Thanks to Google Meet for sponsoring a portion of today's video.
It's been so many years.
Long have I waited.
Finally, it's my turn.
Hello Internet.
Welcome to Film Theory, the show that always knew that this day was coming.
It's been over eight years, but finally, the 5 minutes of Freddy's live
action feature film is set to hit the silver screen in a little over a month.
And you know what that means.
It means that nowhere is safe anymore from FNAF theories.
Don't believe me?
There's a FNAF cookbook releasing in October, a FNAF cookbook.
It's coming for you next, Food Theory.
Now all we need is a FNAF fashion line that's infected all of us.
Oh, my sweet stars.
What have I done?
But for a satisfying
as it is for Film Theory to take another toy
out of the toy box of Game Theory and claim it is our own -
see also Sonic, Mario and Last of Us in this year alone -
In all seriousness, we are way overdue for a theory
breaking down our predictions for this movie.
And believe me, there is plenty to talk about.
If you're on YouTube and you somehow missed the phenomenon
that is Five Nights at Freddy's, how?
Genuinely, how?
I need to know your secrets.
This series exploded about a decade ago with every let's player on the platform
screaming their heads off over the haunted animatronics
hunting us down in the ruins of a dilapidated pizzeria.
But while the scare certainly got us started, it's the story that's kept us going.
What's helped the series persist for as long as it has
has been its incredibly mysterious story
told through scraps of information and obscure environmental details.
Heck, 60 episodes later on Game Theory
and we are still trying to decode this thing.
Really, it's only been 60?
It feels like it's got to be 100 at this point.
And this new FNAF movie seems to be staying true to the franchise's roots,
not in terms of the lore necessarily, but in terms of the cryptic storytelling.
There is a ton of information packed into the few short minutes of trailer footage
that we've seen so far, enough
that I believe we can predict the entire plot of this new movie
right down to the shocking twist ending that's going to leave you devastated.
Here's a hint: if you think this movie has itself
a happy ending with everyone smiling
and living happily ever after, then clearly you have not been paying attention.
So today, Film Theory does what Game Theory's never been able to do: solve
this franchise.
And we're going to do it before the movie even releases.
Keep your eyes on your monitors, loyal theorists,
we're going in.
So we think a good place to start with
our prediction here is sort of laying out
what we think the movie's trying to do with FNAF as a franchise.
Just from watching these trailers, I think it's clear
that this movie does not take place in the universe of the games.
Why? This thing.
I have played, watched and read every last scrap of information
this franchise has put out, and this is unlike anything we've ever seen before.
Clearly, it's a murder weapon, and clearly it was made by the franchise's big bad.
But why? What?
And how? is still a complete mystery.
My best guess, and again this one is a guess,
is that it's a remnant extractor,
a way to ensure murder victims have the most traumatic,
awful death possible so the agony they experience can be harvested
to help create creatures with eternal life.
If none of that meant anything to you, strap in El Chipo,
you're in for a crash course.
By the end of this thing, you're going to be talking about Faz-Goo
with the confidence of a pro.
Looking at the trailers and IMDB, we know that this is going to be
the story of Mike Schmidt, a security guard from FNAF 1.
But things are different this time around.
While this certainly appears to take place in the 1990s
like the original FNAF game, considering everyone's using old school
wired telephones, there are no modern cars and all the monitors are old CRTs,
they're also bringing in characters who clearly reference later parts
of the franchise, specifically Vanessa from Security Breach, a blond security
guard in the game who here appears as a blond police officer.
What I think's going on here from a meta perspective
is that the movie is taking a bunch of stories from the game franchise
and simplifying them for a general film audience while trying to keep
the most iconic aspects of the games intact.
Plus, they're going to be combining ideas and characters
from different areas of the franchise
to get as many recognizable aspects of FNAF into one film as possible.
That's why we see the story
from the original FNAF interacting with someone new from Security Breach.
And then you have a girl named Abby mixed in there
whose name is literally an anagram of baby,
all fighting against an unbroken version of Spring Trap.
That right there, that is the filmmakers trying to bridge
the gap between the different eras of FNAF and bring in as many fans as they can.
