The teaser for the Blumhouse adaptation of hit indie game Five Nights at Freddy’s has given us a sneak peak at some of the horrors we should expect from the movie.
In the trailer, we see Josh Hutcherson’s character Mike Schmidt, working as the night security guard. We also get a glimpse of Matthew Lillard as William Afton, and fans have gone wild. It looks like the team behind this film have definitely done their research on the lore behind the franchise.
Whilst the games keep a lot of the story purposefully ambiguous, the fan theories and the information that has been gleaned from the game all comes together to tell quite a terrifying backstory to the whole franchise. Particularly the main antagonist of the games William Afton, who has to be one of the most evil characters to exist in video game history. If the movie adaptation keeps even a shred of the backstory we’re in for a wild ride, especially with Matthew Lillard playing the character, as Afton is well within the actor’s particular niche.
The movie will likely be keeping Afton’s backstory the same as the games and perhaps even expanding on it. So if you want to learn all you can about the Five Nights at Freddy’s villain before diving into his nightmare world this October, here is the place to start.
Afton’s Backstory
For the uninitiated, William Afton is one of the most important characters in the FNAF games. Whilst he’s never really seen in any of them, he is the one responsible for the killer animatronics who seem to love eating kids. Oh, and he’s also a serial killer himself, so he’s definitely not the kind of guy you’d want to spend much time around. Afton is the co-founder of Freddy Fazbear’s pizzeria alongside his business partner Henry Emily. William is also the creator of the animatronics as he also founded a robotics company, Afton Robotics.
Afton has a family, an unnamed wife and three children who all play significant parts in the story later down the line. There isn’t much explanation given as to why Afton began killing children in the first place, but the games show us some of his back story, including the killing of his partner, Henry’s daughter as well as five other children. He’s frequently seen wearing the spring Bonnie costume, which he used to lure children into the restaurant.
In the Games
FNAF 2 gives us little pieces of information about Afton’s killings that slowly come together. He appears as a purple figure in the pixelated minigame that can be played in between player deaths. It took the fanbase a while to figure out what the minigames were actually showing but this little bonus feature adds so much to the lore of the franchise.
One of these shows the purple figure approaching a child outside of the pizzeria. Whilst it’s not entirely clear within the game itself, story wise this is one of the first instances of Afton killing. For whatever reason he kills his Henry’s daughter, Charlie, who subsequently finds her spirit trapped in the puppet. We also see the aftermath of some of Afton’s other murders during that minigame, too.
Remnants
Afton quickly learns that killing children provides something referred to as remnants. Remnants are the souls of children and they tend to attach themselves to inanimate objects like, you know, animatronics and other such things. The animatronics in all of the games are controlled by the remnants of children who stalk the corridors of the establishment trying to enact revenge on their killer. Most fans believe that they attack the player because they mistake Mike Schmidt for Afton.
Around the same time, (although it’s not clear if it’s before or after the murder) Afton’s youngest son is killed by his eldest son, Michael, after he pushes the boy’s head into the jaws of one of the animatronics. You might be wondering if this is the famed bite of 87 that so many talk about. Whilst it actually isn’t, this one is often confused with that bite.
After figuring out how he could use the remnants for his own gain, Afton begins his quest to collect them; he believes they can help him gain immortality. His desires and his experimentation with remnants lead him down a dark path, in which he begins luring children into the establishment and mercilessly killing them in order to trap their souls. He opens another restaurant and programs his animatronics to snatch children and kill them, although this results in his own daughter dying at the hands of one of his contraptions.
Afton’s “Death”
Afton disappeared for a while after his daughter’s death, re-appearing to kill another five children and then disappearing again. He re-appeared one more time as he returned to the original restaurant to harvest the remnants of his first five victims. However, he awoke their spirits and the animatronics gave chase to him. In an attempt to scare the spirits, Afton put the decaying Bonnie costume on. However the mechanisms inside ended up malfunctioning and giving him a pretty ironic death as his body was mutilated inside. Afterwards, Afton’s remnant became fused with the Bonnie suit and he becomes Springtrap, the animatronic that hunts the player in the third FNAF game.
The background for this character goes on and on, and he appears in multiple other games after the third, always in the Springtrap suit, though his incarnations can differ in appearance. The original Springtrap suit is decaying and half ripped apart, exposing wiring and some human tissue. His later incarnations have even more missing parts, while he also appears as Glitchtrap and Burntrap, with all of his physical appearances are as a remnant.
The movie is definitely looking to expand upon the lore and give us a more fleshed out version of the character. Whilst it may ruin the element of mystery surrounding the villain, it will be great to see Lillard killing it as such a truly terrifying bad guy, a role which he’s used to playing by now.
The teaser alone is not enough to get a good idea of Afton’s character. Will he play a larger role in the plot? Will he primarily appear in flashbacks explaining the plot? Who knows? The plot has been kept relatively under wraps so we can’t say for sure just how much detail the filmmakers will be going into with the character. However, the fact that they’ve shown him in the trailer and that he’s being portrayed by such a big actor suggests that the story will heavily involve the character, and hopefully keep fans happy with the portrayal.