What's the point of this mask from Into the Pits? As you explore the house of our main character Oswald, this item can fall from the attic. But when during the game this happens is completely random.
What's even stranger is that it's the only piece of Fazbear merchandise in the entire house. The game would have you believe that it's just a tradable item, and while yes, you can use it for that purpose, there are plenty of other items that show up way more reliably that can also be used for the game's one and only trade, making a luck-based item like this feel totally unnecessary. Unless it's not really here to be a game mechanic.
It's here to tell us something. Something important. And I think I know what it is. Hello, Internet!
Welcome to Game Theory, the show that, yes, is finally talking about the biggest and only FNAF game of 2024, Into the Pit. A game based on the first Fazbear Fright story released as part of the... big finale of FNAF's 10th anniversary.
Or at least it was supposed to be. It ended up coming out a day early, and so instead, we got FNAF movie script pages on the final day. We should probably look into that.
Regardless, it came out, and people loved this thing. Like the original story, we follow a 10-year-old boy called Oswald who finds a time-travelling ball pit inside his local pizzeria, Jeff's Pizza. The ball pit takes him back to 1985, where he finds out that Jeff's used to be a Freddy Fazbear's. This thing's got all the stuff you'd expect. Arcade machines, pizza, and a bunch of dead kids, along with the yellow rabbit mascot that's responsible.
Yeah, this place is the real deal. The yellow rabbit tries to catch Oswald, but he escapes, only for the yellow creature to jump out and drag his dad back into the pit instead. The rabbit then re-emerges from the pit, only now he's posing as Oswald's father. And I don't just mean he's at- acting like his dad.
I mean, he physically takes on his appearance. At least to everyone else. Nobody seems to be able to see the yellow rabbit except for Oswald.
And so it's up to him to find a way to sneak past the rabbit, get out of the house, and back to Jeff's to find his dad. Eventually, Oswald does find him, frees him, and kills the yellow rabbit in the process. There are some changes here and there to make sure that it works as a game rather than a 40 page story, but overall, it's a- really good experience. The time travel mechanics work great for in-game puzzles, and the pixel art style is gorgeous. However, like any FNAF game, we all know why we're really here.
The lore. And that's where things get a little bit messy. This game is full of references from all across the FNAF universe.
Has bear fright stories, the games, the graphic novels, the FNAF movie. Oh, and then there's this. Wow, whoever GGY is. Has the top score on every game.
I mean, technically, if Gregory were a robot, he would live this entire time. What trolls you are. So yeah, as you can see, the lore of this game is a bit all over the place.
It's hard to know if these are meant to be just easter eggs or whether they're legitimate lore, and I'm sure we could all argue about this till the animatronic cows come home. But instead, I figured we'd do something a little different. different. Rather than focusing on solving the lore of this game specifically, I wanted to try zooming out a little.
Matt mentioned in a previous theory that the original six games are about the Afton family, their lives, their mistakes, their deaths, their resurrections, all of that stuff. But since then, we've begun being introduced to characters who, at some point or another, were impacted by the Afton family and their- actions. Cassie in Ruin, her father in Help Wanted 2. This new era of FNAF is about the ripple effects caused by the Afton family, and I believe we're being shown exactly that in Into the Pit.
And it all comes down to a single collectible, the Freddy mask. Yep, this one item is going to help us not only understand the themes Scott is presenting with modern FNAF, but also show us where it might be going in the future. How? Well, let's just pop in the second type to find out. I Embrace your legacy!
The Legacy Collection featuring four new signature jackets and a range of flattering graphic tees is available now at LumenOfficial.com Welcome back from the break. Thanks for sticking with us. Before we get too deep into the big meta stuff We should probably go over the basics of this Freddy mask.
During the game You can explore multiple rooms in Oswald's house. One of the rooms is Oswald's attic But on a random night There's a chance that this Freddy mask will fall down when you open the hatch. This stood out as a strange detail because one It's not mentioned in the original book, but two, Oswald doesn't really know who Freddy is.
If you collect the Toy Freddy item, he calls Freddy this thing rather than by his name. And then if you collect this mask specifically, he asks, why would anyone want- to look like this thing. Not only does he not know who Freddy is, but he has no idea why anyone would want to look like him.
