(SFX: Lock clinks) There’s gotta be a code to open this…
(SFX: Locks continue to clink)
Bite of '87.
(Locks clink faster)
New text? I-I must be close!
Incident of '83.
One movie!
Eleven animatronics!
ELEVEN KIDS.
One Phone Guy, one KILLER
Hex code for purple, BACKWARDS
(SFX: Futuristic door opening)
(Creepy music box) Is that...?
MARKIPLIER!
(SFX: Door shuts)
(SFX: Freddy’s laugh)
(Markiplier) Yes, MatPat. It was me!
It was me the whole time...
And that's no theory!
(Evil laughter)
(Game Theory theme song)
(Changes to creepy glitchiing version for the rest of the song)
Hello, internet!
Welcome to the Five Nights at Freddy's Podcast!
Oh, uh...sorry.
I-I mean, Game Theory...
G-GAME THEORY!
Th-the show that covers theories on OTHER games
in the two week intervals between new installments of FNAF.
BUT, if I'm ever gonna see requests for games OTHER than FNAF 4 in my Twitter feed,
THIS video, needed to be made!
Because, I have a confession, internet...
I made a mistake--
(SFX: Audience dramatically gasping)
--in my last FNAF video.
NOT my research, mind you!
My conclusion that this kid, scientifically COULD NOT BE the "Bite of '87" victim, was ACTUALLY 100% right.
Both scientifically, and, as you've been eager to point out, lore-wise.
No, I was wrong in calling THIS the "Bite of '87."
I'm man enough to admit my mistakes!
Hey! It's why they're called "theories," after all, right?
Anyway! In this case, Scott was sure to let me know my error in his first comment
on any of my videos on the franchise (to my knowledge).
Which was really exciting! But it did leave me wondering...
Should I feel honored? Or troll'd?
AND! Let me just say, because you were asking...
I didn't delete that comment. I only delete comments from Game Theorist bots.
NO! I don't want your free PSN codes, okay?
So, I guess Scott must have deleted it, himself.
Maybe there was a typo… or MAYBE a clue to FNAF 5!
(SFX: Glitching Zelda found item sound)
But before we get that far ahead, let's close the book on FNAF 4.
First, let's set the record straight on where it takes place.
It does NOT take place in in Fredbear Family diner, but rather the first location of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza.
The one from the old Phone Guy tapes found in FNAF 3.
"But the Springlock Yellow Suits are the only ones there!" I hear you typing.
And...you're right!
They obviously ARE...
But, remember Phone Guy's tapes in FNAF 3 welcome you to Freddy Fazbear's Pizza.
NOT Fredbear Diner, before he tells you about their, quote: "specially designed suits."
Roll that cassette tape!
(Phone Guy) Welcome to your new career as a performer/entertainer for Freddy Fazbear's Pizza.
Right now, we have two specially-designed suits that double as both animatronic, and suits.
(MatPat) "Specially-designed," i.e. not in EXISTENCE during the Fredbear era.
PLUS, in that same set of phone calls, Phone Guy tells us the suits have become decommissioned
after an incident where there were, quote, "multiple simultaneous springlock failures."
What do we see at the end of FNAF 4?
An incident where multiple springlocks fail simultaneously, and a child dies.
And let me be clear, 'cause the terminology is pretty confusing...
In the game, the word "springlock," is used to describe both the suit as a WHOLE,
AND the individual locking mechanisms within that suit.
A SPRINGLOCK SUIT, is made-up of multiple SPRINGLOCKS.
To have multiple simultaneous springlock failures like Phone Guy says
Would either mean, multiple suits going down at the same time--
Which...is a bit coincidental and hard to believe--
OR that multiple locks within the same suit, collapsed at the same time, causing a catastrophic failure.
Say, for instance, because a child is squirming to escape, and his tears are moistening the locks.
CRUNCH!
And besides, don't you think it'd be weird for Fredbear's Diner to use these suits, have them KILL A CHILD,
sell the company, and then Freddy Fazbear's Pizza starts using them again?
It just...wouldn't make a lot of sense!
Long story long...
Although, Fredbear and Springtrap are the featured attractions at THIS restaurant,
THIS, IS a Freddy Fazbear branded joint.
One dating back to, as we see on the TV set, 1983.
But enough about the timeline.
I don't want to dwell on it in this episode.
To me, having a general placement of the timeline is enough, because the most interesting part of this game
is the ENDING, and its overall meaning.
Like I said in the other FNAF 4 video: If this WAS just a random kid who got bit, that would be...really lame.
So, how does this particular kid fit into the overall lore?
