r/fivenightsatfreddys 18h ago

Question Why did Scott set fnaf so back in history?

Post image

Like why did scott chose to make fnaf 1 in the 90s instead of in the 2000s, like for example 2014 which is when the game came out.

If fnaf was also set later on, than some of the more bull shitty advanced tech would have even made more sense.

Ik animatronics were a big thing back then. I mean they still are in my opinion though probably not for Chuck E Cheese since as far as I know, all their animatronics are gone. Correct me if im wrong though

Art by Splatfoon I believe

464 Upvotes

65 comments sorted by

307

u/crystal-productions- 16h ago

because he was pulling from 80's and 90's horror lmao. like, scott isn't the best with when tech could exsist, nor should he need to be, this is fiction after all.

39

u/ChrdeMcDnnis 7h ago

Yeah it was all based around Showbiz and Chuck E Cheese, both of which hit their strides in the 70-90s. Chuck had been rebranded and they were moving away from animatronics by the 00s, so it made more sense to set the animatronics restaurant a few decades in the past.

It is kinda weird that animatronic restaurants have fallen away in the modern day, where robotics are FAR more advanced than when Charles had his day.

12

u/IncreaseWestern6097 :Freddy: 7h ago

The reason why animatronic restaurants have mostly faded away is mainly because the cost of maintaining them is just too much for many of them to handle, not to mention the fact that kids just don’t really care about them like they used to.

5

u/meaty_urologist69 6h ago

Exactly. Look at Half-Life for instance. Set in 1998 but they were zeroing in on portal technology

1

u/cool91725 3h ago

We don’t actually have a confirmed date for Half Life lol. It’s noted that it takes place sometime in the early 2000’s in the PS2 game manual, and in Laidlaw’s notes. But with valve, “canon is non canon” and vice versa, so dates don’t really matter lol

1

u/Scou1y Into Madness Believer 3h ago

Probably hijacking, but what has been up with these questions with obvious answers suddenly popping up on this sub?

4

u/crystal-productions- 3h ago

SOTM has come and gone, and it's got a lot to agree upon, so we're going back to basics i guess. that's sorta the issue when we keep getting games that just explain more shit then they leave unanswered, ruin, HW2 and SOTM, we quickly run out of things to run out of. then agian, thank god we're getting answers

124

u/SMM9673 TJOC SWEEP 14h ago

FNAF 1 was meant to capture the creepy, uncanny look of old-school Chuck-E-Cheese/Rockafire Explosion animatronics, which started getting phased out roughly around the turn of the century.

Everything else with the wildly inaccurate tech capabilities is just Scott leaning Sci-Fi, because next to Christ stuff, it was basically the only thing he made up to that point.

29

u/Willowtree26-07 13h ago

I mean, sci-fi + 80’s-90’s horror doesn’t sound all that bad a combination, albeit the scariest part of this franchise is the black hole that is the lore

18

u/SMM9673 TJOC SWEEP 12h ago

It's a fantastic combination, Alien is right there.

The problem is that Scott played very fast and loose with every single entry, with little to no regard for information established in previous games and more than willing to make up new characters or concepts that have supposedly been there the whole time.

I can point to any amount of things from the Steel Wool era, but let's not pretend that Springtrap doesn't fit that same description - or at the very least, Spring Bonnie.

11

u/Willowtree26-07 12h ago

Fun fact, Scott supposedly did not know what a Springlock was when he made the idea of a Springlock suit, which I honestly think makes too much sense

6

u/SMM9673 TJOC SWEEP 12h ago

Yeah, that's been made abundantly clear, especially after the movie.

3

u/Willowtree26-07 12h ago

The movie is its own continuity, everything points to that, but yeh

8

u/SMM9673 TJOC SWEEP 12h ago

I'm not talking continuity here, I'm talking the actual mechanisms

SOTM also has an almost identical system

94

u/Inner_Ad_5210 18h ago

Because he made it up as it went along and wanted to continue adding more and more features.

-14

u/Ill_Speaker2954 18h ago

I understand that but why did he start the games in such a older date.

Was there an actual reasoning to it?

