Five Nights at Freddy’s Fazbear Frights #5
By: Andrea Waggener
*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, In the Flesh, 1:35 A.M., Room for One More, The New Kid, Fazbear Frights #1 & Fazbear Frights #2.
Overview:
A priest name Arthur is summoned to Heracles Hospital to deliver last rights to a peculiar patient. The patient has no name, no family and has been incapacitated for as long as anyone can remember. Most disturbingly, the man is completely burnt from head to toe.
A tenyered Nurse (Nurse Ackerman) explains to Arthur that the man has two signals firing in his brain. She and the other nurses believe this is good and evil fighting and evil is winning.
Meanwhile, Mia is a nurse working in Heracles hospital on her first day. While in the break room she hears Nurse Ackerman talking about Arthur and the man in 1280.
Back in room 1280 Arthur astonishingly discovers that the man can move his fingers. Arthur begins asking the man questions and with his finger motion signals “Fazbear Entertainment Distribution Center”. The Man also indicates that he wants to go there before he dies.
The following day Mia finds the other nurses on the floor having a secret meeting in a storage room. She hears them discussing the man in room 1280 and their plan to kill him as they are adamant he has evil living inside of him. She then sees a little boy wearing an alligator mask that unnerves her but she can’t figure out why.
Nurse Ackerman gathers enough morphine to kill five people and starts on her task. The little boy appears in the room giggling. Odd things begin to happen including Nurse Ackerman seeing visions of her son’s death. The morphine vials mysteriously fall to the ground and shatter.
After Nurse Ackerman’s failed attempt, another nurse, Nurse Thomas takes her turn with the same effect. Followed by Nurse Colton’s failure.
Mia and Arthur have lunch together and come up with a plan for Arthur to take the man in 1280 to Fazbear Entertainment Distribution Center. But after Arthur gets approval Mia has second thoughts when the other nurses explain the danger of taking the evil where it wants to go.
Unfortunately, Mia cannot talk Arthur out of it and he proceeds with the task.
At the distribution center workers are operating as usual and nothing looks suspicious. Arthur wheels the man inside but quickly something is wrong. The man appears to explode and fall to the ground. Arthur hears giggling and sees little footprints leading away from the body. Arthur finally believes what all the nurses had trying to warn him about…and evil has emerged.
The End
Lessons and Themes
Good vs Evil
The main theme of this short story is the fight between good vs evil. The evil that resides in the man is said to be fighting with the man’s brain activity.
“Two signals, means two living things. Two entities, They’re both vying for control of the brain…We think they’re tormenting each other.”
Most likely, the man wants to die but the evil needs him to stay alive until it gets what it wants. There is an internal battle going on inside his barely alive body.
Also, this struggle can be seen between Arthur and the hospital. I don’t think Arthur truly sees the hospital staff as evil (I don’t think he beliefs anyone is evil) but it is undeniable that he is a wholesome good force. All he wants to do is make a dying man’s wish come true. He thinks he is doing a kind and compassionate act and the hospital staff is preventing him from doing so.
I am not surprised that in the end, evil reigns. However, for now, good didn’t take any significant hits. No one died or lost anything significant and the man is gone forever. There will be consequences for the world later on of course and Arthur is mentally never going to be the same but it ended a lot better than most of the FNAF stories do.
Cerberus
Cerberus is the three headed dog that guards the Underworld in Greek Mythology. His job is to make sure no one escapes. The man in room 1280 was trapped in that hospital until he was ushered out by Arthur. He was never meant to leave and the Cerberus statue that sits at the entrance was a reminder of that.
Alligator
The boy lurking in the hospital wears an alligator mask. This is symbolic of his danger. Alligators are predator lurking just under the surface. Often you just see the tops with their eyes and snout and that is exactly what the little boys mask looks like.
All of them are in the water with a predator and they don’t even know it.
Do No Harm
Every medical profession aims to help and never harm a patient. The seasoned nurses in this story abandon their ethics because they see the danger. They are willing to kill a patient because they recognize the evil in their presence.
There have been nurses who have done awful things under the guise of compassion but these nurses are doing it to prevent something. They don’t know what it is or what it is capable of but they know it is bad and if it gets what it wants terrible things will happen. Abandoning these principals is not easy so they must really have believed and in the end they were right.
Overall,
This did not end horribly for most of the characters. Most of the other stories end with the main character dying in some awful way but none of the “good guys” died. They are all forever changed by their experience but they lived to tell the story.
Hopefully, Cerberus’ watch works both ways and the evil can’t get back into the hospital to seek revenge.
The Man in Room 1280 was very different. There was no mention of robots or pizza places. Other than the evil entity wanting to go the the Fazbear Entertainment Distribution Center it could have been set in any other universe. I would have liked it to be more connected to the other stories.
I really thought that when they mentioned the hospital had been upgraded and was full of new technology that would be the link but it was ignored. It would have been so easy to have the life saving machines cause this evil.
Rating: 2.5/5 stars
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