Fazbear Frights: The Stitchwraith Stingers / Recap

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It's not as bad as it looks...

“But as the series went on, a meta story emerged in the post-story stingers, centering around one determined detective, a child trapped between worlds, and an evil that just won't die.”

– The Stingers, as described by Five Nights at Freddy's: The Ultimate Guide.

Everett Larson's life could be a lot better. His heavy workload as a police detective led to his wife divorcing him, and he hardly ever sees his son. To top it off, he's been assigned a case investigating sightings of the Stitchwraith, a figure of urban legend dressed in a black cloak with a white mask. It's been seen scavenging garbage in alleyways, and more recently a series of bodies have been left in its wake. Larson is reluctant, but ultimately accepts the case.

Jake awakens, trapped in a shambling metal endoskeleton. He's not alone- another boy, named Andrew, shares this body. Neither are entirely certain what's going on, but Andrew does remember wanting revenge on someone who hurt him. Jake quickly realizes Andrew's anger has somehow infected various objects, which have become malevolent and dangerous. He makes it his mission to find and destroy them, before someone gets hurt.

Little do Larson and Jake know their missions will set them on a collision course with each other. Together, they must untangle the secrets behind an emotion-based pseudoscience, both Andrew and Jake's pasts, and how they tie together with the decades old murders that occurred at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza.

The Stitchwraith Stingers are included in every Five Nights at Freddy's: Fazbear Frights book but the final, hidden behind the "About the Authors" page. Connecting most of the stories together, it tells a continuous story that explains part of the series' lore, mainly about Remnant and Agony. Integral backstories for Andrew and Jake were told in "The Man in Room 1280" and "The Real Jake" respectively, and Big Bad Eleanor was introduced in "To Be Beautiful."

Tropes related to “The Stitchwraith Stingers”:

