Nightmare Fuel / The Walten Files

As a Nightmare Fuel page, all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

Daisy, daisy, give me your answer do...

Being a fan work inspired by Five Nights at Freddy's, it's evident that there'll be some quality scares. However, The Walten Files manages to innovate on the Analog Horror genre in a variety of ways, some of which make it even scarier.

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General

• Bon's Burger's band of mascots may perhaps be one step above the FNaF gang in terms of creepiness, with Bon and friends' designs being a complete departure from the signature Chipper-esque art style that tends to look goofy over time; this makes them seem even more deranged and uncomfortably lifeless-looking, coupled with the Limited Animation.

Company Introductory Tape

• The very first tape of the video seems to be proceeding as normal, even if the animatronics seem a bit creepy... up until the cartoon Bon on screen is stretched as the screen glitches and the video is interrupted by a screen detailing the use of a storage facility hidden deep in the middle of a forest. Pausing the video to read all the text dates the screen as one from 1975 (a year after the clip it's just interrupted), and talks about how the restaurant we've just seen being talked about opening soon is now 'CLOSED FOR GOOD', which makes us wonder — just what exactly happened for it to close so quickly?
  • Special mention to the songs the animatronics play. The first is "The Sun Has Got His Hat On", which is very light and cheery. The second is "How Much Is That Doggie in The Window", complete with cutesy barking. But the third song has them singing "Old MacDonald", and doesn’t seem too bad, until Bon releases realistic pig screeches, at which point the clip cuts out.
• The second part of the video is a cutesy cartoon... which keeps being interrupted by a slightly distorted image of Jack Walten which eventually escalates to Little Bon coming downstairs in the middle of the night to find a MISSING poster for Walten on the television screen while glitchy audio plays which sounds a lot like a voice attempting to talk while badly distorted and screaming.
• The third clip takes the Found Footage Films nature of The Walten Files up to eleven, as the tape is literally the handheld recorded logs of an unfortunate Facility Caretaker named Brian. The K-9 Facility is creepy enough by itself, and the broken Bon doesn't help, but then Bon starts moving when the controls aren't being used, and even worse, begins laughing...
  • Bon then interrupts the footage, with realistic human eyes appearing behind his empty sockets before Tears of Blood start pouring out of them. Then he finally catches up to Brian, holding his hand to his head, shaking uncontrollably, and covered in blood — looking as deranged as an animatronic is able to. But all of a sudden, the tape then cuts to a rather eerie Big-Lipped Alligator Moment starring a polygonal 3D face, with constantly shifting features and expressions as dissonant music plays. Then, just as abruptly, it cuts to the aftermath of the chase: Brian's corpse horribly mauled beyond recognition.
  i can't feel anything

  he thought i was her
  • After the release of Bunnyfarm, Martin went back and remade Brian's corpse, and oh, boy, does it look even worse◊.
• Due to a copyright strike, the episode was reuploded with a few changes. One of them is at the very end: a silent jumpscare of a very creepy black and white photo of Jack Walten.

Relocate Project

Tape #1, created 07/02/1978

• Starting off tame, this tape details BSI's direction as a company in the future, establishing the eponymous Relocate Project. The video plays normally until it shows the broken down Bon animatronic, which then causes the video and audio to distort for a moment before returning to normal.
• The video then moves on to a pixelated portrayal of a BSI employee moving the Billy animatronic into a moving van, which drives offscreen. It then drives back onscreen, but with a pixelated rendition of Jack's distorted face in the driver's window as the video distorts yet again.
  • Something unsettling about this part is that Felix is staring directly at the viewer the entire time.
• The final part shows Felix's plans for generating revenue to get the company back to it's former glory; merchandising. The person narrating the video then goes on to congratulate Felix for being a man with "not only a giant brain, but also a giant heart". As the narrator says "heart", it cuts to a black & white drawing of Jack Walten sporting an unsettling grin, before cutting to a very dark image, with Jack's grinning face faintly in the background.
  • Something else of note; as this portion of the tape begins, there's a TV with an image of Bon, Sha, and something else moving behind the both of them for a fraction of a second.