The OGs from 2014,
the new fans from Security Breach, and also your average Joes who can't
tell a Fredbear from a Nedd Bear, let alone a Glamrock from a Rockstar.
Oh, you have so much to learn.
So, all in all,
think of this movie as something that's going to wipe
the slate clean and start fresh, referencing moments and key characters
from the game and books, but not being beholden to them.
Because, you know, that's not a confusing route to go at all.
That said, let's just hope they don't stray too far from the games.
Case in point, this detail right here.
During a spoopy, scary moment
in the trailer, Nebraska is spelled out very clearly on a poster
in very large, very bold letters right next to the main character's head.
This was an intentional decision, definitely put into the trailers
to keep us talking.
This means something.
Now, the general consensus is that the FNAF games normally take place in Utah.
Multiple spinoff book series have made that detail quite clear.
Could it be then that they've moved the setting to Nebraska for some reason?
Maybe, but I don't think so.
It'd be weird to just have a state poster of the state that you're currently in
right above your security desk.
My guess is that this poster was put here intentionally by Mike.
It's important him for some reason.
My best guess is that it's hashtag goals, an aspirational place to go to to help him
get out of his current situation.
Because on the face of it, things don't seem to be going all that great for him.
It looks to me like Mike and his family have fallen on some hard times.
First off, we don't see his parents in these trailers at all.
Though Mike's father has been cast,
I'm going to guess that he's only here for a flashback scene,
considering he doesn't look too much older than Mike's actor, Josh Hutcherson.
Additionally, we see that Mike and his little sister,
Abby, are living in a small house with an average car, and Mike is looking
for any job that he can get.
We later see Mike bring in Abby along with him while he's
working, implying that this is probably their only option.
They can't afford a babysitter,
and if there were parents at home to take care of Abby,
why would he be bringing her to his nightshift job?
So Nebraska might be a symbolic place of freedom for Mike, a place to escape
and finally be free.
More or less, though, I believe that the setup for the back
story of the FNAF movie is going to align with that of the first game.
Freddy Fazbear's
Pizzeria was a popular arcade and food chain represented by its four
iconic mascots.
However, they're not the only ones here.
It seems that some of the children encountered
another animatronic, a large yellow bunny rabbit that's separate from the other four,
as we see in a drawing here on the wall from this shot.
This was a costume
used by the owner of the establishment, William Afton, an outfit
that he would use to get closer to the kids,
which honestly is creepier in a movie than it was in the games.
You know, just your typical yellow bunny friend holding hands with five kids,
which when you're talking in horror movie speak is code
for: he killed those kids,
stuffed them into suits, and eventually turned them into haunted robots.
Also, just to call it out here, I originally thought
that there was going to be
something hidden in this wall of drawings beyond just the obvious.
I mean, it is the perfect spot to sneak in little bits of hidden lore,
but the more that we've seen of the wall in other trailers,
there doesn't actually seem to be that much of anything here, sadly.
And honestly, surprisingly, considering the franchise
we're talking about.
Speaking of yellow bunny-men,
the trailer seemed
determined to convince us that the person we expected to play the franchise's
big bad isn't actually playing the villain.
Despite rumors that he would be playing our resident
'urple murder man, William Afton, in the trailers Lillard's character
is clearly labeled as Steve Raglan, career counselor.
But here's the rub
If there's one thing we've learned here in Film Theory over the past decade
it's that trailers can be manipulated to create mystery or confuse timelines.
See also Morbius and Infinity War, just to name two key examples.
And here I think we're being presented with the exact same sort of misdirect.
In fact, I'm almost 100% confident that I can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.
First, Matthew Lillard confirmed that he signed a three picture deal
to star in more than one FNAF movie.
And unless Steve Raglan's a new character that Blumhouse is just really hype
about, I expect that deal was to play Afton.
However, far more convincingly,
we have this scene from the trailer where a young boy is seen getting kidnaped
in the middle of the woods.
Based on the film's official website,
the synopsis reads that Mike is still, quote, haunted by the unsolved
disappearance of his younger brother more than a decade before.
