of Glitchtraps were destroyed, and the one that escaped did so via Demonic Possession, no person had their body hijacked by Glitchtrap in the present.
Pragmatic Villainy: Unlike his Stupid Evil originator, Glitchtrap that fused himself with Vanny is far more cunning and much less prone to sabotaging his own plans. Instead of killing people directly, he instructs his host Vanny to instead reprogram animatronics that would do the job on a larger scale, and when Mike was able to stop the out-of-control animatronics and established precautions to limit future attempts, Glitchtrap had no problem with abandoning his plans in favor of new ones. When Vanny proposes killing the security team when they infiltrate the factory at night, Glitchtrap also vetoed that suggestion as that is far too risky to do anything and would likely lead to their death or arrest. Even if they somehow managed to do that, it is improbable that they would have enough time to reprogram one animatronic, let alone as many of them; thus, Glitchtrap advises Vanny to cut their losses and just leave while they still can.
Red Oni, Blue Oni: Glitchtrap that possessed Vanny serves as a cold and calculating Blue Oni, contrasting Vanny's impulsive and brash Red Oni.
Restoration of Sanity: Compared to original William Afton, Glitchtrap has much clearer mind and is not completely consumed by bloodlust as Springtrap was. Due to that, he became much more cunning and calculating planner, able to form a decent plan of escape and come up with several backup plans in case things would go wrong. This is especially reinforced with the instance of Glitchtrap that possessed Vanny, as he became much more intelligent, refusing to take unnecessary risks if it fails to advance his goals, and becoming more accepting of short-term losses in favor of ensuring the success of his long-term plans.
Soul Fragment: He's a fragment of William Afton's soul that manifests itself as a supernatural Computer Virus that haunts "Freddy Fazbear Virtual Experience" game, capable of possessing anyone who manages to put it back together or even outright hijack their bodies in the right circumstances.
Technopath: As it turns out, Glitchtrap's nature as a Digital Abomination allows him to tamper with technology to a limited degree, such as making security cameras in the animatronic factory glitch out to allow Vanny to sneak in undetected.
There Is Another: As Mike and the others learn from Glitchtrap that inhabits their copy of the game, he's not the only Glitchtrap in existence, as there are thousands of Glitchtraps in many other copies of the game, ready to spread all over the world. Thankfully, Nightmare and his clan were called forth to destroy every single Glitchtrap present in the copies of VR games. However, one Glitchtrap already managed to escape and possess a person, and it's only a matter of time before said person completely succumbs to his will.
Toy Transmutation: To preserve his existence, Glitchtrap in Mike's copy of VR game consolidated his essence to turn himself into a glitchy plush toy of Spring Bonnie to make himself harder to kill, even though he won't be able to do anything until he regenerates.

Vanessa/Vanny

Glitchtrap's possession victim, a woman who worked as a beta tester for "Freddy Fazbear Virtual Experience", but ended up having her soul fused with the sole surviving instance of Glitchtrap, ultimately succumbing to his will.

Brainwashed and Crazy: After being possessed by Glitchtrap, she ended up completely succumbing to his will, obeying his every single order, and even ended up inheriting some of William Afton's bloodthirsty streak due to his influence.
The Dragon: Vanny serves as Glitchtrap's primary enforcer, directly answering to him and following his every single order while advancing his malevolent agenda.
Red Oni, Blue Oni: She serves as the much more emotional, brash and impulsive Red Oni, in contrast to Glitchtrap's cold and calculating Blue Oni.
Suspect Is Hatless: The primary advantage Vanny has over the Schmidt family is that they have no idea about her at all, with the only lead they have being a feminine voice, heard in the secret left by Nightmare in the "Freddy Fazbear Virtual Experience"'s Curse of Dreadbear addon, a clue that is too narrow for them to figure out the full details. To complicate the issue further, Glitchtrap specifically instructs her to avoid attracting any attention to herself and remain undercover, thus making the task of finding her much more difficult than before. This does not save him for long.

