Why is Mr Afton purple?

Voiced by: PJ Heywood

If you're curious to hear from his perspective, go here... just make sure you get out alive.

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Main series

    Afton in General 

• Ambiguous Situation:
  • After the Custom Night update for Sister Location, a debate was sparked, as to whether he, or his son, Michael, was possessing Springtrap... although
    
    Word of God implicitly confirmed William as the one inside Springtrap in response to MatPat's "final" FNAF theory.
  • Did he really love his daughter, or was he planning on making her his successor? He is a sociopath, after all, and Pizzeria Simulator's cartoon cutscenes imply that he has problems in forming a genuine smile, so he might not actually feel anything. Baby's motive in PS doesn't exactly help his case. Not to mention that he's aware Elizabeth is possessing Baby and he lets his employees shock her.
• And I Must Scream: A frequent victim of this.
  • The first of his deaths was slow and painful, but afterwards his soul was left trapped in Springtrap's suit, which was barred up and left to rot for three decades.
  • Implied to be what's happening in Ultimate Custom Night, with the place being his dream where he is tortured for his crimes. Oh, and his physical body is immobilized thanks to Henry's fire, so even if he woke up he can't go anywhere.
• Animal Motif: Rabbits; his main costume is the Spring Bonnie suit, as he uses it to gain the trust of children before killing them. When he dies in Five Nights at Freddy's 3, his soul becomes bound to the Spring Bonnie springlock suit and he becomes Springtrap. In Five Nights at Freddy's VR: Help Wanted, Glitchtrap is a malware incarnation of William Afton that presents itself in the form of an old-fashioned Spring Bonnie suit.
• Arch-Enemy: To Henry and the Puppet. The former set up a trap in Pizzeria Simulator to finally kill him, and the latter is his first victim, who resurrected his other victims and it's implied she visited the Pizzeria Simulator location just to stop him.
• Ascended Extra: His role seems to become larger with each game (with exception of the fourth game and Security Breach). In the first game, he is only mentioned in newspaper clippings that you are unlikely to look at in one of the rooms. In the second game, he appears in several minigames you may end up playing after you get killed, and is alluded to in Phone Guy's phone calls. In the third game, he is the Big Bad. In the fifth game, he designed the animatronics trying to kill you — and the one animatronic who's not trying to kill you engulfed a young girl against its own will, meaning he literally designed them to kill people. In the sixth game, he is one of the two Big Bads and has influenced his daughter to follow his murderous ways. And in the VR game, he's the sole Big Bad once again, and actually wins.
• Asshole Victim:
  • William's death — and imprisonment inside Springtrap — was horrifying, yes, but his role in the span of things garners little sympathy.
  • The same goes for his defeat and torture in Ultimate Custom Night.
• Ax-Crazy: From what we can tell, he seems to be very violent and sadistic. Contrary to what his actions might imply, however, his sole appearance in Sister Location depicts him as Faux Affably Evil, and he maybe deeply cared about his daughter. Maybe being the key word here.
• Big Bad: Of the series, and, to be precise, Five Nights at Freddy's 3 and Five Nights at Freddy's VR: Help Wanted.
• Body Horror: He is often almost always depicted with outsides matching his insides. But of course, all of these injuries were caused by freak accidents.
• Catchphrase: "I always come back", or some variation thereof, and boy is it accurate.
• Characterization Marches On: He's gone through so many changes that he's pretty much an entirely different character nowadays.
  • Before Sister Location, he was your average security guard working at a children's restaurant, who occasionally killed some of the children in secret.note The fact that nobody even knew his name, leading to him simply being called "Purple Guy", didn't help at all.
  • Sister Location establishes he owned his own robotics shop, and implied he designed at least some of the animatronics seen throughout the series. Since some of his animatronics had children-killing mechanisms built in, he was now a Mad Scientist as well. It's also later established he knew the man who seemingly started Fazbear's in the first place.
  • Help Wanted and Security Breach make him into a Virtual Ghost and implies he's now got some sort of special powers over both people and technology. In essence, he's pretty much a supervillain.
  • Springtrap in his original appearance has a malicious yet relaxed expression on his mask and a fluid body language that befits Willian's nature as a scheming killer but is at odds with him being a zombie in horrifying pain. In Help Wanted, while Glitchtrap looks like the very definition of Stranger Danger, Springtrap instead shambles around with glowing wide-open eyes and a more pronounced Slasher Smile to make him look absolutely unhinged 100% of the time.
• Child Hater: His victims are primarily children. While the reason behind his preference in victims isn't clear, he still qualifies by default regardless.
• Color Motifs: Afton is a very evil person who used a very friendly costume to kill people. As such, this contrast is emphasized by Afton being tied to the color purple and the spring suits being yellow, forming a pair of direct complement, or the opposite, colors.
• Composite Character: His Springtrap and Scraptrap forms are almost like Dr. Frankenstein and Metallo had a grandson.
• The Corrupter: He corrupted Vanny and it's implied he did the same to Elizabeth.
• Death Is Cheap: He's been killed at least two times, first by being crushed inside a metal animatronic suit and left to rot for thirty years, only to then burn in an electrical fire. And, as Sister Location reveals, he's still alive after that. Subverted in the sixth game, where he finally meets his end and is sent to Hell. And then double subverted when it turns out his soul was attached to a circuit board which allowed him to come back as Glitchtrap, and Ultimate Custom Night was a nightmare.
• Determinator: Credit must be given where it is due — the guy is an absolute monster, but he simply won't stay down. He managed to come back after dying. Twice. It takes being completely incinerated to finally destroy him for good and destroy his physical body beyond repair. Apparently not even that can keep him down — his body might be incinerated, but his soul lives on as Glitchtrap, the creepy bunny that targets you throughout Help Wanted.
• Didn't Think This Through: His Fatal Flaw, as detailed below. In essence, while Afton does admittedly come up with some brilliant plans that do work (such as exploiting the fact that the animatronics can't enter into the safe room to ambush them from there), the moment that another variable enters the equation is the moment that spells his doom, as Afton isn't good enough at improvising another plan to pull him out of the situation the first one put him in.
• Eternal Villain: Good old Billy has started to cross into this through sheer Implacability and Joker Immunity. The bastard has trascended life and death and keeps returning from defeat after defeat, to quote the man himself.

