Five Nights at Freddy’s Fazbear Frights #5
By: Elley Cooper
*This post contains spoilers for In the Flesh and other stories in Fazbear Frights #5
Fazbear Frights is a series of short stories set in the Five Nights at Freddy’s universe. Each short story is broken into individual discussions to really focus on the individual theme.
If you want to get caught up on other terrifying tales you can check out my post on Bunny Call, 1:35 A.M., Room for One More, The New Kid, Fazbear Frights #1 & Fazbear Frights #2.
Overview:
Matt is a video game developer working on the latest game in the Five Nights at Freddy’s series, Springtrap’s Revenge.
During his play through testings, Matt can’t seem to evade the green furred Bunny and meets his demise everytime. It’s almost as if Springtrap is mocking him as a person and not a player. Frustrated Matt programs the game so Springtrap is stuck wandering a maze all night long also while adjusting the time to slow down times 1000.
He then goes home to his apartment that he moved to after his divorce with a roommate and several dozen takeout menus. All night he thinks about how great it is that Springtrap is in the position he designed.
The next day, Matt reviews the game logs and finds that without anyone to hunt down and kill, Springtrap spawned another version of himself which killed the original… and on and on all night long.
Now, Matt can’t find the Bunny anywhere and his code is permanently damages. When Matt tries to delete it, he can’t. Desperate, he enters the game via VR to hopefully find a solution. There he finds the destroyed body and when he virtually touches it he gets and actual shock down his body.
That night he goes on a double date with his roommate Jason and a girl Jason’s date works with. The entire night Matt ignores his date and focuses all his attention on trying to win over the more pretty interesting girl, Meghan. When Meghan rejects him he storms off.
The following morning, he wakes feeling nauseous and can’t keep anything down. He still goes to work to try to solve his Springtrap problems. Matt realizes that he could theoretically leave the broken code in the game and create a new Springtrap that follows the path he desires.
We then switch POVs to Gene. A former tech worker who has figured out how to hack into Springtrap’s Revenge early and is excited to be the first person to beat the game. Gene finds the body of the bunny and decides to look further into the code. He sees that the program that extracted the title character was initiation by “Its_a_boy.exe”
POVs are switched again to Matt on another vapid date with a girl named Madison. His nausea has subsided and now he is ravenous. His awful table manners scare off his date.
At work, Matt flies into a rage when his supervisor tells the team that the Springtrap he designed is not testing well and leaves work. When he gets home he finds Jason packing up his things preparing to move out due to Matt’s selfishness.
He is truly alone after pushing everyone away.
Matt continues to have odd illness symptoms and his belly becomes more and more bloated. So bloated and uncomfortable that he realizes there is something inside and its trying to get out.
Desperate, he slices his stomach open to reveal a new born Springtrap.
Hours later, not a bunny to be seen, Jason and the cops are standing in the apartment mystified by the site.
The End
Lessons and Themes
Control
Matt wants control of all aspects of his life. So much that he isn’t willing to compromise and everyone around him ends up leaving.
He is supposed to have control over the game he created but when even that won’t bend to him, he tortures Springtrap by trapping him in the mirror maze all night and slowing the time down so that each real minute feels like 1000 minutes to the character. He’s attempting to cause torment to a character that he believes to be fake but is still getting pleasure from his aimless wandering. He wants someone to have a worse night than he knows he will have.
“Maybe he couldn’t control the people around him, but he was in charge when it came to the game.”
Elley Cooper, In the Flesh
Killing the Creator
Without any victims in the game, Springtrap creates more versions of himself which turn around and kill their creator.
This speaks to Matt’s fear of having children. I don’t think that Matt feels as if his children would kill him but I do think that he believes the version of himself would be dead and a new version in his place.
Also, you fear what you create. Matt does not want to decide to have children only for them to turn out to be bad people or a disappointment to him. Ultimately, he births his creation physically (that he was only supposed to do metaphorically) and it leads to his death.
Creation can also be about his failure at work. He has so much pressure on him to make this game great and he fears he will create something that will not live up to the hype.
We also can’t ignore the fact that this is about someone trying to continue a Five Night’s a Freddy’s Series to the same success as their predecessors. Will volume #5 in the series be just as good and live up to the name or will it start to run out of ideas, I think this is the author poking a little bit of fun at themselves and also expressing their fears of inadequacy.
Pride
Matt has a very high opinion of himself.
Every interaction he has with another person is negative and he acts as if he is doing them a favor by being in his presence.
His co-worker Jamie, is too nice and clearly faking it.
His roommate Jason, is a unambitious loser who no decent looking girl would be interested in.
His blind date Eva, isn’t as pretty as her friend and should be more excited to be around him. He also calls her poor because of her teeth and shoes.
In fact, on his double date, he attempts to steal Jason’s date Meghan as they are both more attractive and sophisticated than their original dates. Matt can’t understand why Meghan has no interest in him and wants to date someone like Jason when she can have him instead. She must be delusional and her life will be awful without him in it.
I find it funny that he thinks he is this smart sophisticated guy but he orders Pinot Grigio for the table to show Meghan how much money he has. All four of them are eating tomato based dishes which traditionally would not pair well with such a wine. I’m not impressed.
If You Keep Telling People to Leave You Alone… You’ll be Alone
Matt spends the entire story pushing people away and refusing to ask for help. In the end he finds himself alone for the first time and realizes that he’s scared. Its what he wanted the entire time and now that he has it he regrets not forming and keeping meaningful relationships.
He clearly wants human contact but not for meaningful relationships but for praise. He wants someone to tell him how great he is and that he can do no wrong.
We all want people to support us but not blindly. You can’t treat people poorly and expect them to stick by you no matter what. Imagine the shoe being on the other foot and you are the person that is constantly being belittled or cheated on or just never good enough. No one wants that for themselves so Matt can’t expect all others to do that for him and always be there.
Overall,
Body horror is not my favorite and I wish there was more suspense than grossness.
I think this was the most obvious story with adult themes in the series. Forcing the main character to physically birth a terrifying creature is definitely more scary than other titles that left the characters fates somewhat open ended.
Also, the main character Matt, had no redeeming qualities. You wanted him to learn a lesson or get what was coming to him the entire story. Never one did I feel bad for this guy when everyone around him was trying so hard to make a connection. There have been stories in the series where I knew the characters are doomed and it broke my heart because they made one mistake or weren’t emotionally in a good place. Matt was awful and everyone around him was better off for escaping him.
I do have a petty gripe about the in game descriptions in the story. The author italicizes Matt’s actions (also Gene) when he’s going through and testing the video game. They then explain the back story on certain situations. However, they don’t break from italicizing when they are doing this explanation. I believe they should have used the italics to describe the video game actions as separate and go back to the normal text. It is traditionally how I’ve seen in in books and seemed like a mistake in editing.
Rating: 2.5/5 stars
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