Fazbear Entertainment

A corrupt corporation in charge of Fazbear's franchise that is infamous for its atrocious business practices and inability to keep people safe.

Adaptational Karma: In the original Five Nights at Freddy's series, Fazbear Entertainment's discreditment campaign with their VR game was a success, and they were able to build up enough good reputation to gain funds for building a massive Fazbear-themed entertainment center. In this series, however, Fazbear Entertainment's discreditment campaign fails even before their game gets released to public, as it was revealed that children did die in Fazbear-related establishments, thus nullifying their claims that their franchise has no tragic past. Afterwards, after their VR game gets released to public, a former Fazbear Entertainment executive exposed the company's greedy and corrupt practices, especially in regards of their treatment of deceased employees, permanently staining whatever good reputation their game could've given them; even now their discussion became a very heated topic on the Internet and frequently causes the flame wars, with detractors outnumbering supporters.
Big Bad Ensemble: Along with Glitchtrap, Fazbear Entertainment serves as one of the fanfic's two new Big Bads, with Fazbear Entertainment continuing employing their usual scummy business practices and criminal negligence while running their business, with Glitchtrap working behind the scenes to sabotage their projects for the sake of his own malevolent agendas.
Corrupt Corporate Executive: Fazbear Entertainment is ran entirely by corrupt business people who care only about profits and maintaining a good reputation, apathetic to all death and suffering that happens in their workplaces.
Determinator: Mike Schmidt described Fazbear Entertainment as being persistent as a cockroach: no matter how low their reputation would fall, no matter how many times they go out of business, they always find a way to crawl out of the pit and try to rebuild their reputation and establish themselves as a successful business company.
Dirty Coward: Whenever something horrible happens, the corporation executives' first priority would always be a self-preservation; they will try to save face by hiding their crimes and pinning the blame on scapegoats when exposed, find ways to avoid paying charges, refuse to doing anything to investigate the problems that would expose their issues to public, and when that fails, they'll only suck up to their opponents just to maintain their good faith, without any sincerity put into their kindness. Also, when Nightmare comes after Mr. Averus (and other executives) to torture him in his dreams to force him to cooperate with Mike Schmidt, Averus tries to pray for God to save him from demons, a gesture that proved itself to be futile given its blatant self-preservation purpose, and it's heavily implied that other executives would be no braver.
Faux Affably Evil: Mr. Averus, the primary representative of Fazbear Entertainment in the fic, speaks to Mike with business-like corporate politeness and cordiality. However, the narration makes it clear that it's just nothing but a display of professionalism at work; he actually despises Mike and would've strangled him if not for the fact that he can't get away with it.
Greed: Fazbear Entertainment is defined by avarice and corruption, and they would be willing to do anything and endanger anyone for a quick buck, including covering up their unsavory reputations to ensure that customers won't stop giving them money, and preparing to release their VR games and animatronics to public early, even though there are clearly dangerous aspects that can endanger lives (such as malicious code that can drive people to insanity in VR games' cases and malevolent programming in animatronics that would drive them to kill people), all just to reap their profits as fast as possible. Heck, the name of executive that serves as a primary representation of the company is even a pun on "avarice".
Hate Sink: Fazbear Entertainment's management was clearly written to be as despicable as possible, with their blatant disregard for the safety of its customers and employees, their corrupt and greedy nature, their attempts to discredit their tragic past, and inability to owe up to their mistakes in a way that matters.
Humiliation Conga: Fazbear Entertainment's current incarnation constantly suffers many misfortunes ever since revealing itself to public. They immediately hit off with a bad start by facing its first scandal three days after its public reveal when their attempt to discredit the company's tragic past gets foiled by the police state of Utah revealing that murders in Fazbear-related establishments did happen. Afterwards, Mike Schmidt ends up playing them like a fiddle, easily blackmailing them into cooperation and allowing him to beta-test their VR game. And then, several days later, their warehouses blow up, destroying all copies of their VR games, with Mike Schmidt, the primary suspect, being proven to be innocent. And then, at first, it seemed like things would finally go smoothly to them when Nightmare in human form agreed to remake their VR game and vastly improved it with his new additions, making it a best-seller...but then former Fazbear Entertainment executive reveals his former company's greedy and corrupt practices to the public, greatly tarnishing its image and turning the crowd against them, with very few still being willing to defend them, thus forcing them to adopt better business practices against their will.
