I wasn’t the first to jump on theFive Nights at Freddy’sbandwagon. In fact, when the concept of the first game was explained to me several years ago, long before its complicated lore took off and it was just about knock-off Chuck E. Cheese robots wanting to kill the night guard, I just sat and smiled and nodded while thinking about something that made more sense—probablyDragon Age: Inquisition, since they came out around the same time, and I like to catalog my obsessions.
I can’t really say how or why I fell down the FNAF rabbit hole a couple years back, but of the original four animatronics, I guess I gravitated the most towards Bonnie, the big purple bunny. Sure, Chica had an adorable robotic cupcake and Foxy was a pirate, but there’s just something about the second banana, and Bonnie just kind of has that “Freddy’s sidekick” feel to him.
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Over the years, the games have shifted away from the original cast, and I’ve rolled with the punches. I’m a big fan of Circus Baby’s internal ice cream maker, and as the only animatronic at his time not who’s actively trying to kill you, Balloon Boy is still a personal favorite. But when FNAF entered the 3D adventure realm with Security Breach in late 2021, the mix of old and new was a little jarring. The Glam Rock versions of the four-animal band brought us tubular, ’80s-ified new iterations of Freddy and Chica, and Roxanne Wolf was clearly some sort of stand-in for Foxy the Pirate Fox, and quite possibly just a rebranding of the same character.
But Montgomery Gator? Don’t get me wrong, I like the guy when he’s not trying to chomp me in two, but there’s really no link between our winky-eyed Monty and good ol' Bonnie, save for the fact that they both play guitar. And while Foxy’s name has been all but scrubbed from the PizzaPlex, Bonnie’s got a whole bowling alley dedicated to him, even though he’s conspicuously absent.
Bonnie Bowl’s got a giant mural of everyone’s favorite animatronic rabbit at its entrance, as well as a small stage with the red velvet curtain closed and a sign that reads “This attraction is temporarily closed. Please enjoy another attraction.” Bring Freddy (who, if you haven’t played Security Breach, is trying to protect you, not kill you), and he’ll deliver the one and only mention of Bonnie in the entire main game. “I do not come up here anymore,” he says. “I miss him.”
Aha! So he does exist! Or did. But that’s all that Glam Rock Freddie will say on the matter, and a lot of fans have speculated that since that green gentlegator fills his role in the band (and has well-documented anger issues), he must have been responsible for Bonnie’s death.
Fast forward a year and a half to the first (and so far, only) DLC for Security Breach, Ruin, and we finally get answers. Kinda. It’s not really the Scott Cawthon way to be direct about much of anything.
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In Ruin, over in the now-devastated Monty Golf, there’s now a low-intensity theme park ride you can enjoy. Don’t expect a thrilling roller coaster; it’s much closer to “It’s A Small World” without all the singing, and the irritating little children have been replaced with cardboard cutouts of the band. The first shows Monty all on his lonesome, with a bright red mullet that would make Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel proud. Next we see Monty standing off to the side, beaming in adoration at the band: Freddy, Chica, Roxy, and Bonnie (and still no mention of Foxy, so at least there’s consistency). Moving right along, we see Bonnie’s cardboard arm sticking out of a red curtain, presenting Monty with his radical orange electric guitar, signifying that he’s stepping away from the band and passing the torch as it were, since the final bit shows Monty sitting in a salon char as Roxy gives him a hot new ‘do.
That’s little tunnel of love is hard to miss, but there’s a second, much harder-to-find secret hiding in Ruin, specifically, behind a locked door in Bonnie Bowl. Find a way in, and you’ll finally get to see what a Glam Rock Bonnie animatronic would have looked like, if he weren’t lying motionless on the floor surrounded by gloomy-eyed wet floor bots with gaping holes in his head and chest. (Ah, they went with the sky blue motif. My conceptual cosplay was wrong).
And that’s all we get. So was the theme park ride just a ruse to explain to the happy park-goers why Bonnie’s not around anymore? Did a jealous Monty really rip him to shreds? We don’t know for certain, because the game never really comes back to it, and Freddy’s not really even in the DLC at all, so it’s not like we’ll get another hauntingly vague tribute.
I guess that’s part of the appeal for Five Nights at Freddy’s for a lot of people. There’s lore, sure, but most of it is left up to debate and imagination, and that’s how the fan base seems to like it. Me? I still need answers. I studied journalism in college (yes, some gaming journos actually trained for this stuff). I don’t state anything that’s not clear fact without “reportedly” or “allegedy” thrown in the mix. So I can’t tell you what happened to really happened to Bonnie, and it drives me nuts.
Ah, well. Maybe in the next DLC.
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