Into the Pit | To Be Beautiful | Count the Ways
Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep, my sweet Sarah...
"I made your wish come true, Sarah. And in return... well, you certainly made my wishes come true."
Insecure and anxious, teenage Sarah desperately wants to be noticed and loved in her cliquey high school. Obsessed with improving her appearance, she neglects herself and her best friend, Abby, who just wants her to be happy, and instead idolizes the popular girls at school, who she calls the Beautifuls. After a failed attempt to bleach her hair, Sarah encounters an abandoned animatronic doll on the walk home from school. Bringing her home and fixing her up, she turns on and identifies itself as Eleanor. Claiming to just be grateful for the repair, Eleanor says that she'll grant Sarah's wish, so long as Sarah wears a very special necklace and never, ever takes it off. Every day, Sarah wakes up a little more conventionally attractive. She's overjoyed with her new life, not questioning how, exactly, Eleanor is doing this to her, and what the doll's true motives are...
The second short story of the Five Nights at Freddy's: Fazbear Frights series. Eleanor would later return in the Stitchwraith Stingers, and the story would be adapted into the Graphic Novel collection in 2022.
Tropes related to “To Be Beautiful”:
- A-Cup Angst: Sarah starts the story bemoaning her lack of "curves." One of the changes Eleanor makes at night is giving her larger breasts, which gives her attention from the boys at school.
- All Girls Like Ponies: Abby is considered childish at school for still being into "cartoons and horses."
- Alpha Bitch: Lydia.
- Ambiguous Robots: Eleanor sure seems to be a robot when Sarah is dragging her around and fixing her up. The epilogues later imply that she's some sort of Agony-monster.
- And I Must Scream: Sarah ends the story reduced to a pile of scrap metal, unable to feel or presumably even think.
- Appearance Angst: Sarah hates every part of her body: her hair, her nose, and her weight are the main things she brings up, but she also says she dreams about having surgery to fix her smile.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Well, less "be careful what you wish for" and more "be a bit more suspicious of who says they'll grant your wish."
- Body Horror: Sarah's entire body is replaced with scrapyard garbage over the course of a few nights
without her knowledge, leading to her falling apart into a pile of metal when she loses the necklace Eleanor gave her. - The Cassandra: Abby, who is brutally honest and keeps telling Sarah that she looks fine the way she is, and that striving for popularity isn't going to end well.
- Disappeared Dad: Sarah's father left the family some time before the events of the story, only keeping in touch via holiday postcards and the like.
- The Dog Was the Mastermind: Eleanor is supposedly just the Monster of the Week for this short, until she starts popping up more in the Epilogues, and it becomes clear she's had a hand in a lot more stories than just this one.
- Downer Ending: Sarah falls for Eleanor's manipulations hook, line, and sinker, and ultimately collapses into a lifeless pile of scrap metal after finding out that she wasn't ugly at all. Eleanor, meanwhile, gets away scot-free after taking Sarah's identity.
- Everyone Loves Blondes: Sarah thinks that she would be more beautiful and attractive should she go blonde like Lydia. Early in the story, she saves up her money for bleach and dye, only to fail to read the instructions and end up with green hair that her mother has to pay to be cut and re-dyed.
- Evil Redhead: Eleanor, as well as Beta Bitch Jillian, who's supposedly a Fiery Redhead.
- Expy: Sarah continuously compares herself to "Mrs. Mix-and-Match," a parody of Mrs. Potato Head.
- The Farmer and the Viper: Sarah drags the broken Eleanor out of a car in a junkyard and spends an afternoon fixing her up. To repay her, Eleanor pretends to be her "fairy godmother," while secretly ripping apart her body for her own uses.
- Forced Transformation: When Sarah's necklace falls off and she is unable to put it back on, she can't stop herself from turning into a pile of metal parts.
- A Friend in Need: When Sarah begins turning into metal, Abby's the only one who even tries to help her.
- The Ghost: Sarah apparently has a brother who's off at college.
- Girl Posse: The "Beautifuls," as Sarah calls them: led by Lydia, along with Jillian, Tabitha and Emma. They later invite Sarah to join them once they think she's pretty and rich.
- Girls Love Stuffed Animals: Sarah has a plush Freddy Fazbear which she hugs in excitement as she tells Eleanor about her date.
- Glamour: Eleanor's medallion creates an illusion for the wearer and everyone around them, leading Sarah to believe that she was changing into her ideal self while in reality, Eleanor was ripping her apart. Eleanor later uses a similar pendant-button to disguise herself as the real Sarah.
- Grand Theft Me: Eleanor steals Sarah's original appearance after leaving her for dead in her garage.
- Happiness Realized Too Late: Sarah's just starting to get her confidence back when the necklace falls off. Then, when Eleanor takes Sarah's form, she realizes that she was never that ugly at all.
