There are rumors of more "Five Nights at Freddy's" Funko Pops Image credit: Mike Mozart/ Flickr
Funko hinted that they would be releasing more “Five Nights at Freddy’s” Funko pops on Thursday evening during a public Q&A on Twitter. The Q&A was 30 minutes and included replies from both the official Funko Twitter account and Brian Mariotti, the Chief Executive Officer of Funko.
When asked by Twitter user ReeseBitar whether Funko would be producing more Five Nights at Freddy’s Funko pops, Funko responded with “seems likely” suggesting that they are working on new additions for the series. Given that the newest game “Five Nights at Freddy’s Security Breach” arrives in late 2021, it seems likely they will produce figures of characters and animatronics within that game.
Though fans may not have to wait too long for a definite answer. According to a toy focused media outlet known as the Toy Book, Funko is hosting a virtual event known as Funkoween starting May 24, 2021. It will showcase products planned for fall 2021 from various intellectual properties in partnership with Funko.
Allegedly this may include characters from the “Curse of Dreadbear” which was added alongside 2019’s “Five Nights at Freddy’s Help Wanted.” A Funko reporter known as mariobros612 on Instagram was reportedly contacted by an insider and provided a list of products including animatronics from the “Curse of Dreadbear.” If this report holds true, they could potentially appear at Funkoween given the nature of “Five Nights at Freddy’s” as a horror game.
Funkoween will last till May 28, 2021 and any information revealed will be delivered through Funko’s social media accounts. This is Funko’s second Funkoween with the event first introduced in 2020 due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
Illumix is introducing new software. Image Credit: Illumix
Illumix, the company known for developing “Five Nights at Freddy’s AR Special Delivery,” recently updated their website to include information regarding two new AR platforms. One will specialize in the development of augmented reality entertainment products, while the other is designed for ecommerce. The applications are exclusive to commercial brands and have no known connections with “Five Nights at Freddy’s” besides marketing.
With this new software, Illumix plans to foster augmented reality experiences outside of the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” series. In an interview with Comic Book Resources (CBR) last year, CEO of Illumix Kirin Sinha confirmed that the company would be taking on new projects going into 2021.
“We're certainly going to be releasing new titles in the future and we're working on that in the background, '' Sinha said. “We're also very actively engaging third-parties with the AR platform that we've built and so that's also something to look forward to sometime next year.”
But the prospect of e-commerce is new to Illumix whose main concern prior to 2020 was on providing a source of recreation. This was supported by the former look of their website which featured robots and superheroes that are absent from the updated look. Variety, an entertainment news organization, met with Sinha to discuss how her perception of augmented reality changed over the course of a year.
Illumix wants to expand past Five Nights at Freddy's. Image Credit: Illumix
“Prior to COVID, we were very focused around the gaming media and entertainment sectors as the major application for AR,” Sinha said. “But what COVID did was open up a whole new sector that we really hadn’t considered inside the world of e-commerce, and retail brands who were looking for a new way to reach their customers.”
Illumix has yet to release their planned gameplay update for “Five Nights at Freddy’s AR Special Delivery” that was promised last month. As of April 30, 2021 the company has been silent on social media with the website update being their only activity. Only a single screenshot of the update and some background data on Twitter are available at this time.
This fan-made image is used in articles constantly. Image credit: Trycon1980
It’s no secret that the horror game franchise “Five Nights at Freddy’s” has a cult following. Every day on social media people is posting their own drawings, characters, and renders showing their support for the series.
But this outpour of fan content has caused a lot of confusion among those unfamiliar with "Five Nights at Freddy’s", even leading to some artwork being mistaken as official and appearing on commercial news sites such as Comicbook.com and Screen Rant. This is especially true of this image featuring the animatronic Freddy Fazbear, Bonnie the Bunny, and Chica the Chicken in both their classic (pictured left) and toy versions (pictured right).