Why is THIS incident of 1983 so important to show?
Who is the FNAF 4 kid, and what does the ending line of "I will put you back together," mean?
Well, let me tell you.
The evidence points to him being...
The Puppet.
Let's look at the evidence.
First, many have pointed out the streaming tears down the kid's face,
which mimic the tears down The Puppet's mask.
Okay, sure, that was good evidence when we first saw them in FNAF 2,
but at this point, those nice, pixelated streams
are on nearly every chubby cheeked kid who's ever entered these restaurants.
So alone, it's not much to go on.
But we can take in one step further.
While the tears themselves might not be interesting, look at this...
It's a screen from the Mangle mini-game back in FNAF 3.
This weird, crying, giant silhouette was just...kinda out of place in the last game.
And all us FNAF Theorists just...kinda glossed over it in our analyses since...
Seriously! What is it?
I-I mean, it kinda looks like The Puppet, right?
But its overall fabric feel, and its thin, striped legs...
I mean, that's what I thought at the time,
but again there was really no reason to bring it up since it just didn't...FIT anywhere!
But now, we a new game, and new information that might make this make sense.
Look at its body position. Notice anything specific about it?
It resembles a position we see our FNAF 4 kid in a LOT throughout the game, INCLUDING his final scene.
Kneeling down, two streaming tear tracks, and his face turned two-thirds toward the camera.
Do you see the connection here?
But not only that, look at what our kid wears.
A black and grey striped shirt.
And remember, this is in a world where all the other kids are generally wearing single-color outfits.
It's an oddly specific detail.
Now I ask you, what's the signature look for The Puppet?
None other, than the black and white stripes.
But besides those design details, consider that there's no sign of The Puppet anywhere in this game.
And yet, practically EVERY OTHER ANIMATRONIC is present in some form.
Meaning that this game likely exists at a time when The Puppet has yet to be created.
Remember when he just kinda showed up in FNAF 2?
Which, I should remind you, takes place four years LATER than this game.
He just...kind of...came out of nowhere.
Well, this COULD be The Puppet's origin story.
This idea of kid-as-puppet also works really well with the locked box at the end.
What's in there besides Markiplier's stunning face and buttery voice?
A puppet.
As we see in FNAF 2, he has a habit of coming out of boxes,
AND he's the only one who can bend and fold-up into a space that small.
But there's even more evidence when you look at the timeline.
Now, I challenge you to ask yourself one question:
What EXACTLY is the child afraid of in this game?
Why does he hate this restaurant so much?
The easy answer would seem to be the animatronics, but that'd be wrong.
It's important to note that, at the time of the cutscene mini-games,
he's NOT scared of Freddy, Bonnie, and Chica.
When you walk over the pile of plushies in the corner, we see that he considers these characters as his FRIENDS.
Foxy is...kinda in that camp too, but to a slightly lesser degree
because his brother has started scaring him with the Foxy mask.
Hence the head being pulled off.
Even the weird, Psychic Friend Fredbear isn't a scary presence for him.
So, clearly, he's not scared of the characters.
Is he scared of the people working at the restaurants?
The Purple Guy?
MAYBE, but that's not quite the full answer either.
Again, watch how he behaves.
When trying to escape the worker in the Fredbear outfit,
he can't muster the courage to run past the show-stage with the yellow suits.
He collapses in FEAR.
AND when the bullies drag him over to the stage, he's freaking out.
Clearly, what he is SPECIFICALLY afraid of in this restaurant, is the yellow springtrap suits.
Whether in animatronic mode, or suit mode.
Which begs one question: WHY?
(SFX: Thunder)
Well, the answer lies in Psychic Friend Fredbear.
Look at the dialogue running through the kid's head.
"Hurry the other way, and find someone who will help!
You know what happens if he catches you!"
That line WOULD be easy to write-off as this just being a scared kid
who believes the ghost stories he's heard from the dead-eyed girl he talks to on the way home--
She's creepy--
if it wasn't for one thing; This other line:
"No! Don't you remember what you saw?"
This kid actually SAW something. A crime. Something TERRIBLE in these restaurants.
It would seem to imply that he saw another child get shoved into one of these suits.
This would also explain the strange brown pixels sticking out of the yellow body backstage.
A tuft of hair, perhaps?
All of these details also fit with the character I've been lovingly calling "Psychic Friend Fredbear."
(SFX: Record scratch) (MatPat singing) He’s here, he’s there, he’s everywhere…
(MatPat singing in chorus) Who you gonna call? Psychic Friend Fredbear!
