On Aug. 8, 2024, the Five Nights at Freddy’s series turned 10 years old, originally released in 2014. This franchise that started with five animatronics (including Golden Freddy) became a staple in many childhoods and grew up with us into a massive brand that has stood the test of time. With the recent poster release of the second movie, which is set to hit theatres in 2025, and Halloween, here is a deep dive into the history of the rapid expansion of what had started as an indie game that was a last-ditch attempt by the game’s creator. While this timeline will combine releases like the Fazbear Frights series, it is the best attempt at gathering every piece of literature. Please be advised, there are spoilers for all aspects of the series.
Before Five Nights at Freddy’s
Scott Cawthon began making games with a simple blue blob on a private ship which sparked a love for game development within himself. His first professional game was released in 2008 called Iffermoon, which was an RPG-style game released independently. Cawthon continued to create games with Christian beliefs and values like Pilgrim’s Progress (2012) and The Desolate Hope (2012). While having good reviews online, it did not bring in much money to Cawthon. He put out one last game, Chipper and Sons Lumber Co (2013), that would inspire Cawthon to start working on the game that would make him a success.
2014 – The Beginning of Five Nights at Freddy’s
In Aug. 2014, Cawthon dropped the first installment of the Five Nights at Freddy’s series. A simple point-in-click horror game with one goal, survive five nights until six am. Introducing the world to Freddy Fazbear, Bonnie Bunny, Foxy the Pirate, Chica the Chicken, and lastly (but more hidden) Golden Freddy. In an interview with Click Team about the realization of his success, he stated, “As soon as Let’s Play videos started popping up faster than I could watch them, I knew I had something special”. Youtubers like Markiplier amassed millions of views playing the game boosting it into the mainstream. It went even beyond just the traditional Let’s Play YouTubers. The Living Tombstone dropped a song based on the game that became a hit, charting on the hot dance/electronic songs chart at No. 4.
More consequential were the Youtubers who tried to make sense of the bigger picture and stakes of the game. Channels like Game Theory posted multiple videos picking apart the background details to create a story that involved a murderous owner and children’s souls. These theories would help to push the lore and help with the creation of more games.
A few months later, on Nov. 10, 2024, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 dropped. Introducing multiple new characters like Balloon Boy, The Puppet, and Mangle. We also saw the tattered remains of the animatronics from the first game and their newer toy versions. This game added new challenges like flashing the light, putting on a mask, or paying attention to wind up the music box. However, with the tight turnaround, there were still complainants, according to Meta Critic, it felt over-crowded or felt like it was made for YouTubers. The thing that set the game apart from its predecessor was the minigames. For fans who were in it specifically for the lore, this was the gold mine. It signified that the game’s events were set in motion by a murderous owner whose victims were seeking revenge through the animatronics. It also posed the question of whether it’s truly a sequel or a prequel. Fans had a massive debate; on one side we saw the remnants of the old animatronics but the pay stub at the end made it a real question.
2015 – Expanding the Lore
Cawthon proved that he always comes back in January when he teased the third installment that would be released on Mar. 2, 2015. Five Nights at Freddy’s 3 was set in a spooky run-down amusement park, it was massively different than the games that came before. Your main antagonist is Spring Trap, who made his first appearance in the second game. You fight hallucinations as you try to distract Spring Tap from killing you. Despite the differences, people felt as though they were beating the main premise to a pulp. This game didn’t add anything new to the lore besides burning down the timeline of the first three games. Reviewers like Nintendo Life said the game had “watered-down scares.” Some of which were just there to scare you instead of moving the game forward. Ending with an end screen, many thought that this was the final game, which was disappointing due to the lackluster experience.
This didn’t stop Cawthon as later that year on Jul. 23, 2015, he would release Five Nights at Freddy’s 4. This game changed the Five Nights at Freddy’s series with just one location change. Set in a child’s bedroom, this game founded the dream theory. This stated that everything we experienced up until this point had all been a child’s nightmare. The main character, who was dubbed the crying child, is haunted by nightmare versions of the animatronics, but the minigames detail a family dynamic. The crying child is terrorized by his older brother who eventually sticks his brother’s head into Freddy’s mouth and bites down crushing the child’s head.