A-J

Accidental Murder: The Stitchwraith isn't actually trying to kill anyone; Andrew just wanted to scare the people annoying him, and Jake was just trying to figure out what was happening. All of their murders are either on pure accident or done by William.
Agent Scully: For the first half of the epilogues, Larson is trying to find a rational explanation for everything that's going on. Once he sees the Agony, though, it's pretty hard to pretend there isn't something more supernatural happening.
The Aggressive Drug Dealer: Two try to kill or maim the fake Renelle, who's impersonating one of their customers. The Stitchwraith, now only controlled by Jake, tosses one through the window, and burns the words "Just Say No" onto the forehead of the other.
All-Loving Hero: Jake, who just wants to help everyone.
Alternate Continuity: Seems to exist in one parallel to the game timeline, as the connections to "Into the Pit" imply that it takes place in the universe where the missing children were found.
Ambiguous Robots: In "To Be Beautiful," Eleanor seemed to just be a messed-up robot with the same goal as the original Circus Baby: to look human and escape. However, when she appears in these epilogues, she's able to take on whatever form she wants, apparently hunted numbers insecure teenagers, and might be a being made of pure Agony.
Anachronic Order: Epilogues 3 and 4 take place before the first two, and are placed into the book before the stories that take place beforehand, "The Man in Room 1280" and "The Real Jake."
Ascended Meme:
- When Five Nights at Freddy's 3 was first being teased and no one knew what Springtrap was, one of the most common theories (either jokingly or otherwise) was that he was an amalgamation of all the previous animatronics, with some overeager fans dubbing the new animatronic "Salvage". The ending of Epilogue 6 sees William Afton — the man who originally inhabited the Springtrap suit — build a giant mechanical body for himself to inhabit using the scrapped remains of other animatronics, including at least one member of the original Freddy's crew (the version of Foxy from "Step Closer"), arguably realizing this long-standing urban legend.
- A small one from Epilogue 10: at one point, the narration refers to the homeless man that Jake met in Epilogue 8 as "the man behind the Dumpster"; this slightly odd phrasing seems to be a nod to "the man behind the slaughter", a line from the FNAF fan-song "It's Been So Long" which has become the fandom's go-to nickname for William Afton.
- In the final epilogue, one of Eleanor and Larson's battles involves Eleanor taking him to a warehouse of junk and leaping out of a suspicious chest; the chest may be a reference to the Five Nights at Freddy's 4 box mystery, which is to this day still unsolved.
Back for the Dead: William Afton, who turns out to have been inside the Stitchwraith with Jake and Andrew. He materializes in the sixth stinger to try and prevent Andrew from moving on, and in the seventh stinger builds himself a huge body out of Agony-touched robotics, only to get knocked out by the Puppet and thrown into a lake.
- The Puppet also follows this trope, as she appears solely to mess up the Agony and drag it into the lake.
Battle in the Center of the Mind: In the final epilogue, Larson has to continuously dig through Eleanor's memories, find the ballpit, and then beat the everloving crap out of her in order to keep her from mentally killing him. After the fourth time he does this, Jake is able to trap Eleanor in her own worst memory.
Big Bad: Afton thinks he's gonna be this. Turns out it's Eleanor.
Big Bad Wannabe: William was pretending to be stronger than he really was. In reality, his soul was barely clinging onto reality while something far worse, later revealed to be Eleanor, has been helping him.
Big Good: Jake, inside the Stitchwraith, turns out to be this for the stingers.
Brutal Honesty: Phineas always says what he means and what he thinks, even if it makes him sound crazy.
The Bus Came Back: For the following characters:
- Margie, who actually makes her first appearance here. We see that three years after Jake's death, she's still living in the house and has adopted multiple cats.
- Grim, a homeless man who appears in the second epilogue, is found by Jake in the eighth. Jake sees he's having a nightmare and tries to ease his pain.
- Eleanor, the Monster of the Week from "To Be Beautiful," gets to be a major antagonist.
Bus Crash: The following characters from the other shorts get KO-ed inbetween their appearances there and here:
- Millie Fitzsimmons, who is confirmed to have died inside of Funtime Freddy.
- Fetch, which gets knocked out in a thunderstorm and collected by Phineas.
- Plushtrap Chaser, whose pieces are picked up by the Stitchwraith.
- Ella, which is picked up by the Stitchwraith.
- the Foxy from "Step Closer", whose mask is seen in the Stitchwraith's collection. It's possible they're what took him at the end of the story.
Canon Character All Along: Andrew's vengeful attitude toward the man who killed him, coupled with the confirmation that he was attached to said man and continually tortured him, heavily hints toward him being the Vengeful Spirit of Ultimate Custom Night, and thus one of the victims of William Afton. However, whether or not he's the actual canon spirit or a parallel is up in the air.