William: I always come back.

• Evil Brit: As of Sister Location and onward, his voice is known, and it clearly has a British accent.
• Evil Gloating: A big fan of this. This goes as far as the second game, where he will say "You can't" in response to the player trying to save the children if you bump into him.
• Evil Old Folks: In a way. While his physical body has stopped aging for obvious reasons, he was old enough to own his own robotics company before he died, and is at least 30 years older than that as Springtrap, with an ambiguous time passing after that. Fans realised this after Security Breach and gave birth to "
  
  Peepaw Willy".
• Evil Sounds Deep: In Sister Location, he has a deeper voice than most other male characters in the game. Coupled with his Evil Brit accent, he sounds quite menacing. His voice sounds even deeper in the sixth game, where he is already Springtrap.
• Expy: According to PJ Heywood, his voice was inspired by Hannibal Lecter, in that he is always unnervingly calm even when about to kill someone.
• Eyes Are Unbreakable: Even after becoming Springtrap and Scraptrap, his eyes remain untouched.
• Fatal Flaw: Throughout all of his reincarnations, the one consistent flaw he maintains is a lack of foresight. He simply does not think two steps ahead of his current goal, preferring to focus more on immediate satisfaction or panicking when things turn against him. His fear and arrogance lead to him getting crushed within the springlock suit, he forgoes just going through Fazbear's Frights' exit in favor of killing a nightguard (assuming what remains of the suit's primitive A.I. lets him leave), and he walks into the pizzeria simulator even though he knows something is fishy about it just because he can't pass up the chance to kill more people.
• Faux Affably Evil: Wears a smile wherever he goes, and death usually follows. When we finally hear him speak, his voice is full of this too.
• Foil:
  • To Phone Guy. They're polar opposites in many respects. William's actions would imply he detests and despises everything Fazbear Entertainment stands for. He cunningly murders children out-of-sight in a place where they are supposed to be happy, all with a constant smug grin. He's the CEO of a robotics company, and carefully chooses his words with a menacing voice. Phone Guy's lectures, however, show he adores the animatronics and the establishment, knowing they hold a special place in children's hearts. He breaks no rules and enjoys reminding others about the rules. He's only a lowly worker and while his speech is informal, it's very cheerful. And they both die because of what they do. After death, the Phone Guy stays this way. Afton actively refuses to die.
  • He's also this to the Cassette Man, Henry. While Henry is doing what he does to release the soul of his daughter and the other troubled souls in the animatronics, William accompanies Baby/Elizabeth in trying to kill Mike and several more children. Afton is also an example of the worst of humanity (violence, jealousy, and selfishness), while Henry demonstrates the best of humanity (atonement, justice, and sacrifice).
• For the Evulz: Implied. After all these games, we still don't know his motivations, but the novels give us a small clue... Because it's fun, his personal life sucks, and killing people is great for stress relief. This bastard is killing children for entertainment.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Of the first two games, Sister Location, and Security Breach. Maybe 4 as well.
• Hated by All: He is despised by nearly every character in the series: the Cassette Man (or Henry) for killing his daughter and his horrific experiments; the Puppet who brought the animatronics to life as vengeance for her death; even his own son Michael Afton went after him when he tricked him into getting scooped and bodyjacked. The only one who seemed to care for him was his daughter Elizabeth, but the events of Pizzeria Simulator imply that he was grooming her into becoming a killer.
• Hate Sink: He's far more detestable than the animatronics, being an eleven-(at least)-time child murderer. He is easily the evilest character in the franchise and is responsible for the existence of most of the other antagonistic characters.
• Hope Spot:
  • As he's being cornered by the ghosts of his past victims, he sees possible salvation: his old trusty tool of murdering, the Spring Bonnie suit! He hops inside to save himself… and only succeeds in orchestrating his own demise. Whoops.
  • After surviving the third game, he managed to stumble upon yet another pizzeria which could contain possible victims, accompanied by his equally bloodthirsty daughter. However, it was all a ruse by his "old friend" Henry/Cassette Man and Mike to end his reign and legacy of terror once and for all. Or so everyone thought, at the very least.
• Iconic Sequel Character: Though all of his forms are almost as well-known as Freddy and friends, it's easy to forget that he only first made an appearance in Five Nights at Freddy's 2, with allusions to him only existing as very well-hidden secrets in the first game.
• Implacable Man: As noted in the Invincible Villain entry below.
• Invincible Villain: Afton is just too integral to the series' lore to be killed off permanently and every time he's "killed", he comes back stronger than ever. Gets crushed by the springlock suit? He comes back as Springtrap. Gets burned alive in the third game? He comes back as Scraptrap. Gets burned alive again? Golden Freddy keeps him alive and then tortures him in his dreams. Seems that he is now cursed to being tortured forever? Fazbear Entertainment scans Scraptrap's remains for their new VR game, letting him escape his physical body as Glitchtrap. Manage to force a hard reset when Glitchtrap tries to possess your body? It doesn't kill him; it just traps him in the game and it's implied he'll find some way out eventually, and the Halloween DLC implies that he has an accomplice ready to help him, while Security Breach reveals he not only turned Vanessa into a serial killer at least as successful as himself but used her to return his soul to the Springtrap animatronic. To quote the man himself:

  Afton: I always come back!