Tape #2, created 08/13/1978

• This tape goes over the Reprogramming Phase of the Relocate Project, focusing on facial expressions with the Banny animatronic as the subject. It starts off with her demonstrating each of the listed expressions... until the “looking for friends” feature. As Banny looks to the left and the right, a woman’s stretched, distorted face fades in over her head, her eyes pointed in the same direction as Banny's each time. Finally, when Banny looks at the viewer and opens her mouth, once more, so does the woman's face.
• The tape then cuts to an animated sequence where a cartoon Banny wanders around what seems to be the facility in question, as if looking for a way out. As the TTS voice repeats “the bunny rabbit needs to get out” and “the rabbit is starving” over and over again, Banny's behavior becomes noticeably frantic, running from room to room until she finally stands still and turns towards the viewer in tears, as if she has just given up trying to escape out of sheer despair.

Tape #3, created 07/09/1978

• The training tape during the third part of the video features a short animation starring Bon's Fun Size self, who instructs new employees on the necessary items to bring for their shift at the storage facility. He then proceeds to list said items in order — lantern, snacks, key, and camera — only for Bon to abruptly stop mid-list and stare directly at the viewer◊ with a silent Death Glare, while Jack Walten's distorted face creepily peeks out of Bon's backpack.
• The story of Rosemary's death is shown in this tape, and it isn't pretty. Through working with reversed audio, one can find out what led to her death; after her husband Jack's disappearance, she went searching at Bon's Burgers every day to find him, until one day, she heard a voice calling out to her to come backstage. When she does, instead of finding her husband, she encounters Bon (rendered in the same cartoonish style as Rosemary, save for the realistic human teeth). What then follows is Bon proceeding to pick up Rosemary's freshly dismembered remains with his bloodied hands and stuff them inside Sha.
  • Bon's Madness Mantra when Rosemary discovers him is just as unsettling
  ROSE BROKEN. WILL FIX YOU. YOU WILL BEAUTIFUL. YOU WILL BEAUTIFUL. YOU WILL BEAU-
  • Afterwards, the video then cuts to a decrepit Sha in front of a black screen, who narrates the aftermath of Rosemary's Cruel and Unusual Death and subsequent possession. As soon as she ends the story, we are treated with the lovely image of Sha suffering a fit of Bloody Horror while she twitches in agony, just to drive home Rosemary's current state.

Tape #4, created unknown date.

• The final section is formatted very similar to Brian Stells' section in Company Introductory Tape, featuring 3 BSI employees tasked with staying at the BSI storage facility for 3 days to work on reprogramming the animatronics. It all feels normal enough, with the employees making small talk while working, but then Ashley decides to see where the key leads to. While exploring, she comes across the Billy animatronic, along with a cassette tape with the date of June 11th labeled "DISCARD". She instead plays the tape, which is a distorted birthday song that eventually reads off a list of names accompanied by a noise. In other words, a hit list.
  Jack BEEP
  Susan BEEP
  Charles BEEP
  Rosemary BEEP
  Sophie BUZZ
  • The video then blacks out, and after a moment, Ashley struggles to turn on her flashlight, and after successfully turning it on, she comes face-to-face with Bon. The video cuts to the original photo of the three workers, but Hilary and Kevin are in silhouette, and Ashley's eyes and mouth are flipped upside-down. Then, Ashley's face starts getting covered in blood as we hear her screaming in absolute horror and agony, all the while being horribly mutilated by Bon offscreen.
  • Bon slowly removing Billy's face to reveal Ashley's disfigured, rotted, bloodied face with her eyes gouged out.
  • The message we see after Ashley's Cruel and Unusual Death trapped inside Billy. Also doubles as a Tear Jerker.
  "they left the next day, they thought Ashley left early, but she was in the backdoors, screaming as much as she could, but no one heard the screams, the following days the caretakers would complain about an awful smell coming from the backdoors, company decided to shut down the facility until new advice, the relocate project was unsuccessful. Ashley is still there, but she's not screaming anymore, she saw something she wasn't supposed to see, and now she's beautiful, she's beautiful, she's beautiful, she's beau-" ^Uh-Ohfurthermore, the OST (ashley's happy hour) implies that the entire process took an hour.

