Works with their own Trivia pages:
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Games
- Five Nights at Freddy's
- Five Nights at Freddy's 2
- Five Nights at Freddy's 3
- Five Nights at Freddy's 4
- Five Nights at Freddy's World
- Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location
- Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator
- Ultimate Custom Night
- Five Nights At Freddys VR Help Wanted
- Five Nights at Freddy's AR: Special Delivery
- Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach
- Five Nights at Freddy's: Help Wanted 2
Literature
Trivia tropes that apply to the franchise as a whole:
General examples
General Examples
- Author Phobia: According to Scott Cawthon himself, while making the first game he found Bonnie to be the scariest of the animatronics
. Since then, Bonnie became the killer's avatar and primary suit for killing children. - Career Resurrection: The critique for his kid-friendly game about a beaver (Chipper & Sons Lumber Co., to be more specific) that compared his art to creepy animatronics put Cawthon in a deep depression, which almost made him give up video game design. Thankfully, he used this criticism as inspiration for this game, which turned out to be his Breakthrough Hit and escalated him to the position of one of the most famous indie developers alive.
- Colbert Bump: Fans have since flooded to videos playing "March of the Toreadors", specifically the version played in Carmen.
- Content Leak: On May 6th, 2023, the trailer for the Halloween 2023 film was prematurely shown online by someone breaking their NDA and leaking it to the public.
- Creator's Favorite: Despite the fandom latching on to Foxy, Cawthon largely prefers Bonnie, considering him the scariest of the bunch and has even admitted to having recurrent nightmares involving the purple lagomorph during development. Bonnie also appears alongside Freddy in hallucinations, and Toy Bonnie was the first new animatronic to be shown off for the sequel. Plus, y'know, Springtrap◊.
- Creator Recovery: A small-time game developer, Scott was going through some rough times: Chipper and Sons Lumber Co., was harshly reviewed, which sent him into a depression, and he canceled his attempts to crowdfund his new game when he noticed no money was coming in through that either. As a result, he decided to try one last time at making a video game before quitting the industry for good. FNaF was such a success that it brought Scott to indie stardom.
- Defictionalization:
- Run and hide, children, because a real talking (but thankfully not walking) Freddy Fazbear animatronic now exists. The nope train is now departing from the station.
- And now there's a fund to get the other three animatronics from the original game made. Have fun sleeping tonight.
- A group of Redditors got together and formed Project '87, a project designed to build fully mobile replicas of the animatronics.
- It has been confirmed by Gil Kenan that the Five Nights at Freddy's film will feature actual walking, talking animatronics instead of CGI or actors in costumes. They are currently being built at the Jim Henson's Creature Shop.
- Sanshee is selling Foxy and Freddy plushies in the style of 2's Custom Night rewards, with plans to release the other two (and possibly a fifth, who is presumably going to be Golden Freddy) soon.
- The Fright Dome in Las Vegas has hosted a Freddy Fazbear's themed attraction.
- Run and hide, children, because a real talking (but thankfully not walking) Freddy Fazbear animatronic now exists. The nope train is now departing from the station
- Descended Creator: The game's creator, Scott Cawthon, voices Phone Guy.
- Development Gag: The trailers had an unused scene of Bonnie taking his face off revealing his robot endoskeleton face. In 2 he is completely faceless, making him even more terrifying.
- Development Hell: The only Fazbear Fanverse project that has seen the light of the day is One Night at Flumpty's 3, and even then, it was a fortuitous one, since creator Jonochrome was accused of sexual misconduct a few months after it was released, which would have probably soured fans' goodwill had it still remained in development. Nikson (creator of The Joy of Creation: Ignited Collection) and Kane Carter (creator of POPGOES: Evergreen) still regularly update fans about their work on their respective games, but have yet to give a concrete release date. There's very little, if any, news about Five Nights at Candy's 4 (the last time Emil Macko updated about Candy's 4 was in 2021). Five Nights at Freddy's Plus is currently stuck in limbo, after its creator Phisnom's infamous online quarrel regarding Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach led him to get booted from the project.
- Follow the Leader: Since Five Nights at Freddy's, there seems to be an increase of indie Survival Horror games, especially those which take on innocent concepts. One example is Bendy and the Ink Machine.
- During the series' height of popularity, there was a flood of cheap knock-offs on Steam, with varying degrees of shamelessness. Jim Sterling covered several of them, such as "Naninights", "Boogeyman" and "The Dolls".