• Ironic Hell:
  • His fate as Springtrap has shades of this. He's crushed to death in the Spring Bonnie suit, just as he did to his child victims. After this, his spirit is left trapped in Springtrap and left locked in a room at Freddy's for decades, leaving him trapped in his preferred method of murder and entombed in the place he'd committed his crimes at. Whether it is ironic or what he actually intended is up to speculation.
  • It's implied in Ultimate Custom Night that the game is William's personal hell, as he is tormented by the animatronics (both real and imagined) that he helped create, his various victims for all eternity, and two versions of himself, cursing the names of Henry and Michael or screaming for Mike to help him for eternity. A horrifying fate, but for him, fitting. However, it's later implied that this is actually a nightmare.
• Joker Immunity: "Dies" (emphasis on the quotation marks) three times in the series. Never stays that way.
• Karma Houdini/Karma Houdini Warranty: Zig-zagged between the two. Faced no punishment for murdering children, and possibly framing the day shift guard in 2 (assuming the two aren't one and the same), and ultimately went completely unpunished… and then his last trek on covering his tracks ended poorly. Very poorly. His actions also caused Elizabeth, the only person he may have cared about, to die. He doesn't care about his fate, though, but Henry kills him in a fire. And then he comes back, gets Vanessa on his side, orders her to murder children, and is at his strongest since pre-Springtrap. And then in Security Breach, he's set on fire for the third time, and the Blob takes him away, although it's unknown if he died because of it or not (and even if he did, like that's gonna stop him).
• Karmic Death:
  • In the final cutscene in FNAF 3, you play as one of the dead children. You can find and corner William, along with the souls of the other four children. In a panic, he will jump into the Spring Bonnie suit that he wore while luring the children away. Everything seems fine and dandy for him, until… well, let's just say there's a reason it's now called Springtrap. Though, death turns out to be more of an inconvenience for him.
  • Dies for the second time at the hands of Henry/Cassette Man (the father of the Puppet, one of William's victims) and Mike, his own son, in Pizzeria Simulator. Cassette Man even states there's a special place in Hell for his kind of evil. Not like it lasted, or that he even died at all.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • He programmed the animatronics in Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location to kill children when they're alone. Baby accidentally killing his daughter could be seen as this.
  • When cornered by his victims' ghosts, he hides inside the same Spring Bonnie costume he used to lure them to their deaths. However, his haste + the passage of time + his Evil Laugh + the moist and wet room = several broken springlocks and one dead serial killer.
  • He betrayed the trust of his friend Henry/Cassette Man and sent his own son to die in Sister Location. That more than comes to bite him in the ass when Henry orchestrates a plan that kills him for the second time. Michael, even if unaware of the plan, was also involved.
  • While it's not clear which position he had in Freddy Fazbear's Pizza besides co-founder (he was probably the day shift security guard), it's very likely that he took full advantage of the very lax policies of the management regarding injuries and disappearances, even possibly getting away with his murders and causing someone else to took the blame for them. This, however, ends up biting him back when the management decide to wall his corpse up in the safe room rather than retrieve it, effectively forcing him to languish there for decades in the guise of an undead monstrosity.
• Lean and Mean: One of the only features that has remained constant throughout the games is that he's tall enough to outright dwarf most, if not all of the animatronics. Even after his demise, he's pretty tall.
• Mysterious Past: Nothing is known about his earlier life; however, given how awful the childhoods of most serial killers are, it's not a stretch to assume that his earlier life was awful, and helped him develop into the sadistic maniac we see today. All we know for certain is that he was a genius engineer and businessman who owned Fazbear Entertainment alongside Henry and had a wife and three children. He also founded Afton Robotics, LLC at some point.
• Not Quite Dead: Fazbear Frights heavily implies that he survived the Pizzeria Simulator fire and that Ultimate Custom Night is All Just a Dream.
• Practically Joker: William Afton is depicted as someone who enjoys committing murders, as evidenced by his constant sadistic grins in the mini-games. While he is the CEO of Afton Robotics, his entire backstory and motivation behind his actions are shrouded in mystery, and if the man presented in Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator is Afton, he resembles Jack Nicholson's Jack Napier from 1989's Batman.
• Promoted to Playable:
  • In World as both a human and Springtrap. He keeps his Badass Normal status there as the former as well. He's also an In-Universe Game-Breaker, which was why he was sent to the Halloween Update.
  • If you take the theory that Ultimate Custom Night is an Ironic Hell or torturous nightmare for Afton into account, then he becomes playable in the main game line for the first time.
• Rasputinian Death: He is crushed to death with several of his limbs ripped and torn apart, his skull is punctured on all sides, and his eyes have been popped out of the sockets from pressure. After decaying in a sealed room for anywhere from a few months to decades, he is eventually freed. Unfortunately for him, his freedom is short-lived, as the attraction ignites from faulty electrical wiring and burns down, presumably with him still inside it. And the ending of Sister Location reveals that he survived that. And then, another building (the setting of Pizzeria Simulator) burns down, this time a maze with no exit so he can't escape, to do him in. And he survived that as well. His programming chip gets used in a video game and he body snatches a woman to find his old body and bring himself back again… and he gets trapped in a burning building for a third time.
