I don't think I'm the typical Five Nights At Freddy's fan. While the purists will salivate over the original indie games in the series and hunger for Help Wanted 2 on the PSVR 2, I'm more into games that break the classic trapped-in-a-room mold—games like FNAF: Security Breach, for example.
I was actually surprised to find out that I was in the minority on this one. I got to meet Kellen Goff, the voice of Freddy, Sun, Moon, and now Eclipse, at Cleveland Fan Expo a few months back while wearing my interpretation of what a Glamrock Bonnie cosplay would look like, and thanks to the new Security Breach DLC, Ruin, I now know that I was pretty far off the mark (I went with purple instead of sky blue and put a little too much David Lee Roth into it, but at least the people at the karaoke afterparty enjoyed my rendition of Just a Gigolo).
Anyway, before meeting my silver-tongued hero, I had a front row seat for his panel, and I was astonished when a Circus Baby cosplayer got up to the mic, asked Kellen if he actually enjoyed Security Breach, and after he confirmed that he did, retorted with something along the lines of, "Well, I think the fans all disagree with you." Ouch. If you're out there, Baby, not cool.
But she may have a point. FNAF is an ever-growing series, constantly evolving and adapting as its lore expands and its budget grows from point-and-click indie games to fully budgeted triple-A titles. Maybe it's fitting, then, that the ending of the game contains a couple of very special cameo appearances from some unconventional sources.
Oh, right, end-game content. Let me just root around and find that bring red warning text. Yep, there it is.
WARNING: This article contains spoilers for the ending of Five Nights At Freddy's: Security Breach Ruin DLC
There we go, now that you're all properly warned, let's talk about my absolute favorite FNAF game, Pizzeria Simulator. If you're not caught up, it's one game that blends the classic security room feel of the originals with a bit extra, as you spend your days running a pizzeria. Buying and refurbishing animatronics (some of which are going to make your night job a nightmare) and other attractions is all part of the job, as is play-testing them. Every day, you're given a few tokens you can use to play minigames on the arcade machines that you own, which is an important activity, because it's one of the best ways to make money and pick up the more expensive restaurant upgrades. Of course, not everything gives a payout—at least, not a monetary one.
Which brings me to the true star of this article, Candy Cadet. He has candy all day, every day. Candy. Candy. Candy. If you didn't read that in his voice, I'm disappointed in you, but let's move on. Every time you slide a token into that little scamp's coin slot, there's a very slight chance that he'll tell you one of three stories. From what I've read, there's a science to getting him to loosen his LED lips, but I've never gotten it to happen, so it's a good thing YouTube exists. All three stories center around two macabre themes: combining five things together, and death.
While the stories seem nonsensical out of context, ol' C.C. is actually giving you hints to the ending. You think you're just running a pizza restaurant, but in reality you're a pawn in Henry Emily's plan to trap the five animatronics containing the spirits of the damned (including his own daughter and her murderer, William Afton), destroy their mechanical bodies, and free their souls at last. That's some heavy stuff, and the lighthearted tedium of the game's daytime segments only drives the point home further.
Security Breach's main game contains a lot more fanciful imagery and sounds in the same vein as Pizzeria simulator—the Pizza Plex is basically an indoor theme park, after all—before everything starts breaking down. Starting Ruin, the layout of the place is the same, but the place is beyond trashed; it looks like it's ready for demolition. Newspapers are pasted up all over the huge windows, there are trash bags and muck on and in everything you touch, and every single animatronic in the place is somewhere on the spectrum between 'mangled but functional' and 'needs a chalk outline.' By comparison, Fallout 4's raider-infested Nuka World looks like a family-friendly getaway.
Ruin's protagonist, Cassie, only came here to rescue her friend Gregory, the hero of the main game, but why he'd ever come back to the Pizza Plex after escaping the first time is a mystery. After evading broken-down versions of all the old baddies (and even helping out one or two), she's finally made it to Roxy Raceway, the attraction under which Gregory says he's trapped. And even through you've survived attacks from legless Monty, trash-filled Chica, and so many mini DJ Music Mans (Music Men?), there's still one more old friend you've gotta meet, and of course it's Candy Cadet, because why else would I have brought him up?
Gather up the five tokens scattered around, and this time you're guaranteed a story. But unlike the tales of animal mutilation and stuffing five kids in a coffin that preceded it, this story is about a monster who tricks a young boy into unlocking its basement prison by imitating his mother's lullaby. That can't possibly be foreshadowing.
Oh, but it is! Because mere moments later, Cassie comes face to face with a pair of orange, mechanical eyes glowing in the dark, and a familiar voice insisting "I'm Gregory" before lunging towards her. This is The Mimic, a clever being who comes to us from one of the official collections of short stories based on Five Nights at Freddy's, so thank you, local library, and also, kudos, Steel Wool Studios, for getting people to pick up a book once in a while! It's such a cool reveal, and I think it was the perfect choice to bring back the storyteller who foreshadowed the last major FNAF game to stray from the tried-and-true formula, only to do it all again, right up until his dying air horn.