Note:
I wrote this on 2023/11/23, but never posted it, because I had more to say that I never got around to.
But considering this debate is no longer relevant, and the conclusion in this post has nonetheless aged well, I figured I may as well just post it.
(Posting on 2025/11/12.)
Lately, the FNaF community has been caught in a loop of arguments about the canonicity of the Frights and Tales books. It's sort of a repeat of the 83/87 debate, in the sense that the two options represent entirely different, incompatible frameworks for understanding the lore, or even interpreting the games' story on a basic level.
This post is not intended to convince you of a particular possibility. Rather, I want to talk about what it even means to have evidence one way or the other in a situation like this.
An idealized example
"Now you see, of course, that with this method, we can disprove any definite theory.
If you have a definite theory and a real guess, from which you can really compute consequences, which could be compared to experiment, then in principle, we can get rid of any theory.
We can always prove any definite theory wrong.
Notice, however, we can never prove it right. Suppose that you invent a good guess, calculate the consequences, and discover that every consequence that you calculate agrees with experiment. Your theory is then right? No, it is simply not proved wrong. Because in the future, there could be a wider range of experiments, you can compute a wider range of consequences. And you may discover, then, that the thing is wrong."
Notice, however, we can never prove it right. Suppose that you invent a good guess, calculate the consequences, and discover that every consequence that you calculate agrees with experiment. Your theory is then right? No, it is simply not proved wrong. Because in the future, there could be a wider range of experiments, you can compute a wider range of consequences. And you may discover, then, that the thing is wrong."
Suppose we're interested in two timelines. Let's assume we have sources of information about each one, which are perfectly clear and accurate, so there's no difficulty interpreting new information.
These timelines may secretly be the same, but we aren't sure. So, as we slowly get new information about each one, we're constantly comparing them to check how well they line up. Could we ever prove one way or the other?
Well, yes. If there is ever an inconsistency between the two, even the slightest difference, then we can definitively say they are different continuities. Notice, though, we can never achieve the opposite. No matter how well they line up, we can never be sure that they're the same, because the next piece of information could always distinguish them.
That's not to say we can't become more and more confident, of course. A lack of evidence for them being different may increase your credence that they're the same, but rationally, it shouldn't be symmetric. A single difference between timelines would immediately prove they were different. A similarity, however, should only increase your confidence that they're the same by a miniscule amount, because you've ruled out one of many possible ways that they could be proven different.
The problem is worse with FNaF, actually, because we know that the continuities are at the very least parallel to each other. That's to say, they're both FNaF stories, so we expect them to have lots of similarity, even if they aren't the same. This means that similarities, which were already very weak evidence, are even weaker, because we expect them regardless.
Deidealizing
Obviously the real world situation is much, much messier. Most importantly, we do not have a perfectly clear and accurate source of information. Most relevant details have a decent degree of interpretive leeway, and any inconsistency may actually be a retcon, artistic liberty, or even just a mistake. When we get a new piece of information from one continuity, we can't simply check it against our existing knowledge from another continuity, because our existing knowledge might be wrong. In fact, it could be that the reason this new information was added in the first place was to clarify that we were wrong!It's complicated, is my point.