Here's my take on the FNAF story. I know it's long but I hope you can read through it and share your thoughts on it. I'm also new to reddit so if I make any format mistake or any other thing, please forgive me, I'm still trying to figure reddit out. I hope this doesn't end up in the artwork section. Fredbear & Friends inspired the opening of the themed restaurants and pizzerias and not the other way around. FNAF 4 happens at Fredbear's Family Diner in 1982 and the real bite of '87 happened in FNAF 2 (1987). All of these questions and more are answered in my theory, including the story in chronological order (to the left) and the evidence and answers to the most frequent questions (right). Read it here please, it has images and evidence explaining all events in the story http://rydi1689.deviantart.com/art/Five-Nights-at-Freddy-s-My-complete-theory-569114955 For those who can't be bothered to read all that, here's a slightly shorter summary (for evidence please check the image link above): Fredbear & Friends is a cartoon show that started airing in 1970 and became wildly popular in a very short period of time. It soon became one of those shows you consider your childhood for how long they ran and how much of your life you invested in it. It's aimed at educating and entertaining the young ones through singing and dancing, a real world analogy would be Barney & Friends, yes, the dinosaur! :D Due to its popularity, the producers of the cartoon started producing toys, plushies, cosplays and other merchandising of the characters of the show (this includes the toy collection of the girl in the backyard, the plushies and the mangle toy in the girl's room). This explains why there are toys of animatronics not yet existing as such in 1982 but also of toys not existing anymore in 1987 (Fredbear and Spring Bonnie) but also why the toy animatronics in FNAF 2 are called "toy" (they're life sized robots of these toys). After a while, they branched out and opened themed restaurants featuring life size versions of the characters from the show. Fredbear's Family Diner opened first and received the biggest star of all, Fredbear. Fredbear's Family Diner gets a stain in their reputation after the child got killed outside of the restaurant but they weren't liable for it, so they never closed down due to it. It's like someone gets killed in front of Wall Mart and they shut it down even though Wall Mart had nothing to do with the murders. That child became the fredbear plushie first and then the puppet. Freddy Fazbear's Pizza opened sometime later and received a copycat of Fredbear: Golden Freddy. Both restaurants received Spring Bonnie. Those animatronics are springlock based suits, they've been in use for years. Some years later, Freddy Fazbear's Pizza gets a new generation of non-wearable animatronics (Freddy, Foxy, Chica and Bonnie). They get Fredbear's "Friends" from the TV show. In 1982 things take a turn for the worse. FNAF 4 shows us Fredbear's Family Diner (it's obvious with all the Fredbear decorations) and in Night 4 we see how one of the day performers died inside the springlock suit due to Purple man not being there to help him out of the suit. The following day, the child gets thrown into the mouth of Fredbear, his mouth gets stretched beyond its limits and the devices holding it in place break and the whole head comes down crushing the child's skull. The child dies. Fredbear's Family Diner gets shut down, never to reopen. The events mentioned earlier get the springlock suits decommissioned at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza the following day (still in 1982!). Purple man sneaks into Freddy's and takes the suit from the saferoom and uses it to lure and kill five children. Upon realizing something might have happened, Phone guy urges employees not to use that suit and not to take anyone into the saferoom but it's already too late. Under no circumstance should a customer ever be taken into this room and out of the main show area. Management has also been made aware that the spring Bonnie animatronic has been noticeably moved. Someone wearing a mascot costume and taking customers to the backroom? That's exactly what the media reports regarding the five missing children incident! This is the moment when Purple man killed the children! They find out about the murders happening in the saferoom and they board it up with Spring Bonnie inside. Why? Because having an off-camera room used to kill children was a major security breach that would get them shut down in less than it takes to say Fazbear. With the off-camera room out of question, a warning not to mention it to anyone and the corpses of the children nowhere to be found, the pizzeria got away unscathed. Video surveillance finds someone used that suit but can't identify the user wearing it, so they suspect and convict the day performer in charge of wearing that suit regularly. Purple man gets away unscathed. The now released spirit of the child haunts the Puppet suit and stuffs the children in the animatronics, they start rotting and smelling so the pizzeria gets shut down over sanitation. Fastforward to 1987, the pizzeria reopens with new animatronics based on the toy designs sold by the cartoon show producers. What better way to recapture the hearts of children and customers than bringing their beloved toys to life? Purple man gets hired as night guard and uses his shift to kill 5 children using the Golden Freddy suit. He requests to be moved to day shift and Jeremy gets hired. The investigation starts and when it points towards Purple man, he flees, leaving a day shift position awkwardly available. He's the reason the place gets put on lock down concerning any "previous employees". By the end of the investigation, the police conclude the murderer used the Golden Freddy springlock suit "we had a spare in the back, a yellow one, someone used it". Jeremy is asked to take the day shift for the last event and is told to remain close to the animatronics to prevent them from hurting anyone. But the animatronics see him as the guy they've been trying to kill all week and consider him a threat, so Mangle climbs to the wall/ceiling and attacks Jeremy, biting his frontal lobe off, albeit not taking his life. Jeremy's been watching Mangle climb to the ceiling all week long so he didn't notice it wasn't normal and that he was about to be the victim of the most infamous events of all the saga. FNAF 2 closes and the toy animatronics get scrapped. The withered models get fixed but they lose the ability to roam around during the day. Fastforward to 1992. The pizzeria has been open and looking for a buyer for a year but no one wants to be associated with them. Jeremy is still alive, reason why Phone guy is amazed the body can live without the frontal lobe. Phone guy dies. The place gets shut down by year's end, never to reopen. The CEO claims the characters will live on in the hearts of children. In 1993 the place is already run down and in a state of decay, infested with rats, water leaks on the roof and water puddles on the ground. Restrooms boarded up. Purple man returns to destroy the animatronics and uses the properties of the saferoom in his favour. But to access it, he takes down the fake wall constructed over a decade ago. The spirits of the children, now released from the suits, corner him and he dies inside of Spring Bonnie, becoming Springtrap. He becomes a spirit bound to an animatronic suit, just like the children were. Thus, even though the saferoom door wasn't blocked anymore, he couldn't escape. The saferoom is not included in their digital map layout and is invisible to animatronics. The children in the animatronics couldn't enter the saferoom and Springtrap can't exit. He's stuck in a room his programming claims doesn't exist, in a permanent state of ERR, unable to move from the spot for 30 years until the guys at Fazbear's Fright find him and release him. 30 years after Freddy Fazbear's Pizza closed its doors, the horror attraction is one week away from opening its doors. They've brought Springtrap as the main attraction but there's someone else in the building. The Puppet is well and alive. Springtrap conjures up hallucinations of the animatronics to make the nightguard easy prey, they're not the spirits of the animatronics. We know this because after we've comforted all the spirits of the children, the phantoms still appear in night 6 and they still have the same white eyes as Springtrap. The spirits of the children come to terms with the fateful events that took their lives and once the Puppet is released from his physical body (after the fire) they're all reunited at the happiest day party. They all help Golden Freddy come to terms with his death as well and they depart to the other side together. The five unidentified children at the party are the children that died in FNAF 2. Fazbear's Fright burns to the ground and items salvaged get auctioned off. Springtrap's body is consumed by the fire and his spirit, unable to move on, finds his way into Plushtrap. (Maybe zone, not fully sure of this) Plushtrap is bought in the auction by Phone guy's son and given to his own son (Phone guy's grandson). Plushtrap conjures up the nightmare hallucinations to scare the life out of the kiddo