Dante's Night at Freddy's is a Devil May Cry/Five Nights at Freddy's Crossover fanfic written by MJTR of Angel of the Bat fame. The story can be read here
.
Intended by the author as a source of Nightmare Retardant, the story follows Dante as he works a single night in the dreaded Freddy Fazbear's Pizza after destroying an arcade machine and needing to work off the damage.
Has a sequel. Naturally, it parodies Five Nights at Freddy's 2 and teams Dante up with his young daughter Evie in order to fit the "two generations" theme. In the midst of a rather... surreal moment in chapter 9, the story spun off into another one entirely so Dante and the story's writer could confront one another uncensored. It can be read here. A second sequel based on Five Nights at Freddy's 3 has been written. It follows Evie, Dante's daughter, and her fight with Springtrap at Fazbear's Fright. It can be read here.
This fic and its sequels provide examples of the following tropes:
- Acceptable Breaks from Canon: The author's justification for changing Chica's hands into wings. Mixes with Rule of Funny when Dante points out she can't grab ahold of him with such appendages.
- Affectionate Parody: In an author note, MJTR stated he liked Five Nights at Freddy's and found it both very entertaining and genuinely unsettling.
- Affirmative-Action Legacy: Sort of. Dante's mixed-race daughter will be the main character of the second sequel. Subverted because she wasn't created for this purpose, she just happens to tie back to the Fazbear Establishment.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: It’s a Five Nights at Freddy’s crossover, so it’s to be expected.
- Alternate Character Interpretation: In-universe. While The Marionette presents itself as a creature who is justified in its actions and thirst for revenge, Dante delivers a rather scathing critique of how it is a whiny child who ruins not only its own life, but every life within the pizzeria.
- Alternate Continuity: The damage done to the animatronics in the original is carried over into the sequel, rather than copying the way the animatronics were damaged going into Five Nights at Freddy's 2. Given everything that's been seen so far, it also appears to be an actual sequel, as opposed to Five Nights at Freddy's 2, which was a prequel. That is, until we get to chapter 8, when it turns out time travel just sorta happened, and Dante has been standing in the year 1987 this whole time.
- Ambiguous Gender: Bonnie is never given male or female pronouns.
- Arbitrary Skepticism:Manager: Demons don't exist!
Dante: A gigantic tower rose out of the ground in Venna and opened a gateway directly into hell in '89, sir. It was all over the news, it happened a few blocks away from my apartment. There really is no plausibly denying something like that... - Author Avatar: Dante gets a phone call from the author, MJTR, in chapter 8 of Animatronic Boogaloo.
- Babies Ever After: Inverted, due to being a follow up to “Devil May Cry: Revelations”, to the point of being a spoiler. Dante has two children when the story takes place, and it begins on his daughter’s birthday.
- Bag of Spilling: Dante doesn't have any of his equipment while working the security job, not that he ends up needing it…
- Berserk Button: Do NOT mess with Dante's kids, as Mangle and Foxy learn in the sequel.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Dante makes it clear he isn't looking for a fight and is perfectly content to just sleep the night away if he’s allowed. The animatronics have other ideas.
- Beware the Silly Ones: Both Dante and the animatronics get this treatment.
- Big Bad: Appears to be Freddy, before Golden Freddy appears.
- Black Comedy Rape: Mangle attempts (and questionably succeeds) at raping Foxy. Dante is said to be entertained and disgusted at the same time by this action, and the audience seems meant to feel the same way.
- Bilingual Bonus: One Freddy Fazbear knockoff, called "Tsing Tsong the Singing Panda", features eastern Asian animals such as jerboa (hopping rodents similar to rabbits), pheasants (chicken-like birds), and dhole (relatives of the Fox), in addition to obviously having a panda bear as their main mascot.
- Blood Knight: While Dante says he would prefer to just sleep, there is no question that he enjoys battling the animatronics. It is even mentioned that part of him is entertained that Freddy survived being decapitated.
- Body Horror: Dante inflicts this upon every animatronic, though Bonnie and Freddy get it worst.
- Bond Villain Stupidity: In Animatronic Boogaloo, the villains get Dante drugged and knocked-out, but rather than kill him (they know full well he's Sparda's son by this point), they just stick him in the security office with all the animatronics. Not to mention none of the animatronics bother attacking until he wakes up. What's more, they do it twice: Animatronic Boogaloo involves time travel, and Golden Freddy had intended to pull the exact same drugged-and-knocked-out trap on Vergil in 1987; Dante was substituted in by mistake.
- Character Exaggeration: Dante is at his most ridiculous and silly.