- Iconic Item: Eleanor's necklace, which she apparently uses on all her victims.
- I Just Want to Be Beautiful: Sarah’s motivation. Says it all in the title of the story! She ends up getting what she wanted, but at a terrible price...
- Ironic Nursery Tune: To put Sarah into a deep enough sleep to slice her up, Eleanor sings her a lullaby, ending with the promise that "all your dreams will come true."
- Jackass Genie: Sarah wishes to be beautiful. So Eleanor cuts off her limbs and replaces them with fake ones.
- Kill and Replace: Eleanor steals Sarah's looks. The original story implies that something about ripping her body apart is what enabled her to do this (as she tells Sarah that she made Eleanor's dreams come true), though later epilogues would establish that Eleanor can simply shift into whoever she wants.
- Lady in Red: Eleanor, in Circus Baby's classic red tank and skirt. (Though the graphic novel has her in lighter colors.)
- Lying by Omission: Sarah's outfit was from New York. She got it at a thrift store, but it was originally from New York.
- Makeup Is Evil: It's implied that Sarah's mom doesn't want her wearing makeup at all, as Sarah only got permission to put a little bit on at her last birthday.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Was the necklace that Eleanor gave Sarah actually supernatural, or was it some form of illusion disc?
- Mock Millionaire: Sarah pretends that her family is rich in order to fit in with the Beautifuls.
- Monster of the Week: Eleanor.
- My Hair Came Out Green: Played completely straight, as Sarah's failed attempt to make herself blonde turns her hair a sick green.
- Mysterious Past: Even including the Epilogues' lore, how exactly did Eleanor end up in that junkyard? We'll never know!
- Nerd Glasses: on Abby.
- No Full Name Given: Most of the characters in this short don't get surnames.
- Objectshifting: Sarah collapses into a pile of scrap metal when she loses her heart pendant in "To Be Beautiful."
- Only Friend: Abby and Sarah to each other, since they were little kids.
- Popular Is Evil: All of the Beautifuls are vain and materialistic, and mock people of lower income with no mercy.
- Put on a Bus: As Sarah dies, Eleanor skips off in her body to do who-knows-what. The epilogues later tell us what she was up to following this.
- Rich Bitch: All of the Beautifuls, in contrast to struggling Sarah.
- Robot Girl: Probably the franchise's closest use of this trope yet: the scrapped illustration shows that, unlike the cartoonish Circus Baby and the more-blatantly-robotic Ballora, Eleanor's proportions are much closer to a real human being (the main exception being her grotesquely extended metal neck).
- Significant Green-Eyed Redhead: Eleanor.
- Single Girl Seeks Most Popular Guy: Sarah has a crush on the most popular guy in school, Mason Blair. He doesn't give her the time of day until she begins to look different.
- Small Town Boredom: Lydia encourages Sarah to agree with her that their town is incredibly boring.
- Stereotypical Nerd: Abby is a glasses-wearing, science-loving geek who loves cartoons and doesn't care about her appearance.
- Teens Love Shopping: The Beautifuls' favorite activity, which they drag Sarah along to.
- Transformation Horror: Sarah's transformation into a pile of parts is described slowly and painfully, describing to the reader how horrifying the experience would be, right before Sarah finds her own body parts cut up in a closet.
- Traumatic Haircut: After a failed dye-job, Sarah's hair has to be re-dyed and cut to prevent her from going to school with green hair. This just makes her more depressed.
- True Beauty Is on the Inside: Abby starkly tries to remind Sarah that while the Beautifuls are popular, they're shallow and cruel, while Abby is a nice person who genuinely likes herself and treasures her friendship with Sarah. Sarah doesn't listen until it's too late.
- Unnamed Parent: Sarah's Mother is only referred to as "Sarah's Mom."
- Unwilling Roboticisation: As well as unknowing, as Sarah is turned into scrap metal in her sleep.
- Useless Bystander Parent: Sarah's mother does nothing to stop her daughter's budging eating disorder and rampant self-image issues, only blandly suggesting she eat more and moving on when Sarah blows her off. She doesn't try to talk to Sarah about why she tried to dye her hair, either, only saying she should have just let Sarah go to school with her failed makeover. After Sarah starts becoming prettier, she fails to notice the sudden changes as anything more than her daughter aging. She tries to imply to Sarah that she doesn't like her new friends and prefers Abby, but still lets her daughter go out with them.
- Weight Woe: Sarah starts the story convinced she's overweight, refusing to eat anything but basic salad in hopes of losing a few pounds. Her ideal beautiful body is skinnier.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Sarah's new boyfriend doesn't appear at the end of the story, leaving it unknown how he would have reacted to seeing his new girlfriend turn into metal, or if he was actually interested in her or just liked her for her new appearance.
- A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: Disguising herself as a harmless animatronic doll, Eleanor is secretly a killer robot who knows how to pretend.
