In Too Deep: The Ultimate Five Nights of Freddy’s Theory Part Two: Where Do These Games Take Place?

Hello and welcome to In Too Deep, where I over-analyse a certain section of pop culture.

Now I’ve talked about this franchise before, with how it scares us and why it’s so popular. But I’ve yet to talk about the lore of it because, well, MatPat’s Game Theory show (seriously, go watch it, it’s a great show) seemed to answer all the questions… or did it? Because while I agree with some of his conclusions, I think he’s still not painting the whole picture. So join me as I come up with a definitive, all-encompassing theory that will be invalidated when the fourth game comes out.

Note: You really need to go watch all of MatPat’s videos about this first, because I’m not gonna waste time explaining stuff he already covered. So while I’m going to elaborate on personal theories, I will make leaps in logic that require a knowledge of what the game series is actually about in order to follow. Go read up on the background first, or watch his videos, then come here. Because this blog is going to be long enough as it is without me explaining the ‘common knowledge’ on this lore.

The Videos

FNAF 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th_LYe97ZVc

FNAF 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1kw1RmzrPc

FNAF 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPugMe4ePEw & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgACktyVXbk & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQv_k43MYdw

Now since I’m splitting these blogs into multiple parts (since the overall blog is over ten thousand words long, making it a mammoth even by my standards), I’m going to examine it piece by piece in order to build up a comprehensive picture of all the lore in the series. So the first thing we have to ask ourselves is: When and where do these games actually take place? It’s a minor thing, but learning this will be vital in unravelling everything else.

So last time, I talked about the ‘when’ of the game, creating a somewhat reasonable timeline that explores when everything is most likely to take place. This time round, we have a much harder challenge. Where, exactly, is all this suppose to take place? How many restaurants are there? And have we been going about this all wrong from the very start?

But first, a refresher:

1963-1971: Fredbear’s Family Diner is opened and gets popular.

1972: Big Business buys the Diner the same year a child is murdered.

1972-1977: Big Business must do something with this franchise, probably making smaller restaurants more in line with McDonalds than Chuck-E-Cheese.

1977: Location 1 opens, with animatronics and whatnot running around.

Jan-Jun 1982: Location 2 opens, the setting of FNAF 2, with animatronics and whatnot.

Jun-Aug 1982: The murders happen at Location 1, the animatronics get sent over to Location 2, with the new ones set up to look for criminals. Sadly, it doesn’t work out, and they’re forced to close and move elsewhere.

Nov 1987: Location 2 re-opens after being closed, only for the Bite to happen.

1988-1992: Location 3 is opened, giving use the game for FNAF 1.

1992: Location 3 is closed down ‘many years’ after the two pronged tragedy: The murders and the Bite.

2022: Location 4, Fazbear’s Fright Night, opens up to be tested.

So then, lets break down each location bit by bit to see if it is where we think it’s suppose to be. Fredbear’s Family Diner is the easiest one. Despite never actually playing in it, we do have a mini-game in it, showing that its location must exist in some form. It’s at this Diner the first kid gets killed. Now this Diner was created some time between 1963-1971, with the murder and the buyout happening in 1972. It’s possible that the murder prompted Big Business to take a look at the company, with the owner selling out his rights in order to get away with the scandal. How do I know all this? Well lets break down what Phone Guy says about this first location:

“Uh, we’re going to try to contact the original restaurant owner. Uh, I think the name of the place was…”Fredbear’s Family Diner” or something like that. It’s been closed for years though, I doubt we’ll be able to track anybody down.”

So then, the place has been closed, with the owner hard to find. Now if they were paying royalties to him, they’d be able to find him by just working out where all the checks have been going. But they can’t, indicating that there’s something more at play here. If they can’t contact the guy that means they must have brought the rights without the need to continually pay him. So the company must own the rights to these characters, meaning they can’t shift the blame. So we know the Diner exists in the late 60s early 70s, it was brought in 1972, a kid was murdered in 1972 and that the owner must have given up the rights in order for it to be hard to contact him. Double confirmed, all is good and well here.

So then, what about this ‘Location 1’ I mentioned before. Now, for the sake of clarity, I’m going to list every time Phone Guy mentions this location, or another location in general, in order to have it in one neat place. So without further ado:

FNAF 2, Night 1: “Uh, now, I want you to forget anything you may have heard about the old location, you know. Uh, some people still have a somewhat negative impression of the company. Uh… that old restaurant was kind of left to rot for quite a while, but I want to reassure you, Fazbear Entertainment is committed to family fun and above all, safety.”

