Help Wanted | HAPPS | B-7
Steve found himself holding the door less forcefully. “But it’s not real,” he said, even though he felt his resistance weakening.
"Reality is what we make it, Steve," DJ Dan said. "Make your own reality, and make it beautiful. All you have to do is push the button."
Steve Snodgrass is an aspiring Indie Game developer working on a basic fetch-quest game about cartoony rodents whenever he's not at his 9-5 janitorial job. To his surprise, though, at work, a man from Fazbear Entertainment approaches him about making indie games based around the "false" rumors about the company's past. Not wanting to make fun of real tragedies, Steve declines.
The next thing he knows, he's waking up in a strange house, with his upcoming date tending to him dutifully. It's been several years, and he's married with two kids now, with memory issues brought on by a previous car accident. They need money, really bad, and so when Mr. Edwards arrives again with the same offer, Steve doesn't have much choice but to take it. Almost just as suddenly, he starts having horrible nightmares, and soon begins questioning why it doesn't seem that he can leave his house, and what that strange ringing noise could be...
The fourth Tales from the Pizzaplex story, and the first of the second book, HAPPS. Due to its name and content, it is heavily implied to be a Stealth Prequel to Five Nights At Freddys VR Help Wanted.
Tropes related to “Help Wanted”:
- Alliterative Name: Steve Snodgrass.
- Artificial Human: The Snodgrass family turns out to just be illusions placed over base robots on tracks.
- Author Avatar: Steve Snodgrass is clearly an Expy of series creator Scott Cawthon, with him working on a game similar to Chipper & Sons Lumber Co. before being approached by Fazbear.
- Brown Note: As always, the illusion discs are able to emit a ringing that creates complex illusions.
- Cabin Fever: In order to maintain the illusion, Steve isn't allowed to leave the house, with several different excuses being provided to him. He starts to question this when he starts seeing things that Victoria says aren't real.
- Call-Back: It's almost definite that an illusion disc is what is used to make Steve's house and family look real, as Steve hears the same distant ringing as John, and breaking the smoke alarm breaks the illusion, similar to how Officer Burke shot the spotlights that hid the discs in the fake Freddy's.
- Cheerful Child: As part of Steve's perfect life, Avery and Abigail are made to be the happiest, most loving children.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Brock Edwards and anyone else from Fazbear Entertainment who signed off on kidnapping a man and forcing him to make video games.
- Downer Ending: Steve decides to stay in a false reality where he is exploited, and possibly dies at the end as well.
- Failed a Spot Check: Steve walks into a house to meet with a woman on a dating app, only to pass out. When he wakes up, she convinces him that it's been several years and they're now married with kids.
- Foreshadowing: The audience might just notice that Steve is never able to physically leave the house, and that there is always the same voice on the radio.
- Gaslighting: Fazbear's main method of keeping Steve under control. Victoria convinces Steve that he has memory issues, making him more reliant on the "truth" that she speaks, as she continuously comes up with more and more reasons they can't leave the house or call outside. When Fazbear starts amping up the nightmare illusions to encourage Steve to make the fourth game, Victoria tries to convince him that he's imagining things.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: Steve's false reality is created solely to push him to make the Five Nights at Freddy's games and pump them out as fast as possible.
- Manipulative Bitch: Whoever voices DJ Dan, who's made to convince Steve to turn the illusion discs back on and continue the game.
- Monster of the Week: Fazbear Entertainment and the robots they created.
- Morality Adjustment: Steve initially refuses to make the video games, not wanting to make light of real deaths. He has to change his mind when his totally-real family needs money.
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Nightmare Fuel: Literally; Fazbear starts sending Steve increasingly frightening visions in order to inspire him for the fourth horror game. - Nightmare Sequence: Steve has constant night terrors, though it's unclear if these are waking illusions or actual nightmares.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: "And now, by special request, here’s the latest hit from Saylor Thrift."
- Plagued by Nightmares: Fazbear intentionally puts Steve through this in order to inspire his horror games.
- Plot Parallel: The setup of a character being forced into a faux house with a repetitive life and no seeming way out, realizing it is an illusion, but then being convinced by a mysterious recorded voice to turn the illusion back on, was later mirrored in the series' final story "Dittophobia", though with hallucinogenic gas rather than illusion discs.
- Prefers the Illusion: Steve panics upon realizing his whole new life is an illusion and barricades himself away from the base robots used to represent his family. The radio DJ voice then comes on and convinces him that his fake life is better than his real one, and to turn the illusion back on.
- Properly Paranoid: Steve becomes increasingly worried that something's going on with his nightmares and inability to leave the house. Turns out he's right, and it's all an illusion set up by Fazbear.
- Recursive Canon: This story literally focuses on the making of the Five Nights at Freddy's series within the Five Nights at Freddy's universe.
- Satellite Character: All Victoria, Avery and Abigail care about is being around Steve. This is done intentionally, as they are literally robots made to make him feel safe and comfortable.
- Sequential Artist: Steve is an indie video game developer, as written by an indie video game developer.
- Shattering the Illusion: Literally, as Steve breaks the smoke detector, accidentally breaking the illusion disc.
- Spiders Are Scary: The main nightmare illusion that Fazbear uses on Steve is a giant, angry spider, which splits into hundreds of smaller spiders.
- Stealth Prequel: A prequel to the video game of the same name as the protagonist, Steve Snodgrass, is an indie game developer hired by Fazbear Entertainment to make indie horror games so they can make light of the events that happened around their business. The story reveals that Steve was actually kidnapped by Fazbear Entertainment and brainwashed into having the perfect family to do it, when in reality said family turned out to just be robots as the story ends with Steve choosing the lie and being blissfully unaware that his "wife" was stabbing him in the heart after hugging her.
- Uncertain Doom: The story ends with the line, "His bliss was so great that he barely felt the continuous stabbing in the vicinity of his heart." It is unclear if this is a deadly attack from the robot representing Victoria, or if it's a more metaphorical stabbing as he represses his fear and newfound knowledge. Thus, it's also unclear if "DJ Dan" was trying to get Steve to open the door to die, or to actually just turn the illusions back on and continue development.
- Five Nights At Freddys VR Help Wanted may align with the "death" interpretation, as it implies that Steve has only completed three-and-a-half of the video games; the VR collection only includes the first three games and a few cameos from the fourth and fifth. However, later games and Tales from the Pizzaplex shorts would include references to the fourth, fifth and sixth games as well, implying that Steve may have survived and continued developing. Could this be an Alternate Continuity?
- Waiting for a Break: Steve works as a janitor as he waits for one of his video games to take off.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Both Steve's casual girlfriend, Amanda, and best friend, Matt, disappear from the story after Steve's abduction. It's unknown what they think happened to him.
- Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: Brock Edwards, who represents the Fazbear Entertainment company.
- Working-Class Hero: Steve was working as a gas station janitor prior to his abduction.