This cannot be his mask, meaning it would have to belong to someone else in the house. Given their prominence in the game, my first thought was that it must belong to his dad. But when I realised that, there was just one thought running through my head. Is Oswald's dad Freddy Bro, the bully wearing the Freddy mask during the bite of 83?
I definitely wasn't the only person thinking this either plenty of others online were quick to make this connection But why why would the immediate assumption be that if Oswald's dad has a Freddy mask? Then he must be this random character from FNAF 4. Well because this isn't the first time this has happened In Ruin, Cassie was able to collect a Bonnie mask, and combining that with other details she gave us about her dad, like the fact his favourite character was Bonnie, and that he collected Fazbear memorabilia from the 80s, it led us to believe that Cassie's dad was another one of these bullies, Bonnie Bro. However, a mask alone does not a Freddy Bro make.
There would obviously need to be other connections, and so the first question I asked myself was, Does the timeline match up? It sounds simple enough, but we're actually missing a number of crucial details. The game doesn't tell us how old Oswald's dad is, all we know is that he's old enough to have a 10 year old son.
On the other side of things, while we don't have the exact ages, it seems pretty widely accepted that Michael and his bully friends are at least... tweens when we see them in 1983. So for Freddy Bro and Oswald's dad to be the same person, Into the Pit would need to take place far enough in the future from 1983 where he could grow up, have a kid, and have the kid turn 10 years old, while also not being so far into the future that he becomes too unreasonably old to look the way he does. Which leads me to my second problem.
The game is very explicit that Oswald is travelling back to 1985, but it's never stated what year he starts in. In fact, Mega Cat Studios has been so careful not to reveal the date, that despite the calendar in the past giving us the month and year, the one in Oswald's house during the present only shows the month. But there are a few details that slipped through the cracks, and I believe that they can help us figure out at least a rough range of dates for when this story takes place. During the second day, you have the opportunity to look around Oswald's school, and in the second classroom you can find several things hanging on the wall.
the wall like numbers, a sun clock and a world map that seems a little...broken? Maybe that's why there's no bears in Security Breach. Probably a theory for another day. But just below that very confusing map is the actually important detail. Another calendar.
Just like the one in our house, it tells us the month with no year. But there's one crucial difference. It has the days crossed out, with the final marked date on the calendar being August 16th.
Now, As a Brit, I typically read my calendars as the first day being a Monday and the last day being a Sunday. That would make August 16th a Friday in this game. However, FNAF takes place in the US, and you guys use some weird calendars that start on a Sunday and end on a Saturday. I have no idea how this makes sense to you.
It's called the Week End for a reason. Anyway, using this calendar system means that August 16th is a Thursday during the year the game takes place. There's only a few years after 1985 where August 16th has been on a Thursday.
1990, 2001, 2007, 2012 and 2018. This immediately narrows down our search, but the range of dates still feels a little too large. We're currently spanning three whole decades, plus if the game took place sometime during those early dates like 1990, it would be nearly impossible for Oswald's dad to have a 10-year-old son and be a tweenage Freddy bro in 1983. So, the search continues. My gut instinct was to look more closely at the technology being used. Tech's come a long way in the last 30 years, so it should be pretty easy to date.
The piece of tech we have the most hands-on time with in this game is Oswald's dad's cell phone. Taking a look at it in your inventory, there's a comment from Oswald about how it's, quote, the saddest, most out-of-date model imaginable. And by today's standards, yeah, I definitely agree.
So I did some research into older mobile phones, and after looking through multiple sites with every make and model of phone since the 1980s, I found this. The Nokia 6600, which is almost identical to the phone Oswald uses throughout the game. This phone was released in 2003, which means our most problematic timeline years of 1990 and 2001 are off the board.
As for the other dates... I had to do a lot more digging than I anticipated. Scott and Mega Cat did a very good job keeping the world looking pretty ambiguous. I looked at washing machines, water fountains, blackboards, TVs, but all of them were either too generic to suggest a year, or the item is still being used in the modern day despite its age.
Thankfully, my technology hunch came through once again, because during the game's final day, you get to go into the back of Jeff's pizza, and there you can find Jeff sitting down at his computer. Taking a look at the screen, I immediately noticed something. The grey taskbar and window design is identical to the design of Windows 95, but But actually, that isn't what I noticed.