Gameplay-wise, this differed from other games as it didn’t rely on the player’s visuals but audio. You had to sit down and focus, listening for cues rather than looking for them. You had to listen for movement and breathing while fighting the usual alarm and bell sounds with a couple of red herrings in there to throw you off track. While the third installment was meant to end the trilogy timeline, this game truly did just that and pushed us into the next phase of Five Nights at Freddy’s that did not rely on the previous games.
In April 2015, it was announced that the first movie would begin development, but fans would have to wait years to see it come to light. However, the first book, Silver Eyes, which is not said to be canon, but fans argue the legitimacy of that claim, was published. Taking place 10 years after the murders, we follow Charlie, daughter of the co-founder of the pizzeria, to honor her friend, Michael (the security guard from the first game) who went missing. We find out about William Afton (the original purple guy) and his murder spree. She is forced to face the dangerous animatronics that her father helped create. This series was used to explain and provide a back story for the entire series.
2016 – Finding Our Footing in a New Era
Now we come to the monstrosity that was FNAF World. This RPG-style game was released on Jan. 21, 2016, and was taken down only a few days later. Despite its mixed but more positive reviews, Cawthon said he wasn’t happy with the reviews and was offering refunds to anyone who had purchased the game. It was eventually re-uploaded for free to anyone who wanted to play. This was Cawthon’s first attempt at a spin-off game that moved away from the horror genre. Sources like Tech Raptor spoke about the game saying, “FNAF World isn’t a horror game. It won’t appeal to those horror fans as much” and “From start to finish, FNAF World is made for people who are fans of the series.” In its release, a lot of the mechanics were messy or poorly executed and were extremely buggy.
With one failure comes a major success with the release of Sister Location. My favorite, or at least second favorite, installment in the series started its own timeline while simultaneously continuing the lore from the original games. Taking a year to make, it was released on Oct. 7, 2016, this added characters Ballora, Bidybab, Circus Baby, Ennard, Funtime Foxy, Funtime Freddy, and Minireena. This game doesn’t hide your danger as you are directly told your mission is to make the animatronics less of a danger. Not afraid to make fun of itself, it makes the main character feel more real as we see his home and what he does after work. Unlike every other game in the main series, there is a new challenge every night. It doesn’t feel like a game that fits in the series because it’s not the same formula, which reviewers like Destructoid didn’t like.
My favorite part of this game was the endings. One ending, deemed the fake ending by fans, has Ennard (a conglomerate of all the animatronics) following the main character Michael home who is thought to be safe. Then what is deemed the real ending, the main character getting ‘scooped’ (his insides are literally scooped out) and Ennard goes inside of him. They walk around until his body breaks down into the second purple guy. Game Crate says that “if you are looking for the next definitive chapter in FNAF lore, you may be left wanting,” as a negative, but that’s the positive of this game. This is the perfect transition game into the new era of Five Nights at Freddy’s. Offers us outside actions and lore that help us to understand who the first game’s protagonist is. If you are like me, you view this game as a prequel for the entire series and explain the actions of the following game with Michael acting as “Mike Schmidt” of the first game. Searching and “killing” Spring Trap.
2017 – Books on Books on Books
This year did not see any major releases in the main games’ series, except the first looks of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria Simulator (which I will not talk about until 2019 when it was released on app stores). This year was when Cawthon released books like Five Nights at Freddy’s: The Freddy Files and Five Nights at Freddy’s: Survival Logbook which cryptically provide lore through puzzles and hidden clues. You are given background on the characters and are filled with hidden easter eggs.
The narrative book released was the second book that came after Silver Eyes, The Twisted Ones. This book takes place a year after the events of the first as Charlie is now in college and she tries to move on. Her healing is stunted when ‘twisted’ versions of the animatronics are killing people around her hometown. We see the return of William Afton and the shock that Charlie may not be human herself. This book’s ending has everyone questioning what is going on, and who the characters really are and what their intentions are going forward.
2018 – The Ultimate Combination of Book and Game
Only beating the game from this year by a day, the third and final book from the original book series was released. The Fourth Closet follows and questions who Charlie truly is. She was dead but now she is back and hanging out with friends, but her friend, John, doesn’t understand how. This Charlie was made after the death of Charlie by her father, Henry. On the Afton side, he is trying to bring back his daughter, Elizabeth. This book explores what are the animatronics and who is inside them, the names being the kids at the graves- Susie, Fritz, Cassidy, Jeremy, Gabriel, Henry, and Charlie.