FNAF 2 Night 3: “Oh, hey, before I go, uh, I wanted to ease your mind about any rumors you might have heard lately. You know how these local stories come and go and seldom mean anything. I can personally assure you that, whatever is going on out there, and however tragic it may be, has nothing to do with our establishment. It’s just all rumor and speculation… People trying to make a buck. You know… Uh, our guard during the day has reported nothing unusual. And he’s on watch from opening til close.”

FNAF 2 Night 4: “Ok, so uh, just to update you, uh, there’s been somewhat of an, uh, investigation going on. Uh, we may end up having to close for a few days… I don’t know. I want to emphasize though that it’s really just a precaution. Uh, Fazbear Entertainment denies any wrongdoing. These things happen sometimes. Um… It’ll all get sorted out in a few days. Just keep an eye on things and I’ll keep you posted.”

FNAF 2 Night 5: “Hello, hello? Hey, good job, night 5! Um, hey, um, keep a close eye on things tonight, ok? Um, from what I understand, the building is on lockdown, uh, no one is allowed in or out, y’know, especially concerning any…previous employees. Um, when we get it all sorted out, we may move you to the day shift, a position just became…available. Uh, we don’t have a replacement for your shift yet, but we’re working on it.”

FNAF 2 Night 6: “Hello? Hello…uh…what on earth are you doing there, uh didn’t you get the memo, uh, the place is closed down, uh, at least for a while. Someone used one of the suits. We had a spare in the back, a yellow one, someone used it…now none of them are acting right. Listen j-just finish your shift it’s safer than trying to leave in the middle of the night. Uh we have one more event scheduled for tomorrow, a birthday. You’ll be on day shift, wear your uniform, stay close to the animatronics, make sure they don’t hurt anyone okay, uh for now just make it through the night, uh when the place eventually opens again I’ll probably take the night shift myself. Okay, good night and good luck.”

FNAF 3 Night 3: “As always, if there is ever an emergency, please go to the designated safe room. Every location is built with one extra room that is not included in the digital map layout programmed in the animatronics or the security cameras. This room is hidden to customers, invisible to animatronics, and is always off-camera.”

FNAF 3 Night 4: “Uh, there’s been a slight change of company policy concerning use of the suits. Um, don’t. After learning of an unfortunate incident at a sister location, involving multiple and simultaneous spring lock failures, the company has deemed the suits temporarily unfit for employees.”

FNAF 3 Night 5: “Um, this is just a reminder of company policy concerning the safe room. The safe room is reserved for equipment and/or other property not being currently used and is in fact a safety location for employees only. This is not a break room, and should not be considered a place for employees to hide and/or congregate – and under no circumstance should a customer ever be taken into this room and out of the main show area.”

FNAF 3 Night 6: “Uh, this is just to inform all employees that due to budget restrictions, the previously mentioned safe rooms are being sealed at most locations, including this one. Work crews will be here most of the day today, constructing a false wall over the old door base. Nothing is being taken out beforehand, so if you’ve left anything inside, then it’s your own fault. Management also requests that this room not be mentioned to family, friends or insurance representatives.”

So, that’s everything Phone Guy says that refers to places in and around the Pizza locations. Our next job will be to try and rearrange these conversations so that we have a chronological order about them. So, to break that down:

FNAF 3 Nights 2-3: These recordings, about the spring lock suits, must take place long before most of what we see happens happens. It’s also safe to presume that these new suits are a mix of animatronics and regular costumes, meaning it has to take place sometime after the 1977 opening of Location 1. So these recordings must be made between 1977 and 1982.

FNAF 3 Night 4-5: Now, this refers to the suits failing and the back room being employees only. Two interesting facts, when we consider what we know about the murders. One, the bodies of the children were placed inside of the animatronics and, if discovered, would probably justify why they were quickly decommissioned and two, the murderer lured the kids to the back but wasn’t caught in the act, meaning it had to be somewhere where the cameras didn’t get to. So it seems fitting that these messages were recorded sometime after June 26^th of 1982, probably around July 1982 for simplicity’s sake.

