Five Nights at Freddy‘s: Untangling a Twisted Timeline
As an indie game franchise that first debuted in 2014, Five Nights at Freddy‘s (FNAF) has exploded into a worldwide pop culture phenomenon with a uniquely complex and cryptic lore. At the core lies a disturbing story spanning decades involving tragedy, murder, supernatural hauntings, and questions that still confound fans. This article aims to chronicle the known timeline of events in the FNAF universe.
When most hear "FNAF" they think of jump scares and surviving nights trapped as a security guard. But looking deeper reveals an intricate mythos centered around animatronic mascots, cursed pizzerias, dead children, and dangerous secrets. It may seem confusing, but putting the pieces together in order actually creates a hauntingly tragic story.
It All Began in ‘83
Our journey starts in 1983 – a year that sets everything in motion. This time period revolves around an entrepreneur named William Afton, co-owner of a Chuck E. Cheese-style restaurant called Fredbear‘s Family Diner, along with business partner Henry Emily. The diner boasted two animatronics created by Henry – a golden bear and rabbit duo named Fredbear and Spring Bonnie.
As hinted through retro-style 8-bit minigames in later installments, the relationship between William and Henry takes a dark turn at this point. William has become mentally unstable and uses the mascot suits for disturbing purposes – hurting children. Outside of the games, companion guidebooks reference an incident where William‘s youngest son Michael leads his crying sibling to Fredbear, resulting in a horrific bite crushing the younger boy‘s head. This tragedy contributes to Fredbear‘s closing and the divorce of William‘s wife.
Building the Foundation
After Fredbear‘s shuts down, William goes into business for himself. He retools the old animatronics to open Circus Baby‘s Pizza World by 1987, featuring new high-tech mascots including the star attraction Circus Baby. However, William has sinister motivations beyond entertaining children.
Director‘s commentary in Five Nights at Freddy‘s: Sister Location reveals that William specifically designed Baby with secret features to capture and kill children. Her claw arm and roomy interior could snatch, hide, and dispose of victims. William also demonstrates his technical prowess constructing a "Scooping Room" – a gruesome device housing remnant extractors able to transfer human souls.
During the short-lived Circus Baby’s run, William’s daughter Elizabeth wanders too close to Baby and ends up victim to her gnashing interior – explained via in-game dialogue by the animatronic herself. Her soul remains trapped within.
Meanwhile, Henry has gone solo as well, opening a new diner with original animatronics Freddy Fazbear, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy. The stage is now set with two restaurants and a series of fateful events ready to intertwine them forevermore.
The Missing Children Incident
All the background comes to a head in 1983 with the infamous Missing Children Incident – the pivotal tragedy etched in FNAF history.
Through 8-bit atari-graphic mini-games within Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 and 3, we witness William returning to his Spring Bonnie suit to access Henry’s restaurant and abduct five unsuspecting kids – luring them backstage where their bodies are later discovered. As bleak as this is, their souls now play a major ongoing role.
This is where the supernatural occurs. The children‘s spirits remain tethered to the pizzeria, their agony attracting the mysterious Puppet from Henry’s place, who seeks to give them new life by stuffing their essence into Freddy and the main animatronic cast. From here on, the robots are more than just servos and wires – they are inhabited by the souls of victims seeking vengeance.
William gets his eventual karmic punishment as well. In the follow-up mini-game (set years later with the restaurant revived and reopened), we see him trying to dismantle the haunted mascots when they finally retaliate – chasing him into a back room where he hastily dawns the rotten Spring Bonnie suit for protection. The animatronics cause the springlocks inside to rupture and puncture William all over – a painful demise leaving him crushed on the floor in a pool of his own blood. But this will not be his end either…
The Bite of ‘87
William‘s murderous misdeeds inadvertently give life to a new urban legend in 1987 – "The Bite of ‘87". Rampant rumors tell of an animatronic character biting off a child‘s frontal lobe at a Freddy‘s location one day.
Solving this mystery has been maddening for FNAF theorists. Details come through subtle clues instead of overt exposition. Based on information scattered across games and guidebooks, most agree the culprit was likely Mangle, Toy Foxy’s damaged and contorted successor.
As for the victim – clues point to Jeremy Fitzgerald, the new night guard protagonist in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, set just before the ‘87 attack. Various clues like changed eye color and mentioning previous head trauma in his background check indicate Jeremy could be the bite victim (or Michael Afton, but that‘s another theory). How he miraculously survived is still perplexing.
Renewed Terror
Meanwhile, the Legacy of Freddy‘s itself refuses to end. Despite closures and massacres, corporate owners Fazbear Entertainment drag the brand’s carcass into each new decade against common sense. The original animatronics return to smaller, cheaper locations. There’s even been speculation that surviving relics from various pizzerias end up merged together as a sort of Frankenstein‘s monster attraction – the setting for Five Nights at Freddy‘s 3.
A Return to Evil
William Afton does not stay buried either, despite being crushed within an animatronic. Driven by dark experiments into manipulating soul energy called “Remnant” (introduced in The Fourth Closet novel), he figures out how to harvest parts from the haunted animatronics to inject himself and prolong his life beyond death’s grasp – at the cost of becoming an undead human/animatronic hybrid contained in Springtrap.
When first revived in Five Nights at Freddy‘s 3, Springtrap initially seems motivated by chaotic violence, attempting to murder the new security guard protagonist each night. But as later games show, William‘s true purpose runs deeper down a depraved path to unlocking immortality and playing god, regardless of the trail of bodies left in his wake.
The Final Chapter?
Eventually in Five Nights at Freddy’s 6, Henry finally completes his ultimate Machiavellian gambit – trapping the loose ends of their shattered history together for one final reckoning below a labyrinth family pizzeria as bait, then igniting the facility to burn everything and everyone inside except himself and the player character Michael Afton. This brings a definitive end to William and Henry’s legacy gone awry, while freeing spirits like Henry’s daughter Charlotte at last.
Or…has the end yet to be written?
Conclusion
When woven together, Five Nights at Freddy’s reveals layered story threads from scattered bits that make solving the lore puzzle so compelling yet frustrating. A winding chronology focused on heartbreaking tragedy strung together by future games, revealing backstory that recontextualizes past events in new ways. After digesting the accumulated background wrapped up in Security Breach, fans still debate questions left unanswered and wonder if new mysteries await. The mythology continues evolving alongside the blockbuster franchise itself. Hopefully the truth hidden behind the fantasy continues getting excavated one piece at a time through more games and transmedia experiences – perhaps even clarified on the silver screen whenever the oft-delayed film adaptation sees light of day.
For now though, the perpetually reopened doors of Freddy Fazbear‘s Pizza showcase how this independent game series turned superstar franchise continues striking a chord with audiences through gameplay and storytelling alike nearly a decade later. Beneath the adrenaline rush of animatronic jumpscares persists a fascinating chronicle full of secrets left to unfold.