[Old Game Theory Intro, FNaF Edition]
Hello, internet!
Welcome to Game Theory in 2018!
A show apparently dedicated entirely to virtual boxes.
Loot box psychology, loot boxes as gambling,...
...the treatise on the science of fictional cardboard boxes.
It's like box episodes are the new FNaF episodes for the channel.
Gotta milk 'em dry!
Next episode should be on, I don't know, The Orange Box or something.
But in all seriousness, the box tetralogy reaches its dramatic finale today
as I cover what is perhaps the most infamous digital box of the last decade: FNaF 4's locked chest.
Now, last episode, we started to explore the idea that FNaF 6 is all about tying up loose ends.
That, as the last game in "The Purple Guy Saga",
Scott's goal was to give us the information necessary to close the book on this chapter in Freddy's story.
But to me, as someone who has studied these games inside and out,
if there was one question that needed to be answered in a final game,
it wasn't how Michael Afton was able to become a living purple corpse through remnant
or how Henry was able to create a device that could somehow simulate child body temperatures.
I didn't even care so much about the timeline at this point.
No, what I wanted answered was the biggest lingering mystery of FNaF.
What was in the box?
Rewind back to FNAF 4, the game that utterly wrecked everyone's understanding of this franchise.
You beat the game, you get the iconic line of "I will put you back together", and then BOOM!
A literal "Mystery Box" that would make the likes of J. J. Abrams proud,
accompanied by the lines "Perhaps some things are best left forgotten, for now".
But you know what? I never forgot. The fans never forgot, and I don't think Scott forgot either.
So now, two years, three games, and four books later,
I think I'm finally ready to break open the locks and reveal what was supposed to be in this thing,
versus what actually was in the thing.
Because I have reason to believe that the contents of the box have changed three separate times,
and that now, in the wake of FNaF 6, Scott has already shown us what is inside the box.
Let me explain.
FNaF 4 was released on July 23rd, 2015, and with it, the mysterious box ending.
Exactly one month later, August 24th, Scott made a post on Steam referencing a Halloween update for the game.
An update where he had considered opening the box.
Quote. "I wanted to post some information about the upcoming Halloween update.
I started off a few months ago with several ideas in mind for what I wanted to release;
ranging from DLC, to a new game, to opening the box (more on that later),
but now I've been working steadily and have a pretty clear vision going forward." End quote.
So, why wasn't the box included as a part of that update? Well, he explains it later in the post.
Quote again. "Now I want to talk about what WON'T be included... the box."
You know, when I released the first game over a year ago,
I was amazed at how quickly everyone found every bit of lore and story.
Then the same happened with part 2.
Then part 3 came out, and once again the story was uncovered by the community.
But then I released part 4 and somehow.... no one, not a single person, found the pieces.
The story remains completely hidden.
I guess most people assumed that I filled the game with random easter eggs this time. I didn't.
What's in the box? It's the pieces put together.
But the bigger question is- would the community accept it that way?
The fact that the pieces have remained elusive this time strikes me as incredible, and special,
a fitting conclusion in some ways, and because of that,
I've decided that maybe some things are best left forgotten, forever." End quote.
So, clearly in the month after the release of the game, disappointed that the mysteries were staying hidden,
Scott had already changed his mind about what he wanted to do with this box.
And I've just gotta say, Scott! My man! You didn't even give me a shot at this one.
You change your mind about a game's fundamental mystery in a MONTH?
I mean, in that amount of time, all I could do was release a rushed-out, retro-fitted prediction theory,
because I was stuck in Con Season when the game was released.
Give a theorist some slack, man!
So that begs the question of what he originally intended to be in the box.
My theory: toys, a badge, a hospital wristband,
and a picture of what eventually became known as the Afton family.
The only time we would ever see them truly happy in this franchise.
Remember, FNaF 4 was meant to be the final game in the series.
And, based on all the clues Scott left prior to the release of Sister Location,
he absolutely intended for Freddy's to be a story told in the mind of a child.
Maybe not so much in dreams, like Dream Theory would indicate,
but perhaps in a coma, or on the kid's death bed.
