Are you ready for FNAF?

The movie is almost here, so what do you need to know?

Blumhouse’s Five Nights at Freddy’s (FNAF) movie is coming out this October and the hype is alive for it. One of the biggest questions though is: what is it about? Unless you’ve been keeping up with the franchise for the last nine years since the first game came out, you might have no idea what’s going on at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria. 

Have no fear, friends! Well, maybe just a bit of fear of these giant robot animals that want to murder you. But, I’m here to fill you in on the lore behind the big brown bear and his band. 

The story at its core revolves around one man: William Afton. Father, engineer, inventor, businessman, and child murderer. A British man who moved to Utah with his family, his wife, his two sons, and his daughter. His wife doesn’t have a canon name, but her fanon name is Clara, so let’s go with that because she deserves it. The oldest child was named Michael, the middle child was Elizabeth, and the youngest child is not named in canon, they just call him ‘crying child’. Allegedly, his name is Evan; so we’re calling him Evan, because it’s less sad. 

The first restaurant, Fredbear’s Family Diner, opened in 1982. Somewhere along the way, a man named Henry Emily comes into the picture. Some say that Henry comes into the story about Fredbear’s Family Diner and that he’s not involved with the opening of Fredbear’s, but he’s here now, in some capacity. 

Another restaurant opened in 1983, called Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, starring our main robot, Mr. Freddy Fazbear himself. A lot else happened in 1983. Henry’s only child, Charlotte Emily, gets murdered by William Afton in the back alley of the restaurant, which is the first reported murder by Afton. That same year presented the death of another child: “Crying Child” Evan Afton. At his birthday party, his older brother Michael and his friends pick up Evan and put his head into the springlock suit and his head gets chomped. Evan is dead. 

Fredbear’s Family Diner closed shortly after and we jump all the way to June of 1985. This event is called ‘The Missing Children Incident’ in which five kids – Susie, Fritz, Gabriel, Cassidy, and Jeremy – all go missing. At least, the public thinks they’re missing; in actuality they’re all dead.  

William Afton, dressed up in one of the springlock suits, specifically Bonnie the Bunny, also known as Springlock Bonnie or Golden Bonnie, lures the five kids to the safe room in the back, murders them, and stuffs them into the four main Freddy Fazbear suits. Gabriel possesses Freddy Fazbear; Fritz possesses Foxy the Pirate Fox; Susie possesses Chica the Chicken, and was the first child murdered; Jeremy possesses Bonnie the Bunny; and Cassidy possesses Golden Freddy. Golden Freddy is different from the other four animatronics, it’s the counterpart to the Golden Bonnie suit that William Afton uses. Golden Freddy lacks the mobility that the four main animatronic suits have. Golden Freddy is also the most aggressive of the possessed robots and the most angry.  

Charlotte Emily, William’s first victim, is also possessing a robot. She possesses the Marionette, more commonly known as the Puppet. Charlotte takes the souls of the dead children and ‘gives life’ to them through the animatronics. 

Eventually, that Freddy Fazbear’s location closed down because of complaints of blood and mucus oozing from the suits and that they smelled horrible. 

Shortly after that restaurant closes down, William Afton opens Circus Baby’s Pizza World. With this, we get the Funtime animatronics. In the game Sister Location we see Funtime Freddy; Funtime Foxy; Circus Baby, which is like a baby doll clown; and Ballora the Ballerina. Except, these new animatronics are specifically murder animatronics. Good ol’ Willy Afton is after “remnant,” which puts a soul into an animatronic, and these robots are doing murder for the remnant. William tells his daughter Elizabeth not to go near Circus Baby, even though it looks just like her. She doesn’t listen, she gets close to it by herself and gets sucked inside Circus Baby. Unfortunately, Circus Baby’s Pizza World gets closed down before opening because of this and they just say it was a gas leak that caused the restaurant to close and a child to die. 

Elizabeth Afton is now possessing Circus Baby.  

William decides to open another business: Circus Baby’s Entertainment and Rental. He’s renting out the murder robots.   

Then, a group called Fazbear Entertainment buys out the Freddy Fazbear franchise. 

Time-jump to 1987. It’s what you’ve been waiting for, the Bite of ’87. But, also other stuff. William is working at a Freddy Fazbear location as a security guard. William killed at least four more kids, but these ones don’t have names. These four kids possess the toy animatronics: Toy Freddy, Toy Bonnie, Toy Chica, and Toy Foxy (AKA Mangle). We don’t know much about the Bite of ’87, except that someone’s frontal lobe was bit off by an animatronic. Most presume that the victim was Jeremy Fitzgerald, the security guard who was moved to the dayshift during FNAF 2. 

Michael Afton, at some point in this timeline, has a very, very bad day. He goes into the scooping room, in the Sister Location location, and he gets scooped. An animatronic called Ennard, which was an amalgamation of all the Sister Location animatronics in one exoskeleton, hops their way into Michael Afton’s body. Michael’s just hanging out as a decomposing body for a little bit, until Ennard decides to hippity-hop back out of Michael’s now decaying body. 

William Afton also has a very, very bad day. He decided to try and dismantle the OG five animatronics. But, that makes the ghosts wake up and they are upset. He panics and hippity-hops back into his Spring Bonnie suit, which was a bad idea. The springlock suit malfunctions, and he dies. 

But, uh oh, he’s not entirely dead. He lives in or possesses (it’s unclear) the Spring Bonnie suit and he’s now called Springtrap. It takes place in our current year 2023 at a horror attraction called “Fazbear Frights” which is about the many crimes at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria. At the end of FNAF 3, it burns down, and you would assume Springtrap dies, but he doesn’t. 

Then, we get to Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria Simulator. You play as a franchisee owner of a Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. You run the restaurant yourself and you can salvage animatronics from the back alley. This game ends with an old friend, Henry Emily, burning down the restaurant so all the spirits can rest. Charlotte as the Puppet is also here, her dad made Lefte, a bear-adjacent animatronic that stands for Lure. Encapsulate. Fuse. Transport. Extract., so that his daughter’s soul could rest. 

The lore of the main Scott Cawthon games (before Security Breach, which is made by Steel Wool), ends in Ultimate Custom Night, where you play as William Afton’s soul trapped in hell by Cassidy, AKA Golden Freddy, AKA ‘The One He Should Not Have Killed’. 

Most of the lore is theories and this is mine. If you want more detailed lore, it’s out there for you to find. But, these are the basics, and hopefully all you need to know to watch the new movie.