Welcome to the The Ultimate FNAF4 Guide, Part 5, this one’s a long one I’m afraid! But FNAF4 is genuinely the game that acts as a cornerstone for the entire series, so there is an incredible amount to cover.
To read the previous parts (as we may refer back to them), please see the below links.
Part 1 – Timeline, House, Toys, I Will Put You Back Together, Fredbear
Part 2 – Foxy kid, The Bite, The Box, Lally’s Game, Balloon Boy, The Immortal and the Restless
Part 3 – The Real Jake, The Doll, The Magician
Part 4 – Dittophobia, Cake, Happiest Day, Caught in a Loop, Desk Man, Afton Family, Fear Research
As you can imagine, we’ve covered a lot of ground at this point, but there’s still plenty to go through.
Security Logbook
First up, lets have a look at a unique piece of media to the franchise. The Security Logbook, this activity book style publication appears at first glance to be something fun for kids to do with various tasks and questions for them to answer, along with little drawing prompts. However in its pages are carefully concealed faint text, wordsearches and faint images. It has tremendous implications for the narrative of the series as a whole, but almost mercifully it has mostly fleeting connections to the story of FNAF4. In Part 4 we talked about cakes and the happiest day using a page from the security logbook and in addition to this we see a few other applicable illustrations.
Before we discuss the illustrations though I think it’s important to look at the authors of the logbook itself. There are several types of text in the book and the way various individuals interact with these is important.
Voices
- Scrambled or changed text – The standard font of the security logbook itself can be altered by what we presume to be the influence of some kind of paranormal spirits. These change the standard wording of the book itself.
- Faded Text – There are faded words in the background along with meticulous schematic-like drawings. I believe these were written by William and have since faded, they ask direct questions much like someone running an experiment might.
- Bright Red Text – One of the most noticeable layers of text is the fresh bright red text that originates with someone named MIKE, this colour is also how we see some of the elaborate illustrations in the margins and crossed out or sarcastic comments. We can tell this is Michael Afton as we see him in the games, firstly as he gives us his name, secondly as we see him snarkily draw the cash basket from Sister Location as preferable to the Exotic Butters that he ultimately receives.
- Tally Marks – In addition to the bright red text, we also see a layer of red tally marks, which may or may not be from Mike, these seem to have their own cryptic code to tell, and might be from some other figure than Mike himself. We think that it is Henry and have deduced a code on what they are telling us, but this is for another article.
- Black Text Post-It – On the first few pages of the book there is a post-it apologizing for someone else (Mike) having filled in the book on our behalf. I assume this is simply a stand in for whoever in-universe supposedly sourced us this document. They appear to be on the side of Fazbear Ent and mention we should not discuss the springlock suits at all.
With this context, lets look at some of the pages from the logbook that I thought were important to relate to what we know so far about FNAF4
An Excuse
The first page we’ll look at is one from Mike where he responds to a “My child said Freddy bit him!” line with “He tripped and fell on Freddy’s teeth. Not our fault.” This is almost certainly giving us insight into what Mike said in defence of his actions with his brother, although we don’t entirely believe that HE believes what he’s saying either. We are given a few insinuations that he is wracked with guilt over what happened and may even have almost been charged with manslaughter or some other crime for the incident. I believe that escaping punishment for it has almost made things worse, leaving him feeling like he is owed retribution for his actions and dedicated to revenge on his father as a means of moving past it. My thoughts on this do not all come from this single line of course, but I just wanted to offer them while we are here.
Also please do note the puppet again and the mention of how it is a “birthday-themed” animatronic designed to deliver birthday cake.
Favourite Toys
Its time to hark back to Part 1 where we talked about the important toys in the FNAF4 bedroom and how these are important to the Crying Child. Its also important to remember how in part four we talked about the fact that these toys were once again present. The logbook has the large text (William, as far as I am concerned) ask an intrusive interview style number of questions as though attempting to reach out. Below he asks “DO ANY OF THESE TOYS LOOK FAMILIAR TO YOU?” and “DID ONE OF THESE BELONG TO YOU?” and incidentally one of the toys shown is a telephone.
I have brightened all of this for clarity, of course. The actual page is very faint. It’s also once again worth noting a toy that is shown is a jack in the box with a strange face, very reminiscent of the core design of the puppet, where it is a twisty puppet in a box.
The large faded text goes on to far more directly ask “WAS YOUR FAVOURITE CHILDHOOD TOY A PLASTIC PURPLE TELEPHONE?” which once again lines up with the plastic toy we see in the FNAF4 room and Dittophobia. We know the plastic purple phone is a prize counter win from Freddy’s.
Conversations – THE PARTY WAS FOR YOU
Though it seems at first like William’s text is talking to no one, it turns out that there are places in the logbook where we see the crying child’s answers in the text. One such example is below where we see the response in the text for DAY 4.
The words here have changed from their defaults to say “I can hear sounds” and “It was for me” showing that he can hear the words he is being told. He is told elsewhere in the journal that “THE PARTY WAS FOR YOU”.
