Nexie | Drowning | The Mimic
Monkey see, monkey do.
Mimic, though not completely destroyed, was now a pathetic picture of total defeat. At some point during Edwin’s assault, Mimic had toppled over, and he now lay, arms bent, in one last tragic copy of Edwin’s little boy.
Edwin Murray has recently merged his company with that of the fledgling Fazbear Entertainment, where they request he builds new endoskeletons for the restaurant suits they plan on using. He tries to work on them, but being a single father to an energetic, attention-hungry four-year-old has taken its toll. After having a realization about how his son's white tiger bed mimicked his plush, he creates a program that would be able to copy whatever it saw. Entitling it The Mimic, he lets it take care of and entertain his son while he works. Surely, nothing will go wrong here!
The nineteenth Tales from the Pizzaplex story, and the third of the sixth book, Nexie. It exists as a prequel to the Mimic Epilogues placed at the end of each book, and the previous book's "The Storyteller." The following book features the White Tiger as the Mimic's new disguise in the titular "Tiger Rock." Following these books' releases, the Mimic would then become established as a canon character in the video games with the 2023 release of the Ruin DLC.
Tropes related to “The Mimic”:
- Abandoned Warehouse: Edwin and David live in what used to be a lace factory that has been long-since abandoned. After David dies and Edwin disappears, the place becomes the terrifying hideout of the Mimic.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The Mimic could very well be the face of this trope, though in this story it doesn't start malfunctioning until the end of the story, after Edwin beats it and it learns to copy violence. It then engages in some quite violent actions against the workers sent by Fazbear to find Edwin's work.
- Animal Motifs: Both the Mimic and David end up heavily associated with the white tiger due to the events of this story.
- Antagonist Title: Though the Mimic's only really the antagonist for the second half of the story.
- Body Horror: All the vicious deaths the Mimic later causes have some element of this, as it stuffs people into fridges, spears and hangs them to leave their entrails hanging out, rips internal organs out, and shoves a man into a wall until his body shreds itself.
- Body in a Breadbox: The second Fazbear team literally finds a man stuffed into a fridge.
- Brutal Honesty: David has the brutal honesty that only a four-year-old child can have.
- The Chain of Harm: All in all, the Mimic appears to be a metaphor for this, as it only starts hurting other people after it was first hurt and learned to commit violence.
- Character Tic: The Mimic often has its left arm raised to imitate how the late David used to carry a plush around, and it attempting to ask Edwin for ice cream with the same arm gesture David would make caused the man to violently lash out on it. Burntrap also shares this particular behavior, which suggests he was the Mimic all along. However, their connection is not fully explained by Ruin once the Mimic is encountered.
- Cheerful Child: David is constantly happy, only getting upset when his father yells at him. He is very energetic, playful, and excitable.
- Children Are Innocent: Despite living in a decrepit, abandoned factory, David absolutely adores his home and has "made friends" with it. He believes the sounds from the pipes come from a Pipe Fairy, and isn't at all scared by the Mimic endoskeleton.
- Color Motifs: David is constantly seen with a white tiger, first appears covered in a white sheet, and is hit and killed by a white truck.
- Constantly Curious: Little David.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: All of the deaths the Mimic causes at the end of this story are absolutely brutal. The first group ended with a man being stuffed into the fridge, and one hanging from a clothes hanger with a rod through his chest. The second group has Harry's brain pulled out as he's still alive, Glen is turtled which causes his upper body to shred itself, and Dominic has his trachea ripped out of his neck.
- Death by Childbirth: Edwin's wife, Fiona, died giving birth to David.
- Death by Disfigurement: Implied to be what happened to the original team, as the Mimic shoved one in the fridge and hung one like a coat.
- Death of a Child: David's death serves as a huge turn in both Edwin's life and the Mimic's, and Edwin's grief is written out in explicit terms.
- Establishing Character Moment: David begins the story running up to his dad and trying to play with him, and then sneezing as the old factory's sheets aren't suitable for play. Edwin chastises him and tells him that he's busy, showing his inability to parent a small child despite his love for him.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: The Mimic's eyes glow an eerie orange.
- Gone Horribly Right: The Mimic is supposed to copy what it sees. It copies David, even after he dies, causing Edwin to beat it. And after being attacked, the Mimic learns and copies the violence it was given.
- Gone Horribly Wrong: David teaches the Mimic to always put things away in the fridge, hang up coats in the closet, and hide in costumes. It keeps that in mind once it starts killing people.
- Great White Feline: David's favorite toy is a white tiger plush, aptly named "Tiger." He has a bedframe designed to imitate the tiger, and tries to give Mimic his own toy tiger, making the animal his and the Mimic's motif in this story, "The Storyteller," and "Tiger Rock."
- Gutted Like a Fish: One of the previous Fazbear workers is found in a closet with their entrails hanging out. Of the second team, the Mimic rips Harry's brain out, and tears Dominic's trachea out from his stomach.