(SFX: Canned laughter)
(Back to regular MatPat) I mean, seriously! What IS this thing?
Sometimes he's a bear, sometimes he's referencing "It,"
and sometimes he's...a flower?
Uhmmm...okay.
At first, it seemed like the creepy little toy was nothing but an imaginary friend.
That was until the final moments, after the bite.
When we see the bear's signature yellow text.
But THIS time, instead of parroting back the kid's feelings, like he usually does,
he shows that he is CLEARLY in possession of a mind of his own.
Saying ALL KINDS of creepy things like...
"You're broken."
"We're still your friends."
"Don't you believe that?"
And "I'm still here, I will put you back together."
This isn't just a split personality of the kid or anything.
This is a separate entity...THIS is a spirit.
This is is someone who KNOWS the danger of getting caught by the people wearing those suits.
THIS is the victim that our FNAF 4 kid saw getting stuffed.
This is Golden Freddy.
(SFX: Static glitching)
Purple Guy's first victim.
And I know you're rushing into the comments now to say that this changes a lot of things
and goes against stuff we've been saying for a while...
But don't worry, we'll address it!
Just...get excited!
We've pinpointed the identities of our two most mysterious animatronics!
This is an AWESOME revelation from an evidence standpoint, but to be honest...
it's a little disappointing from a story-telling standpoint.
Here's why.
We humans all have a proven psychological need to complete things.
This need is called--unimaginatively-- “The Completion Principle.”
We want to fill in the blanks in the stuff around us.
So the world makes sense, and we feel in control.
It's the biggest psychological reason why you want to beat a game, or even just an individual level.
You know how you just can't stop and save in the middle of a level?
You HAVE to play until it's done!
THIS is the reason why!
Weirdly enough, it's even the reason why it's so hard to leave just one slice of cake
--Outside of sheer deliciousness--
OR leave out the last two pieces of a puzzle.
I mean, even just looking at it on the screen--
EARL! Just put the piece in!
Just...FINISH the last two pie--
Just animate the pieces to move over into the open slots, I BEG YOU!
Just finish the last--
Ahh...
Thank you.
This isn't just you being "OMG, I'm so OCD!"
It's actually because the brain is wired to respond to knowing when you're done with a task.
The brain can now take the mental energy it was using to focus on that activity,
and use it on something else.
But, what happens if you DON'T finish that piece of cake?
Or if you walk away from a game right before beating the level?
Your brain can't put that activity away, because it's still not finished!
You literally continue to spend mental energy on it in the background, even when you're doing other things.
As long are there are unknowns, your brain can't feel in total control, and can't let things go!
And whether he knew this when creating the first FNAF game or not,
Scott Cawthon has done an amazing, and INFURIATING, job of creating a story that looks like it goes one way...
but also looks like it MIGHT go somewhere else.
This keeps us thinking about FNAF lore… Talking about FNAF lore…
Pestering our favorite YouTube Theorists for MORE FNAF lore for weeks.
MONTHS.
Watching every video released on everything from top 10 details you missed in the FNAF 4 teaser,
to top 10 facts about the cupcake.
THE CUPCAKE!
TEN FACTS
ABOUT THE CUPCAKE.
Seriously.
Once we're into the lore, our brains literally cannot let the pieces go until there's some kind of resolution.
A completed story.
But Scott has done SUCH a good job of keeping the game in flux,
that the pieces never quite feel like that they fit in a way that feels satisfying.
We never get that moment of R-O-L-A-I-D-S.
...that spells relief
So we want the pieces of the puzzle to fit together cleanly, and the problem with FNAF is that
while there's plenty of evidence for the story to go one way,
there's also evidence for it going somewhere else.
Try this one on for size:
While there's a LOT of evidence for the kid in FNAF 4 being The Puppet.
--and I bet my bottom dollar that that's the solution that Scott INTENDED--
From a STORYTELLING standpoint?
More pieces actually fit together if the FNAF 4 kid becomes GOLDEN FREDDY, and not The Puppet.
This would make our first victim, the one our FNAF 4 kid sees get killed, The Puppet.
Like we've been hypothesizing since FNAF 2.
Suddenly, you have a group of five kids celebrating a birthday.
One kid associated with each animatronic, with the one representing Golden Freddy being the odd man out.
And this scenario perfectly mimics the FNAF 3 good ending, with the "Happiest Day" mini-game.
Where five souls, from five kids, each representing a different animatronic,
reunite to celebrate a birthday that never really happened.
It actually creates a beautifully book-ended story of redemption and forgiveness.
A reunion of brothers.
