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 final question we have to ask ourselves is: Who is our killer, and why did he do what he did? Can we find an answer to all this? Well, lets find out.
Now I’m gonna break the rules of suspense and label who I think the killer is right at the beginning: Phone Guy. Why say this at the beginning? Mostly because it’ll help the investigation if we start with a conclusion and see if we can make all the pieces fit. A bit of inductive reasoning, if you will. But if we presume that Phone Guy and Purple Guy are the same person, how do we go about proving it?
First off, lets work out what we know about Purple Guy. If we presume that the first murder took place in 1972, that means whoever is driving the car has to have been born on or before 1954, since the driving age in Texas is 18. So, at the very least, our killer must have been born around the early 50s. So lets presume that Purple Guy is in his late teens, early twenties when this first murder occurs. Fast forward ten years, and he’ll be in his late 20s early 30s when the second round of killings occur. Again, a pretty reasonable age. Fast forward again to the first FNAF game and he’ll be in his late 30s early 40s, again, a reasonable enough timeline. So it’s safe to assume that Purple Guy did the first murder when he was around 20, the second murders when he was around 30, and his comeuppance when he was 40. If nothing else these ages feel right, even if we just presume his birthday is 1952 to work with round numbers. So then, with that as our guideline, lets look at our killer’s life.
We know he kills the first kid in 1972 when he’s twenty years old. We know he does it near the Fredbear’s Family Diner. But, perhaps he also works at the Diner? It would explain why he happens to be so near the Diner when the incident occurs, and why a similar incident happens ten years later to the same company. Maybe he’s hired to play some sort of mascot, nothing more. Maybe he’s the man in the Freddy suit, though this seems unlikely since we see the kid being murdered the same time a party is going on. More likely he’s just some fry cook or waiter or whatnot, having a bad day, and accidentally killing a kid while trying to help. Why accidentally? Because the kid stops crying for a moment, than cries even harder. If we presume that this child is lost (because it’s outside the building and therefore away from the party inside), Purple Guy may have been trying to help the kid. Purple Guy might not have even meant to kill the kid, just that accidents tend to happy with this sort of thing. This twenty year old kills a kid near the Diner, the place where this kid was last seen, and quickly hides the body. The feds come snooping around but can’t find anything, but the heat is enough to make Fred Bear want to sell the diner off to avoid any more bad publicity. So where does the Puppet come into all of this, when the dead child possessed the Puppet despite being killed further away? Well it’s possible the spirit stayed attached to Purple Guy after its body’s death, which in turn latched onto the Puppet afterwards. Or, the Puppet was in Purple Guy’s car the entire time, being moved either too or from the restaurant. It’s entirely possible that the murder and the soul’s attachment to an earthly beacon didn’t take place right next to each other, after all. But Purple Guy kills a kid and covers it up, still being employed by the Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza company. But what does he do? Well, he did always like Foxy…
Is it not possible that Phone Guy’s first job was to play Foxy the pirate at other restaurants? To dress up in the costume like someone dressing up as Mickey Mouse? Hence why he thinks Foxy is his favourite: That’s because he was Foxy, as far as he was concerned. Likewise, when the new spring lock suits come out, it makes sense that he, a long time employee, would be the first one to test them out and to train others on them. It’s here where he essentially gets his first promotion, as a trainer. He continues doing what he does, putting on the suits occasionally to entertain the kids. Then, at some point in 1982, something goes wrong. Maybe he thinks it’ll be a neat idea to have the kids get into these suits so they can play around with him. Maybe he’s deranged and wants to have more friends. He could easily have a psychotic breakdown that leads to a lapse in judgement. The first kid dies and becomes Balloon Boy, with Purple Guy dumping the body near the same place he dumped the first kid. Two more kids die, all locked into suits. Purple Guy panics, knowing that things are going to get worse. And then, he has a brilliant plan. He gets another security guard to come in, on the Friday night, to be the night guard. We hear this conversation during Night 6 in FNAF 2, where he sets it up to make it look like this guy has been the killer all along, killing two more children in order to frame this no-named guard. That way, this security guard is the one who gets caught and convicted of the five murders, not Purple Guy. Purple Guy is free to go back to Location B… only things don’t go so well for him, and the place gets closed down. It reopens again briefly before being shut down again. Then, after many years, Location A reopens and Phone Guy fulfils his promise he made to the security guard in 1982. When Location A does reopen, Phone Guy, aka Purple Guy, becomes the night security guard. Little did he know that this was key to his own downfall.