I mean, sure let me be clear. Yes, there was absolutely a real-life string of murders informing this kid's visions
as evidenced by the puppet and the murder outside the restaurant.
But, I mean, look at what he just said in that Steam post.
"Most people assumed that I filled [FNAF 4] with random easter eggs... I didn't."
And now, look at everything that lines up in this game.
Toys that match the look and behavior of the toy animatronics.
People getting shoved into suits by a guy hidden in shadows
that would probably look like a murder to a young child.
A boy carrying a balloon to inspire Balloon Boy.
Bullies who wear masks that perfectly match the Nightmares.
Shadows that would literally inspire Shadow animatronics.
A mangled toy. The concept of a plush Bonnie that bites you.
A child's phone and a child's fan to simulate the night guard desk.
People walking around in animatronic suits like Springtrap.
A grandfather clock, like you would find in your home, going off to signal the end of the nights.
The list goes on, and on, and on.
And, even though he'd moved on with the story, Scott still wanted is to figure it out,
which is why, on our October 5th, 2015 GTLive, Scott crashed the livestream,
giving us explicit clues to figure it out.
"Four games, one story."
"Why is Toy Chica missing her beak?"
And "What is seen in shadows is easily misunderstood in the mind of a child."
All three clues again pointing to the conclusion of some sort of Coma Theory
with the box containing the items alluding to that story.
Toys and plushies to show where all the ideas for the animatronics came from.
A badge to show that this kid's father worked at the restaurant as a security guard.
A hospital band to make it clear that the child was rushed to the hospital
in the aftermath of the Fredbear bite.
And a happy family that we see shattered in the aftermath of a stupid prank.
This box is locked and hidden away in an attic or a basement when the child dies.
The memories it contains are too tough to bear.
But the line of "Would the community accept it that way?" is the key phrase in all of this.
Scott knew that the story, as he envisioned it, would be controversial for a fanbase
that was literally comparing shades of purple across the series.
He had a solution to the story that he wanted to tell, but was now trapped by his own success.
People were too interested in his mystery box, which is why Sister Location and everything afterward emphasized more real-life events.
Scoopers, and remnant, and literal purple people walking around outside.
But before he got to that point, there was one other course correction.
FNaF World, the pimply-faced puberty of the franchise.
The game that, also like puberty, everyone wants to forget, including Scott himself.
And it was here that Scott tried to unveil the mystery of the box a second time.
If you played through the game normally, you would never see any connections to the box.
You would just play through this bizarre, fever-dream of an RPG
and then finally kill Scott Cawthon himself as the final boss of the game.
Yeah! In case you skipped over FNaF World, Scott is one of the final bosses
and complains about how obnoxious the fans of the series can get.
It is strange, it is funny, certainly meta, and most undeniably passive aggressive.
Anyway, if you linger on the opening dialogue between your character and Fredbear,
you unlock a hidden quest that lurks beneath the surface of the game
that was undoubtedly meant to tie into the mystery of the box.
We're told that the quest requires us to, quote,
"Leave breadcrumbs for him, to help him find his way."
The 'him' we're helping is FNAF 4's bite victim,
And we know this from the opening dialogue.
Quote. "Something has gone wrong. That's why I am here."
"But I won't let the same happen to you."
"I will put you back together."
[chuckles] the Classic FNaF 4 lines,
So infuriatingly vague.
Anyway, that line confirms that the "you" being talked about here is the bite victim
that the something has gone wrong is referring to the bite itself
and that the yellow eyes doing the talking, the one who is trapped here
is the puppet.
From here, your secret quest is to find a series of clocks,
and complete mini-games that directly relate
to the steps necessary to unlock FNaF 3's "Happiest Day Ending"
You push Balloon Boy into a box,
You press four arcade buttons,
You set up four cupcakes. Et cetera, et cetera.
And if you do everything correctly, your secret ending reads as follows:
Quote. "We're still your friends. Do you believe that?"
"The pieces are in place for you."
"All you have to do is find them."
And we know from FNaF 3, that the pieces are indeed found!
On the cutscenes between nights we find the clues that FNaF World left for us hidden in the hallway,
telling us to do things like double click balloon boy and collect the four cupcakes,
Which then enables us to complete the glitched mini-games, and release the spirits once and for all.