- Let's not forget the direct rip-offs, nearly all following the title template of "# Night(s) at X".
- During the series' height of popularity, there was a flood of cheap knock-offs on Steam, with varying degrees of shamelessness. Jim Sterling covered several of them, such as "Naninights"
- Franchise Zombie: Cawthon initially attempted to close out the series with Five Nights at Freddy's 3, which ended on a rather conclusive note with the location being destroyed, the Big Bad William Afton being crushed inside his own animatronic suit before being set on fire, and his victims passing on to the afterlife. This was followed up by no less than three series fauxnales, the last of which ended with an "Everybody Dies" Ending where both William's son Michael and his ex-coworker Henry kill themselves to take William down with them. And yet new games continued to be released after that; Cawthon's retirement from game development in 2021 wasn't enough to prevent the release of Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus:
- Combined with Genius Bonus, the voice you hear through the door and the voice you hear on the telephone during Night 5 are actually quoting Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda. Minus the distortions, what you're hearing is the following text, from the section where the yogi meets a renowned scientist who demonstrates his theories that animals, plants, and even metals share a similar life force.note Door: - and heavy pressure." I looked around the room at the numerous inventions, eloquent testimony of a tireless ingenuity. "Sir, it is lamentable that mass agricultural development is not speeded by further use of your marvelous mechanisms. Would it not be easily possible to employ them in quick laboratory experiments to indicate the-"Night 5 Phone Call: "-it is lamentable that mass agricultural development is not speeded by fuller use of your marvelous mechanisms. Would it not be easily possible to employ some of them in quick laboratory experiments to indicate the influence of various types of fertilizers on plant growth?" "You are right. Countless uses of (omitted: Bose instruments) will be made by future generations. The scientist seldom knows contemporaneous reward; it is enough to possess the joy of creati- (omitted: -ve service.)"
- Marvelous Stealth Pun aside, Yogi Bear was an animatronic feature◊ at some Showbiz Pizza places in 1987...
- During one of the nights, it's possible to have one of the animatronics go through a room with a naked animatronic skeleton sitting on the table... Yes, an animatronic without its costume, that isn't going to be clad by the animatronic in said room. Guess the phone guy was wrong about the animatronics.
- That's the backstage, i.e. the changing room. It could just be, y'know, they expect it to get in-costume by itself. Fridge Brilliance kicks in when you realize this may be a subtle nod to the animatronics not being actually malfunctioning, but instead controled by restless spirits.
- Combined with Genius Bonus, the voice you hear through the door and the voice you hear on the telephone during Night 5 are actually quoting Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda. Minus the distortions, what you're hearing is the following text, from the section where the yogi meets a renowned scientist who demonstrates his theories that animals, plants, and even metals share a similar life force.note
- Inspiration for the Work: A critical review of one of the creator's previous games said the character animation looked like a creepy animatronic. Scott figured he could intentionally make something even more frightening. Nightmares ensued (literally in Scott's case, as working on Bonnie actually did give him nightmares).
- Live on Stage!: Many, many unlicensed stage shows based on the original quadrilogy, Sister Location, and Security Breach were performed during the late 2010s and early 2020s, with the bulk of them originating from Mexico. Apart from the costumes veering into the Unintentional Uncanny Valley with how poorly made they are, these shows often took artistic license with the plot, if not outright making it Lighter and Softer to appeal to a younger audience. In addition, many of them used fanmade FNaF songs (including the ones by The Living Tombstone) without paying royalties to the original artist.note
- No Budget: Most if not all the games in the series were self-funded by Cawthon. The first game in particular was intended to be funded via a Kickstarter campaign but failed to receive any investors and was even playtested by Cawthon's own children.
- Permanent Placeholder: Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy's names were supposed to be placeholder nicknames, but Scott eventually grew fond of them and kept them in the final game.
- Playing Against Type: This game was made by the same man who made a video game version of The Pilgrim's Progress.
- Role-Ending Misdemeanor: Scott Cawthon's retirement from the series on June 17, 2021 came a week after his controversial political donations were brought to light. In a now-locked subreddit, he released a statement defending his decision and announcing his retirement so he can focus on creating other games.
- Saved from Development Hell: As of Spring 2023, the film has finally finished production and is set to release on October 27th, 2023.