So Phone Guy seems to cope well at his job and never gets killed by the robots, no matter how determined they seemed to be. That must mean Phone Guy is incredibly good at his job, right? But lets stop and think about it: Phone Guy knows there’s a secret room in the back that’s off the cameras and no animatronics can get to. He knows, because he was the one that talked about the place being boarded up way back in 1982 after the five kids go missing. He knows it’s the safest place in the restaurant so, every night, he sneaks into it and watches the animatronics in complete safety. I mean, if he knew that place existed, it’d be mad for him not to hide away in it. So he hides and the weeks pass by and he’s safe. He doesn’t have anything to worry about… until one night. On October 31st, 1992 (because who doesn’t love dramatics) something happens that has never happened before: the Freddy costume seems to be awfully close to his hideout and seems to try to get in. Now this guy would probably know what these robots are like at this point, he’d know their patterns, so this is worryingly new. It’s standing outside his door and doesn’t seem to be moving away. Phone Guy, worried, does the only thing he can think of: Catch the animatronics off guard, and turn them back into suit mode. After all, he can’t destroy the suits if they later reappear in FNAF 1, the first game. He must simply disable them. And what better way to disable them than to turn them back into the suit mode, the mode he used to kill the kids, the mode that causes these suits to flop to the ground and appear dead. However, by doing so, he unintentionally releases the kids spirits. Sure, management already opened it up once and scraped out all the insides. They must have, it’s crazy for them not to do so. But only when the killer stopped them that the spirits were finally set free, free to pass on if they so desired. Phone Guy relaxes. He’s dealt with one, and come morning he can switch it back to animatronic mode and everything should be good to go. Inserting and turning the crank was hard work, but he only had to do it once, right? And then the second animatronic comes for him… and then the third… And by the time Foxy is disabled Phone Guy knows that something is extremely wrong. He needs to get out of there, and fast. But he doesn’t feel safe just leaving before 6am, not when everything has been acting strange. Likewise he needs to invent a reason for his sudden disappearance. Suddenly, it hits him. He calls management and leaves a message on their machine, saying that he’s quit and he’ll be leaving immediately. Then, as an act of kindness, he records a message for the next security guard. That way, anyone who listens in would think that he just couldn’t handle the pressure any more and left. And if the animatronics did get him… Well, he warned the new guy. He records everything over one night, claiming it to be over separate nights to give the illusion that he was there longer than before. It’s 5am, he took care of the other animatronics once an hour before, he’s almost free…
… And then the banging starts. The banging on his secret hideout, one that he’s never heard before. He knows that things aren’t right, and he’s probably dead… and then he has a fantastic idea. He knows the animatronics want to stuff him inside an animatronic suit, but they won’t do it if he’s already in one. Quickly he sets the Springtrap suit up, getting ready to jump in when suddenly, Golden Freddy appears. Now, Phone Guy didn’t know about Golden Freddy, or that Golden Freddy could even exist. Hell, he didn’t know that ghosts could exist. All he knows is that he’s glad he recorded a message telling the new guy to check the suits in the back, to check the Springtrap suit, since it’s his only means of survival. Someone will come along and find him, he just has to hold out till that happens. He’s ready for the worst when Golden Freddy appears, scaring Phone Guy enough that he jumps into the Springtrap suit to survive. Golden Freddy does nothing, can’t do anything. Phone Guy starts to laugh, knowing that he’s survived, knowing that he outsmarted the spirits… when the spring lock breaks, killing him. Finally the building and the victims have had its karmatic revenge. Phone Guy is killed in the way he killed so many others. When management comes in the next day, they simply reset the suits back to the animatronic mode and presume that Phone Guy legged it. Shrugging, they just hire a new guy, with Phone Guy’s recordings playing each night. No one is aware that Phone Guy is stuck in that hidden room, his spirit trapped as so many before him. Trapped and waiting for the day someone sets him free.
Which brings us to FNAF 3, with Springtrap’s behaviour being explained away quite simply: Phone Guy’s last memory was to get into the office. He continues on that, even though he doesn’t know why he’s doing it. All he knows is that he’s suppose to be there and keeps trying to get there, only going back to where he hears children laughing due to the warped nature of his psyche. The animatronic part of his mind is warring with the human part of his mind. He’s a mental mess, one that is finally destroyed when a fire rips through Fazbear’s Fright, finally ending this nightmare… Or, at least, it was suppose to.
So there’s only one loose end to all this. What happened to Balloon Boy after Location B was shut down and he was thrown away? Well, with his body returned to Fazbear Frights along with the other animatronic, he awakens. Confused, just like the rest, his spirit tries to attack the new security guard. But, without any physical body, all he can do is scare the guy. Nevertheless, the hallucinations we see in the last game are the spirits of the children, still tied to this mortal earth as long as their killer roams free. If Purple Guy dies, if his spirit is laid to rest, theirs can be as well. If the anchors that tie them to this mortal realm is properly destroyed, they will be also. Until both of these things happen, the children won’t be at rest. And finally, after defeating Springtrap and giving the children peace, and burning the animatronics so they no longer exist, finally do these children have peace. The End.
… At least till FNAF 4: The Final Chapter comes out, making all this moot.
So there you have it. My look at who Purple Guy is and why he might have done it (although we can never possibly know for sure). If you disagree with anything, or have anything to add, feel free to leave a comment. Till next time.