• Sadist: He clearly enjoys killing children, judging by that sadistic smile he's seen with. His Slasher Smile stays with him in all of his forms.
• Secondary Color Nemesis: He's famously portrayed by a purple sprite, owned a purple car, and as Springtrap, the color of his Spring Bonnie suit has decayed into a sickly green.
• Serial Killer: He's "the Purple Guy", the figure seen throughout the minigames that has killed the children at Freddy's.
• Slasher Smile: He's only ever not smiling if he's working or being cornered by the spirits of his victims.
• The Sociopath: Mr. Afton ticks off all the boxes: Lack of empathy; he doesn't care who he kills, and even his friends and family are at most pawns to be used (with the possible exception of Elizabeth). Lying manipulator; his intro speech in Sister Location is really well composed, but also doesn't address the question asked of him at all. Constant need for stimulation; the only reason that seems to be given why he kills children is that he likes it and he's able to. Brilliant but also lacking foresight; while he is behind the creation of the Funtime animatronics and has in-depth knowledge on the springlock suits, he displays a severe lack of forward-thinking: he decides to climb inside the springlock suit even when the condition it's in makes it highly likely to kill him, and even as Scraptrap knows that the pizzeria isn't what it seems but can't resist the opportunity to kill more kids. Both of these examples lead to his death. He seems to be of the low functional type since he has a single-minded obsession with killing people, even after being turned into Springtrap. It gets to the point where he knows the pizzeria in the sixth game is a trap but can't resist going there anyways if it means claiming more victims.
• The Spook: Who is he? Where did he come from? Why does he kill children? Why does he target a very specific pizzeria for his murders? Why does he come back to destroy the animatronics? Why/how does he come back as Springtrap? Sister Location adds a little more information on him: his name is William Afton, he built the Circus Baby gang (to abduct children, of course), and he had a daughter. Had being the keyword here. That said, his motives are still a mystery.
• Suddenly Voiced: At the beginning of Sister Location, in the very same cutscene that names him, he speaks aloud, explaining some of the new features of the Funtime animatronics. He lets us hear his voice more in the following games.
• Too Clever by Half: Demonstrates this quite frequently. While incredibly cunning and manipulative, a prodigy in mechanical engineering, and scarily competent at everything he does, overconfidence and being considerably lacking in foresight is his downfall many times throughout the series. Easily the two most apparent instances of this in the series proper would be hiding in a Springlock suit while literally surrounded by moisture that could (and does) loosen the locks, and investigating the pizzeria from the sixth game even when he knew something was up. Also, the fact that he uses his prodigious skill as a mechanic as a means to murder people instead of literally anything else, although it's ambiguously suggested he has a Freudian Excuse (specifically, Abusive Parents) and/or a mental disorder to explain why he acts this way.
• Too Dumb to Live:
• Trauma Conga Line: A villainous version. First, his daughter died simply out of curiousity, by meeting a specific animatronic while she was completely alone — allowing it to kill her (and to add insult to injury, the animatronic was one of his own killing machines). Second, he got found out by the ghosts who he murdered and met the same fate as with his own children. Third, the restaurant he worked with turned into a scare mansion, turning his life's work into a universally-despised urban legend and a mere profit scheme. And finally, karma comes back to bite him in the form of Cassette Man/Henry, his old friend, and by extension Mike, his own son he left to die, when Henry leaves him and his daughter Elizabeth/Baby in an inescapable maze to be immolated, with Mike bringing them there in the first place. Let's just say there is no sympathy to the monster to begin with.
• Villain Ball:
  • Averted for most of the saga; William covers his tracks quite well. The only reason he gets caught is because he goes back to the pizzeria after it shut down, to destroy the bots for some reason. Then he's confronted by the ghosts of the children he killed. In a moment of panic, he jumps into the Spring Bonnie suit — but notices his surroundings. There is water from rain leaking through the roof, to the point, there are even large puddles on the floor… which he ran through several times while running from the pursuing ghosts around the room. This man knew full well the risk of moisture on the spring locks but went for it anyway. Snap. It's a miracle the locks held out long enough for him to laugh at his assumed victory. Even then, if he hadn't laughed at the children, he might have lived.
  • Played straight in Pizzeria Simulator. Unlike Molten Freddy, Scrap Baby, and Lefty, he knows full well that the pizzeria is a ruse, but plays along anyway, because he regards it as "interesting". It doesn't end well for him… although the next games revealed that he had a backup plan.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • When finally cornered by the ghosts of the children, he FLIPS OUT.
  • The face that Scraptrap makes in Pizzeria Simulator when being cooked alive says it all.
• Walking Spoiler: It's really hard to say something about him that doesn't spoil the story.
• Would Hurt a Child: A lot of his victims were kids.