- Schedule Slip: Scott is notorious for inverting this consistently with FNAF by releasing the games well ahead of schedule, even lampshading it with the 4th game's release. Even the spin-off book wasn't exempt, due to Amazon publishing it early. Though this seems to be restricted to games he personally developed; Help Wanted was released on time, while Security Breach was delayed a couple of times.
- Serendipity Writes the Plot: Many of the games' most iconic features were the result of its shoestring budget or late-game decision changes. The creepy way the animatronics just stare at the cameras saved money and time on making animation and the camera system builds the suspense of their approach without showing their exact movement.
- Subverted in the case of Freddy: Word of God says he originally wasn't supposed to move around, but that was given the ability late in the game. It appears that to keep from needing to make more images more complicated than they needed to be, Scott only made Freddy visible by the light of his eyes, making him very hard to identify. However, brightening the dark hallways of the pizzeria reveal Freddy's whole model is visible. Apparently, Scott was ready for something like this.
- Shrug of God:
- In a recent interview hosted by Dawko, Scott did this a lot. In the interview, he stated that he feels that the fans should find out how the story plays out themselves. Regardless, he acknowledged the constant effort and near match that Mat-Pat (Game Theory) made and revealed some plot points and interesting facts.
- Cawthon himself admits that the idea for Golden Freddy in the first game came to him right out of nowhere. He would also say something similar in regard to Springtrap.
Scott Cawthon in this Geeks Under Grace interview: "Sometimes things just 'happen' during the game making process. I can’t explain Golden Freddy." - Sleeper Hit: The game started out as a failed kickstarter — it made no profit at all — game intended to be Scott Cawthon's Swan Song. Three sequels later, Scott Cawthon has a spinoff set for release, and an official feature film made by Warner Brothers themselves is currently in development. note
- Urban Legend of Zelda: There was a rumor that if you set the Custom Night to 0/6/6/6, it would enable the camera in the Kitchen. It was proven false as no file of the layout exists.
- Yet another rumor mentioned that putting 1/9/8/7 for the Custom Night would do something. It didn't, at least at first, but that was changed for the game's Steam release. Go see what it does now!note
- A rumor started by the game itself: Phone Guy claims that playing dead will let you survive longer if you run out of power. According to the source code, however, the game doesn't actually check for this.note
- Another rumor claimed there was a hidden sixth animatronic named Sparky the Dog, who was actually non-hostile and would appear ocassionally in the backstage to simply look at the camera, with this screenshot being the sole proff of his existence. However, it was later confirmed the screenshot had been photoshopped by two Tumblr users who confessed the whole thing was just shopped. One can't help but wonder if the mysterious endoskeleton from the second game which ocassionally shows up in the Prize Corner room and the Left air vent to merely look at the camera is a subtle reference to this misconception.
- Following the logic of the animatronic scream from the first game originating from Inseminoid, it is believed that the scream from the second and third games were sourced respectively from a scene in Saw II and an episode of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic of all places (the episode being "The Cutie Map"). However unlike the scream from the first game, the screams from the second game and onward came from a sound library, and in the latter's case the Friendship Is Magic episode "The Cutie Map" didn't premiere until two months after Five Nights At Freddy's 3 came out, and there's music playing over the sound effect that Scott supposedly "lifted" from the episode.
- What Could Have Been:
- Within the Fazbear Fanverse Initiative, it is known that Scott wanted to invite IvanG to the program in order to make a new JOLLY game, initially unaware that Jollibee, the mascots of whom the game's characters are based on, is a real restaurant chain. He had to rescind the invitation after discovering that fact.
- Another Fanverse game under serious consideration was Chomper's, which was sadly cancelled when Scott rescinded the offer due to controversy surrounding the game's lead developer. A bunch of concept art, 3D assets and a basic proof-of-concept demo for the game has been released.
- The Freddy Files was initially supposed to be more lore-heavy than just being a simple guidebook, with lots of reveals like the culprit of the Bite of 87, the names of the missing children and William's primary motivation for killing them. The information of the unreleased version is not taken as canon anymore by Scott.
- Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things: The FNaF fandom is rather infamous for its more obnoxious members, who get into all kinds of controversial misadventures such as terrorizing pizzerias such as Chuck E. Cheese's and a pizzeria that had the same Google Maps coordinates as a list of eights and sevens that were on Scott's site at one point. Due to a flock of vandalisms on The Other Wiki's 1987 in video gaming page in the section listing games that take place in the year, this section ended up getting removed from every single year's page.
Tropes with their own pages