And we know based on casting that the brothers name is Garrett.
Now, the actor playing this kid, Garrett, is named Lucas Grant.
Hopping over to Instagram, Grant
commented on a post by Matthew Lillard saying that it was great to work with him
and that he's much nicer than his character.
Now tell me,
why would a young actor
playing a kidnaped boy have any reason to interact with the career counselor?
He wouldn't.
The only way they interact is if Matthew Lillard, Steve Raglan, William
Afton, call 'em whatever you want, was kidnapping that kid.
In other words, in this movie, a big final reveal will be
that Matthew Lillard kidnapped Mike's brother.
This would actually parallel some key moments from the original novel
where William Afton acts under a pseudonym, Dave Miller,
and as the perfectly normal, mundane job of security guard for an old abandoned
mall, a job that allows him to supervise the comings and goings around Freddy's.
That way, when kids start poking around, he's
able to hop into the suit - get it hop because he's a rabbit - hop into the suit
and try to scare him away, just like we see him doing here.
And lastly, in the novels
he also kidnaps a kid prior to becoming a crazed serial killer.
Honestly, a lot of the details here line up. Now
before we start jumping from video
to video to keep tabs on Freddy and the gang with more plot predictions,
let's take a moment to thank a service that I bet Mike wishes he had, our sponsor
for this portion of today's video: Google Meet.
I'm going to be honest with you guys,
when Google reached out to us wanting to partner
to talk about their video calling app, Google Meet, I was definitely surprised.
Weird theories about spooky movies?
Yeah, not exactly the first thing that pops in my head when I hear the words
"video calling app."
But hey, the more I thought about it, the more it actually makes a lot of sense.
See, we've been using Google Meet for all of our team Theorist
meetings for years now,
basically the entire time we've been a business.
We're mostly a remote company and Google Meet
is the tool that allows that to happen.
It is quite literally a daily part of my life with no less than 3 hours a day
being spent on Google Meet.
It also checks out because Meet slots into so many
other services that we use every day with zero extra effort on our end:
Google Docs, Calendar, Gmail, YouTube;
it just works seamlessly.
Honestly, we have tried other services, and I hate them.
They're just not as good.
Meet supports one on one calls, obviously, but it can also invite hundreds
of participants
if I need everyone in the company
as well as all my extended friends and family to hear my rantings and ravings
about haunted animatronics.
That happens more frequently than you might think.
I can even share my computer screen to present my 87 part slide
deck about all the hidden lore that I just found.
And here's the kicker, friends, Meet
isn't just for boring business meetings or Theorist corporate mandated fun nights.
It also works great for your everyday life.
In fact, I realized that I actually use Meet
for more than you'd think outside of work as well.
And I'm not talking about video calling the pizzeria
to make sure that the bear and the fox stay put.
As someone who wants to keep in touch with my parents,
and as a dad who wants my son to have a close relationship
with his grandparents, Google Meet's incredible.
We wrangle Ollie and call up my folks with super clear video
no matter where we are or what device we're using.
Sure it works on our computers and laptops,
but Google Meet's also available for tablets and phones.
You even use it through a web browser, no problem.
Basically any modern device
with an OS is going to be able to use Google Meet in some way or another.
In fact, if you happen to have an Android phone,
like basically every one on team Theorist does, it already comes preinstalled
and integrated into your contacts and messages.
And if you have an iPhone, it's super easy to install from the App Store.
So, please, do yourself a favor and try Google Meet today
by clicking the link in the description below.
The quality is incredible and it's easy to use.
What more do you need?
Again, go check out Google Meet by clicking on the link in the description.
One last big thank you to Google Meet for sponsoring this portion of the video,
and now let's put back on our employee
uniforms and head back out to the pizzeria to figure out what exactly is going on
in Five Nights at Freddy's.
So really when we look at a lot of the clues
coming from these trailers, the story is largely what you'd expect.
There's a string of children disappearing from the pizzeria, resulting in Freddy
Fazbear's shutting down.
Judging from both the kids drawing on the wall
and this shot from the trailer, it looks like Afton killed
five children, as we'd expect from the lure of the first game.