FNAF 3 Night 6: Here we get our first mention of budget cuts doing on at the restaurant. So again, this must take place sometime during or after July 1982. But look at the end of that: Insurance representatives. The only time those guys get mentioned is if you’re covering your own arse. So, tellingly, these places may have been boarded up because that’s where the murders occurred, and the company knows it.

FNAF 2 Night 1: This old restaurant is left to rot. Now we know it’s not the original Diner, so it must be the one where the murders took place. But this creates a flaw in the timeline, doesn’t it. Why would the old place be said to be ‘left to rot’ when the murders are happening simultaneously with these recordings? This seems like a pretty major hole in our timeline: We know the criminal database was created after the murders, and that the murders took place before these tapes. Likewise we know that the company received the animatronics from Location 1, who started to smell and were decommissioned. We likewise presumed that this pizzeria was forced to close in 1982 due to the robots stinking and the company in such disrepair. So then, how do we fit all this into our timeline?

So what if the tapes weren’t made in 1982, as I previously assumed, but afterwards. After the murders and the disappearance of the kids, the other restaurant is shut down and the animatronics moved over to the new place. This would explain why the police never found the bodies at the crime scene, if they’d been moved. Likewise, when the Phone Guy is talking about a summer job, it’s talking about it in the future tense, a year after the murders happened. This would make more sense, since it explains everything neatly. So, to change things to fit this new timeline, the tapes we’re hearing must have been recorded in after 1982 (or, at the very least, sometime between 1983-1987, with the closure happening at some point due to sanitary conditions).

But this creates another contradiction, since the messages from Night 2 onwards seem to indicate that they’re talking about the events of 1982. Clearly this must be a paradox, right… except, perhaps not. Perhaps this ‘investigation’ that goes on has to do with the 1982 murders… but isn’t taking place in 1982. Maybe, two to three years later, the murder investigations come back round to re-evaluate what actually happened. This still fits within our timeline quite nicely. A fresh round of investigation hits while these tapes are being recorded, but long after the murders have happened and the culprit caught. So what if these tapes were recorded in 1985 (for no other reason than that there’s a ‘5’ at the end), talking about what was going on at the time of recording, but not the murders at hand. So this seems to tie up some more loose ends. Murders in 1982, with the investigation coming back in 1985. After all, the police were called about the smell, it’d no doubt raise new suspicions that the company wouldn’t want. So that clears up all but one problem: Night 6. Now, Night 6 doesn’t seem to really fit now, does it. But what if it’s not what we think of it. What if Night 6’s message took place in 1982.

Now I know what you’re thinking. I just argued that messages 1-5 had to take place after 1982, so how can this one suddenly be there. Well because the tape isn’t being recorded in Location 2… it was being recorded in Location 1. Lets break it down: Phone Guy talks about one of the suits being used, one of the suits in the back. But, as we will later discuss, the suits were only in Location 1, never in Location 2. So Phone Guy must be talking about Location 1 when he calls up that phone. Likewise, how can the place be closed if there’s going to be a party tomorrow? That’d only be true if the managers chose to close it. And maybe they did. Maybe this fateful call is going on June 25^th, 1982. That’s right, a day before the two kids were murdered and what sparked off this investigation, three other kids had disappeared around the area during the week. Management, fearing that this could result in the cops sniffing around, decided to close the restaurant down to be safe. Maybe they’d already known the murders had taken place there, and decided to close early to avoid scrutiny. So this recording seems like it’d fit the 1985 time period, but it’s actually from 1982. The animatronics acting weird would probably be from the first three murders already having some sort of affect on them. So what we’re hearing is the last phone call this place got before it was shut down over the problems with the murders.

So then, lets revisit our timeline and see how much has changed:

1963-1971: Fredbear’s Family Diner is opened and gets popular.

1972: Big Business buys the Diner the same year a child is murdered.

1972-1977: Big Business must do something with this franchise, probably making smaller restaurants more in line with McDonalds than Chuck-E-Cheese.

1977: Location 1 opens, with animatronics and whatnot running around.

Jan-Jun 1982: Location 2 opens, the setting of FNAF 2, with animatronics and whatnot.

Jun 22-26 1982: Five murders end up taking place, forcing the restaurant to close under scrutiny.