Incompetence, Inc.: Just like in canon, Fazbear Entertainment is staggeringly incompetent when it comes to business management, and that's even if you remove William Afton killing children in their establishments from the picture. Not only they made no precautions to ensure the safety of its customers and employees alike, but they actively seeked to cover up their failings, clearing all evidence of murders and attempting to release a VR game to discredit its past tragedies and paint them as lies and jokes (only to face the inevitable scandal when they were caught lying about the tragic past). They were even willing to release the game despite the fact that they know there is some malicious code that could drive people insane, and did almost nothing to get rid of it before releasing the game to public. Predictably, when their corrupt practices were exposed, they rocked in another scandal, with the public being disgusted by the company's lack of ethics and very few being willing to defend or support them.
Karmic Butt-Monkey: Fazbear Entertainment constantly gets humiliated by Mike Schmidt and faces scandal after scandal, ending up constantly making a joke out of themselves. Said humiliations are not entirely undeserved, given how criminally negligent of the welfare of its employees and customers alike they are.
Never My Fault: Fazbear Entertainment cannot, and does not want to, acknowledge their faults and wrongdoings, always willing to pin the blame onto anyone except themselves. Their campaign to discredit their past tragedies and failings gets foiled by police revealing their tragic past? They pin the blame onto The Scapegoat to get them fired and backpedal on their statements. Their scanning of Springtrap's circuits introduces an anomaly to their VR game and one man gets exposed to it? It's his fault for knowing too much and he must be fired as soon as possible. A former Fazbear Entertainment's executive exposes their dark secrets? It's Mike Schmidt's fault because he resents their company and most likely convinced him to expose their dirty secrets. And the list can go on for long...
Not Me This Time: While in canon FNaF it's not made clear whether Fazbear's Fright was made by Fazbear Entertainment or not, but in this fic, it was established that Fazbear's Fright was created simply by unaffiliated enthusiasts who wanted to cash in on Fazbear's horror and tragedies.
An Offer You Can't Refuse: One of the first things they did after their revival was forcing Scott Cawthon to surrender the rights to Five Nights at Freddy's franchise and work for them on developing their video game under the threat of lawsuits, also forcing him to remain silent on their campaign to discredit the tragic past of Fazbear's franchise.
Overshadowed by Controversy: In-Universe; after their corrupt business practices were publicly exposed by Nelson, revealing that their animatronics murdered countless innocent nightguards and Fazbear Entertainment didn't even lift a finger to do anything about it, their discussions became a very heated topic on Internet and resulted in the many flame wars, not helped by the fact that ghost children secretly were fanning the flames by actively kickstarting/participating in more discussions to start more flame wars.
Pragmatic Villainy:
- When Nightmare, disguised as a private video game developer, was brought by Mike to help them recreate and mass-produce their VR game, Fazbear Entertainment executives honored their deal and didn't hide any clauses, though it wasn't out of genuine honor, but because they simply didn't want to scare off a potential savior of their game, especially the one who would work for them for free.
- Because their reputation became extremely fragile with their corrupt practices revealed to the public, they were forced to apologize to the public and take measures to ensure the safety of its customers and employees, but only so that they won't go out of business.
- Once Mike Schmidt (actually the ghost children using his e-mail address) sends an e-mail that reveals that their Toy Bonnie animatronic wrecked his house and tried to kill him, complete with providing video evidence of an act, Fazbear Entertainment backed down and agreed to postpone the release of their Fazbear Funtime Service program, because they have a definitive proof that their animatronics are not safe for public release. Not out of genuine moral standards, mind you, but because ignoring Mike's e-mail would mean death of their project and, in the worst case scenario, the corporation itself.
Punny Name: The executive that is primarily used to represent the company is named Mr. Averus. Per author's notes, it's "totally a coincidence" that his name sounds like "avarice" (a synonym for "greed", which Fazbear Entertainment primarily suffers from).
Villain with Good Publicity: Subverted; while they tried to initially paint themselves as a corporation with spotless reputation and no tragedies whatsoever, their lies were quickly exposed by the police state of Utah, revealing the deaths of Missing Children Incident's victims with clear evidence. Afterwards, former Fazbear Entertainment executive Nelson proceeds to reveal all of corrupt business practices of Fazbear Entertainment's past incarnation and the way they treat their employees' deaths, with the police sealing the deal by revealing all Missing Persons reports that past Fazbear Entertainment filed. All of this crushed whatever good reputation Fazbear Entertainment had, with them suffering from the many scandals and bad PR. And even after they've made an apology that sounds as sincere as possible and were willing to treat their customers and employees' safety more seriously for the sake of rebuilding their image, the public as a whole still distrusts them, with their discussion being a very strong flame war bait, with detractors outnumbering cautious supporters.

