I have long had trouble understanding Afton's motives in the games. FNaF4 seems to give a straightforward answer- He says he wants to put BV back together. But why? Why does he care about that? It's never quite sat right with me.
Looking at Afton's actions, he doesn't actually seem to show much interest in putting BV together. He cares about putting BV in the Classics, as shown on night 6 and expanded on by World. But then he waits a decade or so to actually melt the Classics together, and then immediately splits them back apart for the Funtimes. BV eventually ends up together as Molten Freddy, but Afton had very little to do with that. And when he discovers Molten Freddy in FFPS, he isn't like "OMG, my life's work finally complete!!" He's just... mildly intrigued?
"Fascinating, what they have become."
I get that he's moved on by that point, but is this really all he has to say about the final fulfillment of his old decades-long goal? He speaks of it like it's an amusing possibility he hadn't previously considered.
The Molten Freddy plot didn't even exist until later, anyway. At the time of FNaF4, his promise to put BV together just goes absolutely nowhere. Which is weird, isn't it? Like sure, Scott makes mistakes, but he could've just... not put that line in FNaF4. This doesn't feel contrived in a "Scott messed up" way, it feels contrived in a "your theory is wrong" way.
What are Afton's goals, anyway? Presumably he wants immortality, one way or another.
“I have faced my own mortality, Jessica. I knew I was dying and through every broken fragment of my body, I was profoundly, immeasurably afraid. I fear it more than I fear life like this, even when every waking instant is pain, and sleep is possible only when induced by enough medication to kill most people.”
So you would assume he wants to learn to put a soul together so he could somehow apply that knowledge to himself. But... why? He already has immortality when he discovers possession. The only reason he should care particularly about putting souls together is if he specifically wants to split himself into multiple places, and then bring himself back together in one vessel. And, I mean... You can make an argument for that, cobbling together information from Frights and TFC, but it's just so contrived. Is that really what Scott had in mind when he wrote the "I will put you back together" line in FNaF4? No, I don't think so.
In the original story, the pieces were put together in Happiest Day. Afton's promise, then, would apparently be the promise of freeing the children, giving them rest. Does Will... care? I shiver at the very notion!
All this has been weighing on my mind as I try to make sense of Afton's intentions with BV. Could it simply be messy and inconsistent due to poor planning? To a degree, yes, but I'm not convinced that fully explains it. After reexamining the night 6 cutscene and its expanded reiteration in World, I've come to another conclusion.
FNaF World
Many have difficulty accepting that FNaF World's "Glitchbear" is Afton, considering he seems at a glance to be setting up Happiest Day. However, with a bit of reframing, it actually fits very well. Glitchbear is not actually a caring, comforting character- he's a conniving trickster. He puts on a facade of compassion when speaking to BV in the beginning and ending cutscenes. But when speaking to the player, the mask drops, and he becomes a bossy, impatient schizo- a characterization not unfitting of Afton!To BV, in the opening cutscene:
"This is a safe place. This is a sanctuary."
Later, to the player:
"This is a safe place, a sanctuary. The truth is that there is no safe place. You don't understand that; you were made for one thing. There is a task for you to complete."
Glitchbear explicitely lies to BV, so it's natural to extrapolate that his comforting persona is entirely a ruse.
FNaF World's Clock route seems to simply be an expansion of the FNaF4 night 6 minigame- It begins with Fredbear's promise, then shows us how he proceeds. That is, he enlists the adventure animatronics to "leave breadcrumbs for him, to help him find his way." ("Him" being BV.) We collect the clocks, playing minigames which reference the FNaF3 memories, ending with Glitchbear returning to BV to finalize things:
"We are still your friends. Do you still believe that? The pieces are in place for you. All you have to do is find them. Rest."
The common interpretation is that he is setting up Happiest Day, but why would Afton do that? No- what he is doing is putting the pieces in place, leaving breadcrumbs to guide BV into the Classics. The "We are still your friends" line is him reminding BV of his feelings toward the characters, to strengthen his emotional connection. (Arguably the entire clock route is just this one line of dialogue, dragged out for a failed attempt at clarification.)
Yes, the "rest" line would imply he is working to put BV's soul to rest. He is simply lying. The whole plot is a lie, he is pretending to be BV's friend, to gain his trust, to move his spirit around for his own purposes. Remember a few paragraphs ago, when I said...
