Regarding the Implications of William
Being the Final Speaker (Rambles)

I've seen more WillSpeaker doubt lately, so I will give my interpretation, and some thoughts on its alleged issues. I will particularly discuss "SparkVictim", ie what exactly the "I will put you back together line" means for Afton's character.

First, it is common to interpret FNaF World's portrayal of "Glitchbear" as contradicting WillSpeaker, and implying the speaker is paranormal. I don't agree with this: I don't think Glitchbear is actually inherently portrayed as supernatural. Glitchbear says that the reason they are in World ("That's why I'm here") is because the storyteller (Animdude) is going mad and Animatronica is fracturing and making things go wrong. Glitchbear's form in World is framed as a product of the game's meta plot.

Contrary to popular interpretation, I think Glitchbear's portrayal actually supports WillSpeaker, because it characterizes the speaker as a two-faced manipulator, who acts calm and comforting toward BV, but switches to an impatient schizo persona when he isn't around, and directly reveals that he lied to BV at least once ("The truth is there is no safe place"). It lines up well with the way Afton is often depicted in later material, playing the Spring Bonnie character to manipulate the children, pretending to be their "friend" ("We are still your friends").

Point is, Afton fits the role of the final speaker from practically every angle. He also has arguably the fewest 'practical' issues- Even if Charlie is dead already, how and why she's talking to BV through a Fredbear plush is totally random and unjustified. Figuring out how to make ElizabethSpeaker make sense takes more mental work than I have the energy for. Mike speaks just prior to the plush with his usual gray text color, separating him from the speaker. What other options are there? William is the one character who existed at the time, would have clearly been in a position to talk to BV at the hospital, AND is known to roleplay characters to convince children he's their friend. I imagine Scott was comfortable leaving it so vague because there's really not many options.

So then, what is the speaker saying? I think it's reasonable to conclude the minigame is trying to explain BV's fate, ie ShatterVictim. We are told he is "broken" (later clarified that "broken" means "in pieces"), and we're shown plushies of the animatronics fading away, implying his pieces are connected to the FNaF1 cast. "I will put you back together" then must mean "put your pieces back together" which entails literally bringing them to one place- fitting what is seen in Happiest Day (BV is also tied to HD through various easter eggs).

The remaining question, of course, being "How does BV get in the animatronics." This is, I think, the central significance of WillSpeaker, at least at the time of 4. For Scott, the obvious answer for how a kid got into an animatronic is "Purple Guy did it"- Purple Guy is the character whose general narrative role is putting kids in animatronics, after all.

There are plenty of ways to interpret how exactly Afton does this, but my preferred method is to once again go back to what is literally said in the minigame. Afton reminds BV that the Freddy's characters are his friends. I think that's it, that's the explanation. BV's soul was guided to the animatronics by Afton's manipulation. This might be unintuitive, because we aren't used to thinking of spirits as intentional things which willingly attach themselves to vessels. And yet, future material repeatedly emphasizes the role of ghosts' intentionality. In TFC, the MCI can only be split consensually. In Frights, Andrew says he split because he wanted to go everywhere. There are more examples- The vengeful spirit keeping Afton alive by will, Jake and Charlie choosing not to pass on in the Frights stingers, Jake following his dad's advice after death to end up in Simon, Travis's grandma in Alone Together, Fetch being all about the effects of willpower through the zero point field, etc. (I wrote these examples from memory, Frights experts please correct me if I got something wrong.) (I know these books aren't gameline- I don't even think their paranormal mechanics necessarily carry over. I am using them here just for general insight into the way Scott thinks about spirits in this series.)

So, finally, what do I make of Afton's promise? He promises he'll put BV together, and then... doesn't. Furthermore, in the original story, putting BV together is Happiest Day, which is surely counter to any reasonable Afton motive. It all seems odd, yes? Well, it seems odd if you're taking Afton at his word, reading into his strange promise as a defining character moment, assuming that, despite Afton playing a deceptive persona to manipulate BV, he is nonetheless honestly explaining his genuine intentions, for whatever reason. If it isn't clear, I think that's the wrong approach.

Look at Fruity Maze. Afton dresses as Spring Bonnie, a colorful character which children will trust. He approaches Susie, a crying helpless child. He reassures her that her dog is still alive, and that she can see it if she just follows him. Does this mean that Afton has honestly brought Susie's dog to life? No. He is bullshitting in order to lure Susie, so he can kill her and put her spirit in Chica. I claim that Plushbear's promise is the same thing: Afton is bullshitting, making a false promise of Happiest Day, in order to lure BV's spirit into the animatronics. It seems foolish to assume that Afton's manipulation scheme would end with an honest statement of his intentions.

