What can we learn from the FNAF 2 Movie?

These are my first thoughts on the FNAF 2 movie and how it connects to the games. It's a little less organized than usual but I hope you enjoy!

Obviously the FNAF movies are very different from the games with disconnects like the FNAF 2 location being the first Freddy's and the Withereds being unused prototypes. But Scott Cawthon wrote the script for it, so I think there could still be some connections that can tell us things about the game timeline.

Let's start with the original Freddy's location. It was open in 1982, and it is the location where Afton killed Charlotte (they never actually call her Charlie in the movie, so I'll be calling movie Charlie Charlotte and game Charlie Charlie). We know from the Fazcoin design (and probably other things) that in the games, Freddy Fazbear's Pizza doesn't open until 1983. That's one year off from 1982, and they could have just as easily made Charlotte's death take place in 1983. Either this is an arbitrary movie decision that was made so they could have the main story be "20 Years Later", or Scott is trying to tell us that Charlie died in 1982. That would make a lot of sense with Henry's "a wound first inflicted on me" line from Pizzeria Simulator (which I'm going to talk about later), but would contradict the "gravestone order = death order" Help Wanted 2 theory. It would also mean that Charlie died at Fredbear's, not at Freddy's as the Ticket to Fun booklet seems to suggest, and that she died before the Bite of '83 (i.e. before Afton has a motive to kill her according to a lot of theories). Or it could just be a thing they changed to make it work for the movie.

I think Charlie dying in 1982 fits well with the rest of the lore, and really isn't contradicted by anything. It would make "later that night" in Midnight Motorist as the night of Charlie's death work with Dave as the runaway, and she could even be the one talking to Dave as Psychic Friend Fredbear and/or FNAF World Glitch Fredbear. It requires a motive for Afton besides "your Fredbear ate my son so now I'm gonna kill your daughter" and doesn't explain the gravestone order, but there are similar (and in my opinion worse) problems with wherever else you put Charlie's death in the timeline too. The only other issues I can think of for this theory are that Ticket to Fun seems to link the Puppet and the security wristband Charlie wears to Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, and that it requires Afton to drive home from Fredbear's when it's close enough for Dave to walk there in FNAF 4. But I don't think Ticket to Fun is canon, because it was designed and edited by Insight Editions employees with no apparent oversight from Scott; If he ghostwrote or even looked through and approved the material, they probably would have credited him in some way like they did for the books. It also contradicts A Week Before when it says that any security guard who leaves their desk will be terminated, when Ralph's job requires him to go out into the restaurant every night. That being said, if Ticket to Fun is a part of the FNAF lore then it makes more sense to ignore the movie and say Charlie died at Freddy's in 1983. As for the issue with Afton driving on the highway to get home from the restaurant he lives down the street from, that can be explained by him either trying to avoid suspicion (it would be easy enough to catch the killer if he walked home from the crime scene), or driving away in a panic before going home and yelling at his son.

Another interesting detail from the first part of the movie is that we actually witness an attempted kidnapping by Afton, but not an attempted murder. He takes a kid into the back room wearing a Spring Bonnie suit just like he does in the MCI, and he seems to knock the kid unconscious but not kill him. Then he washes his hands (in a springlock suit... yeah...), which isn't very interesting on its own but it's a strange thing to do before a murder. We don't see what he had planned because Charlotte rescues the kid, but Afton's actions suggest he was trying to kidnap, not kill. This could tie in to the multiple mentions of Afton's children "all having a purpose" in the movie. I think the MCI kids were either always meant to be stuffed in the animatronic suits or, more likely, were to be used as test subjects in the fear experiments. I'm going to write a separate post about that, but basically it ties together a bunch of tiny details that are kinda just there if the MCI was only a series of murders. He could also have meant to put the kids in the Withereds, as we know he eventually does in the games, but that doesn't make sense as his motive in the movie timeline because as far as we can tell he never does that with the actual MCI kids in the movies; The Withered animatronics were never at the location where the movie MCI took place, and the movie Classics show no signs of having ever had dead bodies inside of them.

