The Cliffs | The Breaking Wheel | He Told Me Everything
Don't ask questions. Just do what you're told.
With his one remaining eye, Chris saw his creation. He saw that this creature looked so much like him that nobody would ever know the difference. It would go to Chris’s house and take its place in Chris’s family. It would sit at the dinner table with his mom and dad and Emma, eating hot dogs and macaroni and cheese. It would play with Porkchop. It would study at Cool Beans Coffee and go to school and Science Club meetings.
Chris saw that his own life was going to go on without him.
Chris Watson wants to grow up. He lives with a poor family, has to do whatever his parents tell him to do, and is tired of his childish friends who he only hangs out with out of obligation. But he's about to start high-school, and with high-school comes Dr. Little's science class. Chris wants to be a famous scientist one day, and Dr. Little is his pathway there– his class is an exclusive club of kids who will do anything to achieve their goals, and he seems to be welcomed with open arms.
Then it's time for the yearly lock-in, where Dr. Little's class do an overnight experiment. Little tells the students that for the experiment, they will use a Freddy Fazbear Science Kit, extract some "Faz-Goo," and then... pull one of their own teeth out and use it for the experiment. He says if they don't do this, they must not be serious about science. Pressured to take part, Chris decides to cheat the system and use one of his baby teeth. Unbeknownst to him, this will make his experiment take longer... and be quite a bit more painful.
The twenty-first Five Nights at Freddy's: Fazbear Frights story, and the third of the seventh book, The Cliffs.
Tropes related to “He Told Me Everything”:
- Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Chris sees his parents as this, due to their overenthusiasm, odd appearances, and blue-collar jobs.
- And I Must Scream: By the time Chris thinks to scream, he's already had most of his body sucked out of him and transferred to the clone. All he can do is whisper his last wishes to the clone that's going to become him.
- Annoying Younger Sibling: Chris sees his sister Emma as this, though he later realizes as he's dying that she's a good kid.
- Artificial Human: The clones will be this by design, though whether or not anyone will ever be able to tell they're not human is unknown.
- Asian and Nerdy: Chris's classmate San, who is Indian and a huge fan of Dr. Little.
- Be Yourself: Chris spends the story pretending to be more mature and well-off than he is in hopes that he can fake it til he makes it. This ends up with him pressured to do an unorthodox experiment that brutally kills him.
- Big Friendly Dog: Chris really wanted a purebred dog, but his parents adopted him a mutt named Porkchop instead. Porkchop is extremely playful, excitable, and messy. He doesn't think much of the dog until he's dying.
- Black and Nerdy: Chris's other friend Brooke, who's deep into Dr. Little's class.
- Bland-Name Product: Josh and Kyle invite Chris to go see the new Revengers movie.
- Body Horror: The slowly-building clone and slowly-melting Chris are both described in vivid detail.
- Brainy Brunette: Brunette Chris is a very smart kid who really wants to be a successful scientist.
- Cassandra Truth: Chris's old friends, Josh and Kyle, tell him that Little's class is scarily cult-like and unsafe. He just thinks they're jealous that they're not smart enough to get in.
- Cloning Body Parts: Somewhat; it seems that the clone is able to grow a copy of Chris's body, but not his organs, so it simply siphons his own organs out of him.
- Cool Teacher: Dr. Little seems to be a deconstruction of this trope; while Chris sees him as a cool old man who's going to help his students in ways other teachers won't, it turns out he's an amoral man with no problem grooming and exploiting his students for his own ends.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: One by one, Chris's organs are sucked out of his body and transferred to the clone, which Chris has to watch grow in front of him as he slowly loses consciousness. The other students seem to have gone through something like this as well, but because they used a more recent tooth, it happened much quicker than it did to Chris.
- Dogs Are Dumb: Porkchop is described as a "happy idiot."
- Downer Ending: Chris dies alone, with nobody the wiser to the fact he's just been replaced. The clone will live the rest of his life, likely under the thumb of Dr. Little, who gets away scott-free with killing his students.