Despite coming out in 1995, people do still run Windows 95 today. No, what I noticed was the size of his monitors. Specifically, their aspect ratio. Aspect ratio basically refers to the ratio between the height and the width of an object or video. For example, the video you're watching right now has an aspect ratio of 16 by 9, meaning for every 9 pixels of height, there are 16 pixels of width.
Most standard TV shows and YouTube videos are made in this format. So, Naturally, most of our TVs and computer monitors are built to match that. But that wasn't always the case.
Computer screens actually used to come in two different aspect ratios, 4x3 or 16x10. That was until 2008 when the modern 16x9 was introduced. And in 2010, they took over the market as the majority.
So the question is, what size are Jeff's monitors? Of course, I whipped out the trusty pixel measurements, and I can confirm that Jeff's monitors are in fact... modern 16 by 9 monitors, despite him still running Windows 95. Not sure you're gonna be getting the most out of those monitors, Jeff. I'm sure LTT would have some thoughts, but hey, you do you. That knocks 2007 out of the running, leaving us with 2012 and 2018, which for our purposes is actually more than enough.
The fact the game can't take place in any of the years prior to 2012 means that from a timeline standpoint, it's definitely possible for Oswald's dad and Freddy Bro to be the same. person. If he was a teenager in the 80s, by the 2010s, nearly 30 years have passed, so he'd definitely be old enough to have a kid of his own. However, even with that part of the timeline at least somewhat figured out, I realised I had a different problem.
Sure, Oswald's dad could be the right age if he was a teenager in 1983, but that kind of relies on us assuming he's Freddy Bro to begin with, which isn't proof in and of itself. I needed more. I didn't just need the year of the game, I needed something that proved Oswald's dad was alive in the 80s.
I looked through every inch of this game but found nothing. So I did the only thing I could. I went back and re-read the book. I know, who could have seen that coming?
Now I've read these books countless times, but each time I do, new details jump out to me. And with this new game fresh in my mind, I spotted this. Quote, Dad, how old were you in 1985? I was just a couple years older than you. All I could think about was how many quarters I had to spend at the arcade.
Jeff's Pizza. Back before it was Jeff's Pizza. It was some kind of arcade, wasn't it? Yeah, it was. But it closed.
At this point, we know that Jeff's Pizza was originally a Freddy Fazbear's Pizza back in 1985. So, for Scott to remind us of that, as well as tell us that Oswald's dad spent all of his time in arcades like it during 1985, it's not a massive leap to assume that the two are connected. So, not- Not only was Oswald's dad alive during 1985, but he spent a lot of time at Freddy's as well. But it gets better, because even though Oswald's dad was playing coy about his age, a couple of years is definitely something we can work with.
Fun fact, there have actually been studies on what people mean when they say a couple of years. Traditionally, the word couple just meant two, but now it can basically mean anything from two to eight. Although, it tends to average out at around 3-4 years.
If that's the case, then with Oswald being 10 during the story, Oswald's dad would have been roughly 13-14 during 1985, making him at least 40 for the earliest date we found, 2012. That is more than reasonable considering he has a 10-year-old son, but does that line up with the FNAF 4 bullies? Well, if Oswald's dad was 13 or 14 in 1985, that would mean that in 1983, two years earlier, he would have been 11 or 12. Now, we don't know the ages of Michael and his friends here, but we can make a pretty good educated guess. The average height of an 11 to 12 year old boy is between 56 and 59 inches, and during the scene, we see them walk past a handful of dining tables, which usually measure in at around 30 inches tall.
If you take a look, you'll see that the bullies are just shy of double the table's height, putting their height smack in. dab in the middle of the 56-59 average. Did we just find the ages of the FNAF 4 bullies?
Huh, that was not the intention of this episode. And, you know, it's FNAF, so I'm not going to hold onto it too tightly, but it's definitely interesting to think about. And for our purposes today, it does mean that Oswald's dad would have been the perfect age in 1983. Combining that with his frequenting of Freddy's locations and owning the same mask, he's looking like a pretty good candidate for the- The identity of the Freddy bro. It's more than just the timeline stuff too.
A detail I always thought was odd was Oswald's affinity for drawing, quote, mechanical animals. He does this at the start of both the game and the book, and as we get more details, it turns out he's drawing characters like Freddy, Bonnie, and Chica. But this is before he's even gone to Freddy's, and as I've already mentioned, at that point, Oswald doesn't know who these characters are.
