Are you ready to break into Freddy's?
It's the middle of the night as Thomas' phone calls, waking him up. It's his friend, Chris, and he wants Thomas to accompany him and his two buddies, Richard and Ashley, to a long-closed restaurant they used to hang out at. The reason? Chris suspects there was something sinister behind the place's closure twenty six years prior, and seeks to break in under the cover of night and find some evidence. Thomas begrudgingly goes along with the plan, but as he and his companions explore the half-rotten restaurant, the others begin to disappear, until Thomas is left all alone... or is he?
Oh, and the restaurant's name? Fredbear and Friends Pizzeria.
Yes, indeed, Fredbear and Friends: Reboot is yet another Five Nights at Freddy's fan game, with the series' original animatronics to boot. In contrast with many other fan games, Fredbear and Friends lets you explore the restaurant freely and has animated cutscenes, voice acting and all. A sequel, titled Fredbear and Friends: A Twisted Awakening, has also been released, and both games can be found on the Game Jolt page of their developer, Rarithlynx
.
Fredbear and Friends provides examples of:
- Adaptation Name Change: While all other animatronics keep their canon names, Mangle is renamed "Endocluster".
- Ambiguous Situation:
- In the final section, it's never explained who set up the trail of clues leading to the code that unlocks the exit door.
- Whether the voice on the phone is the Purple Man or his heard-but-unseen associate is left unanswered.
- Bait-and-Switch: The flashback section ends with the security guard going up to Freddy to turn it off. You can guess what happens next. Or not, as Freddy remains motionless while the guard is assaulted from behind by the Purple Man.
- Cell Phones Are Useless: After realizing he has no way out, Thomas attempts to call for help, only to find out his smartphone's out of power.
- Closed Circle: The restaurant becomes one once the animatronics awaken, as when Thomas reasonably attempts to escape, he finds the door locked. Stranger still, when he smashes the lock, he discovers that the corridor behind it, which should end with the outer exit, is now capped with a solid wall, which somehow reverts back to a door once the clock hits 6 AM, though now it's locked with a keypad.
- Cluster F-Bomb: Thomas starts cursing like a sailor once he realizes his situation.
- Doomed Protagonist: The security guard in the flashback doesn't have a happy ending, to say the least.
- Dramatic Irony: After watching a flashback cutscene where a security guard is killed by the Purple Man, we, as Thomas, reach a room with his corpse. Thomas mistakes him for a missing policeman and resolves to hole up and wait until the police come to get their man, unaware that the corpse has been there for over a quarter of a century.
- The Faceless: The presumed Purple Man is only ever seen as a shadowy figure; the most we get of him is his purple shirt.
- Flashback: There are two flashbacks to a security guard from back when the restaurant was still operational, one playable and one not.
- He Who Must Not Be Seen: The Purple Man's associate is never seen, only heard.
- Interface Screw: In the final section, one of the clues is written on the camera lens, obstructing part of the view.
- Jump Scare:
- As per FNAF tradition, every time you're caught by one of the animatronics, you're subjected to one of these.
- After the clock hits 6 AM, all animatronics freeze... except for Chica, who runs a few steps and screams before stopping.
- Killed Mid-Sentence: Thomas and Chris are just in the middle of exchanging information on what's going on when the latter is snatched up by Endocluster.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: The hiding spots under the desk and in the toilet are only available at select story moments, and cannot be accessed during the "survive the night" section, even though (probably because) they'd probably make the best hiding spots.
- Locked Out of the Loop: One of the casette tapes at the start of the game mentions that the pizzeria's manager intends to start sending the security guards on patrols in pairs and have them armed — while not telling any of them why.
- Luck-Based Mission: The final section, where you have to follow a trail of clues, has you stalked by Fredbear himself. After a certain point, the animatronic seems to teleport, and has a random chance of appearing right behind you, forcing you to re-do the section from the start.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: While the game purports to be in FNAF canon, its own story leaves it more than a little ambiguous whether there's an actual supernatural force at play, or if it's the Purple Man turning the malfunctioning animatronics on and off to screw with his latest victims.
- Mission Control: After Thomas is left alone, he discovers a ringing phone and hears a man who tries to help him by informing him about the habits of various animatronics and the ways to avoid them.
- Mission Control Is Off Its Meds: When the voice contacts Thomas again, it becomes apparent that it may actually belong to the Purple Man, who proceeds to taunt Thomas and reveals that he's been toying with him all along before turning on Fredbear and Endocluster and leaving Thomas for dead.
- Off with His Head!: Thomas deals with one of the animatronics by knocking it over and guillotining it with the drop-down door at the security room.
- Ominous Visual Glitch: After the section where you must survive until 6 AM, the game does the standard FNAF routine of "show the clock changing to 6 while children are celebrating routine", only to glitch out and flicker back to 12 AM for a moment to let you know that this time, waiting until morning is not enough to save you.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Thomas' first instinct after realizing what's going on is to flee. Unfortunately, by then he's already locked in a Closed Circle.
- The Smurfette Principle: Both humans and animatronics have only one girl amongst them (Foxy and Mangle/Endocluster's Ambiguous Gender Identity nonwhithstanding) — Ashley for the former and Chica for the latter.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Thomas drops a lot of f-bombs. Understandable, given his situation.
- Sole Survivor: Thomas quickly becomes the only human left at the pizzeria.
- Sound-Only Death: Thomas only hears Richard's death, and never finds the body.
- Story Breadcrumbs: In the first section of the game, you can find a number of casette tapes from the restaurant's heyday. While most seem to be interviews with the clients about what the pizzeria means to them, several give early clues as to the troublesome events, such as missing guards and a dangerous man in a purple shirt hanging around the place.
- Unexpected Gameplay Change: Underplayed; one section sees you controlling a security guard in the past, pristine version of the restaurant. While eerie, the section doesn't contain any threatening animatronics.
- Unreliable Narrator: Discussed. Several times over the course of the game, Thomas wonders out loud whether he's going crazy.
- Vertical Kidnapping: Until the game's final section, Endocluster hides in the ceiling vents, ready to snatch you if you don't pay attention. It's how Chris meets his end.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Ashley's fate is left unresolved. Though it's most likely she's been killed the same way Richard and Chris were, at the end of the game, Thomas seems confused as to her whereabouts.