Now while usage of the picture has been considered acceptable due to it being posted by someone to Flickr, journalists should refrain from using it in any “Five Nights at Freddy’s” news articles. Not only is it disrespectful to the original artist who doesn’t get to profit off their own work, but it looks bad from a journalistic perspective to incorporate fan-art rather than images from an official source.
The picture first surfaced online on June 31st, 2015. It was posted to the art showcasing platform DeviantArt by a user known as Trycon1980.
Although they use animatronics from the series, Trycon1980 is not in any way affiliated with Scott Cawthon, the developer of "Five Nights at Freddy’s." In fact, these particular versions of Freddy and the gang aren’t even official and were created in 2014 by I6NIS on the 3D model platform Sketchfab. Unlike Trycon1980, who didn’t specify a license, I6NIS labeled their models as noncommercial meaning they did not want anyone to profit off of them.
Fan image by Trycon1980 (left) and official image by Scott Cawthon (right)
So could there be a legal case revolving around the use of Trycon1980’s image in news articles? While Trycon1980 does own the rights to the picture, the characters are still Cawthon’s property so it falls into a legal gray zone that would have to be debated in court. Not to mention the image has been used in news media for over 3 years so there would have to be a good enough reason to take it up in court
At the very least Trycon1980 should receive credit whenever the image is used. It does not belong to Scott Cawthon nor should it be associated with official “Five Nights at Freddy’s” artwork. Unless the creator has granted a news organization permission to use their image, only official content should be used.
If there are any journalists reading, Steam is a great source to find proper "Five Nights at Freddy’s" images to use commercially. There is also an unofficial website known as thefnafarchive that hosts original teasers from Cawthon that were once used to advertise each game. Given that these pictures were used to officially promote the game, they should fall under fair use.
Teaser for the third game. Image Credit: Scott Cawthon
With the audience of “Five Nights at Freddy’s” getting bigger due to the announcement of their new game “Five Nights at Freddy’s Security Breach” journalists need to be more careful with which images they choose to represent the game with. If they want to avoid upsetting members of the "Five Nights at Freddy’s" community they need to do the extra research and find official images.
Bonnie kills the player. Credit: Scott Cawthon (Steam)
Full disclaimer, this article is about “Five Nights at Freddy’s” not “Weekend at Bernies.” Got that Screen Rant? With a franchise as big as “Five Nights at Freddy’s” it is only reasonable that some things may be misinterpreted.
Why, just a few months ago people were convinced that Foxy the Pirate, a fox animatronic from the series, would appear in the popular battle royale game “Fortnite” due to sound files that mimicked his running. This was ultimately deconfirmed but it had a good amount of the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” community tricked for about a month.
There’s also the fact that information keeps changing. While the name of the mysterious crying child went unconfirmed for over 4 years, it is now widely accepted that he’s Evan Afton which was the name revealed through a cipher in the “Five Nights at Freddy’s Security Logbook.”
But there’s a difference between making a few small errors due to a lack of knowledge and doing minimal research, instead relying on articles from the internet. Screen Rant’s “Five Nights At Freddy's: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Freddy Fazbear's Pizza” has many mistakes damaging its credibility and Screen Rant should have known better than to publish it as “facts.”
Now to its credit, not every fact in this article is incorrect and even some things that are wrong aren’t worth making a fuss over. For example the author, Shaurya Thapa, claims that Fredbear’s Family Diner was the old name of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. This is correct, yet they improperly address the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” game creator as Scott Cawthorn when it is actually Scott Cawthon.
Cawthon (left center) in videogame form. Credit: Scott Cawthon
My goal isn't to pick on every little individual issue like a first grader telling their classmate they used the wrong version of “you’re” but rather to call attention to the bigger problems that can constitute misinformation. So these smaller issues can slide at least for this article.
While fact #9 and #10 are correct, fact #8’s claim that there were intended to be secret images of Showbiz Pizza animatronics in Freddy Fazbear’s is based upon evidence that does not exist, at least not as a whole. Thapa cites a post by Cawthon on Reddit, paying special attention to the lines “left out of” and “secret images” assuming they were referring to Showbiz Pizza having hidden content in the game. If Thapa were to examine the post further they would see that this it was referring to one title in particular, “Five Nights at Freddy’s VR Help Wanted” and that the images weren’t left out, they were in the game and later removed.