    William Afton 

"I always come back!"

"As if what he had already done wasn't enough, he found a new way to desecrate, to humiliate, to destroy. As if the suffering wasn't enough, the loss of innocence, the loss of everything to so many people."

— Henry Emily / The Cassette Man

• Abusive Parents:
  • While how much he cared about his daughter is unknown, he clearly despises Michael, as he seemingly sent him on a suicide mission as either a test of loyalty or as a long drawn out execution.
  • It's also possible that he was on the receiving end of this, growing up with a physically abusive and alcoholic father. If you buy the theory that the Orange Man from Pizzeria Simulator is his father, of course.
• Accidental Murder: While his other child murders are very intentional, his daughter's death at the hands of Circus Baby was a complete accident.
  
  Maybe.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Played both ways: his demise in FNAF 3 is nowhere pretty, and after that, there's no indication that what's left of him is something more than a mindless monster, and, if he is still consciously there, then he may be happy of what he ends up becoming. However in the sixth game, not only we learn that he is still 100% himself and completely in control of Springtrap (to the point of being able to talk, repair himself, and remember his past) but that he is mostly unconcerned by his new form and STILL out for children's blood.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • In the fourth game, we see him putting someone in a suit. Whether this was him framing someone or helping someone while doing his day job is unknown. Knowing just who Afton is, it's probably the former... someone was arrested, after all, and it wasn't him.
  • He's heavily implied to be the father of the Child from 4.
• Badass Normal: Seemingly normal, at any rate. As much of a monster he was, he still single-handedly dismantled all of the original animatronics while they were actively hunting for him. Unfortunately for him, this ended up biting him in the ass by releasing the children's spirits, thus allowing them to kill him and move on. This gets even better in World, where he's a playable character — and a pretty good one at that.
• Blank White Eyes: Many of the minigames have him with distinct white irises. It's downplayed (and overlaps with Glowing Eyelights of Undeath) when he's seen inside Springtrap, as he still has black pupils.
• Brain Uploading: Help Wanted implies that the circuit boards uploaded into the VR game somehow contained pieces of William's soul, allowing him to manifest as the glitchy Spring Bonnie animatronic.
• Bring It: In the second game's "SAVETHEM" minigame. The shape is deliberately vague, but either Purple Guy is holding some sort of weapon as he pounces on Freddy, or holding his palm out in a beckoning gesture (see the image in this folder above). Either one fits a predator who leads children astray. After the third game's reveal of the springlock suits, it's also possible that he's holding the hand-crank used to switch the suit into "costume mode". This is made more likely by the knowledge that the springlock suits were part of Purple Guy's M.O.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: CEO of a robotics company, and a serial child killer.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Getting slowly crushed by faulty springlocks in an animatronic suit can't be pleasant.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Downplayed, since the animatronics he creates are at least superficially part of an (loosely) honest business, but the fact still stands that the end goal that he puts his practically revolutionary skill in mechanics towards is killing people, usually ruining the credibility of the business said skillset goes towards in the process.
• Cutscene Boss: After terrorizing players for five nights as Springtrap and in numerous minigames as the 8-bit Purple Guy, the final minigame sees him driven back into his costume room by the ghosts of children he killed and stuffed into animal suits. With nowhere to run, he jumps into the Springtrap suit... which immediately breaks the spring locks due to the moisture from the rainwater in the dilapidated room, making him die gruesomely as the ghosts look on.
• Dead All Along: By the events of the third game, William's corpse has been rotting inside Springtrap for a long time. His spirit still haunts it, though, and it seems like he only kicked the bucket after the first game was over.
• Death by Irony: In a number of ways:
  • William killed children and destroyed animatronics while disguising himself with one of the animatronics' suits — he was also killed by one of those suits.
  • William disguised himself with the Spring Bonnie suit and used it to kill six children without setting off the springlocks that kept the endoskeleton in the suit from skewering him. Then in a fit of panic, while being cornered by the ghosts of the first five children he murdered, he hides in said springlock suit. The same suit that goes off with just the slightest bit of breath and moisture. In a dilapidated room filled with rain and rainwater.
  • Throughout the minigames of the third night, he uses a room hidden from the animatronics to keep himself safe. He ends up dying in that room, and spends the next couple decades in it.
  • The ghosts of the children tried to kill adults by stuffing them into dangerous suits. He killed himself by hiding in one of those suits in an attempt to escape the ghosts.
  • Sister Location amps this up a bit; it is implied that his daughter also suffers a nasty one, as she is killed by her father's child-murdering animatronics that he had so desperately tried to keep her away from. Even more ironically, as far as we can tell, she was the only child whose life they've ever claimed.
• Demoted to Extra: Appears briefly in the fourth game, simply doing his day job as a security guard. Justified, as he has no role in torturing the child and whoever we play as in the nights... but he is heavily implied to be their father.
• Dying Alone: William's eventual fate as revealed in the pixelated ending movie of 3. The revenant children scare him into donning the defective Spring Bonnie suit, the locks fail when he mocks the ghosts from inside a wet room and a possibly wet suit, and he is mangled from the inside out — still twitching even as the children fade away. No one is there to witness his final, agonizing moments. Subverted in Pizzeria Simulator, where he dies accompanied by his daughter, his son, his old business partner, one of the children he murdered, and Molten Freddy.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • In Sister Location, it is revealed that William had a daughter who was killed by Baby. He warned her not to get close to Baby, possibly because he knew she was an unassuming murder weapon. He sent Michael down to the location to save Elizabeth after her death and there are some implications he made Baby as an expression for his affection for his daughter. As mentioned in the Ambiguous Situation trope a folder above, it's still rather questionable how genuine it is.
  • The Five Nights at Freddy's: Fazbear Frights novels imply he loved his wife and was struck with grief after her death. That said, this was seemingly jossed later on when the man that lost his wife turned out to be an original character without any connections to Afton.
• Evil Genius: As of Sister Location's intro, he's smart enough to build high-tech intelligent robots that can dispense ice cream, inflate balloons, and grab children inside them and kill them. Heck, this is just building upon FNAF 2, which heavily implies that he tampered with the animatronics' facial recognition.
• Evil Is Bigger: Relative to the other characters — especially his cameo in 4, where we see him next to another adult — his sprites indicate someone tall.note To be clear: no matter what shot he's in, he utterly dwarfs every other character on-screen. This includes the Puppet.
• Evil Is Not Well-Lit: In the 8-bit minigames his appearance is only seen in purple, hence his nickname Purple Guy. A dark colour, but only enough to distinguish him from the mostly dark background. The only thing to glow are his white eyes.
• Evil Laugh: The only instance in which William shows any emotion other than menace occurs in his appearance in 3, when he cowers in terror from the ghosts of his victims. Once he dives inside the Springtrap suit, he has the temerity to laugh at them… which, alongside the moisture within the room filled with rain, only aggravates the weakened support locks, causing the suit to crush him.
• Fatal Flaw: Obsession. Despite everything he's capable of (such as inventing a variety of revolutionary animatronics, being a legitimately successful businessman, and even finding ways to cheat death in almost every appearance), the only thing Afton ever does with these talents is try and kill children.
• Freudian Excuse:
• Generic Doomsday Villain: He was one for a long time, as he was largely The Ghost, and even when he did appear, he didn't speak or show any significant characterization. Sister Location and Pizzeria Simulator finally avert this by having him speak and delving into who he is.
• Genius Bruiser: Smart enough to build animatronics that count how many children are in the room and capture them if alone, and strong enough to overpower and disable the animatronics, though he had the element of surprise.
• The Ghost: Throughout the franchise, his appearance has always been left a mystery.
  • He's first mentioned in a randomly-appearing newspaper headline from the first game, which doesn't give any details about him besides his gender and the fact that he murdered children.
  • The second game identifies him as a vaguely-defined purple 8-bit sprite, which doesn't tell body features or clothing, unlike the animatronics.
  • The third game does show him as a rotting corpse inside Springtrap, which is barely visible in the costume and doesn't indicate what he would've looked like in the living flesh.
  • We might see his real appearance (albeit stylized as a 50s-esque cartoon)
    
