[Garbled mumbling]
[Low scream that rises in volume]
[Mumbling intensifies]
[Screaming returns, becoming clearer and louder]
[Screaming transitions to mechanical whirring]
[The noise fades away]
[The door creaks as it opens]
[Abrupt silence]
[Paper shredding]
It's back. [Paper shredding]
[Paper shredding]
[Clang]
[Sound of flickering lightbulb]
Hello internet! Welcome to Game Theory,
the show that clearly doesn't understand the meaning of the word "final."
[Recordings of MatPat] "It's finally over! -- "
"That is the end -- "
" -- the last FNAF lore theory -- "
" -- FNAF is at its end -- "
" -- the end -- "
" -- final! -- "
" -- final -- "
" -- final FNAF theory."
But can you really blame me? These games have confirmed endings in FNAFs 3, 4, 6, and Ultimate Custom Night.
It's like Doctor Strange saw 14 million different endings and Scott Cawthon was like,
"I'll take 'em all!"
Beginning to think FNAF World's inclusion of "FNAF 57: Freddy in Space" was less of a joke,
and more of a preview of coming attractions.
So anyway! It's back.
Call it whatever you like:
FNAF 7, FNAF VR, Help Wanted,
MatPat Insanity Simulator,
But after a year of detoxing,
Five Nights at Freddy's is back with a new official game in the series,
and it, more than any other installment,
feels like an inflection point.
A game that is simultaneously looking back to pay tribute to where these games began
as well as a game that's looking forward to lay the groundwork for where this franchise is headed.
This isn't just some quick VR cash grab for the series,
this is a pivotal game in the canon that closes the book on the old lore
and also launches us into FNAF: The Next Generation.
It seems to answer some old mysteries from the previous games, all while opening up the themes and tone for what's to come.
And there is a lot to unpack here.
This is, without question, the meatiest game in the FNAF library,
which is impressive, because it's still a VR title.
SO!
Let's not waste any time and get started with the basics.
Now in case you don't have a VR headset,
I've actually played through the entire game on GTLive
so you can check out all the highlights,
"No -- NO!"
[Grandfather clock chiming]
"AH! Are you kidding me?!" [Grandfather clock chiming]
"Are you kidding me?! Did we do it?!" [Grandfather clock chiming]
-- and lowlights of my playthrough over there.
[in a silly voice] "Hello boys and girls!"
"I'm here to give you your happiest day ever!"
"Come with me wayward souls..."
"...we've got vengeance to strike!"
But let me quickly take you through what you need to know for today's theory:
in Five Nights at Freddy's: Help Wanted,
we're playing as a beta tester for a new Freddy game.
As we're told in the opening cinematic:
And yes, that picture is really Scott Cawthon canonically inserting himself into this game.
That is a discussion for another episode my friends
[strained] because it throws all sorts weird monkey wrenches into the lore!
But we'll get to that later.
So, according to the intro Scott's games gave Fazbear Entertainment a bad name
and the point of this Freddy Fazbear virtual experience then is to poke fun at their past,
clear their name,
and ultimately rebuild the brand.
Seems simple enough, right?
Play through some loving recreations of past games
as well as some new minigames,
and that's it.
Job complete.
A new generation of Faz-fans fall in love with all these new characters
and add to Scott Cawthon's growing pile of money.
[In-game narrator] "Don't forget the merch perfect for birthdays."
Speaking of merch, Fazbear Entertainment ain't the only ones shilling for their supper.
Game Theory merch is also perfect for birthdays.
Heck, probably even more perfect for birthdays, Scott!
And wouldn't you know it, we just released a bunch of new items for you.
Can't sleep at night because you got some creepy animatronic hanging out in your closet?
We've got you covered!
The color-changing Game Theory Light.
It's the perfect way to keep animatronics at bay, 'cuz it's powered by USB.
You don't even have to worry about your batteries running out at 5:55am!
Or maybe you're just looking to be the best-dressed at your friend's next pizza party.
Stay fashionable while making sure to stay out of the employees-only room
in your new his and hers Game Theory shirt.
A purple Theorist pride t-shirt for the ladies
with reinforced sleeves and neck,
and the codebreaker shirt for the guys.
Asymmetric because I think it's really fashionable in clothing,
but also with easter-eggs benedict built into the design of the shirt.
It's a shirt and a puzzle for you to solve all in one.