Minireenas

Miniature ballerina animatronics that used to serve as Ballora's assistants, but now roam the empty hallways of CBEAR.

Harmless Enemy: In-Universe; they are too weak to do anything to harm Mike directly. However, they can alert the other animatronics to his presence, the ones that can kill him. They can also sabotage the oxygen supply in the Private Room.
Killed Offscreen: Though their fate was not shown in the fanfic proper, the author has stated that all Minireenas most likely perished in the explosion of CBEAR.

Bidybabs

Miniature baby animatronics that used to serve as Circus Baby's assistants, but now roam the empty hallways of CBEAR.

Air-Vent Passageway: When trying to kill Mike Schmidt in the Private Room, they prefer to attack from the vent shaft. At least one of them wisened up and tried to attack through the door...only for that tactic to fail as well.
Killed Offscreen: Though their fate was not shown in the fanfic proper, the author has stated that all Bidybabs most likely perished in the explosion of CBEAR.

Electrobab (unmarked minor spoilers)

An electrically-powered and more lethal version of Bidybab.

Adaptational Badass: The original Electrobab was a nonlethal hazard who helped the other animatronics attack you in CBEAR. This version has outright Shock and Awe powers and uses them to fry the Marionette and cripple her body completely, with the implication that it would have electrocuted Mike to death if Charlie hadn't intercepted the attack.
Adaptational Villainy: Electrobab in this fanfic is decidedly more malevolent, as it attempts to electrocute Mike to death and ultimately cripples the Marionette with its powers, demonstrating violent behavior that it didn't display in its original game.
Cruel and Unusual Death: Electrobab met its end at the hands of royally pissed-off Liz, who took the Scrap Baby form, crushed its stomach with her claw, smashed it against the ground, splitting the animatronic in two, and then brutally and continuously smashed it until there was nothing left but a pile of scrap.
Shock and Awe: As one can tell from its name, Electrobab can control electricity. And it can use it to electrocute people to death.
Small Role, Big Impact: It makes only two minor appearances, in the latter of whom it perishes at the hands of Liz, but its attack results in Charlie's Marionette body getting irrepairably damaged, which leads to the Marionette being burned down on a pyre and Charlie being finally freed from her physical body.

Vucarik

A demon lord dissatisfied with the present state of affairs in Hell and wishes to overthrow Lucifer himself.

Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: He was already foolish enough to try to overthrow Lucifer himself, but by attracting Nightmare's personal attention by injuring the children of his family and releasing the damned soul he despises the most, he ended up completely assuring his defeat, losing an army of millions and ending up being subjected to eternal torture for daring to rebel against the Devil and violating the fundamental laws of life and death.
Small Role, Big Impact: In terms of fanfic itself, his role is relatively small, with his goal to overthrow Lucifer not receiving much of the fanfare, and as soon as Nightmare joins the picture, all of his plans were crushed completely. However, his alliance with William Afton was what allowed the killer to escape Hell, kickstarting one of the darkest arcs in the whole fanfic.
The Starscream: Tried to overthrow Lucifer and establish himself as a new ruler of Hell, managing to amass an army of like-minded followers to perform the deed.
Would Hurt a Child: He attacked the younger Nightmares to steal their essences and give them to William Afton to empower him before sending him loose on Earth.

Toy Bonnie

Not the original Toy Bonnie, but rather one of the many recreations of him made by Fazbear Entertainment for their Fazbear Funtime Service program and purchased by Mike Schmidt as a free offer...though there's more to him than meets the eye.

A.I. Is a Crapshoot: He was supposed to be a friendly entertainment animatronic, but his faulty/malicious programming results in him breaking stuff and trying to kill people for no reason. As it turned out, he was hacked by Glitchtrap's possession victim into attacking people, and he may not be the only Special Delivery animatronic to be hacked in such manner.
High-Voltage Death: He meets his demise by being electrocuted and fried from inside out by Mike Schmidt, who used the controlled shock device, along with electric rod, to destroy him.
Hostile Animatronics: While he initially appears to be just a regular animatronic entertainer, he quickly turns out to be yet another homicidal machine, indiscriminately destroying stuff and trying to kill any human he comes across, even succeeding in breaking Mike's arm and leg before being put down.
Legacy Character: He's actually one of the many recreations of the original Toy Bonnie, as the original one was scrapped after the closure of the 80's Freddy Fazbear's Pizza location, with his parts salvaged for Fazbear's Fright horror attraction.
Murderous Malfunctioning Machine: He was designed to be just a regular animatronic entertainer, but as it turns out, his flawed or malicious programming (eventually revealed to be the latter) renders him homicidal, which resulted in him trying to track down and kill Mike Schmidt.
Small Role, Big Impact: His role was relatively minor compared to other characters, but him breaking Mike's arm and leg led to severe consequences, making Mike unable to act for a while, but also giving the Schmidt family a chance to fight back against Fazbear Entertainment and force them into cooperation.

Special Delivery Animatronics

The many recreations of the classic Freddy Fazbear's Pizza animatronics developed as a part of their Special Delivery project. Majority of them were hacked by Glitchtrap and his victim, and were turned into homicidal machines, with Mike Schmidt and the factory workers working together to put an end to them all.

Adapted Out: A sizable number of animatronics present in the original Five Nights at Freddy's AR: Special Delivery game were excluded from the lineup of the Special Delivery animatronics appearing in the fanfic, such as: Bare Endoskeleton, Springtrap, Circus Baby, Funtime Freddy, Ballora, Plushtrap, Jack-O-Bonnie and Jack-O-Chica, Golden Freddy, and every single alternate animatronic skin.
A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Much like Toy Bonnie that Mike Schmidt had received, they all are supposed to be friendly entertainment animatronics, but their malicious programming (as a result of Glitchtrap's hacking) results in them becoming homicidal destructive machines that need to be put down.
Hostile Animatronics: Thanks to Glitchtrap and Vanny's tampering, a lot of them were turned into homicidal rampaging machines, with Mike and the factory workers working together to bring them all down.

Characters / Mike's New Ghostly Family

The Schmidt Family

Allies and Neutral Characters

Living humans

Deceased humans

Animatronics

Supernatural beings

The Nightmares

Others

Antagonists

Previous

Index

Next

Characters / Mike's New Ghostly Family

Edit Locked

The Schmidt Family

Allies and Neutral Characters

Living humans

Deceased humans

Animatronics

Supernatural beings

The Nightmares

Others

Antagonists

Previous

Index

Next