Our favorite bunny-themed serial killer hid the bodies of the kids
inside the animatronic suits, and, in so doing,
trapped their souls inside the robots forever.
And we know that they're sticking with that specific part of the lore
based on the jump scare here.
Oh, it is so good
every time I see it.
Children's hands popping out of animatronic mouths,
not only is it terrifying,
it tells us that he definitely hid the bodies inside there.
But now recently, people have been poking around the old abandoned pizzeria.
As we see in the most recent trailer, some smalltime criminals break in intent
on robbing the place and thrashing it up for fun.
I believe that that sequence
is probably going to be the beginning of the film,
these characters breaking in before they're met with a terrible fate.
The possessed animatronics come to life and kill them as they're mid crime,
not only showing the audience early on
that these things are terrifying, but also creating a giant problem
for Afton,
who now risks having more people poking around his old murder den.
Hoping to prevent future break ins and deeply uncomfortable questions
about his past, Afton decides to hire a security guard
to keep an eye on the place during the night.
His first option doesn't exactly work out all that well.
But, not to be deterred,
our plucky mass murderer tries and tries again
to find someone who will keep the building safe.
Enter our main character of the movie, Mike Schmidt.
Mike will do anything for cash.
Based on these two shots
from the first trailer here,
we know that Mike has a history of working as a security guard, but likely
he got carried away in a previous role, resulting in him getting fired.
Desperate for cash and with no one willing to hire him,
Mike takes a job as the night shift security guard at Freddy Fazbear's
bringing his sister Abby with him.
Seems like things aren't too strange starting off.
Though it's certainly creepy,
they explore the pizzeria without much of an issue,
until, of course, there's a knock at the front door.
Mike goes out and meets Vanessa, a police officer with a strange interest
in the building.
In fact, she seems to know a lot about Freddy's.
Looks like somebody watched our complete timeline.
Soon as creepy occurrences start happening all across the pizzeria, Mike realizes
what he's gotten himself into.
And here's where the stakes get higher.
Obviously, the animatronics are going to pose a danger to both Mike and Vanessa,
but their well-being isn't going to be the only thing on the line
during this movie.
Throughout the trailers, we see shots of Abby
going off to explore the pizzeria alone and ultimately hiding from Foxy
in the ball pit.
Let's just hope that she doesn't time travel.
In all seriousness, though, somehow Abby will befriend animatronics,
especially the leader, Golden Fredbear, a character that you'll notice
never appears anywhere except for in shots with her.
Why does she befriend them?
Or rather, why do the animatronics choose to befriend Abby? Well...
Yep, the animatronics want to add
another member to their ranks, and that is going to be the big driving factor
for this movie.
Mike and Vanessa are going to rush to try to solve
the mystery of the kid's disappearance and put their spirits to rest,
hopefully with plenty of time to save Abby.
The scenes where we see Mike
interacting with the kids outside the pizzeria,
I believe that this is where Mike is trying to put the pieces together
and is speaking to the spirits in something like his dreams.
Of course, William Afton does not want this to happen
and has to get himself physically involved, disguising himself
in his old Spring Trap costume and chasing Mike and Vanessa around
in an attempt to silence them in the big, scary action set pieces.
Afton will likely capture and injure Vanessa at some point,
considering that we see a yellow rabbit hand grabbing Vanessa's neck here
and Mike sitting by Vanessa in the hospital looking concerned.
So that's the main set up for what I see happening in the movie,
But what about the big twist?
There's always got to be some sort of a big twist in FNAF.
Well, I believe that it comes with the identity of some of the spirits.
You see, we actually get a pretty good idea
of which spirits possess which animatronic bodies from this shot in the trailers.
It's pretty obviously telegraphed: bunny ear kid is Bonnie, redhead
with pirate claw is Foxy, the girl wearing all yellow is Chica,
and the boy with the top hat as Freddy.
As for the last kid, though, well, the obvious thought was that
he was going to become the mysterious Golden Freddy.
I think that's what I and everyone else assumed when we saw that first trailer.
But now I'm not so sure.