- As a victim of William Afton, Andrew is seemingly not one of the games' Missing Children, who are named as Susie, Gabriel, Fritz, Jeremy and (most likely) Cassidy. It's possible he was the mysterious sixth kid in "Into the Pit," making his appearance the divergence between universes, but this is unclear, and the sixth kid might also represent Charlie as the Puppet.
- He is speculated to be the Golden Freddy of this universe, possibly replacing Cassidy, as curly black hair that matches his was seen inside of the Fredbear animatronic in "The New Kid." However, upon appearing as a ghost, he wears an alligator mask, while the Golden Freddy Victim wears a matching Fredbear mask in their in-game appearance, implying that Andrew was stuffed into some kind of alligator costume or animatronic. The curly black hair may also represent the novel trilogy's Cassidy, who is also described with black hair, or Renelle, who has the same descriptor.
Children Are Innocent: Jake's only prior experience with homelessness and drug addicts was through television commercials which advertised "Just say no!"
Cloudcuckoolander: Phineas is seen as this by everyone who knows him, as none of them understand the idea of Remnant or Agony.
Continuity Cavalcade: The last two epilogues; epilogue 10 shows Eleanor being behind many of the previous Fazbear Frights stories, and epilogue 11 shows even more familiar locations as Larson fights through Eleanor's memories.
Creepy Good: By all accounts, the Stitchwraith is pretty terrifying to behold, even by the standards of the usual robots of this series.
Dark Lord on Life Support: The only reason Afton was able to assemble the Agony was because Eleanor was helping him.
Defective Detective: Larson easily slots into this trope, as a divorced, cynical Workaholic who needs to learn how to spend more time with his family.
Delicate and Sickly: Jake was this in life, and we're told that Renelle was this when she was younger.
Descent into Addiction: Fake!Renelle tells Jake that she began doing drugs after her father kicked her out and she was unable to get over the passing of her mother. Despite her not being the real Renelle, her story aligns enough with the memories Jake is able to go through that this may have been the case with the real girl.
Disc-One Final Boss: There are eleven epilogues. Afton is killed in the seventh one.
Disposable Vagrant: Eleanor traps a homeless Addled Addict in a box and impersonates her to get close to the Stitchwraith. Luckily, she was able to be found and brought to a hospital.
The Dog Was the Mastermind: It turns out that Afton was too wimpy to be the real Big Bad. Our real Big Bad was... Monster of the Week #2 from the first book, Eleanor!
Drugs Are Bad: Jake finds a passed-out drug addict in a warehouse, and her dealers soon come with a knife to collect on her debt to them. Only really knowing drugs from anti-drug commercials, Jake defends the girl and decides to burn a message into one of the dealer's faces.
The End... Or Is It?: At the end of the final epilogue for the original Fazbear Frights series, Eleanor had been defeated, Renelle Talbert has been rescued and reunited with her father, Jake decides to help the spirits of Eleanor's victims trapped in the ball pit rest in peace before seemingly moving on to the afterlife himself as the Stitchwraith seemingly shuts down for good in the ball pit, and Detective Everette Larson has decided to start spending more time with his family after the incident while taking Eleanor's heart-shaped pendant with him after Dr. Talbert gave it to him. As he leaves however, Larson begins to hear what appears to be singing coming from the pendant, implying that Eleanor may not truly by gone, before seemingly brushing it off and heading home.
Eviler than Thou: Eleanor is supposedly worse than William Afton himself.
Failed a Spot Check: Dr. Talbert is so relieved to see what he thinks is his daughter that he completely misses the giant Mechanical Abomination in his living room and unconscious police officer on the floor.
The Farmer and the Viper: Following her similar ploy in "To Be Beautiful," Eleanor disguises herself as a homeless drug addict and lets Jake take care of her, ultimately trying to get him into Dr. Talbert's house so she could use him for Remnant.
Fate Worse than Death: In the final epilogue, Jake forces Eleanor to fuse with him, and entraps her in her own worst memory forever.
Final Boss: Fighting Eleanor takes up half the final epilogue, with most of it being Larson attacking her through her own memories. Jake eventually takes her out for good.
Forklift Fu: In desperation, Larson tries to push Afton's Agony Amalgamation into the lake by strapping the Puppet to a forklift and ramming it into him. Creative solution, we'll give him that.
Foul Ball Pit: The ballpit from "Into the Pit" is revealed to be infested with Agony in this series, as well as holding multiple blood samples and entrapped souls.
Friendly Ghost: Jake. Once Andrew moves on, Jake begins using his Stitchwraith body to try and help people who are mentally hurting by recovering their better memories.
