FNaF4
One of the biggest debates in FNaF fandom surrounded the date of FNaF4. It was eventually confirmed outright that the game is set in 1983, but at the time, much of the community believed it was set in 1987. This is for good reason- The Scottgames.com source code was filled with scattered 8's and 7's when the game was being teased.
These were obviously alluding to the "Bite of '87" mentioned in FNaF1, suggesting that the game would expand on this event. Then, the game came out, and its story culminated with a bite. Nobody can really be blaimed for thinking this was supposed to be set in 1987.
So what was with the 87's? We don't know for sure, but it's commonly thought that either 1987 was the original plan which was changed during development, or this was just a red herring. Regardless, Scott Cawthon ultimately chose '83, and did very little to clarify this. Understandably, the fandom was confused.
My suggestion here is that Scott should have done this: Rather than 1983, set the game in 1978. Since the 8's and 7's in the html were scattered, they could technically just as well have been spelling "78". If the fans had seen a "1978" on that TV rather than a "1983", surely the reaction would be different. It would have been perceived as Scott 'trolling us', making us assume those 8's and 7's referred to 1987, and then pulling the rug.
The one thing this wouldn't quite explain is the barely visible 87 in Nightmare Foxy's eye.
Maybe this could instead be taken as implying that Foxy did the bite of '87, as TWB seems to suggest? So Scott is fooling us with the source code, but also still giving hints for the thing we expected. I don't know. I don't think it's a very big deal.
What changes about the timeline if the bite happens in 1978? Very little. Scott could have pushed back Charlotte's death and Fredbears' closure to an earlier date, which leaves more time for Freddy's to be open before the MCI. In the current story, Fredbear's closes following the bite and Charlotte's death after Halloween of '83, then Freddy's opens within the last 2 months of '83, and stays open for a year and a half before the MCI in June of '85. All the important events are awkwardly compressed into less than 3 years. Instead, we could've had the bite in '78 and Charlotte's death around '80, leaving at least 4 years for Freddy's to thrive and earn its popularity before the MCI shuts it down and ruins its reputation in '85.
Alas.
Side note, you might think this would mess with The Silver Eyes' timeline, where Charlie (who has to have been a toddler while Fredbear's was open) needs to be a teen in '95 (The 10th anniversary of the MCI). But the novels' timeline was actually already broken- TSE can't decide whether Charlie is 16 or 17, and TFC retcons her death date from '82 to '83. Maybe this is why Scott doesn't give us concrete dates anymore... Anyway, moving Fredbears' closure earlier would just make Charlie older; using the 1980 date I suggested, and keeping her age as 3 while Fredbear's was open, she'd be 18 in '95. If you instead let her age at Fredbear's be 2, then she'd be 17 in '95, which is what TSE already says. So, still, nothing important changes.
FNaF1
In MatPat's FNaF1 video, he uses two pieces of evidence to narrow down the game's date.- Comparing the paycheck's $4/hr with 90's mimimum wage data, he concludes that the game must be sometime from 1991 to 1996.
- Nathan Dunlap's murders at Chuck E Cheese, which Mat thought FNaF may have taken inspiration from, happened in 1993.
But, as MatPat discusses in his FNaF2 video, the second game seems to affirm the minimim wage analysis. Like the first game, FNaF2 has two paychecks: one for the first 5 nights, and another for night 6.
Whereas FNaF1's date was left ambiguous, FNaF2 gives us the date directly, and its salary fits 1987's minimum wage exactly on both paychecks. So even if this was not a consideration during FNaF1's development, FNaF2 seems to be suggesting that it has been retroactively canonized.
...Which means FNaF1 is set in 1993. Right?
Well no, because the minimum wage analysis only narrowed it down to the '91-'96 range. The specific '93 date was found by comparing the events of FNaF1 to a real set of murders. Many consider this comparison distasteful, so it's reasonable to expect Scott might have wanted to distance himself from it by choosing a different date instead.
So, the game is somewhere from '91 to '96, and we know Scott used the FNaF2 paycheck to clarify this. Are there any other clues in these paychecks which might give us the specific year?
There are two other noteworthy things about the FNaF2 paychecks:
- The second one, dated 11-13-1987, falls on Friday the 13th.
- Disregarding the year, the dates exactly match FNaF1's paychecks.
What a coincidence that both FNaF1 and FNaF2 take place on precisely November 12th and 13th.
From this, one could reasonably conclude that Scott is suggesting FNaF1's 11-13-xx is also supposed to be Friday the 13th. In the 1991 to 1996 range, there's exactly one year where 11-13 lands on a Friday. It is not 1993.
This is all to say that, at the time of FNaF2, 1992 was arguably the date which was better supported by evidence.
This would change, of course, with FFPS. The audio file "HRY223" is clearly an allusion to "2023", which was the common consensus date for FNaF3. That number comes from FNaF3's Steam page, which states that the game is set "Thirty years after Freddy Fazbear's Pizza closed it's doors." Finally, we know Freddy's closes the same year as FNaF1 from a newspaper clipping. 1993 + 30 = 2023, QED. The number of steps in this argument might make it sound tenuous, but there's really no other good explanation for the 223 in FFPS.
Ultimately, this would seem to imply that Scott just rolled with the consensus 1993 date, despite the lack of proper evidence at the time, and despite it being semi-controversially derived by comparing FNaF with a real set of murders.
Nonetheless, I still have some
I'm guessing not. But maybe.