The fact that this fifth child in the shot doesn't have
a characteristic explicitly linking him to an animatronic has to be intentional.
And I believe that it was the filmmakers
keeping things ambiguous so we wouldn't guess their twist.
I suspect that the fifth kid here isn't Golden Freddy.
Instead, I think it might be the cupcake.
Yeah, I know. I get it.
It sounds ridiculous, but hear me out on this one.
In the latest trailer, we clearly see cupcake moving around
independently and attacking someone without Chica's help.
My initial gut thought to this, well, that's kind of stupid, to be honest.
Like, does Chica's soul transfer down into the cupcake alone for remote attacks,
leaving Chica soulless for a while now?
Or can a spirit divide itself and act on different parts
of the character at different times?
You know what? I'm not sure.
I don't have a good answer for it, but I do think that this would open up
an incredibly dark and compelling twist on Golden Freddy.
Remember these five kids who disappeared at Freddy Fazbear's
in this shot aren't the only kids that have gone missing in this story.
We still have ourselves
Mike's missing brother, Garrett, who we talked about earlier is the kid
in the back of the car likely being carted away by ol' Billy Afton up in front.
I mean, in this franchise, it would be shocking
if someone kidnapping a child wasn't William Afton.
Anyway, why do we think that this is actually
the moment that we see Mike's brother get kidnapped?
Well, again, we turn to actor Lucas Grant and Instagram, where we see
this post of him hanging out with another child actor named Wyatt Parker.
Parker, even calls Grant his "best bro,"
an interesting choice of words
considering that Parker
was cast in the film as young Mike, two twin brothers, one who gets kidnapped,
almost a one-for-one replica of what we see happen in the Silver Eyes novel.
So let me ask you: what if Mike's brother is Golden Freddy
separate from the tragedy at the pizzeria?
We can assume that Mike's brother
was kidnapped in one of the earlier parts of the timeline,
a time when Golden Freddy would still be in use.
And in the games
we've long theorized that Mike Schmidt is, in fact, Mike Afton, son of William Afton.
This would also mean
that his little brother was the crying child who was killed
and became one of the spirits that possessed Golden Freddy.
Given the fact that Mike's father has been cast
and is distinctly not being played by Matthew Lillard,
I don't think that's the exact direction that they're taking for the movie.
But taking the core of that story, keeping Mike's brother is Golden
Freddy, well that would fit with both the timeline
and serve as a devastating twist to the casual audience.
It would also explain why
Abby is spending so much time with Golden Freddy in the trailers.
It's her spending time with the brother
that she never got to know whether she realizes it or not.
It could also explain why
Golden Freddy retains blue eyes when all the other animatronics have red ones.
The circumstances of his possession are just a little bit different
and he's interacting with the family member.
So, Afton attacks, Mike and Vanessa, for getting too close to his secrets
and despite fighting back, they ultimately lose.
As they're about to die,
Abby is able to win over the animatronics and use them to fight back against Afton
saving them all.
You'll notice one of the oddities of the trailer is the design of Spring Trap.
It is different from what we see in the games.
It's cleaner and it's more
put together.
It has not gone through all the rotten
decay that we'd expect from this character.
I believe that's exactly how it ends.
Mike, Abby, Vanessa and the animatronics defeat Afton by trapping him in the walls,
tying a bow on the end of this movie
while still leaving him in a position to turn into the decayed,
rotten corpse that we all know and love for the eventual sequel.
However, all things can't end happily here.
I believe there's a good chance that the animatronics
are going to wind up getting what they want out of Abby in the end.
Her name is an anagram of baby, after all, an animatronic
that first appeared in FNAF: Sister Location.
The team celebrates the defeat of Afton only for Abby to accidentally stumble
into a clown outfit or maybe get put there by a vengeful Golden Freddy
giving us our villain and the problem to solve in the eventual second
movie, saving the girl from her eternal, ceaseless torment.
Or maybe that ceaseless torment is just meant for me, who is now tasked
with trying to solve the timeline of this franchise across multiple channels.
Truly, the animatronics have taken another victim.
But hey, that's just a theory, a Film Theory.
Aaaand cut...