We've also got socks,
guys' and girls' underwear,
a jacket,
and ONLY a limited amount of everything available.
So once they're gone, they're gone.
If you're a fan of these channels and all the hard work that we put into each and every one of our videos --
-- and I hope that you can see it. These videos do take a lot of time and effort to put together --
buying socks or a shirt or a jacket is the single best way to support us.
So, not only are you showing off your Theorist pride, and not only are you getting yourself a piece of high quality clothing,
you're also just supporting us and our efforts to really do something better here on YouTube.
So with that being said, show off to the world that you actually understand the lore of these games --
-- or pretend like you understand the lore of these games --
by nabbing yourself some new Theory Wear.
Link is right up here, or it's on the top line of the description.
Now with that out of the way, back to VR.
Playing through the game, it is legitimately impressive.
Pretty much everyone here has recreated in a stunning 3D environment:
Bonnie, Baby, Funtime Freddy, the Puppet,
heck, even easter-egg appearances by Minireenas and Lolbit--
-- characters that most of you watching this probably haven't even heard of before
because you have much better things to do with your brain space than I do.
Practically everyone is here in this game! Except for one important omission.
Golden Freddy.
I mean Ballora isn't around either, but y'know, I said important.
Ba-ba-boom! [Airhorn]
But that seems weird, right?
I mean, this is a game that drops you into perfect recreations of the first three installments of the series.
You don't just forget about one of the most important characters to the lore of these games.
Well, that's because it isn't some careless oversight.
Golden Freddy isn't here for a reason.
It's our first clue that this game isn't just a joke, and is a canonical entry.
Specifically, it tells us where it falls in line with everything else that we've played through.
Golden Freddy isn't here because she's busy hanging out in H - E - double Chica arms with William Afton.
Think back to the end of ultimate custom night in our previous theories.
By tracking the voice lines used throughout the game over screens,
we were able to piece together that we're playing as William Afton in that game,
child-killer extraordinaire,
and that the whole game was him trapped in heck to atone for his sins.
And the thing that was keeping him there was the one that he should not have killed,
a girl named Cassidy
the spirit who had an axe to grind possessing the Golden Freddy suit.
The reason Golden Freddy isn't in FNAF VR is because the spirit is down there tormenting Willy A. forever.
[Crackling flames] The reason Golden Freddy isn't in FNAF VR is because the spirit is down there tormenting Willy A. forever,
[Crackling flames] from here until the end of the series.
[Crackling flames] That's why the ultimate ending of Custom Night was Golden Freddy twitching off into the darkness.
That's why the ultimate ending of Custom Night was Golden Freddy twitching off into the darkness.
Cassidy never gives up her soul, no matter what Old Man Consequences said.
Further cementing that Help Wanted is now at the end of the FNAF timeline
is this miserable little creature right here,
the Scrap Baby plush.
Because why wouldn't you want to cuddle with something that rips in half and eats children alive?
Let me remind everyone who doesn't have an encyclopedic index
of all 60+ animatronics that have graced the screen in this franchise,
that Scrap Baby is the homeless hobo version of the old Baby after escaping Sister Location
and was voted out of the Ennard tribe sometime between FNAF 5 and 6.
Her only on-screen appearance is in FNAF6.
So, the fact that a reference to her exists in this game at all
means that it must come after her expulsion from Ennard --
-- sometime definitely after FNAF5 --
but again, with Golden Freddy missing it seems to secure it after everything's burned down and closed.
So, we have ourselves a company that's trying to rebuild its reputation after a series of tragic events.
Seems pretty simple, right?
Of course not! This is a FNAF game!
You know that the story is never gonna be that obvious.
Hidden throughout the game are cassette tapes that, when collected,
unleash a new monster into the hallways of this pizzeria,
what the game's files refer to as Glitchtrap.
A yellow bunny with purple eyes.
Hmmm, yellow bunny with purple eyes you say?
I think I might know where this is headed.
as you collect more and more tapes
this glitch rabbit comes closer and closer,
becoming more and more fully formed.
Beat all the minigames and you unlock the final challenge, "Pizza Party".
A nightmarish fever dream that mashes together every location that you just played through.
Waiting for you at the end of this horrific maze is the single scariest moment from the entire franchise,
and I can't emphasize that enough.
It is literally chilling.
What you learn is that you, a seven-year-old, have been lured to the back room of Freddy's.
