i’m loving this timeline era again of videos. this is such a fun time in the community because everyone is watching and interacting and sharing their theories and i love it!
Is it crazy that I'm still trying to get over "IT'S ME" not being just some spooky, vaguely threatening ghost message and is instead most likely Mike's ghost brother trying to reach out to him. It's been like 5 years since that idea was first raised and I'm still like "oh man I wonder what that's all about"
Now that I think about it, it's also highly possible that Michael dreams the Fnaf 4 minigames as well. Not fun with Plushtrap, but- you know what I mean, the daytime minigames where you play as the bite victim. It lines up with that idea of hauntings leading you to have weird dreams of memories that aren't yours, but I also really like what it does for this version of the narrative you've spun. It's only now, at this point in Michael's life- after everything- that he reflects on what he did, who he was and who he is now in this little dreamscape, ultimately reconciling much of that trauma that way. I REALLY like that being how things go before Fnaf 3, because now he only has 1 demon left to face: William
What if William didn't manipulate Henry into building the Funtimes, but designing them? "Let's say, hypothetically, we needed to covertly capture test subjects as close to our children as we can (to account for as many variables as they can), what would that sort of engineering problem look like?" Henry bangs out designs, brainstorming with William, Will files those blueprints as proprietary technology of Afton Robotics, perhaps without Henry's knowledge or permission, which leads to the board meeting at the beginning of Sister Location. I think it's a pretty dope idea.
@@Rose-dd6bj I originally thought that Fredbear's higher capacity pneumatic devices in the jaws were a leftover from an attempted design meant to attract DARPA cash for military robots, and implemented as a cost-saving measure.
21:30 I don't know what it was about the descriptions around this timestamp, but I suddenly had the thought of "Is Michael a revenant?" and started double checking descriptions of revenants. Most folklore that came up seemed to use revenant fairly interchangeably with general undead. So I started looking at fantasy RPGs. D&D 5e (from dndbeyond): "A revenant forms from the soul of a mortal who met a cruel and undeserving fate. It claws its way back into the world to seek revenge against the one who wronged it. The revenant reclaims its mortal body and superficially resembles a zombie." They even have and ability where their soul lingers on the current plane and essentially possesses another corpse to use as its new body if the current one is destroyed. Pathfinder 1e (from Archive of Nethys): "Fueled by hatred and a need for vengeance, a revenant rises from the grave to hunt and kill its murderer. Devoid of any compassion, emotion, or logic, a revenant has but one purpose, and cannot rest until it has found vengeance." PF revenants are only destroyed when their murder dies permanently. It even calls out that a killer becoming an undead does not trigger the revenant's destruction. They also have to make a save when presented with their own reflection or items of importance from its life. If it fails, the revenant is overwhelmed with self-pity and becomes helpless. But if it makes the save, it will lash out and make all attempts to destroy the offending item with the same fervor as seeing their murderer. Pathfinder 2e (from Archive of Nethys): "Revenants are obsessed, undead stalkers who arise from their own murders and are driven by only one thing: revenge against their killers. The common wisdom is that revenants arise only from individuals who have been utterly betrayed or abandoned to die a grueling death..." This stat block also calls out revenants as not being Evil despite being undead and they "rise not out of a sense of cruelty or hatred for the living, but... the need for vengeance following a deep betrayal."
The highs are crisper with this sound mix. But the lows/65% of your voice are less clear. There's a hum/buzz/ssss/shshshshs/lisp noise. Makes the neurospicy auditory processing a real struggle
I wouldn't mind FNAF 4 being all of the above. It's a smart and efficient use of game space, and you can still kinda use the initial meaning of the game without retconning anything. It's kind of like how the movie appears, where Vanessa may be both a representation of herself and Michael (maybe Elizabeth as an "adult"), Michael is himself as an adult, and Abby is maybe Elizabeth as a child (and Garrett might be CC and puppet). It would all be a little messy, but a controlled mess (and a really fun one to clean, just like the FNAF lore in general).
Mike as fritz smith makes sense cause fritz is a kid that is foxy and mike had a foxy mask in fnaf 4 and if jeremy fitzgereald is bonnie bro aka mikes friend who is working at fnaf 2 who is the bite viticm of 87 and since we now mike has done somethings for william his dad so mike mostly went to fnaf 2 to do something for william and to investgate why an animetionc would bite his friend jeremy
I can't actually believe Rye also has the Shadow Freddy/(RXQ)/Nightmare connection because I was just rambling to a friend the other day about my thought of Shadow Freddy being the agony/manifestation of CC (because we never actually see Shadow Freddy hurt anybody (death minigame aside, I have my thoughts about that /lh) and Michael having seen Shadow Freddy either being what caused or what partial caused the manifestation of Nightmare this is so fun to me, the special interest is so strong
I really like all of the manipulative elements, especially as it's all a "good" motivation for both William and Henry. My only issue with Henry helping to build the Funtimes, is that I don't think he would be stupid or blinded enough to believe that William will not use them on real children. Because, they are building child catching mechanisms, and there is no feasible way to test those "remnant effects" without trying it on real souls. I am not saying that my question fixes that. There are heaps of problems with it, many of which I brought up in the email. But another big issue, story-wise, is then both the Crying Child and Elizabeth would be playing nearly identical roles to each other, so it would just be redundant (both accidental kills by animatronics, even if in slightly different ways). I like the differentiation in the deaths of William's kids, but It doesn't all sit right with me, because of these few issues both ways.
