Attention! Attention! Attention! Rail travelers, platform paces, window gaysers and our rest negotiators! Have you heard? The big rail fair for ease is here! Rail fairs have been frozen across England until March 2027 on standard class tickets, including off-peak, end time and season tickets. For more information, visit nationalrail.co.uk slash fairs for ease. Tensies and excursions apply. The FNAF 2 movie solves the FNAF game timeline. By breaking one of the fandom's most foundational theories. Man, Scott really is just a troll, isn't he? Hello Internet! Welcome to Game Theory, the show whose fate is to be springlocked inside this franchise whatever medium it's in. Just like we see the puppet springlocked inside toy Chica in the FNAF 2 movie. That statement might be confusing for long time FNAF fans, who for some reason haven't seen the second movie yet. So, toy animatronics aren't springlocks, they use endo-02s. And up until now, you'd be right, that was our thinking. But then this movie came out and we see the, quote, ribs of the endo-02 acting just like the springlocks in after spring bonnie suits. That's not the only big reveal either. The movie also seems to tell us that there's only one spirit in FNAF 2, the puppets. The toys and the withered aren't possessed, Charlie, or Charlotte as the movie continuously calls out, is the one controlling them, and she is the only ghost in the location. So, yeah, well the first movie was a pretty paint by numbers reimagining the first game with some fun Easter eggs so this second movie, Scott decided to alter his approach and gave us a movie that fundamentally changes our view of the franchise by clarifying some of the most confusing parts. Today, I wanted to focus on one detail in particular. One change that left my jaw absolutely a gap in the theatre when I saw it. The introduction of one of this franchise's most important characters, Michael Afton. For the longest time, we believe that Michael Afton has been the person that we've been playing as in all of the original six games, going location to location following the trail of destruction his father William left in his wake and trying to cleanse the world of the pain he caused. He starts in sister location where he gets scooped, turned into a walking corpse, then heading onto future locations under a bunch of fake names like Mike Schmidt. He goes through FNAF 2, FNAF 1, FNAF 3, and eventually FNAF 6 where his father, as well as all the other spirits, get cornered by Henry and they all perish in a fire together. But then the FNAF 2 movie released, and not only where we reintroduced to Mike Schmidt, the regular old security guard from the first movie and the first game's paycheck, we were also introduced to a new character, the brother of Afton's daughter Vanessa, Michael Afton. What now? So Mike Schmidt wasn't a pseudonym, these two are officially being shown as separate characters. That is a massive change, something that totally upends what we believed about the timeline I've mentioned. But after I came down from the shock, I took a step back and gave it a real long fake. Something Matt and I would always do at the end of every year was reevaluate our understanding of FNAF. Wipe the slate clean and start from zero. Doing that, having that separation allowed us to notice small details like the company changing from Inc to LLC, which opened up a whole new path for theorizing, and that was only possible because we took that time to reset. Last year I took a look at the knock on effects that would happen if the books were canon. That one turned out to not be true after secret of the mere release, but the point remained. So as it's the start of a new year, I wanted to give that a go once again, to take a step back and reassess my understanding. While I and many others have been convinced that Michael and Mike are one in the same, could it be possible that they are in fact different? And if they are, with that fixed things. The answer to theorists is a resounding yes. It carifies a bunch of motivations, it gives us a much cleaner order of events, and it might even help confirm a theory that existed in the fanbase for a long time. So sorry Lee, I'll let you borrow it for a bit, but I'm stealing from the FNAF back now, because I gotta get to the bottom of this timeline for good. Let me start by clarifying something myself. Can we use the movie to solve the game's at all? It's a fair thing to ask, much like the books, these movies seem to be alternate universe reimagining of the game's stories. We are seeing the event of FNAF 1 and 2, but key details are different. Vanessa, for example, isn't in the first few games. She's from Security Breach, and yet here she is in the first two movies. In this new movie, we see Charlotte dying at her Freddy's at the Toy Animatronics War Act in 1982. But the game's version of Freddy's doesn't open until 1983. And at the end of the second movie, we also see a teaser for the third movie, where people find Springtrap to make their horror theme attraction, which is the same as FNAF 3, but this time it's like a year into the future, rather than the 30 years into the future that the games do. They are clearly different stories, so how can we take them seriously from a law perspective? Well, they aren't to lies in what I just said a