- Composite Character: Taken very literally in the sequel — because Normal Freddy was previously decapitated, he wears Golden Freddy's burnt, half-melted head. The merged Fazbears are only identified as "Freddy", but when he removes his head and it continues talking, it is called "Golden Freddy's Head." The spirit inside Golden Freddy himself may also be the murderer, but given the nature of Chapter 8, he might just be completely batty.
- Conditioned to Accept Horror: Being set after the events of every main series Devil May Cry game, Dante is extremely experienced with supernatural villainy, to the point he is unimpressed with the Fazbear animatronics. Bonus points because Dante is also a former member of the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense.
- Continuity Nod: Several to the author’s previous fanfic, “Devil May Cry: Revelations”, which is said to be in the same continuity. Several are also given to Freddy’s characters, including Mike Schmidt and Phone Guy.
- Contrived Coincidence: Played for absurd laughs. Chapter 8 of Animatronic Boogaloo reveals not only did Vergil fight the Fazbear animatronics in 1985, but killed them in ridiculously similar ways to how Dante did over thirty years later.
- Cover Innocent Eyes and Ears: Dante does this to Evie when Mangle assaults Foxy.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: The animatronics have one set up for Dante, as with the security guards that came before him. Instead, he delivers one to each of them.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: A rare heroic version makes up the entire story.
- Dead Guy Junior: Dante and Lucia's daughter is referred to as Evie after Dante's mother Eva, and according to its predecessor Revelations, her middle name is Matis, after Lucia's adopted mother Matier. Additionally, their son is named Arthur, which is pronounced similarly to "Sparda", Dante's father.
- Death by Looking Up: Chica looks up from her fight to the death with Toy Chica to see Dante about to kill her by using the desk to crush her.
- Denser and Wackier: Dante, when compared with the author’s previous writings (which are in continuity).
- Evil vs. Evil: Dante turned the two Bonnies and the two Chicas against one another in the sequel. There was a little infighting between Foxy and Mangle, but they worked together better than the rest.
- Exact Words: Dante tells Golden Freddy that nothing on earth will stop him from killing him. When he escapes the pizzeria, he is hit by a car and subsequently killed by Dante's 1987 self.
- Experienced Protagonist: Dante wears it on his sleeve in this story.
- Flat-Earth Atheist: Dante points out to the management how idiotic it is to claim demons don’t exist when the Temen-ni-gru unambiguously burst out of the ground in Devil May Cry 3.
- Subverted in the Sequel Hook, which reveals the management uses Freddy's to sacrifice souls to a demon named Fredrick the Bear.
- Freudian Excuse: We all know Mangle's life was hell. Taken apart, put back together haphazardly, broken and miserable. All it wanted was to be loved... Which made it assault Foxy to try to make him love it.
- Friend to All Children: Toy Freddy.
- Gainax Ending: Animatronic Boogaloo ends with an out-of-nowhere reveal that the author himself has shattered the fourth wall and transported Dante back in time for the sake of matching Five Nights at Freddy's 2's twist ending. Dante pays for a pizza delivered by his 1987 self (who kills Golden Freddy purely by accident), then gets home by hitching a ride in a time-traveling telephone booth driven a teen with curly blondes and a teen with black hair who guessed the Twist Ending about a story that from their perspective doesn't actually exist! At this point, Dante
stops questioning it and just lets them take him home. - Genre Shift: The story is a referred to as a "continuation" of the author's previous Devil May Cry story, "Devil May Cry: Revelations", a very serious-minded Decon-Recon Switch about forgiveness and circumstances of birth, which was an overall dark story. This fic, in contrast, is downright silly.
- The Ghost: It wasn't focused on much, but Dante and Evie never found Classic Freddy on the security cameras in Animatronic Boogaloo.
- Good Parents: The original story presents Lucia as this while making Dante appear selfish and indifferent. The sequel, however, brings out the fact that Dante does really care and is extremely protective of his children.
- Greater-Scope Villain: The management, as Dante spells out.
- The Sequel Hook hints that something even more sinister is going on.
- Haunted Technology: Played completely straight, though Dante’s guesses are naturally closer to demons than ghosts.
- High-Voltage Death: Dante delivers one to Chica through a combination of watered down soda and the cords pulled from one of the security room monitors.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Foxy’s famously sharp teeth and run ability are ultimately used against him.
- In the sequel, when Dante faces off with The Marionette, it revives the already fallen animatronics as shadowy monsters. But when Dante points out that The Marionette trapped their souls within Freddy Fazbear's Pizza and is preventing them from moving on to the afterlife for its own goals of revenge, the monsters turn on and utterly destroy it.
