Five Nights at Freddy's

I personally like Bleddyn's idea that the Nightmare Animatronics were made for a movie set, as it would explain why they're so freaky looking.

And personally I'm not a fan of the whole "The 4th game will take place in Purple Guy's Hell" thing, because 1: That sort of thing is really cliche, and 2: If your playing as a child murdering bastard who's being tormented in Hell, I'm not so sure if you'd really want to get out, instead leaving him to his well-deserved fate.

Isn't said "Hell" standing for mental torment, hallucinations and nightmares as he serves his sentence or stuck at a mental institution?

edited 17th May '15 3:19:08 PM by YoKab

^But Purple Guy is dead/zombified. Unless it's another prequel, I don't think that would be the case.

Who says he ever gets out? Even if he survives the five + nights. He'll remain there regardless. That said, yeah don't really like the idea of playing as the Murderer.

edited 17th May '15 3:29:31 PM by WorldTurtle2

So, how about these are not "real" animatronics? Just like the phantom ones.

So here is a theory: next game will follow the "bad" end. Kids are still stuck inside the animatronics, or whatever Soul Jars they inhabit. Slowly, they have gone from "lash out due to fear" to "incapable of differentiating between targets" to "Kill because that is only thing we know". The nightmare versions we see here, are how kids see themselves, sort of inner images they have at this point.

They set out to hunt down a monster, yet became monsters themselves.

"After three restaurants, it's clearly not "a glitch". It's like how Friday the 13th stops being about a campfire story that takes a life onto its own, and becomes a comedy series about a spastic who kills people. More games means F Na F is going to be less opaque. The minigames introduced new elements, Marionette and the Purple Perv, which I thought was inspired — but realistically, a fourth and fifth game cheapens the lore."

I'm not really talking about the lore so much as the setting and design. We went from relatively normal, if a bit dirty, animatronics and kiddy pizzeria that just happened to look creepy in the right context, to a broken down, torn up animatronic with a corpse inside it and burned down animatronics in a horror attraction that is actively trying to be scary. The latter is much more conventional and much less subtle.

I mean, the second game introduced new story elements and had a much more solid story (which, quite frankly, I don't think the series ever needed to get into, because most of the fanbase seems to just want to speculate and ignore canon anyway), but it was still at least set in an innocuous place and make a token effort to include normal looking animatronics. And yes, I realize a kiddy restaurant gets boring after a couple shots at it; that's where you put new twists on things instead of just throwing the whole concept out.

We keep seeing the word "nightmare" related to what's been revealed so far. What if that's extremely literal? This series has been throwing hallucinations at us from the beginning (since what, night 2 of the original? Maybe even night 1?). What if Scott is not showing us the actual threat in FNAF4, he's just showing us the hallucinations that can pop up during play?

I have to admit, one of those things appeared as a brief flicker on my screen, that'd be a pretty effective scare (probably even moreso than if they were marching down the hall).

EDIT: Unrelated, but is it just me, or does the Nightmare Cupcake have human eyes? The other three look like they have mechanical eyes, but something seems unnerving about the cupcake's eyes.

edited 18th May '15 6:31:45 AM by 32_Footsteps

Nightmare makes me think of New Nightmare, the best Freddy movie and the precursor to Scream. So a movie set sounds very likely and it appeals to me.

We're on the same page. I just don't think the facade holds up at this point. After a while you get numb to the sounds and it becomes almost a Desert Bus sim game. The environment is the real enemy in these games, but once you know it like the back of your hand, the fear of the unknown is gone. And even if you get the willies from children being nabbed while out for pizza, there's no way a third or fourth game will recapture those feels from the first.

I guess what I'm saying is if there had to be a trilogy, it was done the best way it could be done: Just a careful re-adjusting of what we're supposed to fear. The robots were scary in 1. The restaurant, or more accurately the wind-up clock, was scary in 2. 3 had a harder time being scary, so it reverses it by making you empathize with Springtrap in the beginning (since for all you know he's just another fallen employee). The "restaurant" gets progressively dingier in each generation, as do the robots, which fits the lost innocence theme. As a story it works.