But the important line of this FNaF World ending is
"The pieces are in place for you."
A line that, very intentionally, mirrors the language Scott used to describe the contents of the box in the FIRST PLACE.
"What's in the box? It's the pieces put together."
And if you think that this is just a linguistic coincidence, it's NOT!
Remember, Scott doesn't do coincidence, because here's the real shocker:
While trolling through the game's texture files,
Reddit user u/POIUY2010_201
Or at least, his was the earliest post I could find discussing this discovery,
FOUND that FNaF 4's box was actually HIDDEN in FNaF World's code!
But it wasn't just the box. It was a texture of the box, unlocked, and opened.
So for a second time, we clearly see that Scott had plans to reveal what was inside his mystery box.
Which then begs the question "What was in it this time?" and, honestly, it's hard to say.
As you can probably tell, FNaF World played with the lore of the main series in some very unusual ways.
For instance, the clock quest showed that this weird, self-aware video game world
was somehow able to influence the events of the real world,
leaving breadcrumbs in the real world that you would be able to follow in FNaF 3.
But because the game ends with the line "The pieces are in place for YOU [to follow].",
it implies that the guard we are playing as in FNaF 3, the one who is actually finding these clues,
WAS the bite victim, which then opens up an entirely different can of worms.
AND if it's all true that the Puppet is stuck in this weird, nebulous FNaF World
then the world of the game is literally, or symbolically, limbo or death?
Anyway, it's very messy. If I were to guess, Scott planned on FNaF World, the game, actually BEING the box.
A game that literally contained all the pieces of this franchise put together.
Yeah, it's a bit symbolic and half-baked, but, y'know, so was FNaF World.
[Rimshot]
But it was here that the mystery would change direction yet again.
This time, though, it wasn't the community that prompted the change,
but rather, Scott himself, who made it clear that he was dissatisfied with FNaF World
as a rushed and unpolished release.
Embarrassed by the game, he quarantined it off to its own little segment of the franchise.
AND in the process, he retconned its story to focus on the new,
more human drama-esque direction that the series would take moving forward.
You can see this, actually, through creative changes like the game's new ending,
which revealed Henry and Baby for the very first time,
as well as some lines that got added between updates,
with Glitched Fredbear foreshadowing something terrible coming, A.K.A. Baby.
Instead of being focused backwards on details from previous games,
like the bite victim and the FNaF 3 mini-games,
the game was now looking forward to a game that had yet to be released,
which left the box, and the resolution it promised for the entirety of the Freddy Story, once again abandoned.
And when both Sister Location and FNaF 6 rolled credits with no mention of boxes,
that's exactly where it seemed like it would stay. Forgotten. Forever.
But I wasn't convinced.
For as convoluted as the story often is, Scott cares too much about it,
and cares too much about this community to leave a mystery this big unanswered.
My first thought about connecting the box to the new game was Candy Cadet.
The best character to ever come out of this franchise.
[Candy Cadet] Candy.
CANDY.
C A N D Y.
[Matt] If you visit Candy Cadet enough times and give him enough tokens,...
he'll tell you one of three separate stories, all sharing the same general theme
of five objects merging into one object, and then being put into a box.
In the first, five keys are melted together into one key by a mother trying to save imprisoned kids,
with everyone dying trapped in their own room.
The second has five kittens in danger of being eaten alive by a snake,
the remains of which get sewn together and stored in a shoe box.
And the third [chuckles] Well, the third is the most uplifting story,
as five orphans get adopted by a man who wants to protect them from a burglar
and it doesn't go so well...
[Candy Cadet] "He left one day to buy food, his heart being filled with gladness,
but returned to find that the burglar had chosen his home, and killed all five of the children.
The man could only afford one coffin, so he stitched the five bodies together to make one, and buried the child.
That night, there was a knock at the door"
[Airhorn SFX]
[Matt] So clearly, the Candy Cadet stories were making some connection to boxes,
but what did all these stories mean?
Characters getting stitched together immediately make me think of Ennard,
but even at Ennard's peak, he only had four characters inside of him: Freddy, Foxy, Ballora, and Baby,
so that one didn't quite work out.