"Many have difficulty accepting that FNaF World's "Glitchbear" is Afton, considering he seems at a glance to be setting up Happiest Day."
As it turns out, that is exactly the point! Glitchbear seems to be setting up Happiest Day— the pieces of BV brought together —because that's exactly what he's pretending to do.
So far, this is all standard stuff. There is an implication here, however, which has not been properly digested (And is admittedly easy to lose sight of considering later developments in SL and onwards).
Let's reiterate this: Afton uses the promise of "rest" (Happiest Day) to lure BV into the Classics. The Happiest Day connection isn't meaningless- Happiest Day is the pieces put together, and it does allow BV to rest. But it's not what Glitchbear actually wants- he's only pretending.
In other words:
Afton does not actually want to put BV together. It was simply a lie, to lure him into the Classics.
Cascading conceptual rearrangement
I think this is the point I've been missing. It was naive to take Fredbear's stated intentions at face value. Putting BV together doesn't really make sense as Afton's motive because it simply is not his motive, it was always bullshit. Afton's goal was never to put BV together, it was just to put him in the Classics, and the "I will put you back together" line was only a means to that end. His promise goes nowhere in the original story because of course it would go nowhere, he never had any intention of keeping it! The pieces are put together in Happiest Day, and separately in Molten Freddy- not because of Afton, but despite him.So, why does he want BV in the Classics? There is a simple answer: it's his first experiment with possession. Afton's two firmly established, continuity-crossing interests are immortality in the long term and control over spirits in the short term- this would be a case of the latter. The way he disguises himself as BV's friend is not unlike the way he tricks the children in the novels and movie.
The idea has floated around that BV gives motive to the MCI, that Afton stuffs the missing children to recreate BV's fears in order to lure in his spirit, as one step toward his ultimate goal of putting him back together. This is in direct contradiction with World, however. Obviously, I don't think we should take the details of its meta worldbuilding sillyness too seriously here. My point is just that, if Scott intended the MCI to be the method by which Afton puts the pieces in place, he would not have released a game showing us Afton putting the pieces in place by doing something unrelated to the MCI.
So... Follow Me. Afton melts together the endos- he is putting the pieces together, right? Not really, no, because instead of making the TFC amalgamation, he just melts them into the scooper for use with the Funtimes, as far as we know. But it's more-or-less close enough, considering Henry describes it as, "He brought them all together." But this is not to be understood as the fulfillment of some grand goal. He isn't doing it because of his promise, because he wants BV together. He just wants to use the MCI spirits for the Funtimes. The "pieces put together" aspect (which isn't really fulfilled until later with Ennard and Molten Freddy) is purely thematic. It happens not because of a particular character working intentionally to achieve it, but instead because BV being put together is important to the narrative, regardless of the details behind how it happens.
That being said, I think Ennard and Molten Freddy can still be considered "Afton's version" of the pieces put together, as opposed to Happiest Day. Scott probably still intended MoltenMCI to clarify and expand on William's promise as the Fredbear plush. It's just really indirect, because Afton isn't doing it with the promise in mind. The promise is fulfilled by accident.
Why does Afton tell Michael to put his sister back together? ...Good question. I have no good answer. Though, I didn't have a good answer previously either. It's a bizarre interaction regardless. Maybe he's just fucking around, seeing what happens.
The unique spark
Now, one may come away feeling that the role of BV in Afton's motivations has been overstated by most SparkVictim interpretations. BV is the initial spark, but nothing more. Of course, he still serves as the root of all the later suffering, and Afton is still related to that, considering he's responsible for the pieces ending up in Freddy's, and presumably the memory/emotion by extension. But that's all- he has no lasting impact on Afton's interests....is what I would be tempted to say, if it weren't for TFC.
"Anyone can discover a fire already burning, but Henry found a unique spark —created something truly different, something he didn't deserve, or intend, to stumble upon."
"Am I not enough?" [Baby] asked softly.
"No, you're not," he said firmly, looking away.
