While the Resident Evil’s footsteps, with giant corporations using their resources to cause harm all across the globe. While early games established William Afton as an evil scientist who created a technology that allowed a person’s essence to be preserved within animatronics, recent releases highlight Fazbear Entertainment’s own twisted experiments. And with the books revealing horrifying creations that rival Umbrella’s bioweapons, FNAF might focus more on actively fighting this obscure technology.
[Warning: The following article contains spoilers for Five Nights At Freddy's.]
According to the novels, which potentially revealed FNAF: Security Breach’s DLC plot, Ruin, Fazbear Entertainment appears to have been using some of William Afton’s major discoveries to make their own horrific creations, profiting off the tragedies that occurred in the restaurants so far. This has slowly been bleeding through the universe of the games ever since Five Nights At Freddy’s: Sister Location, which showed Fazbear Entertainment particularly interested in Afton’s creations. Not only that, but later installments of the franchise, such as Security Breach, have been driving away from the main premise of the series, which could indicate a potential reboot of how the story of the franchise might continue to be told, shifting the focus from the horror of surviving the pizzerias to the more action and combat.
FNAF’s Fazbear Entertainment Has Several Horrific Creations
While William Afton appears to have restricted his research field and focused solely on preserving a person’s essence through the energy of their soul or their agony in the Five Night’s At Freddy’s canon lore, Fazbear Entertainment appears to have been using what came from his research to enhance the customers’ experience in the restaurants, as well as explore the boundaries of what can be done using their animatronics. The Fazbear Frights book series explores this concept consistently throughout its various stories, which not only helps expand the capabilities of Afton’s discoveries about the use of remnant souls and agony in animatronics established in the games, but also settles Fazbear Entertainment’s evil role in the events of the series.
The Fazbear Frights book series are a collection of short stories in the canon universe of Five Nights At Freddy’s that expand upon the premise of the franchise. They often introduce other Fazbear Entertainment creations that haven’t been seen in the games, while still being reminiscent of other animatronics and beings, allowing fans to make theories connecting characters to the books, such as Gregory, who was connected to the Fetch book. In Friendly Face, for example, it’s revealed that the company is advertising an animatronic that can mimic one’s deceased pet. However, once the protagonist is faced with a weird animatronic with the body of a cat but a human face, it’s implied that this can also be used to replicate human beings, which is also a theme ed by other stories in the series, such as Lonely Freddy.
Fazbear Entertainment’s experiments are also explored in He Told Me Everything, in which a group of kids in a school trip are instructed to interact with a mysterious gel which then steals their body. The stories show that they’re using the facade of being a mere children’s entertainment company to hide horrifying experiments that lead to dangerous creations and events, and the next FNAF game might cover what will happen once Fazbear’s secrets go public in an event as major as the Raccoon City outbreak in Resident Evil.
FNAF’s Fazbear Entertainment Might Have Enabled Afton’s Crimes
One of the main plot points of the franchise so far has been the series of murders made by William Afton while he was experimenting with the remnant technology that allowed for robotic vessels to become haunted by a person’s essence. Although in previous installments, Fazbear Entertainment seemed to have been deeply affected by the murders, which drove them to close the restaurants, other games have been pointing to the possibility of the company having been more deeply involved. Two of these titles have been FNAF: Sister Location and Help Wanted, which not only showcased how Fazbear Entertainment was already aware of Afton’s plans for the animatronics, but also how they continued trying to cover up their involvement.
Sister Location was a highly influential entry in the franchise, with FNAF: Security Breach dedicating a secret location to its story, and in its initial cutscene, after William Afton finishes explaining how Circus Baby’s built-in contraptions can enhance a child’s experience during a birthday party in a Fazbear restaurant, a Fazbear Entertainment representative speaks of the company’s interest in another obscure design choice. It’s later revealed through a mini-game that they were referring to a mechanism within the chest of the animatronic specifically built to trap a child inside. And while Fazbear Entertainment’s interest in this mechanic could be from mere curiosity or lack of understanding of what it’s for, the release of both the books and other games makes it seem much more nefarious.
Other games point to the company having an active involvement in Afton’s crimes, enabling them and using them for later research, much like how Oswell E. Spencer's discoveries are key to the origins of Resident Evil's Umbrella Corporation. FNAF VR: Help Wanted cemented this in the lore, with the player being able to discover through secret tape collectibles that Fazbear Entertainment hired a game developer to cover up their involvement after the police investigated the murders which occurred in the restaurants. This signals back to what was seen in that cutscene in Sister Location, highlighting how the company knew of Afton’s murderous plans and could even have been involved in making them come to fruition.
The Next FNAF Game Could Be About Fighting Fazbear Entertainment
Although the first titles in the Resident Evil franchise had settled Umbrella as the greater enemy for players to face, they were more focused on the survival horror aspect of the games, setting the main motivations of characters like Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine to fight bioterrorism. Later entries like Resident Evil 6, the series’ most hated game, became more focused on the specifics of the consistent fight against bioterrorism, with the rise of organizations like the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance (BSAA) and Blue Umbrella. And this change of focus, from horror to action, has been slowly occurring with the Five Nights At Freddy’s franchise, as shown by the recent installments.
Other than being set in a completely three-dimensional and explorable location, one of the biggest differences between previous titles and Security Breach was how the protagonist became able to fight the animatronics with proper weapons, such as the Fazcam and the Fazerblaster. Unlike previous titles, in which the player was helpless against the major threat of the haunted robots roaming the restaurants, Gregory was able to freely roam the Pizzaplex, being offered proper tools to completely destroy the animatronics, something that made the experience feel much more intense than scary, and contributed to making Security Breach so different from other FNAF games.
This change in pacing could continue in future installments of the franchise, much like what happened with Resident Evil, and Fazbear Entertainment could become the series’ equivalent of Umbrella. With the company’s terrifying experiments becoming even more detailed in the books, the games could present an even stronger villain for players to face, defying William Afton’s persistent immortality and the supernatural nature of other characters in the series. The games have always depicted the story of Afton’s path of destruction, with Cassidy and Michael trying to stop him once and for all, and when combining this with the combat mechanics in Security Breach, could completely alter the tone and horror of the next FNAF game. And while this would set the Five Nights At Freddy’s franchise on a path that strays from its roots, it could allow it to expand the games’ universe even further.