Functional Addict: The fake Renelle seems to be somewhat well-adjusted despite being a street addict; this is because she's not an addict, but Eleanor in disguise. The Stitchwraith later finds the real addict and gets her to a hospital.
The Ghost: The real Renelle is never actually seen on-screen, only referenced by Eleanor in disguise and her father when talking to Larson. It's said that she was apparently found and recovered offscreen.
Ghost Amnesia: Neither Jake nor Andrew can remember many details about their life, mainly just fleeting memories and strong feelings. Jake knows that he was "very angry" at someone and wanted to get back at him, so he'd attached himself to him, and Jake remembers being sad and sick. Jake is able to move on when he remembers a happy day with his dad.
- Millie is also unable to remember her death, only that she's desperate to get back home to her family. Everyone else in the ballpit seems to be in the same predicament.
Glamour: Eleanor is seen able to shapeshift into whoever she wants... meaning she really didn't have to rip apart Sarah if she wanted to impersonate her, but, well. She's evil!
Good All Along: The Stitchwraith is initially built up as the Big Bad through Detective Larson's side of the story; it's not until the fourth epilogue that it's revealed to be, at worst, an Unwitting Instigator of Doom.
Good Is Not Nice: Really, Andrew is just an innocent kid who wants the man who killed him to be punished. When Jake first talks to him, though, he's very confrontational and rude.
Grand Theft Me: After doing this to Sarah and an unnamed drug addict, Eleanor impersonates Renelle in order to get Dr. Talbert's sympathy. Considering Dr. Talbert's story about the necklace, it's possible she came from Renelle in the first place.
Greater-Scope Villain: Epilogue 10 reveals Eleanor to have been the other evil powering up Afton's Amalgamation. She also turns out to have been behind a lot of the previous stories' tragedies, having set up the events of "Out of Stock," "1:35 A.M.," "Step Closer," "Blackbird", "Hide-and-Seek," and possibly more, considering the locations in her memories.
Hair-Raising Hare: Even while making a fifteen-foot giant mechanical monster powered by pain and suffering, Afton has to go the extra mile and make sure to give the thing rabbit ears. Hey, he's got a theme going!
Haunted Technology: Phineas Taggart collects Agony-infused items for his studies, believing that Agony is what causes the so-called Hauntings and trying to figure out how to use it to power things.
Healthy in Heaven: When Jake appears to Millie as an apparition of his true self, rather than the Stitchwraith, he has the long brown hair that he lost due to chemo in life.
The Heartless: The last epilogue implies that Eleanor is one of these. Dr. Talbert reveals that her pendant was originally made for his daughter Renelle, and includes some of the girl's Remnant; the end also has Larson hear something distant inside of it, implying an illusion disc or part of Eleanor. With Jake also saying that Eleanor claiming her name was Renelle sounded like a "half-truth," and her memories leading him to the actual Talbert house, meaning she had actually been there and experienced some of her story, it's possible that Eleanor is a separated form of Agony, utilizing the Remnant inside of the necklace.
The Heavy: Andrew is the source behind all the infections.
He Who Fights Monsters: Andrew, who stuck around in order to keep tabs on his murderer and is now totally down to kill innocent detectives if it means he and Jake are left alone.
Hijacked by Ganon: Subverted. The series initially seems to have no true Big Bad, with each story featuring a different antagonist; however, the Epilogues reveal the existence of the Stitchwraith, which is inadvertently responsible for causing the items in many of the other stories to become infected and turn evil. However, it's not until Epilogue 6 that we learn the true source of the infection itself: Five Nights at Freddy's: William Afton, who came back after the events of "The Man in Room 1280", and assembles a new body for himself out of the compacted remains of the infected items – only to be utterly curb-stomped by the Puppet in the very next epilogue, revealing him as nothing more than a Big Bad Wannabe, not helped by how the epilogue closed on the ominous revelation that he was extremely weak and only as dangerous as he was because something else was helping him. This mysterious entity, later confirmed to be Eleanor from "To Be Beautiful", escaped as the Puppet began to tear apart the Amalgamation, abandoning its "puppet" to seemingly die in the process, and becomes the true Big Bad of the series with her defeat happening in the last epilogue.
Hoist by Their Own Petard: Phineas, who is immediately killed by the Stitchwraith upon its activation.
I Am the Noun: When asked what he even is anymore, considering he's barely William now, the Amalgamation's only spoken line is "I am agony."
I Choose to Stay: Jake had the possibility of moving on early and being with his father in Heaven, but he stayed behind because he didn't want to leave Andrew alone.
It's All My Fault: Dr. Talbert says that his studies on remnant are what started all this, and what made him lose Renelle. He then asks Larson to take the heart pendant of Remnant, saying that he "can't even bear to look at it anymore."