Lucky You

• The video itself seems to be a message to Sophie, someone on her side attempting to calm her down and tell her not to be scared. However, as the phrase "Safety in pills, Sophie" keeps repeating, suddenly loud music cuts out as images of the animatronics and capitalized text appear onscreen... and whoever is communicating with Sophie now certainly does NOT have her best interests in mind.
  OH, CAN’T YOU SEE?
  I MADE THEM BEAUTIFUL
  I DON’T KNOW HOW
  I DIDN’T EVEN MEAN TO
  BUT, I DID.
  THEY TRY TO TALK TO US
  THROUGH ANALOG
  THEY WILL BE HEARD
  THIS IS THEIR CRY FOR HELP
  BESIDES, THEY WANT US TO KNOW
  WHAT HAPPENED THAT YEAR
  BUT WE MUST BE PATIENT.
  LOOK.
  THEY ARE FILLED WITH LIFE
  THEY DANCE TO THE MUSIC
  THEY LAUGH AND SING ALONG
  THEY’RE PERFECT
  THEY ARE BEAUTIFUL
  THEY WILL SEE YOU SOON, SOPHIE.
• That music playing in the background? It's "Heartaches" by Al Bowlly, the Leitmotif of another piece of horror media about memory loss.

Bunnyfarm

• As an example of how subtle the horror in this series is; when Sophie first boots up the game, she wanders over to the gravestone of Bobbie the Hippo (Pete the Hippo's father). The RIP on it is exactly what you'd expect, reading as an eulogy with his date of birth and death (which, humorously, reads "Older Year-Other Year"). After the reset, however, she walks back there and reads the tombstone again, and for a few frames, it reads as follows:
  He promised to take care of the 2 kids during that day, he told the parents everything was ok
  
  It's sad that we can't really remember you, Sophie.
  But soon we'll be together, forever and ever :)
  