But back to that line about the Afton kids all having a purpose. Afton mentions it in Vanessa's memory-ish nightmare, and Michael Afton says it again when he's at Mike Schmitt's house (I'm going to call them Michael (for Afton) and Mike (for Schmitt) from here on out). This raises the question, what were the Afton kids' purposes in the games? I could certainly see a timeline where Dave is used as a test subject in the fear experiments (although I can't imagine why Afton would want to terrify his own kid unless he was trying to collect remnant, which is complicated by the relative lack of metal in FNAF 4), and everything in Sister Location from Elizabeth's death to Michael getting scooped was a plot to get a possessed robot in a living skin suit. For some reason. I don't believe this one because I don't think Elizabeth's death could have been on purpose (why design and build a whole new restaurant to be open one day when your robot could eat your kid in your own backyard?), but I like the idea of Michael being scooped on purpose for some kind of experiment, and Dave being used in the fear experiments makes sense whether there are other test subjects or not. Or maybe Michael was meant to be Afton's fanatic follower like in the movie. As for Elizabeth's purpose, I think that's probably whatever Vanessa's is meant to be in the FNAF movies, which I can only assume we'll find out in the next one. Or maybe she was supposed to be bait for the MCI kids, like how we see Baby being used to lure Oswald in Return to the Pit.

Henry mentions in the movie that he suspected Afton of Charlotte's murder, and knew it was him after the MCI. This reminded me of the novel trilogy where it's mentioned that Henry suspected Afton of committing the MCI murders, but also of his line "a wound first inflicted on me, but then one that I let bleed out to cause all of this". I won't go into more detail since I already discussed Charlie's death placement in the timeline, but I think this reinforces the idea of "the wound first inflicted on" Henry being Charlie's death, and "letting it bleed out" as keeping suspicions towards Afton to himself. As opposed to the "wound" being Fiona's death at Fall Fest 1970 while Charlie dies last according to the gravestone order from HW2.

Charlotte being the villain in the movie was an odd choice, but it was pretty well explained as her being trapped in the last emotion she felt before death, which was rage at all the parents who ignored her when she was calling for help. I think this is meant to explain how the vengeful spirit (and ghosts in general) work in FNAF. It could very well be that Cassidy is the vengeful spirit because she was angry at Afton at death, and given her describing herself as "the one you should not have killed" she probably thinks her death was unfair compared to the other kids (more speculation to come in the MCI post). The other ghosts could similarly be trapped in their dying emotions, like how Dave is "Still crying" in his Crying Child appearance in FNAF World.

At the end of the movie, the kid possessing Golden Freddy tells Mike that they (the ghosts) can't hold him (Afton) if they move on. This could explain how Afton goes from Ultimate Custom Night to influencing the Mimic to make Glitchtrap (which would take too long to fully justify here, but I don't think the Mimic is capable of the kind of mind control we see from Glitchtrap on its own); If Happiest Day happens and the vengeful spirit moves on, Afton could be released from UCN and free to possess the nearest copy of the Mimic program. Or maybe he wakes up and gets someone to bring him to a Fazbear facility so he can explode like he does in Frights. Either way, it looks like Old Man Consequences's suggestion to "leave the demon to his demons" may be less wise than it seems.

Speaking of Ultimate Custom Night, there was one line in the movie (besides Henry's "leaving dead space") that I recognized from the games. Charlie's line, "I don't hate you, but you need to stay out of my way" was repeated word for word, by Charlotte to Vanessa, in the movie, right before Charlotte kidnaps Vanessa and makes her give up the password to set the animatronics free. It's probably just an easter egg, but it's worth mentioning nonetheless.

We also get our first canon case of a human being fully possessed in FNAF, with Charlotte possessing Abby, a ghost hunter, and at the very end Vanessa. Possession as we see it here allows the ghost to fully control the victim, with the complete mind of the ghost and some physical features becoming temporarily Marionette-ized, such as the wavy arms and the mask design on the face as though it was painted on. It is also fully reversible, although Abby mentions feeling sick after no longer becoming possessed. The Marionette seems to disappear during the possession; I couldn't tell if it was hiding inside the human or their clothes, or if it dematerialized and went into them. Either way, a lot of the possession mechanics were probably played up to make it look good as a horror movie, and since the exact details of the special effects wouldn't be in the movie script it's hard to say which details if any were requested by Scott and which ones were Blumhouse movie experts making it look good for the screen. It certainly doesn't line up with anything we've seen in the games, so I'm going to assume movie possession is just different from whatever human possession may exist in the games.

And that's all I've got! I'm sure there are some background details I didn't notice, and there are bound to be other game references and/or lore implications. Next post will actually be the MCI theory, for real this time.