4 should almost be about boredom. Like, a near-total lack of activity that lulls you into a stupor, right before a robot Pearl Harbors you. Not gonna happen though.

edited 18th May '15 7:34:37 AM by johnnyfog

I'm thinking there will probably be a "sleep" mechanic to the game. I think it'll be like Weeping Angels from Dr Who, where ever time you pass out, you can see the animatronics (in their demonic form) move straight for your office, but when you're awake they're normal looking and don't move at all. You have to go to sleep on you're own because if your "tired meter" runs out you'll be asleep for far too long and the Animatronics will kill you.

If that was supposed to be what happened in the third game then it's not conveyed very well. Between the three communities discussing the game I hang around on, this is the first time I've ever heard of sympathizing with Springtrap before the reveal.

And actually I'm not completely sure if it makes sense, cause why would a random employee try to kill you?

edited 18th May '15 9:10:16 AM by greenwings

Am I the only one who thinks a "Sleep" mechanic sounds like crap?

A sleep mechanic sounds more like replacement of the battery power management in the past few games.

edited 18th May '15 10:35:53 AM by VeryMelon

I dunno. I thought that would be revealed at the end, but it wasn't.

It's like asking, 'why do all these rabbits keep mistaking me for Purple Guy'. A question I don't rack my brain worrying about. (And the community probably does know why, but I don't visit there.)

edited 18th May '15 10:37:41 AM by johnnyfog

Facing with the possibility of 4 completely butt-fucking the lore, I decided to contribute before it's possibly too late.

So I made this with a friend:

Define "buttfucking the lore".

The fandom has a tendency to jump to conclusions on how the story goes every game even before the game is released so usually Scott will throw a curveball (FNAF 2 being a prequel, FNAF 3's main enemy being Springtrap instead of Golden Freddy) in the development cycle.

Scott pulled this off really well with FNAF 2. Some people still argue about it being a prequel vs. sequel today.

It wouldn't surprise me if he did the same with the Bite of '87 or what happened to Springtrap after the auction.

Given these new guys are called the Nightmare Animatronics. What if this 4th game is really all just a dream? Perhaps the nights will be the dreams of a night guard who survived against the animatronics or maybe they're the nightmares of the Purple Guy which eventually drives him back to the closed down Freddy's... leading to his well deserved fate in 3?

They're being called that BY THE FANS, NOT by Scott. There's nothing to say that's what they're names actually are.

Check out the Indi DB page. The Bonnie picture is named "Nightmare Bonnie".

^....Umm, dude, seriously. You think that picture was named by Scott? <_<;

Anyway, I'd find it funny if its actually one shapeshifting animatronic named nightmare.

the third game spin things by making springtrap the only enemy, between that and his more fluid movement and his identity make is clear who you are against, it feel very movie horror: the final guy against the murder in a 1 vs 1, after that and with the decay the rest of animatronic have, THERE ISNT a way to return to the "subtle-like" way in the final, better go from all

The word nightmare is associated with them regardless. So the idea that the events of 4 might be All Just a Dream still stands.

Any number of ways that can be summarized by "too much answers". I want to believe in Scott and think he won't do that, but the possibility alone frightens me.

P.S. How was the thing I posted?

edited 19th May '15 12:02:16 AM by Luminosity

Nightmare being a label and there appearance points at them either being another hallucination, part of a scare house, or part of a movie set (I personally like the latter).

I am not sure about the Was it me? thing though. The likely candidate for that is the Bite or something to do with the ghost of the Murderer but it's not set in stone.

If it is the Bite then the Mangle did the bite theory might be sqaushed. Although knowing Scott he will be a troll and make it vague enough for all of the classic Fazbear Gang to of been potenial culprits just to give the fandom another thing to argue about.

Someon on /v/ had the nice little theory that we are playing the victim of the bite of 87', who now is traumatized due to what happened to him (and the resulting lack of a frontal lobe).