  R.I.P.
  The two lovely red children.
  May 15th 1962 - May 2nd 1974
  August 22nd 1965 - May 2nd 1974
• The "Hippo House" segment starts off innocently enough, apart from a few minor glitches that Sophie points out as she plays the game. As soon as she finishes the floor puzzle, however, the image of the cartoon Showstoppers suddenly changes to a picture of the animatronic Banny, and the screen cuts to black...before an audio recording of a BunnySmiles engineer named Susan Woodings starts playing. And then the scene keeps going, and it's revealed that she's the person inside the Banny animatronic.
  • Bon jumpscaring the camera when Susan goes to check on him is one thing, but seeing Susan's face horrifically distort underneath Banny's face is a different kind of horror entirely.
  • The victory screen after that segment, unlike the other screens, fades in with an ear-splitting glitching noise as a cue. The message it displays is all too familiar as well:
  Congratulations SOAPIE! You just made Susan beautiful!
• Like the segment in the Hippo House, Boozoo's puzzles look friendly at first, and then lean hard into the creepiness as Sophie continues playing. The scares are (mostly) far more subtle, however, which makes them even more terrifying.
  • The "Spot the Differences" segment in particular has a few quiet, yet chilling moments, like the alternate picture of Bon with a shadowy figure in the background, or the picture of a child playing with their toy car, with two red figures appearing the background. And then the final puzzle appears, comparing a photo of an unnamed man with a realistic photo of their bleeding corpse, who's heavily implied to be possessing the Boozoo animatronic. The kicker? When Sophie clicks on any part of the picture, Boozoo tells her that it isn't the difference... meaning that both faces are the exact same person.
  • To say nothing of the "Prizes" segment at the very end, in which Boozoo makes one hell of a Nightmare Face as a monotone voice glitches out in the background:
  MISSING 0 7 14, MISSING 0 7 14, MISSING 0 7 14, MISSING MISSING MISSING MISSING MISSING MISSING
• The entire "Hide and Seek With Sha" segment, particularly the second half of the minigame. It's Sha's turn to be the seeker, and Sophie picks out the forest area as her hiding spot. The video then cuts to a first-person view of the forest, and all seems well until the decrepit animatronic version of Sha suddenly appears at the horizon. She then slowly approaches the camera until coming up close and personal with Sophie, at which point she reveals her true identity to Sophie before unleashing one hell of a Nightmare Face.
  Sha: "Am I still beautiful to you, Sophie-eeeeeeeeeeee-"
  Sophie: "I-I know you..."
  • That SCREAM that plays in the background during the final scene. It's all but said outright that it's the audio of Rosemary's dying screams as she was ripped apart, limb by limb, by Bon. And prior to that point, the scene also implies that the death of Sophie's mother while she was searching for her husband was no freak accident; there was also someone else present when the incident ocurred (if the shadowy figure in "Relocate Project" is any indication), and they led her towards Bon on purpose.
    I know where He is, Rosie
    follow me
• Showbear, the mysterious white and blue bear character we've seen in previous videos, makes his proper debut here. While he's far from malicious, he's still absolutely terrifying due to his seemingly towering height and his permanent smile.
  • His introduction, where his "Magic Fountain of Memories" looks around before he very slowly rises out of it, is extremely eerie.
• Serving as a sort of Call-Back to Relocate Project, the endoskeleton's "dancing" when the voice is talking about the robots being alive looks eerily similar to Sha's bloody twitching.
• The reveal that Felix, while in a drunken state, got into a car accident and caused two of Jack's children to be killed as a result. While unsettling on its own, Jack's message about Felix refusing to answer calls about where his children are just adds to it, as Jack sounds furious while saying it.
  Jack Walten: Felix. Pick up the phone. Now I need you to pick up the phone. It's been three hours since I told you to get Edd and Molly home. What happened to my children? If anything happened, Felix, you must tell me. You haven't called me in three hours, I need to know what's going on! I've tried to call you all night. What the hell is wrong with you? I've been trying to contact you all night, I've been calling everyone for you. Just what the hell is wrong with you?! Three hours, you didn't call?! I asked you to do one simple favor for me! I need to know, where are they WHERE DID YOU —//
  • Right after when Jack furiously says "What the hell is wrong with you?", an unnerving image of Jack's grimaced expression gradually and subtly emerges from the right of Felix's phone, hatefully glaring at you.
  • In addition to that, the dialogue between Felix and the kids while he's driving is absolutely stomach churning, with Molly telling him that their teacher said drinking is bad and the kids collectively being scared and worried that he's driving too fast, which he excuses by saying he wants to get them home faster. The kids don't know what to do since they're supposed to listen to adults and trust they know what's best. It's disturbingly similar to the Diane Schuler case, or any child which has had the misfortune of being in a car with an inebriated adult. The fact that Molly tries to assure Felix by saying that "Everything is going to be okay!" doesn't help either, since it's the last thing she says before the crash, and the text on screen instead says "It's all your fault".
  • The realistic, raw cries at the end of the "BAD ENDING" segment, which has heavy implication of it being Felix's screams of grief and anguish over seeing Edd and Molly's corpses after the car accident.
  • Speaking of the two children, it's implied by Showbear that after Felix buried them, their souls eventually went onto possess Rocket Bunny.
  • And do you know the worst part? According to Showbear, this isn't even the full explanation as to what's going on.
  Showbear: But that's not all, is it?
  There's still something you forgot to remember.
  They've been waiting for you, Sophie.
• How about the ending? Sophie's avatar appears in the dark room, while Sha, Boozoo and Banny, without their eyes and with wide-open mouths walk out from the darkness. When Sophie interacts with them, she gets creepy monochrome images of them. Then Bon appears, and after the interaction with him, changes to the page image. All this happening while "Daisy Bell" plays in the background...
  • The scene after the blood-covered Bon doesn't help either, showing Bon twitching intensly while various images of Edd and Molly flash in the background.

Spectacle

• Though the episode is mostly consisted of stock footage, the ending happens, as the news reporter finishes her coverage, the footage corrupts and goes to silence before a distorted voice screaming for help is heard and cuts off again as a flash of a picture of a presumed (previously unseen) victim is shown and then cuts to a picture of Bon and Sha, with Rosemary's mangled mugshot superimposed over her face.
  • And for the icing on the creepiness factor, the last shot is of Jack Walten's distorted face with the message "I'm still here" appearing on-screen. The face looks almost Joker-esque in appearance.

• The news coverage in question also comes in response to the closure of Bon's Burgers following reports of blood-curdling screaming heard overnight. The same kind from when Rosemary Walten was dismembered by Bon...

