Felix the Shark | The Scoop | You're the Band
Solve the clues and find the shark.
Dirk knew he’d let this belief pretty much run his life. He was selfaware enough to realize his past fueled his need to be right all the time. He also knew that spending his formative years in a magic act was responsible for his obsession with puzzles, mysteries, and the unexplained. It was like he was a magnet for the bizarre. Maybe that was why he’d loved Felix so much. And now his need to be right, his interest in mysteries, and his love of Felix was sending him on another journey.
While discussing old Freddy Fazbear's memories with his friends, Dirk is surprised to hear that none of them remember his absolute favorite animatronic- Felix the Shark. He tries to remind them of the cool, winding tunnels that surrounded the entire restaurant, which Felix would swim around in, and kids could swim with him. Felix always looked so lonely, waiting for friends to come with him. Not only do they not remember Felix, they don't even believe he was real. Frustrated, Dirk immediately goes home and, with his deep desire to be proven right, sets off to find Felix and prove that he didn't imagine his favorite childhood character.
The thirty-fourth Five Nights at Freddy's: Fazbear Frights story, and the first of the eleventh book. This short is only ambiguously canon, as it is an unfinished, scrapped story released as part of a bonus book with the series boxset. The character of Felix has reappeared, however, in Freddy in Space 3: Chica in Space.
Tropes related to “Felix the Shark”:
- Abandoned Area: The remains of Forkstop's Freddy's turn out to be in an abandoned water park, which has already begun breaking down.
- Animal Motifs: Both Aaron and Louisa are unable to draw themselves away from shark and butterfly motifs. Dirk, a fan of Louisa's novel, also mentions being in a club for studying butterflies.
- Ascended Fanboy: After creating his own TTRPG based on his favorite book, The Dogged Dogmatist. It turns out that not only does he get to meet the author, but she's the key to finding his beloved Felix.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Dirk wanted to see Felix again, and figure out the mysteries of The Dogged Dogmatist. He sure did!
- Bubbly Waitress: Wendy, the waitress at the Crawberry Café, who ends up giving Dirk vital information he needs to find Felix.
- Butterfly of Death and Rebirth: Aaron Sanders's son, Lonnie, chased a butterfly into the ocean, where he drowned and was recovered by a shark. Aaron and his daughter, Louisa, then became obsessed with both sharks and butterflies, and Louisa drew a mysterious butterfly in her book as a clue. When Dirk meets her, she gives him a key that she kept in a Zebra Longwing butterfly necklace.
- Claustrophobia: Agnes admits that she had nightmares about Felix's tank, and being trapped inside.
- Conspiracy Theorist: Gordon, despite being star of the high school wrestling team, was unable to make friends due to his crackpot theories about how aliens infiltrated the government and androids had infiltrated society.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Dirk is going to be dragged through the same looping tunnels over and over while slowly running out of oxygen.
- The Cuckoolander Was Right: When Freddy's is brought up, Gordon wonders if the supposed "android takeover" started there, as the guy who started the chain was "way ahead of his time with animatronics." He wonders if he had an underground laboratory and more dangerous robots than he let on.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Turns out that Felix has one. The man who bought this specific town's Freddy's had his son drown on a beach vacation, with his body only located because a shark pushed it to shore. He then became obsessed with sharks, and insisted on putting one in his restaurant. After a kid almost drowned in Felix's tank, and the location closed, he made it part of the deal that Felix could not be removed from the area. When the new water park was built over Freddy's, he convinced his daughter to write in clues on how to find Felix into her novel, right before she went insane.
- Deadpan Snarker: Gordon, who always says what he thinks.
- Determinator: The second Dirk sets his mind on finding Felix, he's got a plan of action and the determination to travel for weeks to find him.
- Dying Town: Forkstop, which had been desperately trying to pull people in with roadside attractions themed around a bank robber from the 1800s.
- Eye Scream: One of Felix's eyes has been pulled out and is dangling from his face.
- Fanboy: Dirk is this for quite a lot of things, mainly Freddy's and The Dogged Dogmatist.