It was showtime, an event where the animatronics perform, that was to be originally going to be included and not the secret Showbiz images. Thapa seems to have mixed up the explanation for both showtime and the images, assuming Scott were referring to the same thing. The video for showtime can be found below.
Now for the driving factor that led to the creation of this article, Thapa’s claim that Freddy Fazbear’s probably was in business till the 80s. The key word there is “probably” confirming its not a fact but rather speculation. That reason alone should have left it off the list, but it's the evidence cited that really shows the lack of research Thapa did.
Out of all the places they could have pulled data from, Thapa decided to call attention to the popular “Five Nights at Freddy’s” fan-game “Five Nights at Candy’s.” Their claim is that since the events in Candy's took place in 1987, right after the closing of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, Freddy’s existed till the 80s. But here’s the thing, “Five Nights at Candy’s” is not officially part of the Five Nights at Freddy’s story which is why it's referred to as a fan game.
This means Thapa has essentially cited fanfiction in an article that is supposed to be constructed with facts. It is one thing to misattribute information from “Five Nights at Freddy's,” but this is just lazy writing and could have easily been fixed if the person did more than just a quick Google search.
Candy on the camera. Image Credit: Emil Macko (Gamejolt)
There is a recurring theme in this list where the author provides almost no background on each fact and cites only very basic evidence needed to sell the idea. This is especially evident with fact six that states a real-life pizzeria was harassed by Five Nights at Freddy’s fans. While yes, this is true, Thapa’s claim that this was because the restaurant was named Freddie’s is incorrect and appears to be based on a single article.
The real reason fans called the Pizzeria wasn’t because of its name but rather a source code on the official “Five Nights at Freddy’s" website. Scott Cawthon had hidden a bunch of numbers but by sheer coincidence, when plugged into Google Maps, they revealed the location of Freddie’s. So while it is still a fact, this shows that Thapa didn’t care enough to provide context, relying mostly on the work done by other journalists.
And that’s pretty much the rest of the article, just facts taken from Google that have only a small connection to Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. They might as well have titled it “10 search results we got from looking up Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza” because that’s all the list details. It’s honestly a shame that journalists at Screen Rant can get away with cutting corners on research, especially with information that only takes a few extra google searches.
Shaurya Thapa shouldn’t feel the need to know everything about “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” but as a journalist they need to conduct more complicated research on what is being written. Lists made up of quick internet searches aren’t something to be proud of and in the end they are more laughable than informative.
With “Five Nights at Freddy’s Security Breach” on its way, Screen Rant needs to think twice before publishing another Freddy’s article with low effort and minimal research. Actually, scratch that, I need another good laugh in the future.
Menu screen for 'Fury's Rage.' Image Credit: Scott Cawthon
To say people are hyped for “Five Nights at Freddy’s Security Breach” would be an understatement. The trailer has over 10 million views on YouTube, there’s an active community on social media, and more merch continues to be made despite the game still being unreleased. Sadly, the game was recently delayed on April 28th to late 2021 with “Five Nights at Freddy’s” developer Scott Cawthon citing that the company working on it, Steel Wool Studios, needed more time to make sure it was “finished properly.”
Despite the delay, Cawthon did not leave fans empty handed as on the same day he published “Five Nights at Freddy’s Security Breach: Fury’s Rage” a free-to-play short fighting game that gives the player control of animatronics from the new game and lets them beat up other animatronics. So could something that was made on such short-notice live up to the hype of Security Breach? Heck no, but it’s still a pretty fun game.
“Five Nights at Freddy’s Security Breach: Fury’s Rage” embraces the fact that it's not supposed to exist, even going as far as incorporating Cawthon himself into the game. When he’s not helping the player beat up animatronics, he’s calling himself out for not releasing “Five Nights at Freddy’s Security Breach” on time. This self-awareness allows Cawthon to treat the whole game as if it was one big joke, making what should be bizarre feel natural and hilarious.”