And yeah, yeah, I know the complaints. Don't get me started about the size of the kids being different.
They're the spirits of dead children in an 8-bit mini-game, okay? Literalizing the sizes seems to be a bit of a stretch
And it goes even further than that.
In the FNAF 2 "Give Gifts" mini-game, The Puppet gives life to the dead children,
with Golden Freddy as the odd man out, who doesn't get a mask, and does a ghostly jump-scare at the end.
That would reflect the four bullies getting killed in the pizzeria by Purple Guy, in response to this incident
while the one, Golden Freddy, dies somewhere else.
Like, a hospital bed.
I mean, we do see the IV, and pills, and flowers.
And as a result, that's why The Puppet, the first victim, is able to reach those four kids souls and save them,
while Golden Freddy has to behave like a ghost.
It also gels with the idea that the "Take Cake" mini-game represents the first victim at the first location
and why The Puppet is always the jump-scare:
Because HE'S the kid we just watched get killed!
So, a lot of storytelling pieces fit together, but at the end of the day, that leaves us with too many questions about
why Golden Freddy is talking to our FNAF 4 kid.
A spirit needs to be inhabiting that bear for the story to make sense.
And Scott certainly put in plenty of evidence that leads us to believe that the FNAF 4 kid is The Puppet.
The FNAF 4 kid needs to have seen a tragic, scary incident to make him fear the restaurant.
Which means he can't have been the first kid to have been killed!
In short, the challenge here, is that you have a choice.
There's more evidence for our FNAF 4 kid becoming The Puppet,
but the resulting STORY is more satisfying for him to become Golden Freddy.
And either side leaves you wanting more,
because not all of the evidence works in either scenario.
And that, is the true secret to FNAF.
The completion principle demands that we get answers;
that the scraps of evidence across the four games come together cleanly.
But if, and when, they do, our brains will just be able to move on, and forget about it.
Making it just another game that we played, and is collecting dust on our shelf,
or, taking up memory space in our Steam account, I guess.
In the meantime, good on Scott for making sure FNAF is ALWAYS on our minds.
He didn't do it by giving us endless levels, or a whole bunch of stuff to complete,
he did it just by making sure the pieces that are there are NEVER quite enough.
So GG, Scott.
GG.
And GG to all of you too, Theorists. All of us.
For trying to complete the story, and solve the mysteries.
I may complain about it but, honestly, I've been having a blast.
It's like the Gravity Falls of video games.
It's been my honor to work with all of you on this quest over the last year,
and I look forward to trying to continue the quest in the year to come.
In fact, since this has been a video many of you have been waiting for, for a LONG time,
now that it's finally out, this Thursday, at 4 o'clock PM, Pacific Time,
I'll be live streaming right here on The Game Theorist channel,
answering all the remaining questions you have about the FNAF franchise.
Touching on things I didn't get to cover in this episode. like the presence of Mangle in FNAF 4,
while also looking at some of the theories that you've been submitting to me over the last year.
So, if you have a question you want answered, or a theory you want addressed
between now and Thursday at 4 o'clock PM PST, Tweet me @MatPatGT, with the hashtag, GTLive.
It just...helps me sort things.
I'll be reading your burning questions, and answering them to the best of my ability.
And who knows? We may even be able to get a special guest or two in here.
So remember, that's right here on The Game Theorist channel, Thursday, at 4 o'clock PM Pacific Time.
And, to get you ready, welcome back to the--
SUPER AMAZING END CARD TOURNAMENT
Where I wanna know, do you think the FNAF 4 kid is The Puppet, or Golden Freddy? Simple as that.
You've heard the arguments for both sides, click on one to choose.
I'll let you know which side won on Thursday's live stream, and it will all be our way of letting Scott know
how we want this story to take shape.
But remember...
That's just a theory...
A GAME THEORY!
Thanks for watching!
(SFX: Thunder)
(MatPat singing) He's here, he's there, he's everywhere...
Who you gonna call?
(SFX: Record scratch) Psychic Friend Fredbear!
(MatPat speaking in radio) I like, switch keys at the end. Weird.
(MatPat singing in different pitches) Psychic Friend Fred--
Psychic Friend FREDbear!
(MatPat talking) That's it.
(MatPat singing) He's here, he's--
He's here, he's there, he's everywhere...
Who you gonna call?
Psychic Friend Fredbear!
(MatPat talking) That wasn't it either, damn.
(MatPat singing) He's here, he's th— *laughs* this is great *laughs*
He's here, he's there, he's everywhere...
Who you gonna call?
Psychic Friend Fredbear!
(MatPat talking) That was it!