Four Games, One Story...?

Scott Cawthon, the creator of the Five Nights at Freddy's games, has been dropping hints and teasers about the meaning behind FNAF 4, and how it ties all the games together.  "Four games, one story," and "What is seen in the shadows is easily misunderstood in the mind of a child," are the biggies.  Scott has said that we have all the pieces of the puzzle, and have yet to put them all together.

(What follows are my own thoughts, doodled out rather disorganizedly here.  If I'm very close to a Youtube vlogger, or whatever--well, I can't claim it's coincidence, but rather that we reached similar conclusions independently.)

Assume that FNAF 4 ties the while series together.  The story is about a child who has a series of terrible experiences connecting to a birthday party at the pizzeria, culminating in his maiming and death.  But in the cutscenes we see some interesting sights, which might explain elements of the other games.

• In one cutscene, we see purple Fredbear and Spring Bonnie silhouettes.  These became the shadow Bonnie and Freddy hallucinations.  It also accounts for Nightmare in FNAF 4.
• In the same cutscene we see a man in purple helping an employee into the Spring Bonnie costume by putting the head on him.  A young, frightened child night have seen that as someone feeding a person to the animatronic, or stuffing his body into the suit.  The man in purple would be a murderer.
• The child sees a torn-up Toy Foxy doll in his home, and a kid with (among others) a beakless Toy Chica figure. These correspond with the FNAF2 Toy Chica (who loses her beak when she leaves the stage) and Mangle.

The child's bedroom is strikingly similar in structure to the FNAF 1 office, with the two doors that have to be checked and closed when necessary.  Bonnie approaches from the left and Chica comes from the right.  Chica sometimes wanders into the kitchen, where you can hear her crashing around. Similar to FNAF 2, Foxy attacks from the center, which is in this case is the closet.

In FNAF3, Springtrap is a bunny suit containing the body of the murderer, AKA The Purple Guy.  Think back to the image of the purple guard helping someone into the Bonnie suit.  A little kid's mind could have conflated the two people, so the bunny suit now contains the murderer rather than the victim.

In FNAF 1, if the animatronics catch the guard they will stuff him into a costume, causing his death.  Again, remember the image of the purple man helping someone into the Bonnie suit.

These and, I'm sure, a lot of other data points I'm either not interested enough to enumerate or just plain overlooking support the notion that the entire FNAF series takes place in the mind of a child.  He's terrified of the monstrous animatronics, so he has nightmares about them hunting him down night after night.  They are simultaneously murder weapons and the victims of a murderer, the Purple Man, who ends up locked into one of them.  In the end, FNAF is only a series of nightmares.

This theory is internally consistent and persuasive.  And I hate it.

One, the "It's all a dream" thing.  It's a cliche and a cop-out.  Remember when they retconned a whole season of Dallas that way?  I can happily accept FNAF 4 bring a dream/hallucination because it is a window into the mind of a character, which is a valid technique.  But retconning the whole series?  I don't accept that.  And there are things that contradict it:

The Phone Guy.  He says things that would not be in a child's nightmare.  For example:

• "Fazbear Entertainment is not responsible for damage to property or person. Upon discovering that damage or death has occurred, a missing person report will be filed within 90 days, or as soon property and premises have been thoroughly cleaned and bleached, and the carpets have been replaced."
• "Safety is our top priority at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, which is why the classic suits are being retired to an appropriate location, while being looked at by our technician. Until replacements arrive, you'll be expected to wear the temporary costumes provided to you. Keep in mind that they were found on very short notice, so questions about appropriateness/relevance should be deflected."

And there is also the text of the article at the end of FNAF2, which refers to company reorganization and budget.  Again, a child who freaks out when he sees animatronics and hides under a table would not think in these terms.

So...I guess this leaves me right where I started, with no idea what Scott expects us to ferret out about the fourth game.  If he stands on his decision never to open the box (thought I think that was just to goad the fans into speculating harder) then I'll stick with my own theories as posted earlier.

All boneheads who post about 1983/1987 will be soundly ignored, unless they add something that actually helps explain the game.