Like all beat ‘em up games, “Five Nights at Freddy’s Security Breach: Fury’s Rage” has dedicated buttons that allow the character to move in all directions as well as attack and block. However, the game introduces a few unique elements such as the ability to summon Scott Cawthon and perform a side-kick by clicking both the jump and attack buttons at the same time. There is also a special move that can occur randomly with each side-kick
But that’s not to say the combat is flawless, in fact it can be quite frustrating when combined with the game's slow character movement. It is by no means unplayable, but when enemies are coming from both directions it can be especially difficult to avoid taking damage, even with a slide-kick. Using Scott usually takes care of this problem but it is not fun to get sandwiched between two animatronics with no way to escape.
Roxanne Wolf performs special move. Image credit: Scott Cawthon
It’s hard to judge the difficulty for “Five Nights at Freddy’s Security Breach: Fury’s Rage,” especially since the player can choose from 4 characters, each with different strengths. For example, Freddy Fazbear has the fastest recovery time while Roxanne Wolf has the most luck and a poor recovery time. The difficulty all depends on how each animatronic is used and how generous the game is with restoration items that are all based upon luck.
Let’s talk about the visuals. Everything from the characters to the enemies to the backgrounds and interface are just so fantastically designed and really nail the 80s aesthetic the game is going for. While the animations can be a bit stilted at times it never feels distracting and the expressiveness of each character and enemy really make up for it.
If there’s one thing that conveys the 80s vibe it’s the music. Every soundtrack in this game brings in that classic synthesizer mixed with guitar riffs present in many songs during that decade. It also makes it a point to change the music during each boss battle to something that sounds a lot more threatening. Not every song is a winner but it's definitely one of the game’s strong points for sure.
By far the biggest downside of the “Five Nights at Freddy’s Security Breach: Fury’s Rage” is that every level must be played in one sitting. There is no way to select each stage and once the game is closed the levels reset making it so that the player has to start over with the first area. Perhaps this was done to keep the arcade style but at least beating the game awards a star that doesn’t reset.
“Five Nights at Freddy’s Security Breach: Fury’s Rage” might be nothing like “Five Nights at Freddy’s” but that’s what makes it so special. It doesn’t try to be like the horror games it's based upon and instead creates its own category within the franchise. In true “Five Nights at Freddy’s” fashion it is one game where fantasy and fun come to life.
William Afton, the main villain of the Five Nights at Freddy’s series has committed countless child murders, tampered with animatronics to make them hostile and converted himself into game code just to escape death. He is an irredeemable psychopath but even cruel people such as he need to buy equipment to carry out their sickly endeavors. So let’s put ourselves in William’s shoes and assume he was running errands for his next big plot.
What would he purchase? Here is a look at William Afton’s shopping list if he had bought everything he needed for his schemes in one night.
Birthday cake: used to lure unsuspecting children into the back room to murder them
Hammer: to destroy the animatronics that are trying to kill him
Lighter: to burn the pizzeria to the ground and destroy the evidence
Knife: used to commit murder and as protection from the animatronics
Gloves: to remove fingerprints from the weapon
Tool box : to sabotage each animatronic by messing with their wiring
Don’t underestimate the horror mobile game “Five Nights at Freddy’s AR: Special Delivery.” Although it was made by a small indie game studio known as Illumix, this handheld version of the popular horror game franchise “Five Nights at Freddy’s" is chocked full of content. And by content I mean a colorful cast of murderous killing machines ready to tear you to shreds.
But it's not just classic animatronics from the series like Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy who will be sharpening their teeth. “Five Nights at Freddy’s AR: Special Delivery” has more than 30 exclusive animatronics (skins) out for blood.
While you wait for Five Nights at Freddy's AR to update, here are 5 of my picks for the best and worst of these custom animatronics that are sure to knock your socks off with how great or trash they are. Are you ready for Freddy?