- Duplicate Divergence: It's clear that the new clones are extremely happy to be alive, and full of childlike wonder at the world they get to experience.
- Education Mama: Both Malcolm and Brooke say they know their parents won't be mad that they amateurishly pulled their own teeth, since they'll let them do anything if it means getting into an Ivy League college.
- Evil Genius: Dr. Little, who is a genius scientist that's admired by many of his students... who he plans to kill.
- Evil Old Folks: Dr. Little is described as an elderly man, who has no qualms killing his students just to see what would happen.
- Expendable Clone: Horrifically inverted, as the students creating the clones are the ones who are seen as expendable.
- Failed a Spot Check: As Chris sees all the other students leaving, he only bemoans the fact that his experiment is taking much longer than theirs... not noticing that every single one of them has the exact same look on their faces, does the exact same motions, and says the exact same sentence– "They told me everything."
- Forced Transformation: All of the students are forcibly turned into puddles of whatever remains after their Faz-Goo clone is built.
- Grand Theft Me: The Faz-Goo grows a clone of whoever's DNA it absorbs, attaching to them and transferring their organs and other parts to itself, killing the original. In this way, it kills the entire science club.
- Happiness Realized Too Late: The crux of the Downer Ending, as Chris realizes that someone else is going to take over his life, which wasn't so bad after all, and he's going to die alone, with nobody ever knowing.
- Karma Houdini: Dr. Little murders all of his students and replaces them with goop clones, and not a single person ever finds out. He seems to have been this even before the events of the story, as it's mentioned that his lock-ins often result in student injuries that are blamed on the students not following directions, enabling Little to continue teaching.
- Karmic Death: Chris desperately wanted to belong in the science club, so he dies following their peer pressure, melting into a puddle of himself, while someone else takes over his life.
- Kill and Replace: The Faz-Goo clone ends up doing this to Chris, as well as the entire science team.
- Kindhearted Cat Lover: Neighbor Mrs. Thomas, who lives alone with just her cats to keep her company, and offers cookies and tutoring to Chris when he visits.
- Mad Scientist: Dr. Little is definitely this, and at first it seems to be more eccentric than harmful... until the Faz-Goo, that is.
- Monster of the Week: Both the Faz-Goo and Dr. Little, who's putting the kids through this for unknown reasons.
- Morally Superior Copy: After hearing the last wishes of their donors, the clones get a fresh outlook on life and a push to love what they have... while their originals die horribly.
- Mysterious Past: What exactly is Faz-Goo, and how did Fazbear Entertainment get their hands on it? Why are they handing it out? Why does Dr. Little have an interest in it?
- No Full Name Given: Dr. Little's first name, and most of Chris's friends' surnames, are never stated.
- Nonconformist Dyed Hair: On Kyle, who put a purple streak in his hair.
- Our Clones Are Different: No test tubes or DNA sequencing here! Our clones simply come from... goo. Created by a Pizza brand.
- Pubescent Braces: On Brooke.
- Small Town Boredom: Chris hates his small town and desperately wants to leave and become rich and successful. He sees everyone he's hanging around as people holding him back from his goals.
- Spoiled Brat: The science kids seem to all be variations of this; they complain about the cruises and high-profile vacations they're going on to other countries over break, because they'd rather go somewhere else that's just as expensive.
- Transformation Horror: We get a visceral description of Chris's organs being sucked, one by one, through the connecting strand to the Faz-Goo clone, as he can do nothing but watch.
- Twist Villain: Dr. Little seems a little unorthodox, but the idea that he wants his students dead so he can replace them with Faz-Goo clones is a bit shocking.
- Wise Old Folk Façade: Dr. Little seems to just be a kind but tough mentor... who, it turns out, couldn't care less what his students have to go through in order to achieve his goals.
- Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: Dr. Little, who cosplays as an eccentric but fun-loving science teacher, all the while planning to kill his students for the purposes of "science."
- Would Hurt a Child: Even before the Faz-Goo incident, it's said that a few students at last year's lock-in had to go to the hospital for undisclosed reasons, involving getting their fingers re-attached.
- Youthful Freckles: On Emma.
