Screen Rant’s Five Nights at Freddy’s article that broke me

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.