- Foreshadowing: Agnes, who says that she can just "tell things," mentions that she had nightmares about being trapped in Felix's tank, being dragged around over and over, and unable to scream because of the mask. This exact thing happens to Dirk a few days later.
- A bit more obviously, The Dogged Dogmatist, Dirk's favorite book, is literally about a man who possibly dies while on a convoluted search for a shark-croc hybrid that was on the book cover.
- Grade Skipper: Wyatt, Dirk's friend, had skipped two grades. This caused him to have a strained social development, and he dropped out of college quickly. Despite this, he's a Perpetual Smiler.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Dirk has this, specifically around being disbelieved.
- Ironic Name: "Felix" the Shark has had a bad string of luck.
- Local Hangout: The Crawberry Café. Dirk has learned through his road trip that these spots are the best place to get information.
- Mad Artist: Louisa Jewel Sanders, who wrote The Dogged Dogmatist at the request of her father, putting in clues on how to locate Felix, before going insane and moving into a mental hospital.
- Malt Shop: The Crawberry Café is a 1950s-style diner that everyone loves.
- Mechanical Abomination: After years of swimming in abandoned tunnels with no repairs, Felix has been horribly worn down. The years have not been kind to him, and he is now a broken, rotten, and potentially violent animatronic.
-
Meme Acknowledgment: In the early days of Five Nights at Freddy's, there was a lot of gender confusion on the part of the original four animatronics. A lot of people argued that Bonnie was female, as "Bonnie" is more traditionally a girl's name in Western areas. In this short, when Dawn mentions Bonnie being her favorite, Agnes responds, "I thought he was a she. Bonnie's not a boy's name." Dawn sighs and responds tiredly, "Well, Bonnie was a boy rabbit." - Monster of the Week: Felix, despite what Dirk will tell you.
- Most Writers Are Writers: Dirk is an aspiring writer who currently writes for a newspaper column. He's a little jealous of his friend Leo, who writes and illustrates comic books and already has had a successful publishing deal.
- My Significance Sense Is Tingling: Agnes starts up a conversation with Dirk in the diner, which is what leads to him finding Felix. When asked how she knows he's from out-of-town, she just says that she "knows things."
- Nephewism: Dirk was raised by his aunt until his teen years, when she died of cancer.
- Nightmare Fuel: Felix was this in-universe, with all the kids but Dirk remembering him as a terrifying animatronic that gave them nightmares for years. Agnes says she had to go to a therapist afterwards.
- No OSHA Compliance: When Dirk describes Felix's tubes, Jenny says incredulously that that sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen. Turns out she was right, as that location closed after a kid almost drowned in those tunnels.
- Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: Dirk insists to everyone that this was Felix, despite everyone who remembers him being traumatized by their experiences with him.
- Parental Abandonment: Dirk's irresponsible parents left him with his aunt after social services told them to cut him from their magic show, and continuously left him alone with her as they traveled. They finally died when he was eight in a car accident.
- Plot Parallel: The early setup of Dirk's two best friends being nerdy fraternal twins, one of whom he has a crush on, seems to have been re-utilized for "The Breaking Wheel" after this story was scrapped. The idea of Lonnie chasing a butterfly to his death was also possibly reused for Faraday and Jack in "Friendly Face."
- Renaissance Man: Wyatt tells Dirk that he thinks he's similar to this trope for being in so many clubs. Gordon snarkily asks if being a renaissance man requires talent and not just knowledge.
- The Smurfette Principle: In their friend group of five, Jenny is the only girl.
- Stereotypical Nerd: Dirk is in a bunch of clubs for all his nerdy interests, such as TTRPG, science, semiotics, etc.
- Threatening Shark: Felix was always scary to everyone but Dirk. And when Dirk finds him again, time has taken its toll.
- Uncertain Doom: Dirk ends up trapped, his clothes caught in Felix's teeth, unable to pull away from him and unable to get out of the tunnels anyway. Even if his friends go looking for him, with no leads as to what city he's in, there's no guarantee they'll find him before he runs out of oxygen and drowns.
- Wacky Parent, Serious Child: While he loves board games and mysteries, Dirk is already much more responsible than his parents were at his age; apparently they ran away together right after high-school and did a magic show on the road.
