Thesis: FNaF4 Is About the Death of the Crying Child's Father

[xobar0]

Thesis: The core story of FNaF4 is not about the Crying Child's death at the hands of Fredbear but his acceptance of his father's demise.

Scott claimed the story of FNaF was finished shortly after FNaF4 was released, and in addition that the box contained: “the pieces put together.” The text above the box claims: “Perhaps some things are best **forgotten** for now. ”Our mistake was to assume that we were supposed to be looking for something that **was there**, when we should have been looking for what was **forgotten**.

Whenever the child tries to approach the animatronics, the Fredbear doll warns him: “Don’t you remember what you saw?”, hinting at a traumatic event the child has experienced. Furthermore when he sees the guy in the Fredbear suit, he is told “You’ll know what will happen if he catches you”, clarifying that the trauma involves Fredbear. The actual nature of what happened is **forgotten**, and thus is contained inside of the box.

But there are many other things that have been **forgotten**. Why is the child in the house, all alone. Where’s his father? And why does the game end with Nightmare, a variation of Shadow Freddy, that looks exactly like Fredbear? Why do Fredbear and Nightmare have a mouth on their stomachs? These are the other pieces. The box contains the answer to all of them. And it’s time to put them together. And Scott was even nice enough to tell us exactly how to do it in one of his teasers.

Do you remember the Nightmare Fredbear teaser seemed to say “property of me”, while the prior one said “Property of Fredbear’s family diner”? We thought that was because it was Fredbear’s hat, but that doesn’t make too much sense. After all Fredbear is just the animatronic that wears the hat, he’d have no claim to it. But there’s one person that would own the hat: the original owner of Fredbear’s Family Diner.

Nightmare / Shadow Freddy is the ghost of that owner. The mouth on his chest signifies a cut in the costume: a cut that exists because the owner had to be lifted out of it when **the suit failed**. He appears right before the box does, hinting that he has something to do with it. Inside the box is something the child experienced. This means that the child and the owner of Fredbear’s Family Diner are connected.

And more importantly, it implies that the owner of Fredbear’s Family Diner is the child’s missing father. And hence, Nightmare / Shadow Fredbear is the child’s father. This is hinted at relentlessly throughout the game, most significantly through the Fredbear plush. The plush acts as the child’s protector **exactly like his father would**. The child’s fear of suits is explained by this experience. The way the child perceived it, **the Fredbear animatronic ATE his dad** (cough cough “What’s seen in the shadows is often misunderstood in the eyes of a child” cough cough). Hence he’s terrified that if he goes near big Fredbear the same would happen to him.
So here’s why the box being closed is a fitting conclusion: the child gets to move on. When he confronts the ghost of his dead father he finally sees his greatest fear. He survives his memories and his trauma by warding it off. When morning comes, he sees the box. Opening it would mean needlessly confronting his own trauma again, but it’s more than that. The child is looking for answers, which is why he/YOU suffer through playing over the same nights again and again, and again. He’s looking for some deeper meaning that would be contained within the box, so he revisits his trauma. But the answer he takes, the answer YOU take, is to move on and accept it’s better to forget, and better to not needlessly suffer in a desperate search for meaning.

[Speedwagon]

I think you just might have done it.

[AirFreshener]

You did good. But here's something I see as much more plausible.

The traumatic vision the child saw was the stuffing.

He is next to a Fredbear suit, because the suit used to lure was a cartoon mascot. Fredbear and Freinds is a cartoon, remember. ;)

This would explain why he seems to fear the Freddy Gang directly in those nighamres. He saw them get stuffed.

What the death screen? Blood.

In Nightmare Bonnie's jumpscare, you can see a red glow coming from his head if at the right moment.

He knows the children are in there.

This would explain why the takes the souls (plushies) as his friends, but he's afraid of animatronics themselves. He saw the metal of them grind against the children. He's worried it will happen to him.

"Do you still believe that?"

Do you still believe that we are your friends? After all, we are connected to your fears.

Are you still choosing for it to be this way?

Nightmare is not Shadow Freddy, the child is Shadow Freddy.

The nightmare NIGHT texture is titled "shadow freddy". Not Nightmare the character.

This is because Night 7 is the night after the child died. He became Shaodw Freddy after beginning his purgatory cleansing.

There's much more evidence for the child being Shadow Freddy, I'll post a link here when I find it.

[Patterson4]

seems plausible.