By now, everyone has heard of the hit video game franchise FNAF or Five Nights at Freddy’s, where you play as a nighttime security guard at a pizza place in the 1980s while attempting to survive killer animatronics who hunt you down throughout the nights. The first couple of games start with basically the same structure: you have to survive five nights until you ultimately complete the game. Newer games, however, have strayed away from that simple concept, exploring more lore-heavy approaches, adding named characters, backstories, and connections that people have spent years trying to pick apart. This has caused the game to gain a large, devoted fanbase that became very quick to pick apart every detail of every piece of media involving FNAF.
After the slight popularity decline after the hype for the most recent game, “Security Breach,” came out, this game series has resurged in popularity due to the announcement and now the release of the live-action movie. Even people who had never played the game were counting down the days and awaiting every update given out before this cult classic adaptation was out in theaters. As the release date crept closer, however, fans have had a lot to say about what’s scarier, the movie itself or the not-so-great leaks being released from people who were able to see the movie premiere.
A surge in FNAF content on social media apps like TikTok and Instagram make fun of these possible teasers, implying that the movie is going to be like a cheesy low-budget horror film rather than the gory lore-heavy adaptation they were hoping for. A multitude of stereotypical movie phrases were created and adapted by fans to fit the different characters in the movie, such as changing the overused phrase “maybe the real treasure was the friends we made along the way”, into “maybe the real FNAF is the friends we made along the way”. The hype and excitement for the highly anticipated film is slowly becoming more and more of a “TikTok meme” as thousands of creators are playing along with this joke.
As someone who has not seen the movie yet, I personally am very excited to see one of my favorite video games in movie form, and many other fans are as well, but seeing so many people have negative feelings before it even has come out, many people have lowered their expectations quite a bit.