few moments ago. The movies are like the books, and even though the books aren't canon, meaning they're not one for one the same story, that doesn't mean we can't use smaller parts and interpret them in order to help inform us of gaps in our knowledge. Or, to clarify part of the series that the fan base has gone off course with. Scott does seem to be in his clarification era. From Secret of the Mimic, Toop's Smaller East Rags in 5 Lapse at Freddy's. It feels like he's trying to help pointers in the right direction after years of theorizing, and heck! Without stories like the Mimic or GGOI, there's a bunch we wouldn't know about those two characters, even if they aren't in exactly the same universe. This movie isn't Scott telling us how FNAF 2 happened, he's giving us details that either fill in the gaps, like the Springlocks and the Endo-O-2s, or he might be showing us where our theories went awry, in order that we can be put on the right track again. So long as information doesn't directly contradict game facts, not theories, then it's fair game for interpretation. And I do believe that this Mike Michael thing falls into that category. Let's go back in time a bit and look at this theory of Mike being Michael, and where it came from, in order that we can see whether this change feels reasonable, and what the knock-on effects. Oh, Matt first brought up this idea back in the episode FNAF, the final theory part 2. That was a year ago, and definitely wasn't the final theory. Was it, Matt? You lied to me. Anyway, for this theory there were three major pieces of evidence. Firstly, even though he caused himself a Michael at the end of Sister Location, Father, it's me, Michael. During the game we see the name Mike on hand units. He also used Mike in the security logbook, and when Afton perishes in Ultimate Custom Night, he also called him by this nickname. The second piece is that in FNAF1, we play as a character called Mike Schmidt, who was fired for tampering with the animatronics and his odor. Now, not only therefore is he using the same first name, but when you're a literal walking corpse, you probably get a smell of it. For it Smith was also fired for the same thing, leading us to believe that Michael was going location to location under fake names in order to fix everything, which ties into evidence point number 3, where at the end of Sister Location, Michael tells his father, I'm going to come find you. This was his main motivation. Michael was going after his father after learning the truth about what he did with the express purpose of revenge. It felt like a really solid theory, and was really narratively satisfying. It explained why the security guards would work these awful, awful jobs, and continue coming back night after night. It wasn't about the job, it was about the mission. There was just one teeny tiny problem with this though, the dates. Sister Location's place in the timeline has always been vague at best, but as we pointed out in our ultimate timeline, if Michael getting scooped in the Sister Location bunker is the start of his redemptive arc, then it has to be before 1987, when Fnaf 2 takes place in order for him to get fired as Fritz. Which also means, Michael would then go to the Fath 1 location where the animatronics are all intact, before William returns to the facility, breaks and melts them down to harvest the souls trapped inside, creating remnant, which he then used to create the fun times. Do you see the problem here? We're pretty sure that the fun times have souls in them. Even with this re-evaluation of evidence, it still feels pretty likely. We saw that the original animatronics were melted down to create remnant in the fourth closet, which was then injected into the fun times to bring them to life. We also got lines from Candy Cadet about five things becoming one. The five children's souls ink smushed together into one thing, which once Michael is scooped, they escape using his body as innard, then go on to become molten Freddy with the five souls, being inside one body. We even saw the spirit arguing with Elizabeth in the source code of Scott's website, revealing to us that transformation from ENER to molten Freddy. And more recently, people discovered that the furnace during the ENER to repair level of help wanted contains a bunch of Endo 01s, the same endos used for the classic animatronics. These being melted in ENER's level, the character who is the culmination of these souls? It seems like they might be connected. So, after breaking these animatronics apart, creating the fun times and then getting spring locked in a back room, would all have had to happen before Michael goes down to sister location and gets scooped. Which means Michael can't be the night guard in each location. Basically, even though we liked it, Michael being Mike was far from a clean theory. It had some good evidence for and against it. It was like the most narratively satisfying answer and without much to tell us otherwise, that's where we and a lot of the fan base stuck with. I mean, come on, who would use the same name multiple times? They would just make everything super confusing. Until you remember that this is the series that has so many Jeremy's, it's hard to keep track. You know, listen, whenever you're doing these stories for this long, eventually