Ultimate Custom Night was released the next day on Jun. 27, 2018. It’s you, alone, trapped in a pizzeria where you are able to fight off fifty characters that span the entire franchise up until that point. The player is in complete control and is able to range their difficulty to what they want. According to FNAF Lore, this game is the spawn of either Circus Baby or a Vengeful Spirit who is trying to trap who we know now to be William Afton in his own personal hell. The voice acting and cutaways offer a merge of the books and main games to explain the backstories of the characters and the killings that led them to this state. Who is responsible and why they have trapped Afton in this hell? The whispers of, the one you shouldn’t have killed. This game has become the reference guide for Youtubers to focus on the lore.
2019 – Another One, Another One, Another One
Help Wanted was released in May. 2019 on multiple platforms including VR. This game allows you to play certain nights of the first three games while also adding in fun minigames that would play parts in future games. My favorite is the repair game where you are tasked with fixing the broken animatronics. It can be tedious, but you can spend hours playing, and when you get bored or frustrated. It feels like the recap before the continuation of the series. It balances hard gameplay with easy modes for new players, as Destructoid puts it best, “It’s a surprisingly well-balanced spread.”
Then we have Special Delivery, also known as FNAF AR, that was released on Sept. 13. This augmented reality game for phones allowed you to play everywhere and anywhere. TV Tropes mentioned that it was sort of like Pokemon Go in that the action takes place in the location you are currently in. You would find animatronics in your home and stun them to protect yourself. Your goal was to upgrade your animatronics using ‘remnant’. Despite its 4.5 rating, it was officially shut down this year on Mar. 14, 2024.
On Halloween of this year, Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria Simulator was put on both Xbox and Nintendo Switch. In this game, you run Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria as the name suggests. You make upgrades to your restaurant and work hard to make money. But with some hidden things thrown in like the return of Circus Baby. Baby has been exiled from Ennard. From reviews, it seems you are meant to salvage what remains, and is a perfect mix of horror and simulator games. I put this here because it helps to sum up the loose ends Help Wanted clarified with its rerelease and tells us the ending of the Sister Location Animatronics. Many viewed this game when it was first released as an ending, but with the games after the original 2017 release, it only now wraps up this chapter to move on to the next.
Another release that flew under the radar is Freddy in Space 2 which was a sequel to a minigame featured in FNAF World. This game is not special or vital in a way where you have to play it, and from the game description, it seems that a lot of people had issues with the control. I will add here though that this was a partnership with a channel mentioned earlier, Game Theory. It was to raise money for St. Jude’s as a reward.
The last release of 2019 is the start of the Fazbear Frights series, the first book Into the Pit was dropped on Dec. 26. This series is a collection of short stories that were meant to fill in the blanks of the past, not necessarily move forward. These stories also propose moral lessons within each one. The titular story’s message is to appreciate the quiet and boring times in your life because when things get hard and difficult, you’ll miss them.
2020 – Read Your Literature
This is the only year without a true game release, but there was the release of Fetch, 1.35 AM, Step Closer, Bunny Call, and Blackbird which were a part of the novella series.
2021 – Security Breach and cancellations
The last few novellas were released in 2021 called The Cliffs, Gumdrop Angel, The Puppet Carver, Friendly Face, and Prankster. These were overshadowed by the massive success of Security Breach, which dropped on Dec. 21, 2021. After being delayed and given Security Breach: Fury’s Rage as an apology. This game felt like the Renaissance, with the number of memes and let’s play’s. The roaming pizza plex aspects made it different from any game before it. You play as Gregory trying to escape Vanessa, the new antagonist of this chapter of the series, as Freddy helps you navigate the Pizza Plex. Through this, you must collect parts from the other animatronics like Chica’s voice box or Roxy’s eyes. It introduced characters like Roxy, Monty, Sun, Moon, and Music Man.
This is not to say the game was without faults. It was extremely buggy, and reviewers like The Devil’s Advocate pointed out, “One of the biggest issues I had with the game was the fact that characters would de-spawn and spawn at any given moment. This would often play to my disadvantage. As I was escaping an animatronic, I would enter an area of the map I knew was safe, but then suddenly Chica would spawn right in front of me ready to tear my character’s head off”. Which I even have to admit happened a bunch to myself, and made me rage quit a few times. The game though was fun and overtook a lot of my free time. I still find myself watching replays from Markiplier.
