Scott Cawthon basically broke the internet in 2015. Most players expected a straightforward ending to the horror saga, but what we got instead was a series of pixelated, gut-wrenching sequences that changed everything we thought we knew about the timeline. If you’ve spent any time looking into the five nights at freddy's 4 mini games, you know they aren't just "bonus content." They are the primary vehicle for the story. They're also incredibly depressing.
You play as a crying child. He’s small, he’s terrified, and his own brother is his worst nightmare. Every time you clear a night in the main game, you’re dropped into these 8-bit vignettes that count down the days until a birthday party. It’s a countdown to a tragedy.
The Problem With the Bite of '83
For years, the community was split down the middle. Was it the Bite of '87 mentioned in the first game? Or was this something new? The five nights at freddy's 4 mini games eventually confirmed we were looking at 1983, thanks to a tiny easter egg on a television screen. This realization sent shockwaves through the lore-hunting community, specifically figures like MatPat from Game Theory, who had to pivot entire theories based on that one date.
It changed the stakes.
If this wasn't the Bite of '87, then the victim—the Crying Child—wasn't the person we thought he was. He was someone arguably more central to the Afton family tragedy. We see him being bullied relentlessly. His brother and a group of friends wear masks of the classic animatronics: Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy. They corner him. They mock him. In the final sequence, they carry him toward the stage where Fredbear and Spring Bonnie are performing.
"He wants to get up close and personal!" his brother shouts.
The mechanics of the animatronics in this universe are notoriously finicky. It's all about springlocks and pressure. When the bullies shove the child’s head into Fredbear’s mouth, the moisture from the child’s tears likely caused the springlocks to fail. The jaw snapped shut. It wasn’t an intentional "attack" by an AI; it was a horrific mechanical failure triggered by a prank gone wrong.
Breaking Down the Five Days to the Party
The structure of these segments is rhythmic. You start in a bedroom. You explore a house that feels strangely empty despite the presence of a "family."
On the first day, you’re locked in your room. You have to interact with your plush toys—your "friends." The Fredbear plush follows you with its eyes. It talks to you. Some fans believe this is William Afton monitoring his son through a walkie-talkie system, while others think it’s a supernatural manifestation. Honestly, given the later reveals in Sister Location and the Fazbear Frights books, the "psychic friend Fredbear" is likely a mix of high-tech surveillance and genuine haunting.
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Day two is more expansive. You escape the room and find your brother hiding behind the TV. He jumps out. He scares you. It’s a jump scare in an 8-bit world, but it works because of the tension. You see a girl’s room that is empty—leading to years of speculation about Elizabeth Afton and the fate of the sister character before we ever saw a Circus Baby.
By the third day, the world opens up. You’re at the Fredbear’s Family Diner establishment. You see a man in a Fredbear suit. You see a shadow of what appears to be Purple Guy (William Afton) helping an employee into a suit. This is a crucial detail. It proves William was an active part of the management during this specific window of time.
The fourth day is the escape. You’re at the restaurant, and you’re trying to get home. You run past a kid holding a balloon—who bears a striking resemblance to Balloon Boy—and a girl playing with "Plushtrap" toys. These aren't just random NPCs. They suggest that the "Nightmare" animatronics the player fights in the main gameplay loop are based on real-world toys and people the child encountered. It grounds the surreal horror of the bedroom in a tangible, albeit distorted, reality.
The Psychic Friend Fredbear and the Final Dialogue
The most debated part of the five nights at freddy's 4 mini games happens at the very end. The screen is black. The child is fading. We see the plush toys fading out one by one.
"You're broken," the text reads. "We are still your friends. Do you still believe that?"
Then, the kicker: "I will put you back together."
Who said that? For a long time, people thought it was the Puppet (Charlie Emily). Others thought it was William Afton promising a dark sort of resurrection through "Remnant"—the soul-stuff that powers the animatronics. The nuance here is vital. If it's William, it frames his entire descent into madness and experimentation as a twisted attempt to save his son. If it's a supernatural entity, it’s the start of the possession cycle that defines the rest of the series.
The ambiguity is the point. Scott Cawthon has a habit of leaving "breadcrumbs" that don't always lead to a single loaf of bread. Instead, they lead to a dozen different potential stories.
Environmental Storytelling You Probably Missed
If you pay attention to the layout of the house in the mini games versus the house in the actual gameplay, they don't match. Not even a little bit.
The mini game house is a simple top-down layout. The gameplay house has a long hallway, two doors, and a closet. This led to the "Experimental Theory." In FNaF: Sister Location, we see a map on a monitor that shows the FNaF 4 gameplay house and the mini game house as two separate locations connected by underground tunnels.
This implies the main game isn't a dream. It's a controlled environment.
The mini games, however, represent the "real" memories of the Crying Child. When you see the IV stand, the pills, and the flowers appearing momentarily by the bed during the night shifts, those are "leaks" from the real world. The child is in a coma. He is dying in a hospital bed after the Fredbear incident. The mini games are the flashback to how he got there, while the nights are his subconscious processing the trauma.
Why These Mini Games Changed the Franchise
Before FNaF 4, the series was mostly about "The Missing Children’s Incident." It was a whodunit. After the five nights at freddy's 4 mini games, the focus shifted to the Afton family. It became a Greek tragedy disguised as a point-and-click horror game.
We learned that the "villain" wasn't just a purple sprite killing kids for fun; he was a father whose family was disintegrating. His daughter was gone, his youngest son was killed by his oldest son, and his wife was nowhere to be found. It doesn't justify his actions, obviously. But it provides a motive for his obsession with immortality and "putting things back together."
The mini games also introduced the concept of "Shadow" animatronics in a more concrete way. When you see the shadows of Fredbear and Spring Bonnie on the wall in the diner, they look eerily like the Shadow Freddy and Shadow Bonnie from FNaF 2. Are they just shadows? Or are they the beginning of the "agony" that haunts the franchise?
Practical Steps for Understanding the Timeline
If you're trying to piece this together yourself, don't just take a YouTuber's word for it. Look at the sprites.
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- Watch the TV. In the house, you can interact with the TV. The "Fredbear and Friends" 1983 date is the most solid piece of evidence we have.
- Count the toes. Seriously. The number of toes and fingers on the sprites versus the animatronics in the gameplay can tell you if you're looking at a costume or a robot.
- Listen to the sound cues. The sound of a heart monitor flatlining at the end of the final mini game is the definitive proof that the Crying Child dies. He doesn't just "get better."
The five nights at freddy's 4 mini games are the most important part of the fourth game. They aren't just filler. They are the foundation for the "Afton Era" of the story. Without them, we wouldn't have Sister Location, Pizzeria Simulator, or even Security Breach.
They turned a simple indie game into a complex web of tragedy and science fiction.
What to do next:
Go back and replay the "Day 5" mini game. Pay close attention to the colors of the text during the final scene. Notice how the color of the text for the "I will put you back together" line is slightly different from the previous lines. This color change is often used to signify a different speaker, which is the smoking gun for many theories regarding who is actually speaking to the child in his final moments. Compare that hex code to the text of other characters in the series, like the Pigtail Girl or the Puppet, to see where you land on the mystery.