(This post was inspired by a fit of "insane rambling" by Cazlyn. Credit where credit is due.)

FNaF4 was, of course, the most mysterious game in the series. You could hardly give a surface-level explanation of its story without making some controversial claims. It's only natural that Scott would try again to explain it. And when we continued to not understand, he'd explain it again. And again. And again.

~

We were created for one thing: To leave breadcrumbs, for a certain someone, to put them back together. This task requires the collection of 5 clocks, each with a cute reference to a FNaF3 minigame, which allow him to "rest". The box is open, "he put the pieces back together". What might those be? Those minigames, what (or who) are they bringing together?

Sister Location, according to Scott, was an attempt to remold FNaF4, to "ground it in storytelling", to "craft this into something better, for the people who see it as important". So now, we're Michael, descending deep below ground, where memories sleep, into Afton's hidden sanctuary, a place best left forgotten. What were William's intentions with this space? Those extra rooms on the monitor look awfully familiar. In the end, the animatronics conglomerate into a single body, Ennard, in order to escape. Michael, the spitting image of William (soon to be purple, for good measure), is merged with the Ennard amalgam, and cheats death in the process. Was that always the plan?


Paragraph 4: There's only 5 days until the big party on Saturday, and we have to bring them all together. The animatronics, all of them, together in one place, for the party. What place? Don't you recognize it? Those characters, the Melodies, where have we seen them before? Has Rockstar Freddy's tophat caught your eye? Henry tells us that William did something terrible, he "brought them all together". Candy Cadet tells us about a woman melting together 5 keys, a boy stitching together 5 kittens, a man bringing together 5 orphans, all leading to death, to a knock at the door. It's getting a bit obnoxious, really. But we're bringing them together for a different purpose. Now, the memory of everything that started this can finally begin to fade away, as the agony of every tragedy should.

Afton, with an extra soul inside him, is wheeled out to a distribution center. His body explodes, splattering his blood all over the nearby electronics, infecting them. Infection is the way Larson describes it, anyway. The spirit follows the flesh, and also the pain. Andrew goes where Afton goes, one soul clings to the other (which clings to which changes with time). He's extremely emotional, not in the crying-everywhere-I-go way, but the I'm-going-to-torture-you-eternally way. Taggart collects several of the items, funnelling them together into the Stitchwraith, putting Andrew together. Jake has to find all the remaining items, to bring them together as well, so that Andrew can be free. This inadvertantly brings someone else together, someone clinging to Andrew, someone desperate to live on just a bit longer.

The Curse of Dreadbear is a FNaF4-themed Halloween minigame collection. Dreadbear himself is an allusion to Frankenstein, a patchwork abomination of limbs and organs from different people stitched together, a mad science experiment in creating life. We experience this first-hand in Dreadbear's minigame, which is surrounded by other minigames alluding to the Nightmare experiments. What were those experiments about, again? What, or who, were they attempting to recreate? For what purpose? Whose brain is that in Dreadbear's head?

Glitchtrap, the Mimic, a program intended to reflect the past, spreading and recreating memories and suffering, has... what's the word? Infected, it's infected all the machinery in the Pizzaplex. How did that happen? For one, Vanessa, who brought all the tapes together, and became a vessel to house it. But also, a certain boy with a striped shirt, scattering pieces of himself- er, of his name, G's and Y's, throughout the animatronics' code. Two special symbols mixed randomly into source code, does that sound familiar? Now, we need to steal pieces of all these animatronics, and merge them into one vessel, Freddy. Was his bowtie always purple? And who's behind all this? In spirit, that is. Maybe not literal spirit...

Help Wanted 2 is so on-the-nose I feel silly spelling it out for you. On the one hand, we collect the Faz-Force, bringing them all together, merging them into a larger mech. But a mech needs a pilot, of course, and who do we meet next? Not just a meeting, he lives on through us. On the other hand, we also collect the dolls, bringing them all together as well. The result is an arcade, a ceremony, where torches are lit, memories are released, and Glitchtrap is defeated.

~

Let's look back at the box, the one holding "the pieces put together", the one with two locks. It's a locked box, repressed memories, best left forgotten, yes. But it's also "closure", it's where the agony is put to rest, and finally let go. An interesting dichotomy.

Circus Baby's Entertainment and Rentals is William's creation, it's the deep dark chamber where his research is hidden. He takes his creation, the children, the pieces of his son and daughter, and locks them away there. Michael is able to enter and find the pieces, at which point they are put together, and escape through him. William wasn't able to do much with these pieces before his "incident", but all things considered, I think we can piece together what he probably had in mind.

Fredbear's Family Diner is associated more with Henry. It's the setting of both FFPS and Happiest Day (as a memory, probably within FFPS). It's where all the animatronics are brought together, where all the children are brought together, for Saturday's party. It's where the souls, memories, and agony are finally put to rest.

What's that, at the top left of Circus Baby's map, I wonder?

The mystery of FNaF4 remained so opaque for so long, but when it finally hits, it hits hard. It calls out from everywhere at once. There are little pieces of FNaF4 scattered all throughout the series. I've tried to put most of them together, here. But now, I should go. I hear someone knocking on my front door, and I'd like to see who I've summoned.