Five Nights at Freddy's is a video game series which is extremely popular. Despite being a horror game, Five Nights at Freddy's is somehow popular among children...
I would say form my own experience, that some children are not afraid or disgusted by the violence or creepiness of other games aimed at older audiences. However, this is not the case with all children. Everyone is different and can take different levels of terror. And even if it does not scare or repulse them, it may still have negative effects.
I don't find the game particularly scary, but just because some random adult in the internet isn't afraid of this game doesn't mean a child couldn't be traumatized by it.
I am writing this article so you can be informed about what this games are all about.
FNAF Examined
Five Nights At Freddy's is a game about haunted animatronics roaming at night in a pizzeria. The player is a security guard tasked with protecting himself from the creatures for 5 nights, hence the title. This things can either bite your forehead off or stuff you to death inside an animatronic suit.
Some of this videogames have cryptic minigames where the dark story behind the pizzeria is told.
This is a list of most of the games released.
Five Nights At Freddy's 1 and 2. In all this games our player character is guarding the pizzeria at night, trying to survive the animatronics.
FNAF 3 is about monitoring the pizzeria after it has been abandoned. The main antagonist is a zombie man on a bunny suit. and unlike the other animatronics, he is viciously evil. In my opinion, this would be the 2nd scariest game.
In Five Nights at Freddy's 4 you play as a little kid hiding from nightmarish animatronics in his bedroom. He is being viciously bullied by his older brother and eventually he dies after an accident caused by them involving an animatronic. FNAF 4 is, in my opinion, the darkest game.
Five Nights at Freddy's Sister Location. This game is like the others, but with more variety on it's puzzles. Sister Location would be, in my opinion, the 3rd scariest game.
Five Nights at Freddy's Pizzeria Simulator. Just like the others, but now you can also pretend you are the pizzeria owner.
Five Nights at Freddy's Ultimate Custom Night. This game is just like the others, but the player can choose which animatronics he will have to face.
Five Nights at Freddy's Help Wanted and Help Wanted 2 This two are VR experiences.
Five Nights at Freddy's Security Breach. In this game, you are an orphan trapped inside a huge pizzeria mall trying to survive sketchy robot animatronics and a mysterious security guard. This game has a little game within it called Ruin, where this orphan´s friend goes to rescue him after the destruction of the mall.
We also have Curse of Dreadbear which is a Halloween special and multiple other games made by fans under the permission of FNAF's designer, Scott Cawthon. Some of this games are more frightening than the original game, (I would mention Oblitus Casa & The Joy of Creation;) others are not.
A Model of the Zombie Bunny from FNAF 3, Springtrap
The Lore
This video games don't have swear words, sex, whores or drugs, but the lore is theologically inaccurate and definitely not for little children.
The background story has been decoded by multiple youtubers and it goes like this: William Afton was the owner of a pizzeria with large animal animatronics. One day, his youngest son (the FNAF 4 kid) was crushed by a golden bear animatronic after a bad joke. William Afton is a sociopath and this accident triggers him to kill children and stuff their corpses in the company's animatronics.
Because the plot says so, this animatronics became possessed by the dead children and started behaving violently. One of them bit a child in 1987, which triggered the descent of the company. Persecuted by the vengeful souls of the children, William Afton hid on a rabbit animatronic, (the one from FNAF 3) but there was an accident with the mechanisms and he was impaled as the ghosts looked on.
Afton was some sort of alchemist, and was able to extract something from the souls of the children that would allow him to keep himself alive (adrenochrome?). This guy becomes undead and haunts the players, boasting that he is always coming back.
It seems that this guy will never stop prowling around, just like other horror franchises like Elm Street and Chucky where the villain never dies and keeps surviving (or resurrecting) by the power of the franchise. However, there are hints that despite bing undead he is being punished for his crimes.
Some Relevant Characters
William Afton is the serial killer alchemist behind all this. He is represented as a purple pixel art man in the minigames. Springtrap, Burntrap and Glitchtrap are some of the names given to him when he becomes undead and haunts things. The Glitchtrap thing is a computer undead monster that hacks the Security Breach robots and makes them evil.
The Puppet is a soul-scarring being with a ghostly face. It was never a kid, but a robot who saw one of the murders.
Circus Baby is the extremely annoying antagonist of Sister Location. She is Afton's daughter, accidentally killed when one of Afton's killer machines entered in contact with her. Circus Baby blathers multiple stupidities during the game and eventually tricks the playing character into the "scooping room" and kills him.
The Mimic is an animatronic that is not possessed; he learned his violence by mimicking Afton.
Chica and Roxy are some of the female animatronics. Chica is a chicken and Roxy is a wolf. The reason I mention them is because some people have sexualized them. Here they are, so you can recognize them and their multiple versions:
Freddy, Foxy and Bonnie, who appeared on the first game together with Chica, are titular mascots for the franchise.
Conclusion
Overall, I can't endorse FNAF fan because of the messed up and theologically incorrect lore, as well as the unnecessary gore in some of the video games. However to be fair I was actually surprised by how tame it was when compared with games like Grand Theft Auto V and Farcry. There are no prostitutes, no swear words, no filming pornography, no references to obscure sexual activities and no missions where you torture people.
The violence is there but outside of FNAF 3 (where you may be able to glimpse Springtrap's rotting face) and the mini-game Cutscenes this videogames usually don't go too far. But calling this games "family friendly", as some ignoramuses in the media have done, is like calling your local modernist parish an exciting and inspiring place.
Indeed, some children have been traumatized by playing this games. With so many family friendly games like Mario and Tetris, I don't see why any parent would let their minors enter the world of Fazbear's Pizzeria. It is pretty obvious from the beginning that it wasn't made with children in mind.
Another problem would be the deviants making FNAF "art" in creepy furry websites like Deviantart and more mainstream domains like Youtube and Instagram; but then let us be fair to FNAF and remember this creeps enjoy perverting shows like My Little Pony and Paw Patrol as well.
I feel FNAF would be acceptable if it was less gory and if the background wasn't so messed up, but unfortunately, this is what we have.
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