Great video, as always! On the audio quality: I think it's less crisp than it was last ep. Not bad by any means, but especially if it's leading you to have to put in more work vocally to sound this way, I would say it isn't quite worth that.
Great podcast. Its nice to hear an insight into your thought processes behind the timeline. You have a lot of valid questions too - personally I'm not sure if an accurate timeline can be made due to your point about the indie games being unreliable. Its still fun to try but man it makes things tricky! I see you've gone back to Ccfirst too, which is understandable. Its definitely less complex to work around. Tldr great job.
I like the idea that Funtime Freddy and Baby were made to safely snatch up kids to protect them from an abductor, since having the animatronics attack people would be a bad idea, and William tampered with them. I like the idea William couldn’t build his own robots but was amazing at modification. I think that fits into his character very well.
Thanks for the content Ryan! Love the podcasts Most of the lore discussions you can have with FNAF are either youtubers explaining stuff on 30 minute videos or on the chaos of like, twitter, so having someone from time to time take an hour to just chat and refresh the timeline is super fun
it's possible they got footage for ennard and for scrap baby she probably has been roaming around for years or even decades so she mightve been like an urban legend there
I had a mini theory, but not sure if you only accept questions or also theory ideas. I thought about an important connection between Fallfest and FNAF 3. We've been wondering why the player character sees all the animatronic hallucinations as burnt in FNAF 3. What if they were there at Fallfest! What if they saw the mascot costumes burn to the ground! It makes sense why they'd look like the FNAF 1 and 2 characters if Tom's theory was right and some of the mascot suits were turned into animatronics (I assume they had more than one costume for each character). Assuming the player character is Michael makes that very interesting. Is he the one who started the fire as a prank that went out of hand, just like the one with his brother? Not sure, but very interesting things to think about. I feel like you could definitely build off of that into a great theory.
I truly enjoy both solo and guest podcast episodes! I prefer the solo ones when I’m driving to work (like radio for my hyperfixations) and the guest episodes while I’m at home and doing a hobby with my hands. This audio sounds crisper in the upper-mid range without sounding too treble-heavy. Good mix to my ears!
I don't know how I feel about the idea that William didn't make the animatronics, he's definitely smart enough to do it but i don't think Henry did it alone
This might be a silly question, I know, but when people say that "Ending so-and-so is not canon", do they mean that it never happened, period; or do they mean that it *could* have happened and it just didn't? Take the Burntrap ending in Security Breach: most people now agree that that ending is not canon, fine. But does that mean that that ending can be completely discarded, or does it mean that Burntrap is actually down there, but Gregory just never went there canonically? To me, the second option seems more logical. Gregory *could* have gone down there, and if he did, he would have found Burntrap. But, canonically, he didn't, so he never found him. But Burntrap *is* there to be found. Thoughts?
I was on a flight when this dropped but i still wanna drop my two cents. I think id make more sense if William did ask Henry directly if he could build a replica of a human but Henry refused and William got so drunk that night and just went "he doesnt know what losing a child its like. Hes selfish. Im gonna show him" and then kills charlie Also i think for the nightmares i think William forced Michael to work at freddys. Michael fell asleep at the job and had dreams about CC and golden freddy, Michael told William and he was like "well if you need to be asleep i can make you sleep" but it didnt work it only made Michael have horrific nightmares.
My thing is I know the girly already has like 2 hideouts but the one behind daycare is also pretty Vanessa coded yeah it has the balloon world arcade but it also had the cupcake trays bigger clothes and the thumb screw it feels so deliberate.
Henry make these capture bot that totally won't be used to capture. 😂 For this to work Henry would have to be all in. Maybe finding out that William killed Charlotte leads to Henry betraying William but all in before then.
I don't think it's fair to say Michael is shit at everything. If this theory is true (and I think it is) then Michael, from age 13 to 23, experienced a decade of psychological torture and touch starvation before being abused and threatened by his father to help him kill children to save his siblings (the ones he already feels guilty for) or he'd go right back to that same torture. The reason the poor guy was so good at surviving is he's probably hypervigilant as hell from PTSD. Any child locked in a closet and abused for 10 years isn't going to emotionally or mentally mature. Michael Afton at age 23 is effectively still 13 years old and I don't know ANY 13 year old, let alone a traumatized one, that can hold a steady job or work with robotics. Him being mentally 13 might be why Crying Child, Charlie, and the Golden Freddy kid felt safe to out to him. Come to think of it, when you're in a mental health crisis, personal hygiene tends to fall by the wayside so that's likely why he stank at work. I can only imagine the poor guy was stressed and sweating bullets 24/7 as well as digging around in suits filled with rotted body fluids.