Now, it would be impossible to talk about 2021 to talk about Cawthon’s “retirement”. In 2021, it was discovered that Cawthon had been using his funds to support anti-LGBT candidates, which raised a bunch of outrage. It was revealed that he donated to the campaigns of Devin Nunes, Ben Carson, Mitch McConnell, and Donald Trump. Specifically defending Kimberly Klacik, who as someone from Maryland, is not someone I support for her war on public education. He said he planned to retire from game development to focus on his family after living in fear of being doxed. Now I can’t tell you to stop supporting the games or not watch the movies, but it would be irresponsible to talk about the franchise without bringing up this key piece of information. If you would like further detail, I would watch the MatPat video on it where he fully breaks it down. Keep in mind though, the video is biased as they have maintained a working relationship over the years.
2022 – Another Book Series… but Pizza Plexed.
The book series, Tales from the Pizzaplex, released its first three books, Lally’s Game, Happs, and Somniphobia. Like the Fazbear Frights books, these books act as an anthology that tells multiple different stories within each book. They are horror and sci-fi books that tell stories of kids and adults roaming the pizza plex and interacting with creatures like the blob. The cover art for the books compared to the others is more gruesome and eerie, specifically Submechanophobia, which has shown the dismantled and disturbing underwater animatronics.
2023 – The Movie and More
Oct. 27, 2023, it finally drops. The Five Nights at Freddy’s movie. For the long-time fans, it was disappointing and didn’t really hold up to the heavy lore we were used to. It was a fun movie about our security guard dealing with his brother’s kidnapping and inability to keep a job. He gets a job at Freddy Fazbear’s, where he must confront the series’ final villain. It was unfilling for many who loved the series but for those who were just entering it was an easy way to dip your toes in. Forbes called it “baby’s first horror movie”.
It made $80,001,720 in its opening week making it the highest opening day for a movie based on a video game. Overall it has grossed about $137,275,620, making back its estimated $20,000,000 budget. The second one has begun production and will feature toy animatronics.
Freddy in Space 3: Chica in Space, known on Game Jolt as FNAF: The Movie: The game was released on Oct. 18, 2023. According to the game description, it is based on the events of the movie in order to get people excited for the movie.
Help Wanted 2 the sequel to Help Wanted also released in 2023. Debuting on Dec. 14, 2023, the reviews on the Steam page are extremely positive. This game unlike the first version focused on the Security Breach world and ties in Sister Location’s world as well. The collection of minigames ties up the collection or chapter of the lore of the recent games as a recap of almost of all the games that have happened prior to this moment. They keep the mini-game ease that the first game had, that if I am struggling and need a break from one, I am able to move on to another. In their review, Upload VR states, “While there were some surprisingly effective scares scattered throughout, my heart was pumping more from the sheer workout. Ballora Gallery, in particular, is a great way to give your arms a workout.”. Like the first one, you are able to unlock harder modes of the minigames upon completion, so there are many different ways to play.
2024 – Into the Pit and Beyond
On Jan. 24, 2024, Into the Pit was released. Based on the novel of the same name, it has become the highest-rated Five Nights at Freddy’s game. The 8-bit game style has you play as Oswald from the books. He wanders around a revamped Freddy’s Pizzeria, before jumping into a ball pit where he is transported to the 80s. There is some gruesome imagery, including Spring Trap, gazing over the bodies of dead children. This story-based game leaves you feeling anxious, and the 2D graphics are different from any other game on this list. The Gamer reviewed the game from someone who is not as clear with the lore. They said, “Into the Pit’s tale is mercifully much easier to follow even if you’re not knee-deep in the lore”.
With new announcements happening every day, there are so many new adventures and ways this franchise is being taken. You truly have to read and play every game to get every piece of it. This timeline may not have everything, but every piece on here has played some role in introducing newer players and concepts into the fandom. I can’t wait for the next installment in the series that was teased titled Five Nights at Freddy’s: Secret of the Mimic. It was announced on the anniversary of the series and seemed to bring back the Puppet. Who knows what will be released in the time before it is out in 2025? There are more mysteries than what’s on the surface with this series.