Cyber-Fun Tech

• First off, the shift in design is made especially evident with the new animations having a PS1/N64 style of FMV quality adding a bit more to the Uncanny Valley for the humans.
• Jack's terrifying fatherly fury when he arrives at Felix's house on the night of the crash. Driving there at high speed, brows furrowed and eyes bloodshot and wide in rage. Repeatedly jamming the doorbell, until he's knocking on the door, all while you hear voicemail left by Jack himself within the house that never seem to end. Eventually, Jack is reduced to breaking his usual soft-spoken tone, as he screams for Felix and pounds on the door. Eventually, peering through his window, saying he knows he's in there, and then says the following line with cold anger and obvious sincerity:
  Jack: Felix...Felix, if you did anything to those kids...I'll fucking kill you. ...If you don't open this door...(Chuckle) Felix, open the FUCKING—
• Susan Woodings' death is fully animated this time! When she has her fateful encounter with Bon, the rabbit grabs her in a chokehold, snapping her neck and gouging her eyes out with force before dragging her barely living body away. And then we see her mangled, almost zombie-like form later in "Wonderland"...
  • Susan's breathing. During and after Bon stuffing her into Banny, she lets out this horrific croaking rasp in a steady pace. Even worse? It's an actual thing our body can do. It's called Agonal Resperiation, and it happens when your body is near death but you're still alive. In this state, your brain makes breathing an involuntary act, forcing your body to breathe as a last ditch attempt to keep itself alive, and it often sounds exactly like Susan's breathing. Highlighting how, in spite of everything, Susan is still alive, but trapped in her paralyzed, slowly dying body.
  • The Rocket plushie, as in Edd and Molly, were in the room when Susan got killed. At one point, Bon turns his head to them, and put his finger to his lips. He just killed someone in front of two undead children, and he knew they couldn't do anything about it.
• "Bon". An enigmatic force, revealed to be the one that's possessing the Bon animatronic, and using it to commit his gruesomely violent acts. Worst of all, despite his euphemisms of making "fixing" his victims and making them "beautiful", he seems to be fully aware he's killing people with what he does. Casually and calmly dismissing his murders with the You Can't Make an Omelette... analogy.
  • Edd and Molly are revealed to be scared of him and actively avoid confronting him directly. Molly wants to save Susan's spirit from him and asks Edd to help her do it to which he eventually agrees but by the time they get her they are too late. "Bon" got to her first. Disturbingly enough, he briefly seems to be watching them in the background of them being too late before disappearing.
  • Just to drive the point home how much in control he is, one must pay attention to the Wonderland segment again. Edd and Molly, while there, speak in completely garbled speech, to the point where subtitles are needed to understand them. Susan appears to speak a bit more clear, but still garbled, her subtitles sometimes needed as well. And then "Bon" appears, and his speech is perfectly clear.
• Susan's appearance in what "Bon" calls "Wonderland" is this. She looks gray and completely drained of blood with her eyes missing, her mouth agape and bleeding, and her neck being clearly broke with it hanging to the side of her body. Her appearance clearly reflects how she died and she looks almost zombie like in how she moves. Her voice sounds hoarse and completely terrified. If she looks like this then what the hell does Rosemary's ghost look like in Wonderland with her body being torn limb from limb? Or Charles with his missing face? Or Ashley with her mutilated face falling off?