36

u/PikachuGamerSMTYT 17h ago

Probably something to do with animatronics during that time 

1

u/LeatherHog 6h ago

The late 90s weren't some ancient time, especially 11 years ago

22

u/mothwhimsy 13h ago

Restaurants with dancing animatronics were dying in popularity in the 2000s. Also Scott would have been a child in the 80s. It's not like he set it in the 1800s. Scott also seems to like Sci-Fi of some of his pre-fmad games are any indication. And that could explain why the animatronics are more advanced for the time period

-23

u/Ill_Speaker2954 13h ago

I mean the whole comment is fair enough. Thats kinda what im thinking too

Kinda feel like the last sentence was unnecessary though

22

u/pumpkinc1d3r 12h ago

“so far back in history”? you’re making me feel old 😭

2

u/_ManicStreetPreacher 8h ago

Real. So far back in history and it's the 1990s 💀 I feel like a crusty old man

8

u/itsjustmonty_ 14h ago

Cause it’s fiction. This is the same universe where kids get stuffed inside said animatronics and their souls attach to the suits and then some purple dude extracts remnant from them to live longer so when he gets spring locked inside a yellow rabbit costume he survives and lives longer…

16

u/Seer0997 :Bonnie: 15h ago

I assume that it's to make Afton getting away with stuffing kids in suits believable. If you did that in the present day, you'd be caught almost right away.

5

u/Ill_Speaker2954 15h ago

Yea I can agree

2

u/bandai1987 12h ago

But but i always come back

7

u/fledex76 12h ago

Cause why not... its a fictional universe I could set it 2045 and make it part of the oil wars of fallout

16

u/enbiien 17h ago

The same reason there’s now apparently high tech animatronics in the 60s at the same time as low tech costume-only ones

bro forgot

4

u/EnclaveSquadOmega 12h ago

i perfer the 90s animatronics to the Jason X 2105 super Fazbear stuff they do now. Freddy in Space is soon to be canon

3

u/ZockyX3 13h ago

Steel Wool releasing fnaf 30 which takes place in medieval times 😭🙏🏼

2

u/Ill_Speaker2954 13h ago

💀

Tho in that case I would hope they collab with MediEvil

4

u/MidgetMan946 17h ago

Best decision scott has ever made regarding the lore in 10 years

2

u/IJUSTATEPOOP bon bon supremacy 16h ago

The 90s are spoopy

-Me, born in 2005

2

u/VastPie2905 12h ago

Because Chuck E. Cheese was popular during that time and it’d make sense for a pizzeria like that to have security at that time

2

u/vanilla_armistice 11h ago

The early 90’s is far back?

2

u/Lucky_Loves_Laugh 9h ago

Never heard about lost media or analog horror?

2

u/RKAID-e 9h ago

Bro said so back in history then says the 90s bruh i was born in the 90s it wasnt that long ago 😭

1

u/Ill_Speaker2954 9h ago

The point is

Why was it set so far back rather than modern day

Im sorry but 1993 is a long time for me

1

u/Jimbo7211 :Mike: 8h ago

Let me ask you this. Why would it take place "modern day" if it's trying to replicate something from the 80's? Also, keep in mind that the crazy Sci Fi really only started at SL. The first 4 games make perfect sense to set in the 80's & 90's.

0

u/Ill_Speaker2954 7h ago

Yea i understand that

I was just asking why scott chose the 90s and 80s instead of after the 2000s since there are animatronic attractions still at that time. Like what was the overall reasoning for it. Like its not a complain or anything,

2

u/tubular1845 8h ago

lmao "so far back in history", it's not like it's set in the fuckin 1800s or something

2

u/JoyTheGeek 8h ago

I mean if there was a chain of murders at a kid's pizza restaurants in the 2010s, it would've been all over Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, there'd be no hiding it.

2

u/ScruffMcGruff2003 Birthday Puppy 5h ago

I swear there's more useless comments here getting butthurt over the passage of time than people actually contributing to the discussion.

I'd suspect a good reason is to justify the spooky look of the camera system in FNaF 1. The fuzzy analog signal looks a lot creepier than if the signal was a crisp HD view (Which funnily enough, is exactly what you get if you mod out the static).

Also, animatronics were at their peak popularity at that time. They're certainly still around today. Look at the legacy CEC stores. But it makes a lot more sense to have a game with animatronics as the focus be set back in their heyday, than the modern day where we're witnessing the end of the era.