And what awaits you is your pizza party, complete with your favorite flavor of cake,
all your best animatronic friends,
and then Glitchtrap calls you to follow him.
The music fades, and suddenly you're on stage.
You're holding Freddy's microphone. You ARE Freddy.
You've been stuffed. You are now a missing child,
watching as your killer dances gleefully to the song that you're being forced to stand up on stage and sing.
This isn't just a spoopy jump-scare of some goofy character,
This is real horror.
So it definitely seems like this new character, Pedo-Hare over here, is William Afton.
I mean sure, the suit isn't as bulky as a springlock suit,
but he's got all the other qualifications down.
Yellow bunny fursona? Check.
Association with the color purple? Check.
Enjoy children's pizza parties just a weeee bit too much? Big ole check again!
Then again, to call this character William would be missing a huge chunk of this game's story.
This isn't William.
Like I said, he's trapped in eternal torment with Cassidy listening to Barney the Hippo over here tell his life story.
[Mr. Hippo] "Dry bread was always fresh on Tuesday."
"They made sourdough bread on monday and threw it out Wednesday -- What was I saying?"
No. To understand who, or better put, what, this thing actually is
we need to examine the tapes that summon Glitchtrap here in the first place.
Scattered throughout the various mini games are 16 glitching cassettes
left behind by a former game dev, Tape Girl
which when put together tell the story of a failing game company,
a bit of malicious code,
and some very stabby-stabby office supplies.
We're also introduced to the story of another beta tester who was in our position before us
named Jeremy,
making this the third time that the name Jeremy has appeared in these games
with the first being FNAF 2's night guard,
and then again on the gravestones in FNAF 6.
Coincidence?
I think not!
First tape immediately makes it clear we're not picking these up in chronological order --
[Tape Girl speaking]
-- which leaves us the task of shuffling them into some modicum of sense in order to put the story together
of what really happened while this game, the game we're supposedly playing now in its final form,
was in development.
Going through the tapes, I've done the shuffling for you
and I think I've come up with the most cohesive narrative based on the evidence and what tape girl actually says.
She begins by telling us that the games then-play tester, Jeremy,
has been complaining to his manager, Dale, about nightmares.
Except he's not explaining him like they're nightmares,
he's talking about them like they're real.
[Tape Girl speaking]
Pale? Doesn't react to scares? Talking to themselves?
Sounds me like he's going crazy. Either that or he's just a FNAF YouTuber.
#Relatable am I right?
The game he's working on is this one, Freddy Fazbear's Virtual Experience
which includes some code that was inherited from Fazbear Entertainment
scanned off some old hard drives to save them time and money.
[Tape Girl speaking]
Manager Dale doesn't seem to take Jeremy's warning seriously, however,
and instead he starts documenting all of Jeremy's behavior in preparation to fire him.
[Tape Girl speaking]
This confirms for us one major detail: that the scariest thing in the FNAF universe
[thud] is CRUNCH TIME.
Working long hours until you're driven crazy and then fired at the end?
[Giggle] Man! It's just like the real-life games industry!
It's uncanny, these games just get more and more realistic.
So Jeremy is going crazy and no one is listening.
Flash-forward to tape six, where Tape Girl talks about coming in early one morning
to see the supply room lit, and Jeremy in the darkened testing room.
It's a short tape, but it's an important one
because it sets us up for tape number nine
when we learned that what she saw looked like a Halloween mask laying on the ground
and a bunch of ink both on Jeremy and scattered around the floor.
But that's not ink. That's no mask
The ink is Jeremy's blood, and the mask is actually Jeremy's face
which he presumably sliced off his own body using the aptly named guillotine paper cutter.
We know this to be true thanks to tape number four,
where we hear tape girls say that the cutter comes from the supply room
and that Jeremy expressly knew where it was.
[Tape Girl speaking]
And for as extreme as this sounds, we know that he sliced off his face
due to all these seaming minute details about how his face was obscured that morning.
[Tape Girl speaking]
Anyone else getting some bizarre Bite of '87 vibes from this story?
No? Is it just me? Huh.
So Jeremy eventually dies from his injuries.
After Jeremy's death, things start getting even weirder,
which! Is a relative statement considering that this is the FNAF franchise that we're talking about.
Tape Girl overhears a conversation about a lawsuit in the aftermath of Jeremy's death
which makes perfect sense given that he died a horrific death on the job.