This is to say, I don't think Plushbear's promise was meant to represent some grand plan of Afton's at the time of 4. The game doesn't imply that, it doesn't give us any justification for why Afton should actually care about putting BV together, and it didn't really make sense with the context of the previous games regardless. (The aspect that really gets me is the "why does he care" part, to answer it you have to contrive together some vague underlying motive for some specialized kind of immortality, or something along those lines, an oddly specific narrative construction that FNaF4 does not suggest in the slightest.)

Returning to World, I will note that it establishes clearly that Afton is interested in guiding BV's spirit (leaving breadcrumbs for him, to help him find his way), and has us doing something (related to 3's minigames, BV's memories) to 'put the pieces in place'. Given where we know the pieces end up, this backs the idea that Afton is only interested in putting BV in the animatronics. Afton also ends the clock route by telling BV to "Rest", implying that yes, the pieces put together is Happiest Day, and yes, Afton is fully aware of this, but is still claiming that it is his goal. For me, this implies that either Glitchbear isn't Afton, or Afton's promise was a lie; you can't have both.

(Though, note the clock ending dialogue is weird in how it treats the pieces as separate from BV himself- I'm guessing this is a matter of the mechanics of shattering not being developed as they are now. It seems the idea was that the pieces correspond in 3's minigames to the MCI, and the BV who Afton is speaking to acts as the player characters in those minigames, which have to gather the MCI together in Happiest Day. Hence "The pieces are in place for you. All you have to do is find them.")

Inb4 "Why should we take Afton's explanation that BV is broken honestly, but not the promise?" - Because that is how the game is explaining BV's fate to us.

So, this is all to say, I think the final speaker is Afton, but I don't think it was intended to reflect much on Afton's character. The point was BV's fate, and Afton was used because he was the character that fit the role, he's the guy who can connect the dots that the story needed to connect. It's basically WillSpeaker without SparkVictim, or at least with SparkVictim's role reduced. This is specifically a statement on 4's story, judging on what that game gave us, as well as World's direct expansion/clarification on 4 shortly afterward.

I do think BV is relevant to Afton's characterization, though; that was something developed by SL, which introduced the mad scientist idea of Afton, and fleshed out the 'progress' of his ideas over time via the Funtimes and Elizabeth's death. SL gives Afton his TFC characterization, and TFC is where this idea of a "unique spark" Afton is obsessed with recreating was really codified. (Not that this aspect wasn't present at all in TSE or TTO- TFC just formalizes it, making it very well-defined and immediately relevant.)

So, is BV now supposed to be a "unique spark", comparable to the Ella doll in the novels? I'm really not sure, but I think there is good reason to believe such a thing, what with SL showing us Afton's nightmare experiments and Fredbear's monitoring, having Afton's "private room" be full of BV stuff. But the situation is notably different from the novels in important ways. For example, arguably the most important aspect of the spark is how it grows from and feeds into Afton's jealousy of Henry, an aspect which is entirely absent with BV. And when FFPS ported Henry into the games, it brought over that jealousy, and maintained it as the motivator for Charlie's murder. Which is weird, if BV is supposed to be the core of his motivations, isn't it? The point of the spark in the novels is that it was something Henry did that Afton couldn't recreate. What about BV would he want to recreate? He can break spirits easily, he does it with the MCI. And Afton himself is already the one who put BV in the animatronics. So if the "unique spark" concept does carry over, it is at least quite divorced from its structure in the novels.

So what is it that Afton wants to recreate? Something to do with MemoryVictim? After all, it must have to do with BV's fears, since that's what the nightmare experiments are about, right?

It is now that I must reconstruct the usual SparkVictim interpretation all over again, because it does seem vaguely plausible to me that SL actually was trying to make the promise an important aspect of Afton's character, since it's the game that introduces Ennard, and has William telling Mike to put Elizabeth back together. The main issue being that Afton's actual actions in SL don't really seem aligned with putting BV together- he is quite clearly doing the opposite, tearing the spirits apart further. And again there is the question of "Why does he care". An answer which is actually directly supported by the text would be nice. He already has immortality when he discovers possession, and if it's spiritual lucidity he's after then you'd think Molten Freddy wouldn't be... the way that he is. You'd think Afton would show more interest in Molten Freddy in general, for that matter, though I suppose his one line of dialogue calling Molten "fascinating" is the most we could really expect from Scott.

Anyway, I didn't actually intend for this post to be so long, and I don't want to stay up much later writing this, so I will forcefully end it now before I think of something else to say. (I actually went back and added like 2 paragraphs after writing this part oops.)