Famously, there are five children killed as a part of the missing children's incident,
but their souls individually ended up in animatronics
rather than being put together and crammed into the same box.
There are five other games in the series, so maybe this is all a meta commentary about the franchise itself.
But then, what would it mean to stitch them together?
Just solve the story? Where the story is fixating on different moments of the Freddy timeline?
Suffice it to say, Candy Cadet led me straight to a dead end.
A dead and stitched together end, that is.
I gotta say, I scoured the game.
I knew the box was hidden here somewhere,
and I suspected that Candy Cadet was involved in some way,
but I was so overwhelmed with information at this point.
Clues whirling past me.
Vague mini-games and stories that had no concrete answers.
Details of games upon games.
Cut, unused content.
The box needed to be some solution that brought together all of these separate pieces!
And then FINALLY,
the storm cleared and it all clicked.
The final image of the game.
During the true ending, Henry calls in to unveil his trap.
[Henry] "You have all been called here into a labyrinth of sounds and smells, misdirection and misfortune.
A labyrinth with no exit. A maze with no prize."
[Matt] We then see the schematics of the ventilation system we've been working with throughout the entire game.
We see it for a long time as the center square, the actual pizzeria filled with kids, fades away.
And what we're left with is a familiar shape:
A box.
A rectangular box.
A locked box.
A box with no exit.
A box where, according to our responsibilities in Paragraph 4,
we "put all the pieces together" by salvaging the remaining animatronics,
playtesting the mini-games for all the hidden lore,
and finally bring the FNaF storyline to its end, once and for all.
As we bring the story to a close, what did Scott finally decide to do with the box?
He made it Henry's trap in FNaF 6 to lure the final pieces together
and finish 'em off once and for all.
Like Candy Cadet told us over and over again in his three stories.
The box is filled with five dead things becoming one.
Five children killed, sewn together, and buried in one coffin.
Five dead kittens, sewn together. and kept in one shoebox.
Five keys, melted together, and torched in one room.
And in our case in FNaF 6,
five animatronics, trapped in one pizzeria simulator, and burned.
And this works any way that you count it.
Baby, Springtrap, and Molten Freddy, who we know, according to his blueprint,
has three animatronics in him, thus making five.
Or you can count it Baby, Springtrap, Molten Freddy, Puppet, and our character who we play as, Michael.
Five characters all essential to the FNaF story brought into one box to die.
Even Henry himself has a role here in the Candy Cadet stories.
He's the INNOCENT of those stories.
The one who started with good intentions who ultimately fails to protect those under his care.
He's the mom who lets the kids burn.
He's the kid who leaves the snake's cage open.
It's Henry's negligence that allows the snake, the burglar, William Afton to claim so many lives.
We hear him lament this in the Insanity Ending.
[Henry] "It's only now that I understand the depth of the depravity of this creature,
this monster that I unwillingly helped to create."
[Matt] This was Scott's subtle nod to the box in FNaF's final game.
The way to work it in after all the twists and turns his story had to take over the years.
Was it what he originally intended for it?
Absolutely not.
Is it the most obvious explanation?
Ha! By a long shot.
But when you consider that this animatronic empire started as one, big, unexpected twist in Scott's life,
and was then fueled by a story full of not-so-obvious narrative moments,
having the box end up being a symbol for the franchise's final climactic moment: it feels right.
If I can borrow from Scott's original description,
"It feels special, a fitting conclusion."
And with that, there's only one theory left to go.
The analysis I promised for Midnight Motorist and the mystery of the Lorekeeper graves.
Two questions that close out these games for what feels like the final time,
but begin to point towards what the future might hold for the Freddy's series.
MORE ON THAT SOON!
Not next episode since if I do more than two of these things in a row, people get really mad at me.
But definitely soon since I want to put this thing to rest as much as you guys.
I could use, at the very least, a complete refresh on this whole thing and start from scratch again.
So ring the bell to ensure that we all close out the Freddy's Saga together.
And in the meantime, remember...
That's just a theory.
A GAME THEORY
Thanks for watching!
Subtitles by Cdmane