In response the company starts taking some serious steps to cover their tracks.
Namely to sell off the game and destroy evidence that could incriminate 'em.
In the meantime, Tape Girl takes over Jeremy's role as play tester
and all we can hope is that she REALLY cleaned that VR headset before she put that thing back on.
She has three days to play test the game.
Across her audio logs, we learned that in that time she sees Glitchtrap for the first time
and comes to learn that he's attached itself to her audio logs.
She tries to delete them, but can't.
[Windows error noise] She tries to delete them, but can't.
She tries to delete them, but can't.
So instead of deleting them, she fragments and disperses them
into the 16 small pieces we've been collecting throughout our playthrough,
warning us that they shouldn't be reunited at any cost.
[Tape Girl speaking]
Whoops! Probably shouldn't have hidden that info on tape 15 of 16.
After that, though, she seems to backtrack on her story
saying that in fact the entity in the game can be killed and that to do so we should reassemble the tapes.
Odd, but okay, we've got them all anyway, so might as well see what we can do.
Glitchtrap attacks us once we have 16 tapes and if we don't respond in time, we trade places with him.
For a brief second we see through his eyes back down at the console that we were just operating.
Our consciousness has truly melded with his
just like the voice-over warned about at the top of the game.
[In-game narrator] "Fazbear Entertainment is not responsible for accidental digital consciousness transference."
So, that's a bad ending.
But if we do manage to properly follow Tape Girl's instructions as he's trying to mind-meld with us
Well, he still seems like he escapes.
Or at the very least, he definitely doesn't die.
This should've been some Mr. Smith in the matrix moment where all his code disintegrates or something.
But instead, we're trapped on one side of a door in the game --
a bloody, hand-printed door with scratch marks clearly showing people stuck in here
desperately trying to escape.
And we see Glitchtrap, practically skipping off into the darkness.
This doesn't seem like the ending we should be getting for putting all the pieces of the tape together
and following all the tape-maker's instructions.
That would basically mean that snap VR has three losing scenarios here:
getting stuffed at the end of the pizza party,
transferring consciousness on the home screen,
and getting locked behind the door if you choose to follow Tape Girl's instructions.
That can't be right, can it?
Well, maybe it is. Maybe that's the point of the game.
Maybe we are destined to lose no matter what we do here.
I mean, think about it. The canon ending of Sister Location was a bad ending, with Michael getting scooped.
The canon ending of FNAF 4 was a bad ending with the crying child gettin' bitten.
FNAF 6, you and literally everyone else burn to death!
I mean it's considered a victory, but ya still dead!
Now, let's look closer at the text of the audio logs.
There is something clearly wrong in them.
The tapes start out just fine.
They follow her story in a pretty logical way and we know she's a real person in the real world
because she's observing things from outside the game's testing room.
Things like Jeremy complaining to management and the stuff that's present in the supply room.
But then upon closer inspection, you start noticing some strange anomalies.
For instance, we have two tapes that both start with her introducing who she is.
A "Hi" or a "Hello" followed by "You don't know me" or "Can you hear me?"
which is our first hint that something's a bit off.
The same person is making these tapes the whole time, for the same audience.
So why introduce yourself to us twice in both tape 1 and tape 15, why would one end with her saying now?
Why would one end with her saying:
[Tape Girl speaking]
basically telling us to hide the logs,
but then also say this:
[Tape Girl speaking]
basically inviting us to put them all together.
Weirder still is the fact that the last file suddenly does this major about-face relative to all the previous logs,
where suddenly she says out of nowhere
Oh yeah! There is a way to kill Glitchtrap.
This is odd on a lot of different levels, the first and most obvious being
if these instructions really do work and she's so sure about it, why didn't see follow them?
If this method was actually effective and she knew it was effective,
Glitchtrap wouldn't be in the game anymore because she would have followed her own advice and wiped him out.
How would she even know that this system works?
The answer, is it clearly doesn't.
Or at least it doesn't do what she says it's gonna do.
That's because she's not trying to get you to kill off the entity in the code,
she's trying to get you to release it.
While we don't have every piece of the puzzle in the story,
here's what I think actually happened with all these audio tapes.
The tape-maker starts out genuinely making these logs to document the weird stuff that's happening in the game studio.
The stuff with Jeremy? Really happens.
She really sees Glitchtrap in the game.
But on her last day of play testing, she tries to delete the files and fails.
