GGY | The Storyteller | Bobbiedots, Part 2
Edwin snorted. "I can tell you from years of experience that without the stories, all your hardware and software would be nothing more than lumps of metal and wires and a meaningless mass of zeros and ones. Story drives Fazbear Entertainment."
Young CEO of Fazbear Entertainment, Mr. Burrows, wants to cut costs wherever he can. To the horror of longtime board member Edwin Murray, Burrows orders for the creative development team to be axed and replaced with an Artificial Intelligence machine that can make them stories for free. Naming it The Storyteller, Burrows is convinced that this machine is going to be a great idea. So when it starts going wrong, it can't possibly be the fault of the Storyteller. It must be Edwin's. And Burrows is going to prove it.
The fourteenth Tales from the Pizzaplex story, and the second of the fifth book, The Bobbiedots Conclusion. "The Storyteller" was later given a prequel in the sixth book, Nexie, entitled "The Mimic," which intrinsically connected both itself and this story to the book epilogues. Other connected stories include "Nexie," which shows the end of the titular storyteller, and "Tiger Rock," which features the Mimic as an antagonist.
Tropes related to “The Storyteller”:
- Adaptational Dye-Job: While Glamrock Chica is always depicted as white-and-pink with no cupcake, an off-handed mention of Chica in the Pizzaplex has her as, like her original counterpart, yellow and carrying around her iconic cupcake.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The main basis of the story; Edwin firmly believes that A.I. can never replace human creativity, while Mr. Burrows disregards humanity in favor of cutting costs. Soon, though, he finds out that this decision wasn't as smart as it appeared.
- All for Nothing: It's revealed in "Nexie" and "Tiger Rock" that the Storyteller is taken offline and removed completely after barely three weeks, meaning that Burrows's "brilliant plan" didn't even last that long.
- Asshole Victim: Not only is Mr. Burrows a Corrupt Corporate Executive who is all too eager to replace the Pizzaplex's creative team with an AI, he also is more than willing to kill Edwin by trapping him in the Storyteller Tree. (In fairness, he suspected Edwin was tampering with the Storyteller A.I., causing glitches in the Pizzaplex, but the fact he went straight to murder and disregarded all other possibilities doesn't help him much) More than any other protagonist, Mr Burrows brought his horrific fate upon himself.
- Bad Boss: Burrows couldn't care less about the well-being of his employees, jumps at the chance to replace them with A.I., and straight-up kills Edwin in order to stop his poking around.
- Break the Haughty: Burrows's entrapment causes him to completely break down and panic, abandoning his aloof CEO persona as he realizes he is going to die.
- The Cassandra: Edwin Murray consistently tells every board member that the Storyteller is a horrible idea that will never work. Not only do they ignore him, they use his dangerous Mimic01 program to run the thing and refuse to inform him of this.
- Child Hater: Burrows really dislikes children, actually. The only reason he got a job running a children's franchise is because he knew he could make money out of it.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Burrows is a cynical, money-focused CEO who believes that the ethics of replacing humans with machines are unworthy of his attention. He eventually resorts to just straight-up killing Edwin, planning on leaving his body in the Storyteller forever.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Both Edwin and Burrows are trapped in the Boabab tree, slowly suffocating as the air runs out and nobody outside can hear them.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Edwin's exact past and connection to the Storyteller and white tiger isn't explain in-story, but in the later prequel, "The Mimic."
- Death by Childbirth: Edwin's wife, Fiona, is briefly referenced as having died giving birth to David. This backstory is more explored in "The Mimic."
- Establishing Character Moment: Mr. Burrows insisting that they cut the entire creative department, and Edwin immediately fighting back against this.
- Failed a Spot Check: Burrows doesn't realize that, once he enters the tree, he'll have no way out.
- Gone Horribly Right: While the machine itself is working wrong, it is, horrifyingly, able to function even after Burrows unplugs every cable and rips the Tiger's limbs off.
- Gone Horribly Wrong: The Storyteller causes the other robots to malfunction and act out-of-character, due to the Mimic01 program inside of it.
- Great White Feline: The Storyteller's interior animatronic is made to be Tiger Rock, a large white tiger.
- Hive Mind: Burrows connects every working animatronic to the Storyteller, which means that when it glitches, so does everything else.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Burrows makes completely certain that nobody will know how to get into the Storyteller, nor that he's heading in there himself. Meaning that once he's trapped, nobody can save him.
- Intergenerational Friendship: Edwin is apparently close with Yvette, a young designer who is respectful towards him, unlike everyone else in the building.
- It's All My Fault: Upon discovering, to his horror, that the Mimic01 program is what's running the Storyteller, Edwin becomes distraught. His last words, written on the walls of the Storyteller, are an apology.
- Karmic Death: Burrows ends up being killed inside a prison of his own making. In a way, this also applies to Edwin, who created the original Mimic01 program.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Is the Mimic01 program just that good that it's able to continue its functions even with the interior of the tree wrecked apart, or is it some kind of Haunted Technology?
- Meaningful Name: A "Burrow" is another name for a rabbit hole, a nestled home for wild rabbits. Considering William Afton and Glitchtrap's connections to rabbits, it's quite ironic how Mr. Burrows managed to, however accidentally, provide them a home in the Pizzaplex.
- Monster of the Week: Mr. Burrows serves as a much more direct threat to protagonist Edwin than the titular AI does, but considering the AI's true nature and the fact it traps Mr Burrows at the end, it's undeniably the main villain.
- Mysterious Past: Purposefully invoked with Edwin, as his backstory would be explained in the next book.
- Never My Fault: Burrows never once considers that the Storyteller may have malfunctioned, or been a bad idea in the first place. It must be Edwin's fault.
- No Full Name Given: Mr. Burrows doesn't seem to have a first name.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The Storyteller causes the main animatronics to act out and become confrontational with the customers, which is a major problem as they're the main attractions.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Edwin thinks back to his deceased child, David, who had died back towards the beginning of the Fazbear franchise.
- Properly Paranoid: Edwin becomes suspicious that something strange is going on with the Storyteller, and that there's something the programmers aren't telling him about how it runs. Not only is he right, but the Storyteller seems to be the instigator for the events of Security Breach.''
- Uncertain Doom: Mr. Burrows is left alone in the Storyteller with limited air supply, a malfunctioning animatronic, and another dead body. The whole thing is soundproof, so it's very, very unlikely he's making it out of here alive.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Mr Burrows' decision to replace the entire Pizzaplex creative team with the Storyteller, who is actually known as Mimic01, the Mimic's A.I., leads to the animatronics starting to act stranger than before. While he originally believed that it was because Edwin had messed with the AI and trapped him in the Storyteller's Baobab tree in the Pizzaplex which leads to Edwin suffocating and dying, the Mimic was the one that was actually behind it and kills Mr. Burrows as well. While the giant tree the AI was in was later removed from the Pizzaplex, the AI had already infected the animatronics with the implications that it still had some effect on them by the time of Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach.
- World Tree: The Storyteller is meant to invoke this, with the design of a Boabab tree, as one of the longest and sturdiest trees in the world, and one that had a trunk large enough to hold the computer programs.
