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
Novels: Five Nights at Freddy's: The Silver Eyes | Five Nights at Freddy's: The Twisted Ones | Five Nights at Freddy's: The Fourth Closet | Five Nights at Freddy's: Fazbear Frights
- Alas, Poor Scrappy: While by no means hated by the community, people felt rather sorry for Toy Freddy when it was confirmed that he would not be in the Halloween Edition.
- Alternative Character Interpretation:
- Quite literally. The minigames in-between nights focus on a child called the Crying Child, but whether this is the protagonist of the nights themselves is up for debate, with the other most common option being his brother. This is to say nothing about the very popular fan theory that the brother is Michael Afton and the Crying Child is his ambiguously-named brother.
- The game is usually interpreted as either the child stuck in a dying dream as he dies from his injuries, or his brother having a guilt-induced nightmare over what he did to his brother. This was seemingly partially resolved in 2023, when Tales from the Pizzaplex confirmed that the game is actually set in an experimental chamber where Afton would torture kidnapped children, with the animatronics being hallucinations; however, it's left unclear who exactly the protagonist is.
- Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
- The mini-game where the child is locked in the Parts room, with several animatronic heads. We are never given an explanation for this, who locked him in (it's implied to be the brother), what day or time it is, and it doesn't add anything to our comprehension.
- Smaller versions of Mangle's pieces randomly laying around in the kiddo's house. There's no buildup to it whatsoever, and is never acknowledged later. The Halloween update gave us a Nightmare Mangle, though.
- Broken Base: The jumpscares being extremely loud is one of the biggest points of contention surrounding the game. Defenders cite the loud jumpscares combined with the game requiring you to listen closely as creating a hellishly stressful experience that makes the game the scariest in the series. Detractors hate them for being a cheap way to make the game artificially scary and make playing the a chore since the game simultaneously requires and punishes listening closely, with turning the volume up not being an option.
- The Chris Carter Effect: Has been accused of this by some of the fanbase. Many were hoping that the fourth (and at the time, last) game in the "FNAF" series would at least answer one or two burning questions surrounding the lore, like the Purple Guy's identity or the infamous Bite of '87. Instead, people were left even MORE confused than ever. Scott announcing he wouldn't open the box didn't help at all, alongside the Halloween update being Palette Swaps and not much else.
- Creepy Awesome: The Nightmare animatronics look damn cool, but still more or less horrifying.
- Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: The Box, as one YouTube comment says:The box has become a metaphor for us as a community. Scott states how almost all of the lore for FNAF 1 - 3 has been found and when FNAF 4 came, the community looked too hard for easter eggs and misinterpreted the information given in plain sight. Because we as a community can not as a whole settle on events (I.E. the Bite of '87 OR the bite of '83) the community refuses to set on specific beliefs. And so because of this, the story isn't being figured out as it should, which is why the locks will remain, forever. Until we can all agree, the box will never be opened.
- Fan-Disliked Explanation:
- After the game's release, Scott had planned to allow a means of opening the mysterious box at the end of the game, which he claimed had "all the pieces [of the story] put together," but went back on those plans to avoid having it be one of these. Given later clues on his website heavily implied the series was All Just a Dream (as opposed to only the fourth, which had already been established as an extended Nightmare Sequence), the fans weren't too keen on this possibility. Notably, the next few games in the franchise completely ignore this twist, if it was what Scott had in mind all along.
- The near-confirmation in 2023 that the the game is set in an experimental torture chamber for children kidnapped by William Afton, with the animatronics being hallucinations brought about by a hallucinogenic gas. Although it had already been foreshadowed in Sister Location nearly 6 years prior, and many a fan was simply happy to have a clear-cut resolution to the game's story, many others felt that this explanation was unnecessarily complicated and robbed the gameplay segments of their emotional importance, especially when contrasted with the two prevailing explanations (the nights being either the Bite Victim's dying hallucinations or the Brother's guilt-ridden nightmares). To say nothing about the alteration of William's character from a serial killer to a Jigsaw-esque torturer.
- Fanon:
- Early on, some fans liked the idea of the child from 4 being Mike Schmidt's son due to obvious reasons.
- Since the Sister Location DLC,, it's been almost universally accepted by the fanbase that the older brother is Michael Afton (William Afton/Purple Guy's son).
- Love to Hate: The jerkass older brother, at least for the first five mini-games. He may have apologized after Night 6, but he's directly responsible for the Bite of '83 and likes to terrorize the protagonist on a regular basis. No Draco in Leather Pants for him.