Instead of killing Glitchtrap she undergoes at digital consciousness transfer
-- just like we do in one of the three bad endings --
trapping her in the game and releasing Glitchtrap
presumably into her own body, or just releasing him into the real world
both of which are possibilities that the game explicitly warns us about in the opening sequence:
[In-game narrator] "Fazbear entertainment is not responsible for accidental digital consciousness transference -- "
[In-game narrator] " -- real-world manifestations of digital characters -- "
That, my friends, is why you always have to read the disclaimer.
From inside the game, she's now stuck
with her only hope for escape being to go through the same process she just went through from the other side.
She creates a new log, starting over by saying --
[Tape Girl speaking]
Which in reality is saying, "Hello, can you hear me in here?"
since she's now making the log from inside the game.
She tries to create a new story that encourages a future developer to piece the logs back together
and then seeds one final log out there to tease the idea that a future developer
can solve the problem by killing off Glitchtrap using her log assembly method.
It's smartly constructed because she's counting on future developers having the same curiosity and determination she did.
She even mentions this in one of her earlier logs, tape three,
that when Jeremy had told the developers that something was wrong --
[Tape Girl speaking]
We do exactly the same thing,
finding what's wrong and following the instructions on how to fix it
only to find ourselves on the wrong side of the door covered in handprints
where presumably lots of other people have been there before us.
Glitchtrap, or whoever is in the body of Glitchtrap at this point --
-- perhaps Tape Girl herself --
-- disappears into the darkness and takes over our body on the outside.
And now it's our turn to wait for the next beta tester to come in, follow the tapes,
and hand over their consciousness to us.
Now, that last bit there is speculation based on the oddities in the audio logs
and the fact that following her instructions results in seemingly yet another bad ending.
But even if all of that about consciousness switching
and her being trapped in the game and us taking her place trapped in the game isn't the case,
The point is! William's back. Just not in a way that any of us expected.
What seems undeniable in Help Wanted's story
is the fact that his consciousness was preserved in the circuit boards that got scanned to make this game
and now? He's here, as Glitchtrap, tricking players into letting him escape.
It's no longer the same guy. He's now an AI replicating the behaviors of William
and snatching the body of whatever completionist is determined enough to play through all the elements of the game
In a funny way, it's exactly like the story we've been piecing together for Petscop.
[Music cuts out] [Chuckle] It's odd, actually.
Maybe they really are one and the same, both made by Scott Cawthon.
[Music returns] The biggest lingering question in my mind, though?
How many Williams are out there?
Is this just one instance of an AI looking to escape, and now we're the new host body?
Or is it somehow able to replicate itself, copying and pasting its code into any mind out there that's playing its little game?
Could we be entering a new part of the franchise with multiple William Aftons,
all in completely different bodies?
For as cool as that would be -- and honestly, I think this game could open up that world --
I don't think that's gonna be the case.
I think that's why there's such an emphasis in this game on you being a beta tester.
It's one instance of corrupted code and you happen to be playing it.
And now, you're infected by it.
In the next generation of FNAF, YOU!
or at least your body with William Afton's code in your head
is the new killer.
And so on and so forth, until we finally get to
FNAF in Space.
But hey! That's just a theory,
a Game Theory!
aaaaaaaaand
We should probably talk about Jeremy.
It's weird that his name is used three times.
There is no possible way that that's meant to be a coincidence.
There's also this random appearance of Shadow Freddy which I found in my playthrough,
which again, seems like an odd little detail that's important to account for in the Pizza Party minigame.
And the fact that Glitchtrap has three toes
just like the footprints that are outside of FNAF 6's house window --
There is a lot more here in this game.
But I honestly just need more time to think it all through.
Rest assured, though, I'll be back.
[Distorted MatPat and Springtrap simultaneously] I always come back.
That, my friends, is why you should subscribe
and ring the bell to make sure that you're notified of all our new uploads!
Because you can bet I am not done with this new game quite just yet.
There is just so much to unpack!
And again, just as a reminder,
we upload new theories every Saturday or Sunday.
We've been doing it for years now, so please support the channel.
Now if you'll excuse me, I do really gotta figure out this Jeremy stuff. It's really bothering me.
There's something here.
There's something here, it's the linchpin in everything that came before!
This is weird, man.
Also, Scott Cawthon's the villain in his own game.
But, uh, again, more on that one next time.
[Music fades away]