    in Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator's cutscenes, where he wears a purple business suit, is constantly smiling, has a cleft chin just like Springtrap's, and even wears what looks like a night guard's uniform in one picture.
• Hidden Depths: For a brutal and sadistic Serial Killer, he appears to be one heck of a technician, if Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location is of any indication.note This matches up with the idea that he tampered with the Toy animatronics' facial recognition in 2, even if it's not fully confirmed. He's also not completely heartless, since it's revealed he had a daughter that he loved enough to try and keep safe from his murderous creations. He failed.note However, that last bit could have been subverted in Pizzeria Simulator, which implies that he may have wanted to keep Elizabeth alive only to make her become Daddy's Little Villain.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Ultimately killed himself attempting to hide in the Spring Bonnie springlock suit, stuffing himself into one of the suits like he had done to the children he was hiding from. He apparently built Baby and possibly the other Sister Location animatronics with a feature that would make them horrifically murder children provided that no one else is looking. To our knowledge, the only kid ever killed by this was his own daughter, whom he specifically warned to stay away from Baby.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Among all the animatronics and the supernatural occurrences, this monster is the cause of everything.
• Karmic Transformation: More like a Karmic Reincarnation, actually. He ended up condemned to the same fate his victims were left in: becoming the very animatronic that he was crushed to death in.
• Killer Cop: He was with the company since Fredbear and Spring Bonnie were in operation, and was definitely, and apparently, the day shift security guard at Freddy's during Jeremy's week. From what Phone Guy tells Jeremy his first night, he was the nightguard before him, but got saved by being moved to the day shift after complaining to management about the Animatronics' killer nature.
• Luke, I Might Be Your Father: The most likely candidate for the Child's father in the fourth game. At the very least, the fifth game indicates he was watching him.
• Mad Scientist: He held full responsibility for the creation of the respective animatronics and how he got hired to the Pizzeria to receive his funding for it. Not to mention the camera system in the Private Room, which shows footage of the fourth game's bedroom and Plushtrap area, implying that he watches children in these rooms, observing from the Private Room, which is most likely his office. Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator definitively establishes him as one, as the Scooper's blueprint reveals a reservoir for a substance known as "remnant", which is implied to be what allows a soul to remain after death.
• The Man Behind the Man: He is directly behind the entire situation with the animatronics, as they are haunted by his victims, and he ultimately died and wound up haunting the Springtrap suit, lasting longer than any of the others. He also might be the Child's father from 4, is confirmed to be the father of "Eggs Benedict" from Sister Location and is the creator of the animatronics from the same game.
• Manipulative Bastard:
  • William is somewhat presented in this light in Sister Location, in that he favored having his creations murder for him, and that it's implied that he used Michael as a scapegoat to go to the underground facility the game takes place in.
  • As shown in the Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator Fruity Maze minigame, this is part of his MO as a serial killer— gaining the trust of children so they would follow him, allowing him to kill them without alerting anyone. It's implied that he's been observing the little girl who frequents at the pizzeria's arcade, exploiting the child's emotional vulnerability over the tragic death of her dog by telling her that her dog's not dead and he can show her where her dog is if she follows him...
  • When looking at the circumstances for Elizabeth's villainy in Sister Location and Pizzeria Simulator, one interpretation is that William wanted Elizabeth to continue his legacy by orchestrating more tragedies in the Fazbear Entertainment chain. This opens up the possibility that he may have used reverse psychology to tempt Elizabeth to go to Baby, in order to immortalize her by trapping her soul in the animatronic.
• My Death Is Just the Beginning: One interpretation of him, if he's somehow still alive or in full haunting control of Springtrap, considering the number of years that passed since his demise.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: By destroying the animatronics, he ended up releasing the spirits of the children he killed, which eventually led to his own death.
• No Name Given: In the first four games, all we know about him is that he's male and was at one point employed at the restaurant. He was later given the name "William Afton" in The Silver Eyes, however, which carried over into the main games with Sister Location; Pizzeria Simulator even calls him such in the credits instead of Springtrap.
• Not Me This Time: He has no (direct) connection to the events of the fourth game. He only makes a minor cameo. Similarly, he has nothing to do with the Funtime animatronics' psychotic tendencies; though he did design them, and designed them to kill children at that (and lost his daughter because of it), it's left ambiguous as to whether he had any clue that they were sapient.
• Overdrawn at the Blood Bank: Explodes in a fountain of pixellated blood once the suit caves in on him. Of course, given the actual amount of damage the suit did to him, the size of the pool of blood under him is quite realistic for someone killed while surging on adrenaline.
• Purple Is Powerful: In the minigames, the murderer's sprite is completely purple save for his eyes, mouth, and occasionally a badge.
• Rage Within the Machine: While an employee and co-founder of the Fazbear restaurant chain, he maintains a pathological hatred towards the establishment. This ends up murdering him when he returns to the last restaurant, which had been closed for some time, specifically to dismantle the animatronics.
• Returning to the Scene: He returns to the FNAF 1 location to destroy the animatronics and therefore rid himself of any remaining evidence. This actually led to his death.
• Robot Master: Sister Location's intro reveals that the animatronics of Circus Baby's Pizza World were built by Mr. Afton. Dialogue from Baby and information gleamed from unlockable blueprints heavily implies that they were built to assist him in his killings, with (among other things) Funtime Freddy's blueprints including, "Voice Mimic/Luring".
• Self-Disposing Villain: He was never caught by the police (or, if he was, he managed to escape), and if he hadn't come back to destroy the animatronics, then he would most likely have gotten off scot-free for his crimes.
• Slasher Smile. In all minigames, except the minigame after fifth night in Five Nights at Freddy's 3.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Played with. Whilst the stuff that happens during gameplay and the story are as a result of his actions, apart from killing the children, he has nothing to do with the Bite of '87 and didn't have any clue about the haunted animatronics... until the third game, possibly. Although, considering what's shown in SL, it's possible that the children's possessing the animatronics was intended after all.
• Villain Protagonist: Easter eggs and books suggest that Ultimate Custom Night is his torturous nightmare after Pizzeria Simulator.
• Villains Out Shopping: His appearance in the fourth game show him putting someone in a suit... but seeing how there's another person wearing a Fredbear suit nearby, it's completely possible that William is simply helping out a fellow employee.
• Wicked Toymaker: Designed deadly animatronics meant to help him in his murders, and to lure kids into his restaurant.