Lacrimosa

• We see a different angle of Bon making Susan beautiful which was originally censored in Cyberfun Tech. Susan's body is mostly in Banny's animatronic suit with her head crudely jammed into it below the animatronic's endo head, despite this she is still alive and starts actively struggling as Bon decides to place Banny's mask on her head. After that we catch a brief still of the mask lopsidedly placed on her body with blood gushing out of it. The fact that she still was trying to get away from him despite how viciously he mangled her before is both terrifying and heartbreaking. All of this while Charle's voice call is being played over the sequence, with him being desperate to try to find out what happened to her which we know likely never happened before his own similarly horrifying fate of being mutilated and put into Boozoo.
  • Even worse is what Bon does before he puts the mask on her head. He takes a moment to wave it front of her, and then put his finger to his lips; like he's taunting her with what he's about to do to.
• Most of this short is an fully animated version of the bunny is starving segment only with the added on horrifying factor that we can see just how mangled Susan is as she is trying to find help. Blood is seeping out of the Banny animatronics head and suit with Susan's neck visibly broken with it hanging to the side of her body with the Banny mask still on. Despite all that she is still alive as signaled by her croaking rasp and is walking agonizingly around Bon's Burgers in the dark trying to find help to no avail.
• An updated version of Susan's mutilated face from Relocate Project can briefly be seen in the dark of the facial recognition software segment just grinning.
  • During her wandering Susan sees the Bon entity watching her from the shadows with a terrifyingly wide grin at a few points. Words do not do justice for how horrifying he looks in this tape.
• At the end of the tape Susan sees what looks like a door to Wonderland open up right infront her. When she tries to walk to it her vision pans over to animatronic Bon with his face missing looming over her before the tape cuts out. Susan was so close to perhaps finding help or just moving on to a better afterlife before Bon stopped her.

Non-canon works

• The Mysterious House:
  • This is the first "non-canon" work from Martin Walls, created as a Halloween special to satisfy people waiting for Walten Files 3 to come out. If you thought that meant it wouldn't be as scary as the main series, you'd be wrong. So very wrong.
  • Pretty much everything about the Pumpkin Rabbit. Even before his true nature is revealed, there's just something off about him, probably due to his voice or his unusually calm demeanor. When he tries to convince Tammy and Ducky to stay for the night, he almost sounds like a pedophile trying to lure children into his house. Not that he's any less scarier when he reveals his true self to Tammy.
  Pumpkin Rabbit: I think it's a great idea. Besides, it'll just be for one night.
  • The scene where Tammy finds the corpses of Duckie and the Pumpkin Rabbit's other victims. Particularly because it's never shown how they ended up like that.
    • Ducky in particular looks like he's melting, while the fox kid almost looks like he got his jaw torn off.
    • Poor Tammy's reaction also counts. She's clearly horrified upon seeing her friend dead, and she sounds like she's in tears as she confronts the Pumpkin Rabbit.
  Tammy: What have you done!?

  • The scene partially counts as Nightmare Retardant though, as the version of “Streets of Cairo” playing in the background has the same amplification effect that’s applied to earrape videos.
  • Let's not forget the Pumpkin Rabbit's true face beneath his mask, which seems to be a rotting animal skull or human head contorted into a smile.
• Boozoo's Ghosts:
  • Mortality. A chilling subversion of Don't Fear the Reaper, crossed with everything scary about The Pumpkin Rabbit multiplied to absurd degrees, he's quite possible the scariest character Martin Walls has ever created. Which is saying something.
    • Of particular note is when he appears after Boozoo's Hope Spot. Everything is disintegrating around him, the music is distorting, and Boozoo is begging to make it stop...and then everything goes dead silent as the camera cuts to Mortality looking out the window, just staring. Then he dashes towards the camera at unbelievably fast speeds, all while letting out a maniacal laugh straight out of hell itself. Holy fuck.
  • The Sad Ghost becomes very creepy when he gets mad, growing long arms and a terrifying face.
  • The entire story is just horrifying from beginning to end. In the original Christmas Carol, the Ghosts help Ebenezer see the error of his ways, and at the end he sets out to be a better person. In this story, the Ghosts do nothing but torture him, ignoring all his pleas and just telling him, over and over, that his greed has consequences. Right when it seems like Boozoo is finally free to start anew...it ends up being a trick, and Mortality brutally kills him.
  • And the way Boozoo dies is brutal indeed. After Mortality gives him what appears to be a present, Boozoo finds out that the box contains a clock, which starts ringing shortly thereafter and more or less telling Boozoo that his time is up. As the poor guy drops the box in shock and fear, Mortality appears behind him and proceeds to slowly melt and distort his entire body, face included. Then the video cuts to Boozoo's bedroom, with the man himself mutilated so much a part of his face is deliberately censored. And as an additional kick to the teeth, Mortality did the same thing with Boozoo's younger version right in front of the horrified original's eyes, as if to show him what fate would await him.
  • Ignorance and Want can come of as this due to their appearence, which contrasts the more cartoony style of the video.

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I'm half crazy, all for the love of you...