We know the party he died at was for the crying child as the kids along the way home tell him as much on the between night minigames. This is an intentional reminder of this fact and the answering scrambled text confirms the identity of the one scrambling letters in the font.
We also see cross communication between Mike and the other faded text. There is a page where the text asks “DO YOU HAVE DREAMS?” and Mike has responded by drawing a picture of Nightmare Fredbear. This page is fascinating to me because it could very well imply several things. It might imply that Mike drew up the original Nightmares (people see what they expect to see and his brother might have been intimidated by his drawings), he might ALSO be haunted by his brother’s memories which bleed into his own.
William might even have created Nightmare Fredbear as a means of punishing him for killing his brother. There are several implications and ways to interpret this particular drawing without needing to force things out of order at all. We see FNAF4 from the perspective of a young protagonist throughout the nights, but we do not know if this protagonist remains the same throughout. The addition of Baby and Funtime Freddy into the Night Terrors games in Help Wanted imply that there is a very real possibility that during his search of Sister Location that Mike wandered into the test area and may well have found himself impacted by the gas there (Dittophobia).
We also see Fredbear in the security logbook, looking absolutely devious. The header here is discussing “in the face of extreme fear” and dealing with it by “thinking back to your childhood” which is certainly something that could be linked to the experiments in Dittophobia. This image does not present the image of the Fredbear plushie as a friendly companion but instead a means of insidious control. It is possible that even after death William is still using the plushie to control the crying child from beyond the grave, as he is known for presenting a front of “being one of them”.
We have the precedent in The Real Jake also where Jake became depressed and unresponsive towards people when his surgery failed. It is possible that a similar thing happened with the crying child’s energy, soul or vessel and William’s solution was to reach back to his previously established companion. It is also possible that crying child was just so traumatised by his treatment that the only way to really reach him was via a harmless companion.
This page asks DOES HE STILL TALK TO YOU? Which is incredibly ominous when you consider this is William asking.
Balloon Boy
And so we return to the constant thread throughout all these tangled threads we have been weaving. Balloon Boy. Once again in the security log book we see Balloon Boy, and he appears on a truly ominous page which once again links him to being the final resting place of the soul of the crying child.
Balloon boy is depicted here in a business suit, all “grown up” (while remaining a child), the text challenges the reader as to what they would want to be when they grew up and how it differs from their current job prospects.
The crying child probably didn’t anticipate becoming a Balloon salesman/collector, but when we consider that balloons so often depict souls (as in the ending of FNAF3) it casts him in a more heroic light.
We will go into this in more detail under Security Breach, but Gregory, also strongly connected to the crying child has an unlockable Balloon World arcade that only he seems able to actually complete available to him in the game.
Also, I just want to say that I’m sick, absolutely sick that I didn’t notice that he has a FAN on his hat. The fan that is associated with the Afton family constantly, that baby has in her chest.
And just in case you needed more evidence from the logbook, here’s the page where William’s text asks him if he remembers his favourite attraction at Freddy’s.
WAS YOUR FAVOURITE RIDE THE CAROUSEL?
We all know who stands next to the carousel, right?
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Dittophobia
One last page that held my attention from the Security logbook was this one. It shows a mirror and asks WHAT DO YOU SEE?
It’s worth mentioning that in Dittophobia the bathroom mirror shows Rory two completely different views of himself when he looks in it. One young, one much older when the gas wears out. William asking this question is chilling. Mike also has his looking in the mirror moment in sister location, but this page definitely puts me in mind of the short story.
“Rory used the toilet and then stood in front of the sink to wash his hands and brush his teeth. After he did these things that he was supposed to do every morning, he lifted his face and looked straight ahead so he could check his hair in the mirror. He didn’t much care about his hair, or the rest of what he looked like, but Rory’s mom did. She was always telling him to comb his hair.”
“Rory was practically hyperventilating by the time he flushed the toilet. He was almost afraid to turn toward the mirror, but he had to. Rory stepped up to the sink and looked into the mirror. His mouth dropped open, and his eyes widened. The image in the mirror gaped back at him.“
On the opposite side of this spread, there is a wordsearch, which has been contentious over the years. But to me the thing that always stuck out was WHATISYOURNAME (this time the spirit altering the font asking the question ) followed abruptly by Afton Robotics. This particular word is incongruous with the others in the search which are just the names of the animatronics and short play related words. The search itself is also absolutely riddled with ITS ME.
But to me the “Afton Robotics” always stuck out, and I can’t shake it off.
Conclusion
This part I think has enough substance just with the Security Logbook, these images weren’t easy to scan in and I think they have significant implications. Its also worth mentioning just as an aside that the logbook itself is absolutely covered in blood. We never really find out if the blood is because William carted it around with him (he does notoriously keep journals) or if its blood from its various owners.
Either way this very short, very strange and facinating little book is absolutely packed with hints as to the ongoing lore.
In the next part we will have a look at a few more stories and the relationship between the crying child and his brother, and if we have time, might even have a look at midnight motorist ;)
Next part!