K-Z

Karma Houdini Warranty: After getting away scott-free in book two, Eleanor finally gets defeated in the eleventh epilogue.
Killed Off for Real: Jake manages to send Andrew to the afterlife in the sixth epilogue, and he never shows up again. In the seventh epilogue, the Puppet finally drags Afton down into a lake, destroying the Agony creature.
Kill It with Water: Larson and the Puppet manage to drag the Agony into the lake.
Kindhearted Cat Lover: Margie has become this after losing Evan and Jake. She was given a cat (possibly by Gillian) to keep her company, only for the cat to give birth, and she couldn't bear to give away the kittens.
Lotus-Eater Machine: Jake finds himself in one of these after his battery pack is shot, living in the image of a child's happiest birthday party. He is able to pull himself out of it in order to defeat Eleanor.
Made of Evil: Both the Agony and Eleanor herself.
Mad Scientist: Dr. Phineas Taggart, who makes a robot out of haunted artifacts in order to study the effects of Agony.
Mechanical Abomination:
- The fourth epilogue reveals that the Stitchwraith is one of these, being a rogue endoskeleton with a modified doll's mask, powered by Fetch's battery and the agony carried with it. The first thing it does upon activation is kill Phineas, it's own "creator," by effectively (and most likely accidentally) obliterating his consciousness with a touch. It's suggested that this is what it does to the rest of its victims.
- As for the Agony, it's hard to find a more fitting term to describe a fifteen-foot-tall amalgamation of various Fazbear Entertainment products, each part being used in the wrong place, powered by the soul of a long-dead Serial Killer and evil incarnate.
Meta Twist: For pretty much the series' entire run, William Afton has been the definitive Big Bad of the series; even before his name was known — even when he was just a nameless, faceless figure mentioned in some newspaper articles — his evil has cast a shadow over the franchise and cemented him as the source (directly or otherwise) of pretty much all the evil in the franchise. So when it starts to become clear that the episodic stories aren't so episodic as they seem, and that everything seems to originate from a heavily-burned man alive against all odds, many fans smelled his fingerprints all over the series; and sure enough, Epilogue 6 has him cement himself as The Man Behind the Man for the infected items, forming a vast mechanical body for himself out of infected junk. Case closed, right? Wrong. The very next Epilogue has Afton and his Amalgamation Killed Off for Real by the Puppet, and it becomes clear that — as evil as Afton was — the only reason he had the strength to do anything after years of torment by Andrew was because Eleanor was feeding him power.
Mind Hive: The Stitchwraith is possessed simultaneously by Jake, Andrew, and William Afton. The Agony consists of William Afton, Eleanor, and later the Puppet.
Mind Rape: With a single touch, the Stitchwraith can overwhelm a victim's mind so severely as to induce convulsions and ultimately reduce them to a near-mummified state. It's not on purpose, though, and once Afton and Andrew disappear, Jake is able to unlock a more useful ability.
Mistaken for Junkie: Eleanor does this on purpose, impersonating a drug addict in order to get close to the Stitchwraith.
Morality Chain: Jake serves as this to Andrew, keeping him in check and preventing him from accidentally killing anyone else with the animatronic's shock function.
The Mourning After:
- It's pretty clear that Margie still isn't over the deaths of Evan and Jake, as she has kept Evan's room exactly the way it was and cracks her voice when saying how long she's lived there alone.
- While not stated exactly how, Dr. Talbert's grief over his wife's death and obsession with Remnant is apparently what drew Renelle away.
My Death Is Just the Beginning: After dying, William came back, possessed the Stitchwraith, knocked away the spirits inside, created his Amalgamation and then possessed it. Except he died again.
Mysterious Past: Even ignoring the question of what Eleanor is, what the hell was the Puppet doing in an evidence locker?
No Full Name Given: Andrew is never given a surname, and Dr. Talbert is never given a first.
Not Quite Dead: Jake. Well, technically he's dead the entire time he's inside the Stitchwraith, but the trope still applies. Epilogue 6 ended with him being dragged back down into the trash compactor, with the remains of the Stitchwraith being ejected from Afton's Amalgamation and lying still, implying that Jake had been rendered Deader than Dead. However, Epilogue 7 has him get back up moments later, now in full control of the Stitchwraith, and attempt to stop Afton's Amalgamation. It's implied he finally moves on in the final epilogue.
Once More, with Clarity: Epilogue 10 features, as part of The Reveal, a sequence in which Larson, in a kind of hallucination or Mental Time Travel, witnesses Eleanor's past... and learns that she was responsible for several of the events of the past stories. In particular, we see her placing the eyeballs and teeth into the Plushtrap Chaser, scratching on Delilah's window to make her think Ella is stalking her, holding Pete immobilized as the surgeons prepare to cut him open, arriving at the Hide-And-Seek game with a knowing smile after Toby kills himself, and leaving Sam disoriented in full Blackbird costume on the train tracks.