For whatever reason, in the novels, Afton is uniquely interested in Charlie, the lost piece of Henry's soul, even beyond the simple concept of possession, long after the MCI. Since this likely has a lot to do with his jealousy of Henry, which is tied up in the novels' specific plot, it might not carry over to the games. But then again, it might. If the implication in 4 and/or SL was meant to be that BV is the unique spark for games Afton, taking a similar role to Charlie, then surely it would! Even if Afton isn't interested in putting BV together, he may nonetheless be uniquely interested in BV in a more general sense. That would seem to be the implication with SL's fear experiments and Fredbear's monitoring.
"You, maybe he can re-create. Henry somehow got a piece of himself into you, and that's something we haven't seen before. That's ... unique."
Consider the role of Baby. In the novels, she's the 4th Charlie, stolen by Afton. Her existence in the story is fundamentally tied to Afton's interest in the spark, which she ultimately fails to recreate. In the games, the spark is different, and so also is Baby's role. Elizabeth is suggested to have been shattered across the Funtimes, which would imply that Afton is using her as a means of recreating/studying what happened to BV.
Is it possible that this "unique spark" concept was only conceived post-FNaF4, perhaps in SL, and that Afton originally had little interest in BV? I think it's possible, though I also want to be careful with specific claims of retcons or intention-shifting, considering it's usually used as an easy way to ignore jank in theories which would otherwise be a sign of misunderstanding. Nonetheless, we know Scott used SL to turn 4 into more of a story, because he's said so himself. So I think this is fair game.
The question, then, is why Afton cares about Charlie so much. It can't just be his interest in possession, nor soul-splitting, as he's already casually split the MCI souls in TFC, and is nonetheless still desperate for Charlie. What's so interesting about Henry's spark, that he wants to "re-create"?
One answer is simply that it is unique, as that's what TFC repeatedly emphasizes about it. It's something Henry did that William can't, which sparks his jealousy, creating an obsession. The jealousy aspect surely wouldn't apply to BV, but it's still possible his interest in the games is simply related to BV's uniqueness, and not because of some particular goal he wants to achieve.
The other interpretation I see is that Henry's spark is special because he was able to put a piece of himself into something without dying, purely through emotion. He cried himself into the Ella doll in his grief over the loss of his daughter, and although he was literally and metaphorically left a broken man, he survived nonetheless.
"The spirit follows the flesh, it would seem, and also the pain. If I wish to become my own immortal creation, my body must lead my spirit to its eternal home. Since I am still ... experimenting ... I move my flesh piece by piece."
Afton's goal in TFC is to put himself into his immortal creation, but he cannot do it through emotion like Henry did. He's forced instead to physically move pieces of his flesh, one by one. He could simply kill himself and haunt it as the children do, but I suppose he's too cowardly for that. Perhaps that's what's special about Charlie.
Could this apply to BV? ...Maybe? BV's spirit is already said to be broken before the flatline, though the time between breaking and dying doesn't seem particularly substantial, so this is probably a far-fetched connection. There is the possibility that the Fredbear plush has a piece, but Afton doesn't seem particularly interested in that, considering his neglectfulness during the nights. The comparison becomes stronger if we deemphasize the "broken while alive" aspect and emphasize the "haunting through emotions" aspect. Much like how Henry's grief allows him to put a piece of himself into Ella, BV's emotion allows him to put pieces of himself into the Freddy's characters. In this case, it is apparently his emotional attachment to the characters which is relevant- hence "We are still your friends."
It's worth noting, however, that Afton doesn't make the TFC amalgamation in the games, so perhaps his goal isn't quite the same. Though comparisons between Henry's piece and BV's pieces are tempting, BV doesn't necessarily have to be interesting to Afton for the same reason as Charlie. Their roles are fundamentally different, after all. There's one obvious unique aspect to BV that could be used instead; that is, the sweeping paranormal impact of his lingering memory and trauma. It's easy to see how Afton might be interested in this, especially considering it's what he was trying to recreate most directly with the nightmare experiments. We know Afton is directly involved in ShatterVictim, by putting the pieces in place, but you can argue he's only manipulating BV's spirit in order to manipulate the memory/emotion by proxy, bringing it over to Freddy's.
So we have 3 possible pictures of games Afton, and the root of his interest in BV:
- He's interested simply because BV is unique, and has no particular goal related to the spark other than to understand it.
- He's interested because he wants to become immortal by putting himself into something, but is too cowardly to die, so seeks to achieve it through emotion.
- He's interested in the paranormal effect of BV's fears, likely because he wants the same sort of broad lasting impact.