Blackbird | The Real Jake | Hide-and-Seek
Your secrets won't stay secret for long.
"The Blackbird will make you tell."
Sam O'Neil and Nole Markham are two college film students paired up for a project. They decide to make their short film a horror story around an animatronic called the Blackbird, which haunts the main character until he confesses his darkest secret. In jest, Nole tells Sam his darkest secret: that he was a bully in high school. A previous bully victim himself, Sam isn't impressed by Nole's recounts and leaves in a huff.
The next day, Sam goes missing, with his blackbird suit feathers found on the railroad tracks; it's assumed he was hit by a train. Nole is very shaken, and becomes even more shaken when he starts seeing the Blackbird everywhere. Then it begins haunting his dreams, and he's convinced it's trying to drag him down to hell, unless he makes up for the sins of his past.
The sixteenth Five Nights at Freddy's: Fazbear Frights story, and the first of the sixth book.
Tropes related to “Blackbird”:
- Abusive Parents: While Christine's father is kind and caring, when she talks about her mother, it's implied her mom was incredibly judgemental and may have pushed an eating disorder on her.
- The Alleged Car: Nole drives an old car that used to be cool once, but turned into a "piece of junk on wheels" over many years of use.
- Anti-Villain: The Blackbird is just trying to force Nole to become a better person. It stops hunting once he makes amends with Sam and Christine.
- Asshole Victim: The boys' movie character was conceived as an animatronic bird who specifically targets Asshole Victims. Nole is set up to be one, but repents and survives.
- Big Damn Heroes: Ian, Nole's neighbor in the frat building, manages to break down Nole's door and wake him up as the Blackbird is torturing him in his dream.
- Break the Haughty: The Blackbird's torture sure wises Nole up fast.
- Brilliant, but Lazy: Nole is a variant; he seems to have a lot of academic interests, such as describing his pranks as science experiments and quoting Shakespeare. However, he also proclaims himself to be an idiot and makes light of anyone who claims otherwise.
- Bully Magnet: When Nole admits to Christine that he'd been her school bully, she dryly asks, "Which one?" Apparently she had so many she can't remember their names.
- Character Development: Nole starts treating everyone nicer, starting with Ian, Amber, and finally Christine. By the time Sam returns, he's become a different person.
- Dark and Troubled Past: It's implied with Sam; he won't admit his dark secret, and at the end all he says was that he "got back" at one of his bullies. Considering his frightened reaction to Nole bringing up Freddy's, it may have something to do with that?
- Deadpan Snarker: A lot of Amber's dialogue is sarcastic quips.
- Decoy Protagonist: The first chunk of the short is from Sam's POV, making us think he'll be the protagonist... until he goes missing.
- Dissension Remorse: Nole feels so bad about his last argument with Sam that it either summons the Blackbird or he starts hallucinating it. Either way, he ends up in the middle of campus in the middle of the night screaming apologies.
- Easily Forgiven: It probably doesn't seem easy to Nole, who got tormented by the Blackbird the whole way here, but once he actually apologizes to Christine, she just gets up and hugs him.
- Everybody Lives: Despite the setup, all the human characters make it out of this one alive.
- Feathered Fiend: The Blackbird is certainly not friendly.
- Formerly Fat: Christine apparently lost weight after taking up dance as a way to let out her pent-up aggression.
- Freudian Excuse: While he's trying to sleep, Nole goes through his psych class knowledge and tries to figure out why he'd been such a bully as a kid.
- Gentle Giant: Ian.
- Good Parents: The O'Neils and Earl Wilber, who are loving and supportive.
- Goofy Print Underwear: Ian likes to go around the frat building wearing only boxers with funny prints on it.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Kind, turning-the-other-cheek Christine Wilber has pretty blonde hair.
- Happy Ending: And Everybody Lives, too!
- Hidden Depths: Joked about, when proud idiot Nole quotes Shakespeare.
- In Name Only: The Blackbird animatronic is inspired by the Fazbear Entertainment creatures, but has nothing to do with the actual brand. Meaning this has really nothing to do with Five Nights at Freddy's.
- Jerkass Realization: Nole has this as he thinks about how his pranks on Christine would have felt from her perspective, and he realizes that they were never that funny at all.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Was the titular creature actually a supernatural entity, a manifestation of Noel's own guilty conscience, a very much alive Sam playing a prank on Noel as revenge for Noel's behavior on set, or some combination of the three?
- It's also been suggested that illusion discs may be part of the Blackbird's disuigse, as it's often accompanied by screeching and whining sounds, similar to the discs.
- Mistaken for Junkie: When Nole starts screaming in the middle of campus during the night, a security officer asks him if he's on drugs.
- Momma's Boy: Implied; Nole remembers his mom giving him advice on how to relax when sleeping.
- Monster of the Week: The Blackbird.
- The Movie Buff: Both Sam and Nole, the film students, but mainly Nole, who's convinced that all horror films have to be bloody.
- Must Make Amends: The only thing that will stop the Blackbird.
- Nightmare Sequence: We have a couple short ones, as the Blackbird screams Nole awake every time he tries to get to sleep. Then we get a truly horrific one where he can't move, and feels that the bird is dragging him to hell.
- Not Quite Dead: Sam was presumed dead, but his body was eventually found by a search party still alive but with a broken leg.
- Parting-Words Regret: After his accident, Sam regrets arguing with Nole, but Nole brushes him off, having realized that he was the one in the wrong.
- The Prankster: Nole thought of his bullying as fun pranks, and was really proud of the stealth puns he made out of them.
- Reformed Bully: The crux of Nole's character arc. He at first claims it's his biggest regret, but it's pretty clear he still thinks what he did was funny. Once the Blackbird makes him think, though, he realizes what an asshole he actually was.
- The Quiet One: Sam, the very quiet student.
- Schoolyard Bully All Grown Up: Nole's this for a while, until the Blackbird arrives.
- Shout-Out: Specifically, the Blackbird is one to Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven."
- Token Rich Student: Nole's family is apparently loaded, and he's in a fraternity just because his family has been in it for generations.
- You Remind Me of X: Nole realizes, to his confusion, that his new girlfriend Amber looks a lot like Christine.