    Springtrap 

"It is not your flesh that sustains me. It is your fear!"

"We found one. A real one. Uh-oh-uh gotta go man- uh, well-well look, i-it's in there somewhere, I'm-I'm sure you'll see it.."

— Phone Dude

• Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal: Wore a purple bowtie and buttons as Spring Bonnie, but lost them due to wear and tear over the years. A single button is still visible on his chest, however.
• And I Must Scream: The rare screens show the suit is causing pain to Afton and he's trying to take the mask off because it hurts that much. You can even hear him moaning and grunting when he's roaming the halls! When he shows up wearing a different Spring Bonnie suit in FFPS, one that he apparently feels more comfortable around given how calmer he is, you can't blame him.
• Artificial Zombie: Springtrap is the pseudo-reanimated corpse of William Afton wearing the suit, with his spirit trapped in the suit. This is a major contrast to the other animatronics, which, despite the hints that they're stuffed with corpses, have their usual endoskeletons with no hint of human material inside.
• Black Eyes of Evil: The "costume mode" lenses over his eyes give his sclera a dim, blackened appearance, contrasted by the sickly green-yellow glow of his irises.
• Body Horror: He looks like a rotting zombie, so this goes without saying. Turns out this is because he is a zombie, as Afton's corpse is inside him. Being burnt to ruins in Pizzeria Simulator only made this worse, as is revealed when we get a clear view of Springtrap during the true end of Security Breach: The Spring Bonnie suit is now missing much of its exterior, and it's hard to distinguish where the endoskeleton ends and the remains of William Afton begin.
• The Cameo: Appears for a split second at the end of the last cutscene in Sister Location, showing that he survived the burning of Fazbear's Fright.
• Chekhov's Gun: Phone Guy's recorded messages talk extensively about the safety precautions required to safely operate springlock suits, and what will happen when these precautions are not followed. Come Night 5's end-of-night minigame...
• Clingy Costume: It's a bit hard to take off this suit when your innards have basically been Iron Maiden'ed to the inside of it. Oh, and just so you know, Afton is in complete agony when wearing this suit and the rare screens show he wants to take it off.
• Composite Character: Is on the game's icon like Freddy,note Other similarities to Freddy include making a distinct noise, having a Slasher Smile, taunting the player, and moving fairly quickly. makes poses similar to both Withered Bonnie and Toy Bonnie (both of whom he resembles, being a decayed Bonnie animatronic), is referred to with a menacing nickname like Mangle, is in a state of disrepair like Foxy (complete with exposed shins), is distracted by noise like the Puppet, and is (or more accurately, was) colored gold like Golden Freddy. Finally, like all the others, he serves as the can for a dead person.
• Doppelgänger Spin: If the ventilation fails and your vision starts to fade, you'll hallucinate several Springtraps on the cameras. Hope you remembered where the real one was!
• Dramatic Unmask:
  • Upon starting the game, it's possible to find a picture
    