What's even weirder is these drawings don't play any part in the story whatsoever. So, OOP. why are we being shown this? Because the start of a story is where you establish who your character is.
Their likes, dislikes, hopes, dreams, and their relationships. In this case, we're being shown that before this story about a Freddy Fazbear's even starts, this character, this family, has a connection to the Fazbear franchise. A connection Oswald may not fully understand, but one that his dad certainly does.
But why does this matter? What does this fundamentally changed for us and our understanding of this franchise. Well, it's once again showing us that this modern era of FNAF is widening our view on the world and the characters we look at, focusing on the knock-on effects of the Afton family and how the part these other characters played all led to them changing their ways. Cassie's dad being Bonnie Bro in Ruin was the first instance of this.
Cassie tells us that he had a technician's faz wrench, hinting that after the bite of 83 he grew up and became a technician so that he could stop any malfunction like the one he witnessed from ever happening again. Oswald's dad being Freddy Bro does the same thing. We learn that Oswald's dad used to work at the local mill before it shut down. Again, in true Scott fashion, he kept what type of mill this was vague in the story.
I always imagined it was just your typical steel or wood mill. But in the game, we actually get to visit this mill. Or more accurately, you get to visit the trash heap outside the mill. Although, this isn't any ordinary trash.
I mean, some of it is, but next to the classic black bags, you can see a few recognizable Fazbear characters. The most obvious ones are Trash and the gang from FNAF 6. Because, of course, the characters made from literal trash are hiding out in a dumpster. But besides them, you can also find things like a toy Bonnie doll, a Bonnie mask, a Freddy head, and a couple of animatronic hands and feet. And these things do belong to the mill as well, because Oswald says that they've been sitting there ever since the factory closed down.
This mill isn't just your typical mill. They were making parts for Fazbear Entertainment. attainment. Oswald's dad worked at this factory, so it seems like he grew up and started working at the local factory that made Fazbear parts to make sure that they were properly inspected, tested and approved before being sent out.
That way no kid would ever suffer the same fate as Michael's brother due to a faulty part. For years, Michael, the foxy bro, was the only one of the bullies to truly try to atone for the mistake he made. He wasn't able to help his brother, but he tried to put his sister back together.
together. And when he learned the truth about his dad from her, he went on a mission to finish him as well. But for almost a decade, the other three bullies basically got away with it. They just disappeared into the back of people's minds, never to be seen or heard from again. Now, here they are, showing up one by one and revealing to us that these events did change them.
That just like Michael, they too are trying to atone for what they did back in 1983. And This theory works regardless of whether you think Into the Pit and the books are 100% canon and Oswald's dad is literally Freddy Bro, or whether you believe he's just a parallel for a grown up Freddy Bro. The theme is still the same. This era of FNAF is about the ripple effects of the Aftons and the atonement of the FNAF 4 bullies.
Scott is trying to wrap up loose ends that were left dangling for years. He's giving us a little more insight into characters that, up until now, have basically been one dimensional. Both Bonnie Bro and Freddy Bro were just bullies. Mean kids that thought it would be funny to shove Mike's little brother into the mouth of an animatronic he was terrified of.
But now, we're being shown that they didn't stay those one-note cruel bullies after that. That just like Michael, they were haunted by what they did, and were doing whatever they could to make up for it. We see during the end of the game that Oswald's dad deeply cares about his son.
He's no longer the awful bully, he's kind and loving. just wanting to provide for his family. And before the factory shut down, he was trying to stop the same horrifying incident happening again. Just like Bonnie Bro did as a technician, and just like Foxy Bro did when he put an end to Dear Old Dad.
So theorists, when the next FNAF game does come out, one that isn't a prequel anyway, make sure you keep an eye out for a Chica mask. I have a feeling whoever it belongs to might have an important story to tell. But hey, that's...
Have we got a peachy deal for you! Fierce Legacy Collection has Dead Peach! With shirts inspired by your favorite theories, including Dead Peach!
We're talking Dead Peach, Dead Peach, Dead Peach! So much Dead Peach that we're putting you into a Dead Peach Overdrive! Their Dead Peach is in another casket, your Dead Peach is limited edition!
What time is it? Dead Peach o'clock! What's your favorite theory?
Dead Peach! Duh! There are other shirts too, but you can't get more Dead Peach than this!
But hey, that's just a Dead Peach!