The fate of the Animatronics (if any of the others are still around) can be seen as this. Initially, they were designed to be family-friendly machines that would entertain children. However, due to a series of tragic events that were beyond their control (IE: murders, mutilation, etc.), people's attitudes towards them changed drastically. Now, they're essentially forgotten apart from various ghost stories and urban legends, to the point where they've been reduced to a "haunted house" type attraction. Imagine going from being beloved and bringing joy towards others to being seen as nothing more than horrifying monstrosities. And still being ALIVE (somewhat), as the mutilation doesn't seem to kill/set free the skins and endoskeletons-OR THE SOULS OF THE DEAD CHILDREN.
It's even worse when you consider the sentiment towards the characters that the management gave in the first game:
Management: These characters will live on. In the hearts of children, they will live on.
Actually, it's much worse, at least for Chica and Foxy. Chica and Foxy have become lamps with Chica being put on the floor like trash...
There's a lot more to that: the minigames reveal that the Purple Man/William Afton dismantled them. The Pizzeria has a dilapidated look to it (mice on the ground and water dripping from the ceiling), meaning Afton returned to the Pizzeria for the sake of dismantling them. In other words, they were killed a second time by the one who killed them when they were originally living children.
Also, given that Fazbear's Fright burns down and given The Stinger images and how utterly wrecked the four heads look (look at Foxy's lower jaw! Look at it!), then it's pretty sad to think that their final fate is literally to be burned and destroyed to the point where they'll probably be thrown out completely... ifThe Stinger is actually a hint that the heads survived and not just a symbolic image to say whether the souls are still trapped or not. It's perfectly likely that Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, Foxy and Golden Freddy have been completely destroyed, never to return. The fourth game, as a prequel, cements the fact that the original four animatronics that started it are gone forever.
Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator is after FNAF 3, and it is supposed to lure the remaining animatronics to one location, to burn it all and kill everyone for good. The bad thing? None of the original five animatronics return, besides being mentioned. This truly shows that Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, Foxy and Golden Freddy are dead for good, and will NOT return.
Hell, the newer games make it even worse!
The VR game tells us that Fazbear Entertainment basically tried to forget about Freddy, Bonnie, Chica and Foxy, making it seem like some events surrounding them were simply rumors. And Golden Freddy is even worse! They have completely threw him out, making him be forgotten forever.
The AR Game implies there's an army of Fazbear Entertainment-made robots going throw AT LEAST Utah! This means Freddy, Bonnie, Chica and Foxy will be hated there, for being extremely dangerous.
BB's Air Adventure, the secret minigame shows three silhouettes of BB's under a tree, crying silver tears. Was this how BB felt on the inside?
The upcoming game, Security Breach, shows that Bonnie and Foxy were outright thrown out of the band and replaced by Montgomery Gator and Roxanne Wolf, abandoning them for good.
"The Happiest Day". The Marionette Easter Egg, there's no game to be played; you are a small child wearing the mask of the Marionette, while there are other masked children sitting at tables with three-layer cakes. It does sound like a "Happiest Day" moment, doesn't it? But at the end of the room, there is a gray-coloured, crying child behind the stage. In Five Nights at Freddy's 2, the gray-coloured children were those who died.
Turns heartwarming when you find out exactly why it's called the "Happiest Day": if you unlock it after earning the Good Ending, the final room will be occupied by the gray spirits of the five murdered children, dressed in masks representing the animatronic characters they once inhabited; once the Marionette enters the room, the children vanish, and the empty masks to fall to the floor — signifying that the tormented spirits at the root of all the horror at Freddy Fazbear's have finally moved on.
The two ending screens are just depressing to look at. The Bad ending shows the animatronic heads with lights in them just lying there. The Night 6 ending, on the other hand, has a newspaper article regarding the Fazbear's Fright attraction burning down with little to nothing left over; even though that place was filled with killer animatronics and whatnot, considering that it was once a happy place and it now led up to this can be quite depressing. Not to mention there's a soft somber music box that plays at both endings, which happens to be "Brahms' Waltz in a Major Op.39 No.15" in the case of the Bad Ending and The Happiest Day.
The illuminated heads only appear in the "Bad" ending (which you get if you complete all five nights, but fail to successfully complete the mini-games). The lights signify that the murdered children's spirits were never freed.
The good ending (which you get after replaying the game and freeing the children's spirits from the hidden minigames) speaks even higher volumes. It's just a bittersweet ending: the music playing is sad, and while the souls of the kids that haunted Freddy, Bonnie, Chica and Foxy are finally in peace, the Purple Guy killed them for the second time, first as humans and then as robots, and alas, all of this overall hammers down the reality that Freddy and his friends, who were created to entertain people, especially kids, don't exist anymore and will never be able to entertain the kids. And as they are destroyed, they are definitely deactivated, the robot equivalent of death.
