This is based on opinion. Please don't list it on a work's trope example list.
While the
One Night at Flumpty's games are a surreal
Affectionate Parody of
Five Nights at Freddy's, it should be noted just
what they're parodying in the first place and what to expect with that.
General:
- Flumpty in general is this. Putting up a Faux Affably Evil and Mask of Sanity persona, underneath his superficial charm, he is an insane, sociopathic Eldritch Abomination. He kidnaps the player character, imprisons them, and forces them into a game where they have to survive while him and his friends try to kill them. All of this for no discernable reason other than amusement. And not to mention how he is able to warp reality and manipulate time, which he uses to ensure that you can never truly beat his game as stated in ONAF 3.
- Several of the faces that Birthday Boy Blam makes. Some of them make him look like a stereotypical British man (Kevin Jr.), others look too uncanny in a toon-ish way, while other times he dons a Slasher Smile.
- The Redman, the "guy who drank lava and lived (kinda)". Why kinda? Well, whatever he was before, he's now a disjointed collection of malformed red bones that cameras can't even process properly, appearing as a demonic stickbug when using his ribcage as a set of limbs to grab the player.
- To elaborate, the Redman starts in what seems to be a room of red static, similar to the kitchen in the first Five Nights at Freddy's game. Late into the night, however, you see that the static has moved, and the room appears to be Hell itself. Then you realize that the static is moving closer...
- The Eyesaur is probably the most disturbing-looking monster in the games, being a collection of ghoulish red heads on a reptilian body. Its backstory is also disturbing, what with it having been made from the skinned bodies of Flumpty's past victims, those who lost the game. Also, there's a bit of Fridge Horror involved, in that it was in the first game, but didn't come out. It gets heightened if you remember that one of its eyes closes every time Grunkfuss gets closer to you.
- The very idea of Hard Boiled Mode. You replay the night, but the difficulty is ramped up. And the idea that a monster that could be active late at night now be active very early is one that spells Paranoia Fuel. You need to be calm, use your power and abilities sparingly, and be clever with how you want to tackle Flumpty's friends if you want to beat Hard-Boiled Mode.
- The game over screens in all of the games share something in common, and that's the fact that regardless of how you die and who kills you, you end up having your eyes ripped out. The first game consists of your eyes getting cooked on a pan like an egg. The Game Over in the second game has your eyes getting put on an egg sliced. The third game just simply shows an animation of your eye falling down on the floor and cracking like an egg.
One Night at Flumpty's:
- The jumpscares. Even before them, watching Grunkfuss slowly inch his way into your room late into the night can be unsettling. And a couple of the monsters can catch you off guard.
- Flumpty appears to be a harmless cute fella... when he isn't attacking you. Then in his jumpscare, he gets bloodshot eyes, fangs, and a forked tongue.
- Birthday Boy Blam's appearance in the door is more than enough to close it. But unlike the Redman or Flumpty, he just cuts to the chase with his jumpscare, which features a lot of holes spread across his face (pictured above). It can especially horrify you if you have trypophobia...
- The Beaver's jumpscare is akin to Foxy's, but with black eyes, glowing pupils, and shiny golden teeth.
- The Redman looks as if it is attaching himself to your face like a facehugger.
- Grunkfuss twists his head 180 degrees with two rows of cracked teeth, spiral eyes, and a pointy nose.
- On a contrast, though, Golden Flumpty is rather tame, just appearing in the office and zooming in on you, retaining his open mouth and cracked appearance.
- The hallucinations Golden Flumpty makes when he appears in your office are also creepy, consisting on a picture of Flumpty's face as it changes from his normal face to a cracked black hole with creepy teeth.
- The phone call in Hard Boiled Mode. It's reversed when you play the game, but if one flipped the audio sample, produces a single line that gives the player a better idea as to what Flumpty really is.
One Night at Flumpty's 2:
- When starting Normal Night, instead of a phone call, you get a record player jingle. Despite being catchy, listening to the lyrics is a much different story.
- Some of the returning characters have new jumpscares that take a step further than the ones they had in the first game.
- Flumpty has the front portion of his shell break open, revealing a skeletal face underneath his normal one.
- Grunkfuss lunges at you rapidly with a completely open mouth and empty eyes.
- Birthday Boy Blam's jumpscare could be the opposite in comparison to his jumpscare in the first game, since it doesn't invoke trypophobia this time, but it doesn't help that he gains white soulless eyes and warped teeth that sink in as he gets close to your face.
- Golden Flumpty averts his Nightmare Retardant jumpscare from the first game. If you don't turn the lights off or view your tablet in time, Golden Flumpty just appears in your face with a loud demonic roar and glaring eyes. No zoom-in either, he just replaces your screen.
- The new enemy, Eyesaur, certainly has a memorable jumpscare, too. It's a simple lunge at your face, but what makes it scary is that a black fluid is leaking from the eyes on all of the heads, and that roar... Good god that roar.
