An Answer for GGGL

Over a year ago I made a post about GGGL where I tried to lay out the difficulties with working around PuppetStuffed. I'm not sure how happy I am with the post, but the basic confusion underlying it has continued to plague me in the time since. There is a lot of good reason to believe William stuffed the bodies in the suits. Nevertheless, GGGL directly shows the Puppet doing it. FNaF World references this with its Giftboxes move, which revives dead party members, spelling out in no uncertain terms that "give life" literally means bringing to life someone who was dead. The children are made to haunt the suits, and we know this happens as a result of their bodies were stuffed inside (if it wasn't obvious, TFC says it explicitely). We see on-screen the Puppet allegedly giving the children life, by putting heads of the characters onto them. There is really not a lot of room for interpretation.

Something important that I hadn't yet realized at that time, though, is that PuppetStuffed is wrong. In FFPS's insanity ending, Henry describes the children's possesion as...


Meanwhile, in the completion ending, he displays GGGL on the monitor while saying...


So. Kids haunting suits: They're trapped, bad thing. Whatever Puppet did in GGGL: Carrying them in her arms, helping, good thing. Bad is different from good and good does not equal bad, therefore GGGL does not depict the Puppet stuffing the bodies. Case closed, apparently.

This leaves us in an odd position, though, because now we have to track down the mythical WillStuffed-compatible GGGL interpretation.

So. I'll start with what we know. The Puppet is giving life to the children. They were dead, and she's bringing them back to life. "Failed Happiest Day" theory is out, "tying the spirits to the suits" theories are out, etc etc.

Next, we know that being made to haunt the suits is what gives the children new life, which forces us into the PuppetStuffed interpretation. Right? Well, not necessarily. Bringing back the children's ghosts and trapping those ghosts in the animatronics are, theoretically, two distinct processes. Spirits in FNaF generally haunt objects, but they don't necessarily have to- see Alone Together for an example of a wandering ghost.

This is subtle chink in the armor of PuppetStuffed I intend to exploit. The Puppet does not tie the spirits to the suits. What the Puppet does is bring the kids to life in the first place. What the stuffing achieves is trapping the children's ghosts in the animatronics. This interpretation fits the literal text of "give life", while also cleverly weaseling out of the usual contradiction with Henry's lines. What Henry doesn't like is specifically that the souls are "trapped in prisons of my making," which would still be Afton's doing, not Charlie's.

In retrospect, this move- the conceptual separation of spirits from possession -is actually more enlightening than it would at first seem. As it turns out, we know that stuffing a body is not sufficient for possession. We've known it since FNaF1, with the implication that tons of dead nightguards were stuffed in the suits backstage. It always bothered me that the children haunt the suits by being stuffed inside, but the nightguards don't. I guessed there wasn't an explanation, but apparently Scott realized it from the beginning, and explained it away in FNaF2.

Now, it would seem that we need to explain why other children in the story are brought to life without a magical Puppet to help them. Charlie, for example. How'd she haunt the Puppet? Henry actually addresses this in completion speech, right before the part where he shows GGGL...


Not much of an explanation, it would seem, but the fact that it's addressed in the same speech that kills PuppetStuffed feels intentional.

Henry says that Charlie was revived by willpower. This is precedented: It seems to be the reason the vengeful spirit survives the fire, for example. The importance of willpower as a factor in spirits living on and even haunting things has been suggested many times across Frights, Tales, and the novels. Andrew explains that he split into the distribution center items because he wanted to.


In TFC, when asked how he can move the MCI spirits into the Funtimes, William says:


There are more examples- Jake (and Charlie) choosing not to pass on in the Frights stingers, Travis's grandma in Alone Together, Fetch being all about the effects of willpower through the zero point field. Spirits have an inherent degree of paranormal autonomy.

(For this reason (among others), I also think that Afton coaxed BV's spirit into the Classics simply through his "We are still your friends" shtick.)

It also is noteworthy that there seems to be natural variation in spirits' abilities. Charlie claims to be "very aware" as opposed to the MCI being "like animals", but why? Why can Withered Foxy see through the mask, but not the others? These seem to simply be inherent difference in the spirits, not directly caused by some known circumstantial factor. So I don't think we really need a rigorous explanation for why only the MCI needed the Puppet to give them life.

Anyway. I'm not sure this is a perfect interpretation. It doesn't seem to explain the heads in the minigame very well, for example. But it's easily the best I've been able to come up with.