- Hand Signals: David and the Mimic invent their own form of sign language in order to play together, as the Mimic doesn't yet have a voicebox.
- Hope Spot: Dominic tensely sneaks through the abandoned factory in an attempt to find an employee satchel, which he can use to build a weapon. He manages to grab it and escape to the attic, only for the Mimic to be there waiting for him.
- Impromptu Tracheotomy: How the Mimic ends up killing Dominic.
- It's All My Fault: While destroying the Mimic, Edwin knows that he is simply venting his frustration at himself for not watching David closely enough.
- Look Both Ways: Four-year-old David chases a ball outside of the factory he and his father live in, and right onto the highway, where he's hit by a truck.
- Lovable Coward: Harry is very skittish upon entering the factory, which makes it all the more horrible when he's the first to die.
- Mechanical Abomination: The Mimic doesn't have an associated spirit (though it's likely infused with agony), instead having an advanced AI. It's arguably the most purely mechanical threat in the entire series, and what a threat it is. It easily slaughters almost a dozen Fazbear Entertainment workers, and later slowly but surely picks off a group of teens one by one. It has the highest kill count in the series, except maybe for Eleanor, who is a literal demonic entity.
- Missing Mom: For David, whose mother died in childbirth.
- Momma's Boy: Harry, who quotes his mother's sayings while at work with his friends.
- Monster of the Week: The Mimic, who would later return for "Tiger Rock" (as the titular Tiger Rock), the book series' epilogues, and the games themselves.
- Murderous Malfunctioning Machine: The Mimic is actually functioning as it was intended to: it's copying what it sees. It just so happened to see, well, intense physical pain.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: When the Mimic copies David's sign for wanting ice cream, Edwin breaks in grief and beats the shit out of the endoskeleton.
- Outliving One's Offspring: After David is hit by a car, Edwin spirals into a deep depression.
- Parental Neglect: Edwin loves his son, but he's also a single parent with a crapload of work, and thus he often doesn't care when David is wandering the huge abandoned factory on his own. This culminates in David running into the middle of the street and being hit by a car.
- Plot Parallel:
- The story has a similar structure to Fazbear Frights' "The Cliffs," with the story being about a grieving widower raising his young energetic son and giving him a robotic toy that is supposed to watch over him while the father works. Following a tragedy involving the boy, the man then beats the everloving crap out of the toy as a way of getting out his own self-hatred and feelings of guilt.
- An endoskeleton being made to imitate an inventor's young child, only to be violently beaten and infused with Agony after the child dies, is very similar to Circus Baby's backstory in Five Nights at Freddy's: The Fourth Closet.
- Robot Buddy: The Mimic was originally created to be this to David, the son of its creator Edwin Murray. This stopped after David died and Edwin beat it with a pipe in misplaced anger.
- Speak of the Devil: Harry believes that talking about things makes them happen, so he'd rather keep quiet about the rumors he's heard about the weird warehouse.
- Start of Darkness: For the Mimic. It was originally created by Fazbear Entertainment employee Edwin Murray to be a friend for his son David, learning from him as they played together. After David died in a car accident and the Mimic replicated the gesture he made when asking for ice cream, Edwin lost it and attacked it with a pipe, which taught it how to be violent. When a couple of Fazbear employees later found and repaired it, the Mimic began its killing spree.
- Stealth Prequel: It is not entirely clear to what extent Glitchtrap is connected to it, but it is heavily implied that Glitchtrap was created from scanning the Mimic's programming to make the "Freddy Fazbear Virtual Experience". This would make it directly responsible for the events of Help Wanted, Vanessa turning into Vanny and everything that happened in Security Breach. At the very least, this story serves as prequel for this book series' epilogues.
- Struggling Single Father: Most of Edwin's problems come from being overworked by being a single parent of an energetic child and having to build a crapton of endoskeletons for Fazbear Entertainment.
- Third-Party Peacekeeper: Dominic is this between the skittish Harry and jokester Glen.
- Toy-Based Characterization: David is never seen without his plush tiger, and his kindness and empathy is shown when he makes Mimic a "tiger" of his own.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Ice cream for David.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Edwin Murray creating The Mimic to entertain his son while he worked eventually led to events where Edwin took his grief from his son's death out on The Mimic and infused it with his agony while teaching it about violence. Because of this, when a Fazbear team sent to retrieve everything Edwin abandoned tried to find it, The Mimic started its killing spree.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Dominic and Harry both violently puke upon seeing the contents of the fridge.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: It's unknown what exactly happened to Edwin following the beatdown of the Mimic and preceding the events of "The Storyteller."
- Working-Class Hero: Edwin's become poor after Fiona died, and relies on Fazbear Entertainment's work in order to support David. He tells his son that they can't even afford a second tiger for Mimic.
- You Dirty Rat!: When Dominic and his team arrive at the factory, he thinks he spots a rat living in the slide's mattress.