In the Mangle minigame, you can come across a giant crying Puppet statue. The Puppet was a demon in the last game. Here, he starts to be a Tragic Monster.
How about the Shadow Bonnie minigame? The depressing music is only the start of it. You play as a horrifically glitched-out, monstrous-looking Bonnie who travels through almost all the minigames, plus a strange purple void. The fact that it seems that it can't get out of the box, forever trapped in there, is even more tearjerking... until you realize how to glitch out of the box and use that to free the soul of the child outside of the purple box.note Taking into mind the fact that Springtrap may very well have been destroyed in the Night Six fire, and the person the color purple is most closely associated with in this series, and it becomes... better, and yet evenworse. But that's only if it really is the Murderer's ghost.
Post-Sister Location, it takes on a different meaning. That being that the possible ghost Shadow Bonnie represents is the Murderer's son. Someone who needn't've died in theory, and also, this meant that the children didn't kill their murderer.
The hat◊ image released by Scott the day after the game's release. Seeing just the hat lying there, by itself, makes it feel like the show's over, Freddy's story has finally ended. The fact that there's nothing to find by brightening the picture, unlike nearly all of the images before it, drives the point in further...note But with this being the end of the story, it's far from the end of the franchise.
In a really, really subjective way, the ultimate fate of the Murderer. Oh yes, he DESERVES whathappenedto him... but now's he's forever stuck in the suit, most likely unable to pass on. It gets dampened a bit when you realize that he probably wasn't going to go to a nice place after death either, and that he still tries to kill the night guard, but it's still a sad fate for anyone to endure. It's almost a good thing that Fazbear's Fright burnt down, because now he can move on from his fate... until you realise he escaped.
Also remember that the suit was decommissioned previously because of an 'accident.' Considering the procedure in case of a springlock accident is to go to a saferoom to not scare people while you are horrifically killed, an entirely innocent person died because Fazbear Entertainment cared more about a quick buck.
The ending, of course. On the one hand, Afton is left to suffer in the Spring Bonnie suit, the dead children can rest in peace, and the corrupt and unsafe Fazbear Entertainment seems to be permanently out of business. But let's not forget that the kids were still in torment for decades before moving on, and their parents likely never found out the fate of their children. There's also the fact that, in their quest for revenge, the spirits became nearly as bad as their killer, having murdered, maimed, and traumatized quite a few people over the years. At least two innocent guards died at their hands — both Phone Guy and the nameless victim who had to be stuffed in a suit in the first place for Phone Guy to know their MO. There's also the victim of The Bite of '87, which claimed another person's life, but not before literally putting them through hell. If Mike, Jeremy, Fritz, or anyone else who's put up with the animatronics is still alive, they're probably going to have a tough time dealing with the mental stress when nobody will likely believe their story. And if the end of the sixth night is to be believed, the Fazbear's Fright guard may have committed arson to put an end to the horror — an admirable idea, but the police suspect him and he may be arrested. Plus, the murderer's spirit lingered in Springtrap in some way, and there's the insinuation that he may still not be entirely gone, even with the fire. Bittersweet the ending is indeed.
Seeing how happy the children were before they died. Really drives in how much of a monster Purple Guy is.
Let's talk about that fire for a minute. It's implied that the guard might not have escaped. Sure, the Purple Guy got a heaping dose of karma, but at the possible cost of a totally innocent life. It makes the ending even more bittersweet.
Gets worse when you realize Springtrap survived.
MandoPony's Filk Song "Balloons". Sung from the perspective of the spirits of the children inhabiting the animatronics, it is at once confused, terrified at the things the animatronics do, and elated at finally being put to rest after all those years.
The most depressing thing about it all is that our player character is one of a small handful of people who actually find out the truth. The parents of the missing kids will never find out what happened to their children, the lights of their lives. They’ll never be able to hold them in their arms again, never say “I love you.” The kids who grew up loving the Fazbear gang will forever be confused and disappointed as to why they went away forever, never to be seen again. The friends and family of Phone Guy will never find out what happened to him, why he vanished forever. The worst part: They could know. Fazbear Entertainment very easily could have said “Your children have died. They’re in the animatronic suits. Go hold them, kiss them, love them, one last time.” But instead, they did nothing. They cheated, cut corners, and even flat out lied to cover their ass and make sure the Fazbear empire never collapsed. In the end, William Afton may have been a sadistic, evil, and psychotic serial killer, but one of the true monsters is Fazbear Entertainment: a corrupt, money-grubbing, and ruthless company who chose money over morals, who ignored the suffering and agony of hundreds of people just to keep making extra money.
The fact that despite it looking like the poor souls finally found peace in this ending, FNAF 6 implies that either Baby or Ennard has harvested the souls, most likely to use them to possess other animatronics to continue the killing spree. Well, at least they are still free, as Baby/Ennard dies.
— signifying that the tormented spirits at the root of all the horror at Freddy Fazbear's have finally moved on.