Jul-Aug 1982: The murders have happened at Location 1, the old animatronics get sent over to Location 2, with the new animatronics set up to look for criminals. Location 2 stays open during all of this.

June 1985: Location 2 is forced to close when the police start to re-investigate the murders, with the suits smelling particularly bad at this point.

Nov 1987: Location 2 re-opens after being closed for two years, only for the Bite to happen.

1988-1992: Location 3 is opened, giving use the game for FNAF 1.

1992: Location 3 is closed down ‘many years’ after the two pronged tragedy: The murders and the Bite.

2022: Location 4, Fazbear’s Fright Night, opens up to be tested.

So, we have our four Locations running around. But are there really four? Well we know Location 4 is not Location 3 or 2, due to how different it looks. They can’t be the same places. But, what if, Location 3 and 1 were the same place? Lets break this down a bit more with what we know.

We know Springtrap had to be found in Location 3, due to that where his body died. We know Location 3 is the same place as FNAF 1 due to its layout in the FNAF 3 mini-games. We know that the tapes that make up this game must be found with Springtrap, otherwise what are the chances of finding two separate but related things on the same day? It makes more sense to presume that these two were found together in Location 3. So then, we know that during this, Phone Guy refers to somewhere else as “sister location” and that there are “many locations”. But where would these sister locations be? Well, we know that the golden suits were only used in Location 1, since there’s no mention of them outside of that. We know that Phone Guy couldn’t be in Location 1 during the recording, otherwise he wouldn’t call it ‘sister location’. He must be somewhere else, most logically, Location 2. So Phone Guy, in Location 2, refers to an incident in Location 1. But, what if, that incident was in relation to the murders? It’d make a bit more sense. The ‘incident’ could refer to the kids being inside the suits, given them an easy out. They could just argue that a kid wandered into it by accident and they couldn’t prevent it. So could that mean between the suits being introduced, and the time we hear the warning, many years might have passed? These first two messages, Night 2 and 3 about the suits, may have happen in 1977 when the restaurant opened. The next three messages may have happened in 1982, after the incident. So these tapes found in Location 3 were recorded in Location 2, talking about Location 1. But, we see that the ghosts are haunting Location 3 in the FNAF 3 mini-game, when we just said they were killed in Location 1. How does this make sense? Simple, Location 3 has been Location 1 this entire time. Location 1 was the first to open, and the bigger, better Location 2 opened later. Location 1 was forced to close due to the murders, and Location 2 was forced to close twice (once for an investigation, once for the Bite). With few options it makes sense that they’d go somewhere that already had most of the stuff set up, Location 1. Which means in FNAF 1, we’re playing the very same place the children were murdered 10 years in the past. So then, let us call the setting for FNAF 1 and the murders Location A, with the place we play in FNAF 2 Location B (and the setting of FNAF 3 Location C).

1963-1971: Fredbear’s Family Diner is opened and gets popular.

1972: Big Business buys the Diner the same year a child is murdered.

1972-1977: Big Business must do something with this franchise, probably making smaller restaurants more in line with McDonalds than Chuck-E-Cheese.

1977: Location A opens, with animatronics and whatnot running around.

Jan-Jun 1982: Location B opens, the setting of FNAF 2, with animatronics and whatnot.

Jun 22-26 1982: Five murders end up taking place at Location A, forcing the restaurant to close under scrutiny.

Jul-Aug 1982: The murders have happened at Location A, the old animatronics get sent over to Location 2, with the new animatronics set up to look for criminals. Location B stays open during all of this.

June 1985: Location B is forced to close when the police start to re-investigate the murders, with the suits smelling particularly bad at this point.

Nov 1987: Location B re-opens after being closed for two years, only for the Bite to happen.

1988-1992: Location A is re-opened, giving use the game for FNAF 1.

1992: Location A is closed down ‘many years’ after the two pronged tragedy: The murders and the Bite.

2022: Location C, Fazbear’s Fright Night, opens up to be tested.

So that appears to answer the questions of when and where this all took place, except for one last titbit. The creator, Scott Cawthon, lives in Texas. The Chuck-E-Cheese headquarters is in Texas. It’s more likely that the games themselves probably take place in Texas also. A minor little thing, but it’d be nice if it was true. So there you have it. My look at the when and where of these games. If you disagree with anything, or have anything to add, feel free to leave a comment. Till next time.