- Narm Charm: The Nightmare Animatronics have very over the top horror designs that can come across as ridiculous compared to the more mundane Uncanny Valley designs of the other animatronics across the series. However in-game the Paranoia Fuel they present (especially Nightmare Bonnie and Nightmare Chica relying on an easy to miss audio cue to know if it’s safe to use the flashlight), the extremely loud Jump Scare you get for failing, and the context behind them haunting the Child’s nightmares makes the Nightmare Animatronics genuinely terrifying.
- One-Scene Wonder: There are around 5 kids that show up in the Night 3 minigame, and show up nowhere else in the game. The most popular of these kids is the girl in pigtails, mostly due to being decent theory material at the time and has gotten shipped with the Child for some reason (despite their only interaction being her scaring the brunette with a rumor and laughing at his fears).
- Porting Disaster:
- While all of the games in the series have had a problem with frame-rate drop in their mobile ports due to the limited power of most phones/tablets, it is especially noticeable in this game due to the constant movement and running around you have to utilize as opposed to flipping through an array of static camera screens with the only animation being on the animatronics' kill screens. A subdued version of this trope, to be sure, but still a hassle.
- In addition, this game also eschews the story related minigames that take place between nights, a la Five Nights at Freddy's 3 (the latter still has the Toy Animatronic minigames, but without the Purple Guy ones it loses a lot of the context). Normally this wouldn't be an issue if it weren't for the fact that the story is only told through those minigames since you don't have someone calling you every night and talking to you like the last three. To say this has caused a bit of They Changed It, Now It Sucks! reactions would be an understatement.
- Scrappy Mechanic:
- Before the v1.01 patch that increased the breathing volume to much higher levels, many people disliked the crucial game mechanic of having to listen for breathing to know an animatronic is nearby in the hallways, in order to close the door and wait for them to leave. It was previously very troublesome for the hearing impaired, and a fair amount of Let's Players who were shown during gameplay videos to not actually be able to hear anything no matter how long they waited for the breathing to appear, due to the actual noises being rather inaudible if one didn't intently listen to it. Previously the only solution was to turn the volume up, which would only cause more problems if players were given the noisy jumpscare anyway.
- Nightmare Fredbear and Nightmare both laugh to signal that they aren’t in the halls and are either on the bed or in the closet. The issue is that the laugh can sometimes be a fake out and there is no way to tell if the laugh was real or fake from the laugh alone. While there are ways a fake laugh can be distinguished (such as footsteps still being heard after a laugh) there will be times where it is impossible to tell if a laugh is real or fake. While it is possible to check the bed, closet, and the hallway Fredbear’s footsteps were last heard in on Night 5 and 6, Nightmare is much less forgiving and a fake laugh on Night 7 or especially 20/20/20/20 can make survival a game of luck rather than skill.
- Sequel Difficulty Spike: After a rather easy third game, this new installment cranks the difficulty back up to the hardest game in the series. Surviving requires a combination of patience, listening for subtle audio cues, and managing Nightmare Freddy and, if you don’t stop him from entering, Nightmare Foxy with death being certain if you slip up. Night 5 and beyond introduce Nightmare Fredbear/Nightmare who are both highly aggressive and difficult to counter animatronics that can attack from both hallways, the bed, and the closet.
- Spiritual Licensee: A young protagonist survives nightmare creatures, and loses sleep because they're hunted by said creatures. The references were, evidently, not just for show.
- Squick: Many people have this reaction to the Nightmare animatronics. Averted in terms of Plushtrap.
- They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
- An odd case of this. One of the things that made the series unique was its mundane-looking animatronics as the monsters in the series, which is decidedly different from most horror villains/monsters. Upon this game's announcement and release, many have complained about the Nightmares looking like generic horror villains, to the point it feels that Scott was trying too hard to make them scary and, in the process, just made them too generic to BE scary to some. In other words, they changed it and made it suck by making the new animatronics look too similar to other horror monsters out there.
- Nightmare Balloon Boy can be this to some, due to his Non-Standard Character Design among the Nightmares and his minor role in the games' timeline, whereas the rest of the Halloween Edition animatronics were non-canon.
- Ugly Cute: Plushtrap is a Fun Size plushie version of Springtrap, the third game's antagonist which was already pretty monstrous to begin with. But, just look at him. Isn't he adorable?
- Viewer Gender Confusion: One of the Older Brother's friends, the one in the Chica mask, is just as often assumed as a girl (specifically the Tomboyish One of the Boys kind) as that one as a boy, it probably has something to do with the Chica mask.