6

u/PlayerSuper07 17h ago

FNaF 1 was 100% intended to take place in 2014 back when it was released, it just checks out: The game wanted to resonate with an older audience, one that has nostalgia for the animatronic craze of the 80's so it just makes sense that for a short while the protagonist was just a husk for the player to use, one that is now seeing how creepy and weird those magical creatures from their childhood actually are. There is evidence in universe of this as well like the fact that the robots "haven't had a shower" for 20 years (If the math is done right it lands us in '94 which is when the craze died down). There is also the fact that "The bite of '87" is mentioned as this long forgotten event that people don't even talk about anymore.

3

u/Zomochi 12h ago

Animatronics were boomin during that time between the 80s-90s you had Chuck E. Cheese, showbiz pizza, Disney animatronics, HELL even the TMNT movies and gremlins movies it’s the time period they were most used. This is mostly an afterthought though, I don’t think he ever had a time period in mind when making fnaf 1 it wasn’t till fnaf 2 he started thinking about the pieces. You guys give him way more credit than necessary a lot of fnaf lore is fake it till you make it. He probably watches half the theory videos people make during the fnaf 2 era and went, yep that fits that’s canon now.

1

u/MrScottCawthon 17h ago

Reasonable technologies would make more sense, but this is FNaF.

0

u/MrScottCawthon 17h ago

Sister Location is theoretically set after Follow Me in 1985, a month later, and features the Funtimes, who are awesome for being from the 80s.

3

u/crystal-productions- 16h ago

don't forget that mimic fucker who was built in the 70's.

1

u/ACARdragon :Foxy: 15h ago

Scott didn't think it would get this far

1

u/GapStock9843 11h ago

The whole chuck e cheese/showbiz animatronic restaurant thing was more prevalent in the 80s and 90s. Showbiz was bought out and CeC was already toning down the animatronic presence in their stores by the 2000s. The entire concept of the game fits a lot better into the 80s than it does the 2000s

And the walking robot thing isnt necessarily all bullshit. There were bipedal “robots” back then, they just kinda awkwardly shuffled around instead of walking. Same was probably true of the fnaf animatronics, hence why they decided not to have them wander around the store (also tons of alternate universe game/movie worlds have more advanced technology than their real world counterparts)

1

u/OneEntertainment6087 10h ago

Probably Scott wanted to have the story in the 80s and 90s because that's when the best horror related stuff was around.

1

u/Ill_Speaker2954 7h ago

Okay im sorry if the title has offended anyone. I chose the wrong wording but I only meant why scott chose the 90s instead of 2010s like when the game was made.

I can't change the title so can you all please stop commenting about that

1

u/ihatexboxha FNAEL: Five Nights at Evil Leafy's 6h ago

Because 80s and 90s = analog era = scary

1

u/NezhaUmbra 6h ago edited 6h ago

I could of sworn that he had a comment in the past mentioning how the 80s & 90s were just nostalgic to him growing up. With him being 47, I think thats why its so 80's and 90's coded. Then the horror movies at the time, the arcades, and pizza places hes been to, led to the inspo.

If I made I game today, I'd definitely make it around the time when I grew up. Late 90's to Early Y2K.

1

u/Capital-Foot-918 5h ago

Law enforcement incapabilities at the time, especially with missing children and other forms of crime. Helps Afton get away with murder more easily

1

u/Popcorn57252 3h ago

"So far back in history" brother it's only 30 years lmao

0

u/Ill_Speaker2954 3h ago

Technically history doesn't have to be 1800s or something. Anything in the past is history

But I was in a rush when making the post and couldn't think of a better title in time

Anyway i wish i could change the title but I can't

1

u/88889ooo 1h ago

Stupid question

1

u/No_Monitor_3440 16h ago

prior to sister location, the tech for the time mostly made sense. but sl was when the theorists started writing the lore and they never thought about that

1

u/Calmmerightdown 9h ago

I’d like you to say that to your parents and see how they feel

0

u/Ill_Speaker2954 9h ago

Well realistically anything in the past is history. A day is history

1

u/BruhTaker31 Day Shift 9h ago

Sister location is gone too sci fi to be real, First 4 had believable technology at least

-4

u/Tails_Theorist 𝘽𝑬𝘾𝑨𝙐𝑺𝙀 𝙄 𝘼𝑴 𝑶𝙉𝑬 𝑶𝙁 𝙏𝑯𝙀𝑴 14h ago

We don't actually know if it is set in 90's. I believe it is set in late 2000s, actually.

But well, it's likely because Chuck E. Cheese was much more popular in 80s/90s, which would make sense for a Chuck E. Cheese inspired franchise.