you just run out of name. And that reality has now come to a head because we have a movie that presents these two as distinct characters. Mike Schmidt is a guy trying to provide for his family and so takes these crappy jobs because he needs the paycheck. Only to discover that he has a strange connection with the place that William Afton kidnapped and killed his brother. Michael Afton, on the other hand, is a creep. I mean, just look at that face! Great casting, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't make me like the guy. He states in the movie that he's carrying on his father's work. He's using the animatronics to kill people, luring them to the FNAF2 location. He's meant to be our act 3 antagonist, although whether that actually happened is kind of debatable. But regardless of how it was implemented, implemented it was, and so here we are. The movies weren't the only time this came up either. Recently Scott released Ticket to Fun, a collection of FNAF memorabilia including Jeremy's paycheck, a security badge and a black light. Like, using said black light on the included crossword, you find the phrase name Mike Schmidt. Given that outside of the movie, Scott has never brought this name back up since the first game, it feels like once again he's drawing our attention to this name, to have us rethink how it fits. We were also recently introduced to another new nightguard, Ralph in the week before. This is the nightguard who records the FNAF1 phone calls, but despite everything leading up to this point, he loved Freddy's and was there because he wanted to provide for his daughter, as the night to go on. He gains a morbid curiosity about what's happening, and so continues to show up each night. Clearly people in this universe are just willing to work a bad job. It doesn't have to be because of some eternal vendetta, and all of this actually solves the issue I've been raising. With Michael being his own character, he now doesn't have to be present at all in FNAF1 to 3. He can just be the protagonist of FNAF4 to 6. FNAF1 to 3 instead can be the story of Mike Schmitt. His name is on the FNAF1 paycheck. FNAF2 starts with Jeremy, but after getting bit at the end of night 6, he's replaced with Fritz, who is fired for the same reasons as Mike. So I'm willing to believe that these two could still be the same person with Mike using a fake name. I mean, in the FNAF1 movie we saw how much Mike was struggling for work, so maybe the pseudonym is so he can get work in the first place. Plus, we did see Mike in the FNAF2 movie only completing a single night when all the animatronics were active, just like Fritz. And then it all culminates in FNAF3, like we're going to see in the movies. With Mike Schmitt, now knowing what's going on, and trying to end it all with fire. Although ultimately it fails because while he's learnt all about Afton's crimes, he doesn't have a full understanding of everything like Remnant. I could see that being what they do if they want to make more movies, but I'll leave that kind of theorizing to leave. This is where Michael can come in. We've suspected for a while that in FNAF4, we're playing as Michael, not as the crying child David. Because while we see the hospital details tying us back to when David got bit, we also hear things like the FNAF1 phone call, which the crying child likely wouldn't have heard. But a grown up Michael working as a security guard would have. And then in Ditophobia, we learn that it's a hallucinogenic guess used in a place that is weirdly similar to the FNAF4 house. And in that story, it's a 17 year old who hallucinates to be 7. At the end of the story, we also hear the voice of a middle aged man on the tapes convincing him to turn the gas back on and return to the house. Most of the community has attributed this voice to William Afton, which makes a lot of sense given what we know about FNAF4. Which then means we could connect this story to the Michael Afton we met in the movie, one who is helping his father, but maybe not fully of his own religion. He's being haunted by nightmares of animatronics and he knows that disobeying his father will only lead to it, continually. He would then go down to the bunker following his father's orders. I've found it. It was right. Where you said it would be. Just like you asked me to. Which leads him to finding baby, discovering the truth about what his father did and... And all of that could happen after Mike Schmidt had already been to these locations, allowing William to go back to FNAF1, dismantle the animatronic. And then he would have been dismantled to the animatronics, melt them down for remnants and infuse them into the fun times. Fixing that core timeline issue. It could even be that all of this happens after FNAF3. Michael's big ending monologue from Sister Location where he says, I'm going to confine you, shows an already burnt down FASBARE's fright. Meaning that event may have already happened. Personally, I quite like that idea. Because it means after a few weeks when Michael's body decomposes, then it leaves forming their new bodies as scrap baby and molten Freddy, and are almost immediately drawn to the FNAF6 location which takes place that same year. Rather than these rogue animatronics and a literal rotting corpse wandering around for several