- Hook Hand: Foxy has one, as in canon. Dante tears it off and shoves it in one of his eyes. Oddly, this is the only injury that doesn't carry over to the sequel.
- Improvised Weapon: Dante doesn't bring any of his equipment to the security job, so everything from the doors to the fan become improvised weapons for him.
- In the sequel, he goes so far as to rip the carousel out of the floor and drop it on Freddy.
- It's All About Me: Dante's fearsome critique of The Marionette comes down to this.
- Kill It with Fire: How Golden Freddy gets taken out.
- Killer Robot: The Fazbear crew think they know exactly what they’re getting into and are sure they'll kill Dante like the rest of the night watchmen they've met in the past. They don't count on Dante being seasoned at Demon Slaying and a half-demon himself.
- Lampshade Hanging: Consistently throughout, though Animatronic Boogaloo's chapter 9 and the subsequent Uncut Conversation take it to an extreme.
- Lemony Narrator: The narrator (who is also the writer) usually keeps out of the action, but when an adorable piglet is introduced just to be brutally sacrificed, he stops to admit, "Wow, that was kinda fucked up even by my standards."
- Losing Your Head: Dante inflicts this on Freddy. To his surprise, it doesn't quite go as planned. Not that Dante minded this, of course.
- Love Hungry: Though just appearing incredibly horny for Foxy, Mangle's backstory and her choice of music when she assaults him (Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody") imply it really just wants someone to care about it.
- Ludicrous Gibs: Said to be all that’s left of Freddy after Dante shoves his head into a Devil-Trigger-powered fan.
- Mega Crossover: Devil May Cry meets Five Nights At Freddy's, with a bit of Hellboy toward the end.
- Hellboy appears properly in the first chapter of the sequel, though his name is never said in full.
- Mook Chivalry: While not exactly mooks, the animatronics may have had a better shot at fighting Dante if they hadn’t come one by one.
- Multiple-Choice Past: Golden Freddy admits he’s not even sure what made him and the other animatronics act the way they do, though he shoots down every guess Dante has regarding their origin except for The Bite of ‘87.
- Mythology Gag: Dante remembers Vega as Balrog when he finds his daughter playing Street Fighter II
- The Nose Knows: The terrible smell of the animatronics is brought up from the beginning.
- Nothing but Hits: Averted, Mangle plays popular music from its radio, but are all dated for a story set obstinately in the 2020's (See 20 minutes into the future). However, every song it plays was popular in the year 1987...
- Chapter 8 reveals it is actually played straight, and Dante and Evie somehow got forced back in time.
- Oddly Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo: The sequel is named in homage to the Trope Namer, being titled Dante's Night at Freddy's 2: Animatronic Boogaloo.
- Outside-Context Problem: Dante is the outside-context hero.
- Papa Wolf: In the sequel, Dante angrily shouts that drugging and kidnapping his daughter is low even by Fazbear Entertainment's standards, and when Foxy and Mangle roar at her, it crosses into Dante's Berserk Button. When the revived Golden Freddy tries to kill her, he goes full Devil Trigger for the first time in years just to make sure GF is dead.
- Poorly Disguised Pilot: Sort of. In amongst whatever else is going on in The Uncut Conversation, Dante mentions he is aware he used to be a character in one of the writer's earlier comedies, and he questions if they could start that series again. True to form, the conversation is followed by a preview of a newly revived comedy series called "FMZ Mini Stories".
- Put on a Bus:
Word of God is Dante will not return in the second sequel. - Retired Badass: Dante describes himself as this, as a Continuity Nod to the author’s previous fanfic, “Devil May Cry: Revelations”.
- Revenge Fic: Of a lighter variety.
- Sadist Show: After the (first) death of Bonnie, it’s pretty clear none of the animatronics stand a chance. The reader is just following Dante from one beatdown to the next.
- Serial Numbers Filed Off/Follow the Leader: In-universe, in "Animatronic Boogaloo" it's shown that Fazbear Entertainment is being besieged by a string of imitators, all apparently themed after foreign cuisines. And they made sure to rip off everything, from the design of the security office to the fact that the animatronics want you dead.
- Sheathe Your Sword: Dante tells the animatronics multiple times that they can just leave him alone and everyone can leave the pizzeria unharmed. It doesn't work.
- Shout-Out:
- The original: Though none are mentioned by name, Dante makes explicit references to Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street, Hellboy, and Jeff the Killer, including the fact that he has met the first two in the past. Perhaps most randomly, however, Dante sings bits of the pirate theme from LazyTown on the flimsy justification he used to watch reruns of the show with his daughter. The Sequel Hook also references Terrance and Phillip from South Park.
