YMMV / Something Always Remains

• An Aesop:
  • If people in your life are toxic, cut them out, even if they’re family. Toxic behavior does not get rewarded in this story, from the one-off creep who hits on Vanna to Vanna and Bonnie Wickes cutting off most of their family to Greg getting fired for not respecting Bonnie Wickes’ wishes to The Smiling Man getting his comeuppance for his Disproportionate Retribution after being rejected.
  • Any gender is capable of toxic behavior. Bailey Belrose doesn't get any screen time, but putting murder aside, her actions and behavior are arguably just as bad as the Smiling Man's, as they both intentionally hurt someone they claim to love to try to control them, and the effects of that damage lasted decades.
    • And that's before getting into what Bailey's whole family did.
  • When someone turns you down, respect their choice and move on.
  • People grieve at their own pace. You can’t force someone to “get over” a loss.
• Anvilicious: Mike and Vanna are friends. Best friends. Not dating, and happy with it. Best. Friends.
• Complete Monster: The Smiling Man, later revealed to be Greg Mortman, was a family friend of Bonnie Wickes, whom he felt entitled to have as his wife. To pursue a relationship, he murders her husband, Freddy, by burying him alive. When Bonnie still rejects him, he kills her by tampering with the locks of the Spring Bonnie suit she wore when working at Fredbear's Family Diner, painfully crushing her to death. When he later finds her niece, Vesper, suffocating in the Puppet's box, he leaves her to die out of spite for Bonnie. Dedicating himself to ruining Bonnie's legacy by tarnishing her restaurant's reputation, he murders four children at their new establishment. To frame him for the crimes, he also kills Jeremy Fitzgerald by stuffing him in the Spring Bonnie suit. Returning years later to wipe out any evidence of his crimes, he tries to kill Mike Schmidt and anyone else aware of his past, sadistically bragging that he'll murder Mike by stuffing him into the Spring Bonnie suit. Even when he's confronted by the spirits of his victims, the Smiling Man remains unrepentant of his crimes, even trying to turn the animatronics on Mike one more time.
• Moral Event Horizon: Killing kids is bad enough, but the Smiling Man crossed this long before then when he buried a man alive to try to get with his wife.
• Realism-Induced Horror:
  • The Smiling Man was a close friend of Bonnie Wickes, and was thus able to get close enough to hurt and murder her, which is an unfortunate reality for many women.
  • Bailey Belrose gaslit Vanna into thinking her accident never happened, and that Vesper disappeared in a different way than how she remembers. She also treated her as the scapegoat to golden child Vesper and tried to control her.

---