decades. I mean, Michael may be unable to die, but his corpse ain't getting any fresh up. After decades, I'm not even sure how much would be left of him. But I hear you saying, how would Michael hear the FNAF1 phone call if he's not the one working at the FNAF1 location anymore? Well, just because he isn't THE character we play as in FNAF1 doesn't mean he isn't working there at some point. In the FNAF2 movie, Michael is working at the original location, allowing YouTubers to come in and film the place only to perish. He also talks about trying to help his father's mission. So it's not unreasonable to assume that at some point in the game, Michael could have been there doing the same thing, listening to the same pre-recorded messages after Mike Schmidt had moved off. So does it make more logical sense? Definitely. Does it make things more confusing? Also, definitely. Does it make things more satisfying? Definitely not. Technically, Michael would have the same motivations as he always did. He ends up being a pawn in his dad's schemes, but after finding out the truth, he vows to make things right and immediately finds a job for a Freddy's that shouldn't exist. Knowing his dad will be drawn there and then helps Henry end it all. The challenge is that it feels like a speedrun. He goes straight from being tortured by his dad to finding out the secret to Ending It All. Our previous timeline meant he had build up time to methodically work against William and figure out how exactly to help the children solve. So this way, while logical would mean it all happens within the space of a single year, and his revenge slash redemption is very quickly paid off. Although looking at the pace of the movies, maybe that's what Scott's going for. And speaking of the movies, Mike Schmidt being a separate character works there and feels satisfying because we get to know him. We know what drives him, but in the games, we know nothing about him. All of what I've suggested is essentially just inference from the movies, and that doesn't feel great because we want to feel like this character and their journey matters. Although I think it does matter just maybe less for the character and also for us. The eras of FNAF up until now have been essentially broken down like this. Secret of the mimic, or the Edwin era, FNAF 1-7, the Afton era, and help wanted onwards the mimic era. This is what we've been talking about, puts a divide in the middle of the Afton era as we currently know it. But I think that actually makes things clearer. Even though Mike Schmidt may not be important to the actual plot, what is important is what we learn in those games. We learn about the missing children's incident, we learn about Charlie being killed outside, and we learn about William Afton being springlocked in the back room. The first three games, which were initially the only game Scott was going to make, were teaching us about William's crimes. This was the William era of the story. It wasn't for us to know Mike or care about his story. It was to get us invested in this villain and what he did. And by making us nothing more than a name, no face, no voice lines, it allowed us to sit in that chair, in that office, and witness it all first hand. To become part of the ghost story, we became Mike Schmidt. A random guy who stumbled upon this place and this game, and sat through five nights despite it's scary that hept out of us then. When the sequels happened, we went back because we felt the intrigue to learn more. And it felt good when we finally beat Springtrap because it felt like we'd ended this horrible man's reign of terror. We did that. But that novelty admittedly only lasts for so long, which allowed the story to be followed by the Michael era, where the story shifts from being a spooky first person mystery into a character driven one. We go beyond William's crimes and into William the man, William the father. We learn about his three kids, David in Fnaf 4, Elizabeth in sister location, and throughout it all, we see what it was like to be a child of William through the eyes of Michael. This makes you hate the man even more because not only was he a monster who committed awful crimes, he was a monster towards his own children, seeing them as nothing more than tools in his experiments, which leads us to cheering on Michael as he finally wins against his old man, where we then get to see him tortured for all eternity. We want so desperately for this story to be this big overarching idea, with every character being important to the plot. We're very guilty of that on this channel to say the least, because it's what feels most satisfying. But actually, we might be being shown that sometimes a character is just a character. A means to an end. A way to take us the audience on a journey so that we can learn about the things that matter for that moment. Sometimes, a story is just a story. It also means that characters can stop being important. Right now, the story is no longer really about William or Henry, it's about Edwin and the Mimic. We can't be afraid of letting go of characters or letting new ones come in, even if it's just for a short while. I guess sometimes you just need a Jeremy or a Mike to do something to help things progress. But hey, that's just a theory. A GAME THEORY! Thanks for watching!