- The sequel: There is a file inside the office in the sequel that references Bigbug, Partywolfe, and Markiplier, stating they terrified the animatronics when they increased their AI and survived. The three were the first three players known to beat 4/20 mode. PewDiePie is also mentioned as having disappeared after annoying all his co-workers. Taken to its complete logical extreme in chapter 7, in which The Marionette, after revealing it is Canadian, states he isn't related to anyone of note, just the Pilgrims, the Carreys, the Copelands, the Withoutabodys (Manwithoutabody), the Biebers, the Protons, and the Evans (most likely in reference to Captain Canuck).
- These are later followed up with the Retcon that Arin and Suzy from Game Grumps were the souls trapped within Mangle and Foxy respectively.
- Seinfeldian Conversation: Dante is implied to have had one with Golden Freddy towards the end of the original. In the sequel, Dante and MJTR have a very long, tedious one that ends up ridiculous enough the author split the second half of it into an uncensored, separate story.
- Sequel Hook: The last chapter is even named this, and reveals the name of the sequel: Dante's Night at Freddy's 2: Animatronic Boogaloo. There is another at the end of that story as well, featuring the sequel name Evie's Night at Fazbear's Fright.
- Seven Dirty Words: MJTR uses all of them to test the waters in The Uncut Conversation.
- Skewed Priorities: The fact that Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza will spring for an overly-elaborate-tablet-based-security-system before soap to keep the animatronics from reeking really grinds Dante’s gears. Though for his part, he readily states that he is more comfortable being killed conventionally than stuffed within one of the suits.
- Subverted Catchphrase: In the original, Dante at one point, when preparing to beat Freddy with his own severed arm, asks, "You ready, Freddy?"
- In Animatronic Boogaloo, he gets two. When he asks the other animatronics who it is who trapped their souls in the pizzeria in a petty revenge scheme, he says, "It's not me." and hands the Marionette over to them to kill. Later, when delivering the mother of all threats to Freddy, he states, "You're. Not. Ready."
- Suck E. Cheese's: The setting, naturally.
- Take That!: Dante criticizes the writing of several fictional news headlines.
- In the sequel, Dante and Evie find a file containing the names of several former employees in reference to popular Let's Players. Among them is a "Swedish weirdo" named Felix who the managers found annoying and are glad is dead, saying they wanted to put a gun to his head and go "Pew! Die die!".
- In The Uncut Conversation, MJTR claims that Arin is the weak link in Game Grumps.
- Talking the Monster to Death: In the sequel, Dante finally managed to talk down an animatronic... by turning Chica's murderous intent onto her toy counterpart, with grisly results for both parties.
- Troll Fic: Subverted. Despite the whole plot of Dante killing all the FNAF animatronics, MJTR stated he liked FNAF in one of the author's notes.
- The Power of Rock: Dante used the guitar to force the Marionette to back off... by playing some Slayer.
- Time Travel: Animatronic Boogaloo sees Dante travel back to 1987 to match Five Nights at Freddy's 2, but we don't find this out until Chapter 8, after he's already trashed all 12 animatronics.
- Token Good Teammate: At one point in Animatronic Boogaloo, Dante and Evie meet the naked animatronic endoskeleton, who is revealed to be Sparky the Dognote . He's actually pretty nice and happily plays go-fish with them, though he is very annoying sounding and gets dispatched by Marionette rather quickly.
- Torch the Franchise and Run: In-universe. At the end of Animatronic Boogaloo, Dante, upon learning Fazbear's Fright is being constructed, walks into the building while it's being constructed, tears it to shreds, appears to kill Springtrap, and destroys the place. Of course, considering the Sequel Hook...
- 20 Minutes into the Future: It's pretty much never focused on and one would have to read the predecessor fic to know, but the story is set in the decade of 2020, given the previous story ended (pre-epilogue) in 2015 and Dante and Lucia have had enough time to have two of their four children.
- Averted with Animatronic Boogaloo, as it's eventually revealed that yes, it is indeed 1987, as little sense as even Dante knows that makes.
- Wastebasket Ball: Dante does this with Freddy’s head after knocking it off.
- Wham Episode: The stories were never particularly down to earth to begin with, but Animatronic Boogaloo's chapter 9 and the subsequent Uncut Conversation take the cake.
- Wham Line: Chapter 8 of Animatronic Boogaloo has two: "VERGIL" and "My name is Michael Joseph Tharnish Roby... MJTR for short... And I wrote the twist.
- Weird Crossover: The main protagonist from an over-the-top Hack and Slash series fights demonic animatronics in a slow burn Survival Horror game.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Dante delivers a surprisingly poignant speech to the Shadow animatronics that not only gets them to back off, but also take The Marionette with them.