5th Worst: Boiler Baby
Image: @Illumix via Twitter
As much as I love the Circus Baby character this skin doesn’t really add anything new to her design. It simply sticks an oven in her stomach and adds a gritty texture on top, that’s it. Definitely not the worst skin but one that feels really underwhelming compared to the others
5th Best: VR Toy Freddy
Image: @Illumix via Twitter
VR Toy Freddy doesn’t have a very complicated design but its neon-like aesthetic really makes it stand out compared to the other, more detailed skins. Unlike the other skins released alongside him, VR Toy Freddy fully commits to its style ditching the eyes in favor of a VR headset which is made up of basic shapes. Although the style works well for any animatronic, it is the most creative Freddy skin in the game
4th Worst: Shamrock Freddy
Image: @Illumix via Twitter
Although this is one of the first skins ever added to the game, it is essentially just a green version of Freddy Fazbear with a few accessories. At the very least Shamrock Freddy lives up to its name, but he’s just plain and uninteresting with the clover on his hat as the only thing connecting him to Saint Patricks Day. Even for nostalgia's sake I can’t give this skin a pass.
4th Best: Ringmaster Foxy
Image: @Illumix via Twitter
What do you get when you combine a pirate fox, killer red coat, whip and a top hat? One of the coolest "Five Nights at Freddy's AR: Special Delivery" skins to date. What makes this skin so neat is the way it uses Foxy’s character traits to portray the ringmaster persona. Instead of a hook he has a whip, instead of brown shorts he wears black and red shorts that match with his jacket, the design is just so clever.
3rd Worst: Frost Plushtrap
Image: @Illumix via Twitter
Like Shamrock Freddy, this skin is just a blue version of Plushtrap but with a couple icicles thrown in to distinguish the two apart. To its credit, the skin does come with the same brilliant mixed reality room that was added with Plushtrap, however the only change is the addition of snow which feels underwhelming. I feel like if they changed the mechanics and design a little, like Frostbear it would have stood out better but sadly it's just a color swap.
3rd Best: Catrina Chica
Image: @Illumix via Twitter
This skin is just gorgeous. Every nook and cranny from her head to her toes is so well thought out and intricately designed with so many eye popping colors. It nails the aesthetic of Dia De Los Muertos and the reception from the Mexican "Five Nights at Freddy's" community was very positive towards it.
2nd Worst: Boulder Toy Bonnie
Image: @Illumix via Twitter
What can I say, this skin just doesn’t rock. To be fair there isn’t much one can do with a skin based off a boulder but what bothers me about this skin is that it doesn’t feel like one, in fact I’d assume it was more of a statue. Unlike VR Toy Freddy which blends seamlessly with its style, this skin just looks like an animatronic with a rock like texture.
2nd Best: Curse Springtrap
Image: @Illumix via Twitter
So much work and effort was invested into this skin which is colorful, visually stunning, and jam packed with little details. Since Springtrap is canonically an old animatronic, it makes sense that he would be portrayed as an ancient being. Although I do not agree with its stereotyped nature, this skin is a work of art.
1st Worst: Big Bad Foxy
Image: @Illumix via Twitter
If the idea was to make it look like Foxy glued on some gray hair to dress up as a wolf for a Halloween party then Illumix nailed this skin. At least Boulder Toy Bonnie tried to replicate a boulder but this skin doesn’t even attempt to make Foxy look like a wolf other than adding a tail and gray fur. All they had to do is change his color to gray or modify the face to make it look like a wolf but I guess cheap cosplay was better than making it actually look good. At least the grandma version is okay.
1st Best: Magician Mangle
Image: @Illumix via Twitter
This skin is truly magical. I love how Mangle's twisted appearance and multiple limbs are used to incorporate the many tools of a magician. The knives were such a creative addition as well and look soo cool when they're hovering around Magician Mangle in game. Overall, Magician Mangle is just super creative and well thought out, topping every skin they've released so far.
