It’s quite a wait this year until the release of Five Nights at Freddy’s 2. Fans are eager to find out new plot details, characters who may be returning, animatronics that will be making an appearance, and which game the sequel will decide to focus on. But until those details come to light, there is a whole library of online fan material that audiences can enjoy for now.

The Five Nights at Freddy’s movie is an adaptation of one of the internet’s most enduring horror franchises. The original FNAF video game came out in 2014, and it arrived during a perfect storm of events. YouTube was beginning to soar in terms of popularity with young adults and children, and content creators were raking in millions of views. Let’s Players led this era of YouTube, ballooning the popularity of video games with their younger audience, who were eager to see the latest releases. Within this online community, a sort of symbiosis began to emerge between Let’s Players and indie game developers, especially indie horror developers. Game designers like Scott Cawthon (creator of the FNAF franchise) would release a title, and the internet would light up. Let’s Players were only one element of this. Whole theorizing communities were created, dedicated to solving the mysteries established throughout the first six games.

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This community hasn’t gone away. In fact, it has only continued to grow over the years. FNAF may not be reaching its 2010s peak as a series currently, but after the official run of the first six games, the FNAF story has found new life through its VR spin-offs and open-world sequel games in the 2020s. The fandom is still whirring out video after video, analyzing every square inch of FNAF’s continual development, but also solving long-standing mysteries that still carry over from its very beginning. This universe has an elusive and vague history with its lore. Its many unconfirmed plot points, character arcs, and timeline placements left a perfect breeding ground for fans to create their own material. FNAF lovers have spent the last ten years filling in the blanks themselves, long before Cawthon decided to clear the air on a number of issues. The creator of the franchise encourages fan projects, tending to view them as a sign of endearment.

There’s A Big World Of FNAF Out There, Kid

Other than the insanely high number of growing fan FNAF games on Steam, YouTube holds the largest and most expansive library of FNAF fan content. An online series collectively known as the FNAF VHS Tapes was among the most popular. The tapes fit into a niche form of found-footage horror more commonly known as analog horror. This is a subgenre of horror that uses the aesthetics and style of vintage analog media like VHS tapes, video training manuals, and cassette tapes to create an unsettling atmosphere. They often feature low-quality graphics, cryptic messages, distorted audio, and little to no traditional jump scares.

The original FNAF VHS series captured the imagination of fans all over the internet, garnering millions of views every episode. The twelve episodes all involve recovered tapes that place the viewer in the shoes of Michael Afton, the son of the overarching murderous villain of the franchise, William Afton. As Michael slowly uncovers his father’s past, the ghosts of William’s victims, trapped within the FNAF animatronics, begin to speak to Michael. They threaten him and beg for Michael to set them free. It is a deeply disturbing experience that dwarfs any scare found within the original games, taking the FNAF brand to a much darker, more unfamiliar place.

In the finale, William’s cassette tape recording captures his agonizing experience immediately after his springlock suit fails, and he becomes the zombified version of himself: Springtrap. The tape captures, in graphic detail, his torture and how he was trapped for decades in a sealed-off room. This series was so popular that it led to dozens of other YouTubers replicating the formula and creating their own FNAF VHS Tapes, which have themselves become a subgenre of analog horror.

For any FNAF fans that felt let down by the first movie’s PG-13 rating and reluctance to show R-rated horror, the VHS tapes offer a more gruesome take on Freddy and his crew. It ranges from the abstract and graphic to the absurd and surreal, so any and all horror fanatics will find something to enjoy. Audiences eager to watch more onscreen FNAF content, instead of replaying the lengthy series of video games, will be able to have their fill while they wait for the sequel to arrive. The FNAF community is always finding ways to strengthen and reinvent Cawthon’s original vision, so for now, the wait for Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 won’t be too tedious.

Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 is set to release on the 5th of December later this year.

Five Nights at Freddy’s

Release Date

October 27, 2023

Runtime

109 Minutes

Director

Emma Tammi

Writers

Scott Cawthon, Seth Cuddeback, Emma Tammi

Franchise(s)

Five Nights at Freddy’s