I have thought the Henry built all the animtronics for a while now. Then mr billy stole the designs, tweaked them to become the sister location robots we know and love. I feel like that fits henry's quote very well. Security breach i think is trying to show that with Freddie having the cake hatch. Henry designed the sl bot with features like this. Ice cream delivery from baby. FF probably also the the cake hatch. Then William took these bots and reprogrammed to steal kids using those features.
I like the fact that Henry could of been manipulated into making the fun times and once Henry found out he got framed by William for MCI so that William could continue to experiments but I still agree with game theory that Charlie was a crime done in a drunken state
I know this is becoming like my default response to these, but seriously, shits cooking! This is like watching the donut glaze machine! But also, scrapbaby might contradict it, but ennard could have been caught on the sister location cameras
What if the fall fest was being used as a way to promote circus baby's pizza world but having FBF(fredbear and friends) characters and CBPW characters interact to gain interest. We alreay think the gas leak is a cover, and i can really think of how the fall fest could have burned otherwise. Could also explain springboard cut out being there as a wha of showing THIS is springtraps 'birth' But i dunno. I like the weird odd ball theories that i come up with half asleep
Scraptrap is covered in "fresh" living tissue, proving that after Afton dies he "regrows" again. The bone-color of his skull is a living bone color along with the muscle and vein like structures.
It is possible, since Ennard got out Circus Baby Entertainment and Rental, that peoples saw them sneaking around and view them as some sort of criptid. Fazbear Entertainment, wanting to not take any chances, decided to put both Ennard and Scrap Baby in their games and use the excuse "Oh yes! These were just publicities".
18:59 Don’t we technically DO have confirmation of that tho…? We literally *play* Sister Location and we play through Michael’s entire canonical experience in that facility. And in the canon ending path that we get to play in Mike’s POV, we never visit the secret room.
i forget where i heard it, but someone argued that the games the gamedev made were the 8bit games we play in the videogames?? idk if it lines up or not but just i figured id throw it out there
I think your questions about the character designs being public knowledge can be explained using the frights fiction theory where all the fazbear frights books are fiction in universe that are about rumors and stuff and thats why they get a lot of things wrong/we have a lot of similar characters that arent quite the same like elenor could be scrap baby or stitchwraith could be ennard they could have just been modeled after some photoes of the characters that were taken by random people
if u want an answer on the mic, it was glitching out in some parts. like around 5 minutes in, there's some glitching. ur not crazy, rye, i heard it too.
Re: cc; if this happens first, with no preceeding murders or what have yous, why is cc afraid of the actual animatronics? Just curious as to what you think that reason might be in this situation. Dittophobia is weird, the gas stopping strikes me as part of the actual experiment, yknow? Because why else would there be a prerecorded message that then rewinds itself for the next time Rory makes it that far? Like how long can i keep you convinced you want this for yourself? Michaels remnant rejuvenation: do you think it took like a year plus to heal Everything? Like his whole skeletal and nervous system was gone but also in the books, fazgoo cloned an entire person from a tooth so who knows 😂 Michael flops to the ground like a cloth puppet with cut strings, not falls like a person with physical body but stands up immediately like he Does have a bone and muscular structure. Excluding the fazgoo situation, (where the tooth is the exception and not the rule, iirc the fazgoo consumed all the other donors before/during cloning, mc just didn't follow directions) all the possessing spirits all occupy something with physical form, even the puppet can walk around and the plushes and balloon boy and so on, don't articulate but have rigid bodies that they transport... somehow. Micheal is again, an exception, not the rule, unless theres something i forgot 😅
I'm cool with William killing Charlie so Henry will help him, as long as that's not his ONLY reason. I think it can also be out of bitterness like "this is your fault too, so why do you get to keep your child and not me!?"
bro is trying so HARD to say we play as Michael... why would someone dream about a phone call they only heard once completely backward and then at the same time be the size of a 3-year-old in their dream despite being a grown man
Can a FNAF timeline actually be made? Yes. Will it make a lick of sense? Maybe. Will it be satisfying and hold together come the next book, game or whatever Scott's brain decides to vomit out? Lol probably not.
i think bringing guests every podcast kinda make it less special idk i like it to be more sporadic so the guests also have more to talk about when they eventually rotate
I am 100% sold on the "Henry build funtime manipulation." Because looking at fnaf from a meta sense? Scott's favorite game is Megaman. He's said this, and we have Freddy in Space, which is a Megaman/Metroid spin off game. The plot of Megaman is "Good scientist (Dr Light) makes robots for good. Bad scientist (Dr. Wiley, which is one letter away from Willy,) steals the good robots and turns their use for bad. Good scientist makes robot child to defeat bad robots and make bad scientist plead for mercy." That last part doesn't parallel as smoothly, but I'm focused on the first part. Is Scott doing this on purpose? No, do you know how many stories are subconscious spins on the favorite stories of the creator? A lot.