One-Winged Angel: Once free of those pesky meddling kids, Afton combines all of the agony-infected metal to become a fifteen-foot monstrosity with rabbit ears, declaring himself Agony.
Plot-Triggering Death: Renelle's mother dying apparently is what split her and her father and caused some serious crap to go down. Afton's explosion in "The Man in Room 1280" and Jake's passing in "The Real Jake" also enable the Stitchwraith's plotline to occur.
Posthumous Character: Technically, Jake and Andrew are both dead by the time they end up in this story.
Powered by a Forsaken Child: Phineas didn't intend to put children in the Stitchwraith, just kinda hoping that it would be powered by Agony. Considering his Mad Scientist persona, he might not have been too worried either way.
Red Oni, Blue Oni: In the Stitchwraith, Andrew is the rude and aggressive Red to Jake's timid and kind Blue.
Refusing Paradise: Temporarily. In the fifth epilogue, Jake realizes that if he concentrates on good memories, he can move on. He eventually does, but only after the infected items, William, Eleanor and Andrew have been dealt with.
The Reveal: The audience realizes Renelle isn't what she seems when Jake first notices her recognizable heart-shaped pendant. Jake realizes this in the next epilogue when he sees that she's not Renelle at all, then watches her shapeshift to better match the girl's form.
Revenge Before Reason: Andrew spends years torturing William Afton in an eternal nightmare rather than let the two of them move on to the afterlife (where William will probably go to hell, anyway), and then when trapped in the Stitchwraith sulks in his anger as Jake tries to fix things. When Larson points a gun at them, Andrew begs Jake to let him kill the detective to protect them.
Shock and Awe: The Stitchwraith's killing touch happens though an electrical shock powered by Fetch's battery pack. It leaves the victims with black liquid dripping out of their eyes.
Sole Survivor: Jake and Eleanor are the only infected items not rendered inert by the end of Epilogue 7. By Epilogue 11, Jake has defeated Eleanor, leaving him the sole survivor, and the end implies that he moves on after calming the ballpit spirits.
The Stinger: True to the title, all of these stories are placed after the "About the Author" sections of the book, making them a literary post-credits scene. Sequel Series Tales from the Pizzaplex would reuse this format for the Mimic Epilogues.
Troubled Child: Andrew, who has a lot of anger issues and isn't too peeved about accidentally killing people. From Jake's thoughts on him, we can tell that Jake thinks he's someone who is hurting and is simply looking for control in his afterlife.
Two Beings, One Body: Jake and Andrew in the Stitchwraith. Afton's in there too, but he doesn't do much talking.
Unexpected Character: It turns out the evidence in Larson's bag that he was hoping to use to barter with the Stitchwraith was the Puppet, which is able to defeat the Agony in the seventh epilogue.
Unfinished Business: Jake originally stays behind solely to take care of Andrew and make sure the Agony-infected items are destroyed. He eventually (supposedly) moves on only after going to the ballpit and finding a way to put the souls there to rest as well, rather than the eternal torment Eleanor was feeding on.
Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Firstly Phineas, who puts Afton's agony into a robot and sets it loose. Then it turns out that it's ultimately Dr. Talbert, whose studies on Remnant gave Eleanor her terrible powers.
Vengeful Ghost: Andrew.
We Hardly Knew Ye: Afton lasts one main story and two epilogues before the Puppet kills him, this time for good.
Wham Shot: Larson opening the evidence bag and finding the Puppet's mask.
What Happened to the Mouse?: To wrap up all loose ends, we're simply told that Renelle and the unnamed drug addict that Eleanor impersonated were recovered safely offscreen and are totally happy now. How'd they do this? Don't worry about it.
- The ballpit is stated to be either Eleanor's work or somehow the thing that created her. This explains the infusions of agony, but doesn't explain whose blood was in the samples; Eleanor doesn't bleed, and the reports Larson got said that each sample was from a different date someone went missing, but was all from the same person, meaning someone was bleeding into the ballpit on different dates over several decades.
When You Coming Home, Dad?: The reason for Larson's family troubles are his obsession with his work. He's never able to keep any promises to his son, Ryan, which makes Ryan angry at him. He ends the story by finally taking a break and watching his son's baseball game.

Recap / Fazbear Frights: The Stitchwraith Stingers

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Recap / Fazbear Frights: The Stitchwraith Stingers

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