- A dead Piglet is hung on the Office's right wallnote He was replaced by a winged pig from the Riddle School series in the The Egg Collection remaster due to copyright reasons., with his organs exposed, his eyes missing, and an agonized expression donning his face. It's a severe kick for anyone who grew up watching Winnie the Pooh.note A gutted Winnie also appears in the Office's desk from the first game (replaced by a generic teddy bear in the remaster), but it isn't as visible or graphic as this case. To make matters worse, he'll sometimes stare at you and smile, which is unnerving if you notice. Poor Piglet.
- Hard-Boiled Mode here. It's mostly due to the heightened Paranoia Fuel. Characters do appear much earlier, but it's the fact that the EXPOSURE meter increases significantly if your lights aren't off. In fact, if Grunkfuss or Eyesaur catch you with the lights on, consider yourself dead already (unless you have really good reflexes).
One Night at Flumpty's 3:
- Flumpty's phone call at the start of Night 1 can be pretty unsettling, especially when you consider the implications of what he's saying.
Flumpty: Hiya, best friend! Wouldn't you know it, after all this time, you still haven't survived until 6am! But if you ever do, I'll finally let you leave! Until then, friends... let's... play...
- The Beaver and the Owl are both back, only as a twisted stitched-together fusion who crawls through the vents! Oh, and it has a knife. Fun!
- The jumpscares in the third game manage to beat the other two games by a mile in terms of the scare factor.
- Birthday Boy Blam grows 2 pairs of soulless black beady eyes that melt on each other, and sharp teeth which he presumably uses to bite you given how far his mouth opens.
- Grunkfuss spins his head 90 degrees to sheer your face off with his gaping maw.
- The Redman crawls out of the furnace before seemingly jumping to your head.
- The Beavowl screams in your face, knife raised, poised to stab you.
- Eyesaur gets a revamped version of its jumpscare from the second game, except it covers THE ENTIRE SCREEN. And its jumpscare sound is much more demonic-sounding, being more like a demented wail than a loud scream.
- Flumpty's jumpscare gives us a look at what's inside him, much like in the second game. However, instead of having anything remotely resembling a face behind his shell (said face being reused for the new Shadow Flumpty), this time (fitting for a chaos god of death) it's a hellish garbage disposal-like grinder lined with eyes, while what seem to be faces flash in the blackish red void that is the center of the madness; his shell is also completely soaked in blood no less. If this doesn't cement Flumpty's status as an Eldritch Abomination, nothing will.
- The Victory Fakeout at the end of Night 1. You make it to 6am, you see the clock slowly turning to 6, and your freedom is ready to be claimed... and then the clock reverses back to 12am. You're thrown immediately into the Flumpty Night, which starts off with Flumpty saying two words in an INCREDIBLY chilling tone:
- If you look at CAM 6 during this night, you'll see that all of the other characters have been brutally slaughtered by Flumpty, and he has made clones of himself to take their places. Birthday Boy Blam had his head and torso split down the middle, Grunkfuss has been brutalized and stuck with quills, he tore the Beavowl and Redman to pieces, and Eyesaur has been stabbed to death with fragments of Golden Flumpty's corpse and had some of its heads torn off for good measure.
- Speaking of the clones, special mention goes to the Beavowl's replacement, Spider Flumpty, which is an egg with DIAMOND EYES AND SPIDER LEGS. It spends its time in the jacuzzi like the Beavowl, but has filled it with blood to meditate within it. And unlike the Beavowl, Spider Flumpty is animated when he runs through the vent!
- While the skull face he makes at the door is arguably funny, some of Skull Flumpty's faces in the cameras are creepy, especially his third sprite in CAM 2, where he has a large Slasher Smile with large fang-like teeth.
- Fitting his inspiration, Golden Flumpty's replacement is simply called Shadow Flumpty. The mechanics behind him are mostly the same; don't exit the monitor if he's onscreen, change the camera and he won't be a problem. If you do, however, he'll appear in your room and... does nothing, initially. Every time you close the camera feed while he's onscreen, he gets closer and reaches out farther. By the fifth time, his eyes have rolled back into his head like a shark ready to bite down on something. And the sixth time, he finally strikes.
- You know when the Redman crawls out of the furnace should you fail to stay away? If his replacement Furnace Flumpty is in the furnace, he downright sports a Slasher Smile before THROWING HIMSELF AT YOU.
- Not long after Flumpty Night starts, you can notice a new pair of rooms that you are given access to not long after. These rooms have another Flumpty attached to them. You need to use laser grid doors to keep him at bay, because he'll hide just out of frame enough in the doorway for the camera to not deter him. The camera does, however, give you a good look at his giant bloodshot cat-like eyes staring at you from the darkness.
- Part of the way through Flumpty Night, another pair of rooms is bolted onto the building, with another Flumpty to worry about. This one is intent on making his way to the power control for your doors and turning them off. If he reaches the lever, the final two faces he makes towards the camera are a cheeky lip-biting grin with pupils large enough to appear as empty sockets, and a dead, husk-like face that is nonetheless smiling gleefully at having rendered you literally powerless before him.
- Remember how in the second game, the Redman appeared as a pop-up that could disable your laptop so that he would jumpscare you shortly afterwards? Flumpty decided to take a page from his book and set up a different version of his message that will disable your cameras instead if you fail to delete it in time. Not that it changes much, though, since you're probably going down with them straight after...