    ◊ of Springtrap ripping his head open to reveal William Afton's mummified skull.
  • Inverted in the end minigame. William, having been cornered by the spirits of the children, stuffs himself into the one and only suit he can find to hide in: the Spring Bonnie suit.
• Easily Detachable Robot Parts: Springtrap is an animatronic that can be dismantled and held back with spring locks so it can be worn as a costume. The animatronic can be "rebuilt" and still work fine.
• Evil Is Visceral: The innards of this model are rusted-out and decrepit, making it hard to discern the sinewy flesh from the suit's workings.
• Evil Laugh: Lets an exhilarated cackle loose in Special Delivery if he successfully catches you.
• Evil Sounds Raspy and Deep: Although the raspy part is from the damage to his vocal cords.
• Facial Horror:
  • The randomized loading screens reveals some of the damage done to William's head when this bear trap of a costume clamped shut on him. Hooks were driven into his cheeks, giant grapefruit-size eyes exploded from his sockets (or were smashed into them), and a neck attachment shot up his larynx and through the roof of his mouth, spearing it open.
  • Security Breach reveals that the Springtrap suit lost both its eyes and jaw in the incinerator at the end of Pizzeria Simulator. The top half of the head is being held on by the aforementioned hooks, the lower part of Afton's mummified head is exposed, and his eyesockets are clearly empty, barring twin purple sparks glowing in the depths of the empty socket.
• Failsafe Failure: When the failsafes on the rabbit costume... well, failed, robot endoskeleton parts pierced and crushed his body, as shown by the reservoir of blood around him. And yet, according to the minigame, this did not kill as quickly as one would hope.
• Flawed Prototype: Spring Bonnie was one of two suits designed as an animatronic-suit hybrid. One can use a hand-crank on the animatronic to recoil and compress the animatronic parts into the sides of the suit, with a spring lock holding the animatronic parts in place. This allows an entertainer/performer to climb into the suit and wear it. The parts must be tightly compressed and the spring locks secured, or else the animatronic parts will break loose, leading to death/grotesque maiming of the person wearing it.
• Four-Fingered Hands: Unlike all of the other animatronics, averted, since the suit was meant to be worn by a human.
• Ghostly Gape: Though obscured by the teeth of the suit, opening up Springtrap's head reveals that Afton's mouth is permanently speared open by the animatronic parts.
• Glasgow Grin: His chaps are torn up, making his big teeth even more apparent.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Notably, he is the first animatronic in the series to have these without first taking out his regular eyes, which can't be good news for that poor security guard. Come Security Breach, and the glow in his eyes is now purple.
• Green and Mean: Is green due to decades of neglect, and is very, very mean.
• Hair-Raising Hare: A zombie-looking animatronic rabbit possessed by the franchise's overarching antagonist. Need we say more?
• Haunted Technology: He's a Fazbear Entertainment animatronic, what did you expect? Though, unlike the first two generations, he's actually haunted by the soul of an adult.
• Hell Is That Noise: His "scream" is an animal-like hiss that, rather than sounding angry or vicious, sounds like it's in unbearable pain. Pun not intended. As the
  
  Once-Reveal shows, it sounds like that for a damn good reason. A later patch put in a new noise, and he now sometimes makes a strange muffled moaning noise that sounds almost human, as if he's trying to say something.
• Icy Grey Eyes: As opposed to the original Bonnie's Red Eyes, Take Warning.
• It Can Think: Springtrap's movements while active are disturbingly fluid and human-like, in contrast to the jerky shambling of the previous animatronics. He also takes every path he can to get into your office, while the older generations only used preset routes. Sister Location's final cutscene implies it, and Pizzeria Simulator confirms it. And how can it do this? Because it has the soul of a child-murdering psychopath bound to it.
• Kill It with Fire: Zig-zagged, HARD. At the end of 3, Fazbear's Fright burns to the ground, but Springtrap managed to escape at least moderately unscathed. Then in Pizzeria Simulator, someonenote who was his own business partner lured him, Lefty, Baby, and Molten Freddy into an inescapable maze and set it on fire, and, well... can't get lucky twice, as they say. Except he did... Only for him to get burned down again in one of the endings of Security Breach. But then again, he was never seen dying in that ending, and who knows what the gigantic "Blob" that "killed" him really has in mind.
• Last of His Kind: Because he's stored inside a room that nobody bothered to open, Springtrap is the only real Fazbear animatronic left intact when Fazbear's Fright opened 30 years after the chain closed, the others having been disassembled as props. He is also the last of the classic "animatronic-suit" hybrids designed to retract their endoskeleton and let an actual person wear them. There was a reason for that. Eventually subverted, however, given the identity of Lefty.
• Meaningful Name: The reason he is called Springtrap? According to the final minigame, getting stuffed into the suit was a trap sprung on William Afton with springs trapping him inside.
• Monster Clown: His clown skin from Special Delivery.
• Mummy: An… odd example. From what the images of William's corpse show, it was somehow mummified after being locked into the suit.
• No OSHA Compliance: Spring Bonnie is a walking "fuck you" to safety — his suit was designed to be both a functional animatronic and a suit worn by humans. However, the method of shifting the animatronic parts out of the way was… not very safe (simply breathing could loosen a lock and kill/injure the user), and it was hastily retired after multiple spring failures. William found this out the hard way.
• Not Quite Dead: Sister Location's Golden Freddy cutscene shows that Springtrap is still moving, and the soul inside him is still alive games later. And then Springtrap comes back again in the true ending of Security Breach, if only briefly before he's dragged back into the incinerator by Molten Freddy.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Unlike the animatronics in the previous two games, it's never been explicitly stated what Springtrap will do to you if he catches you.
• Offscreen Teleportation: As per usual for the animatronics, Springtrap moves and attacks when not being watched, taking advantage of when the cameras briefly become defective. It is, however, more understandable to have him in your face when you were repeatedly blacking out from a faulty ventilation system. Also, the control monitors aren't large enough to cover the whole screen, so you'll catch glimpses of Springtrap moving towards the door and then the inside of the office before he forces either monitor down to growl at you.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: "Springtrap" is just a nickname that is never used in the marketing of Fazbear Entertainment. His real name is "Spring Bonnie". And his real name is William Afton.
• Our Zombies Are Different: Springtrap is a wearable animatronic that contains the corpse of William Afton/Purple Guy. Even after Afton's death, Springtrap carries out his murderous intentions.
• Predecessor Villain: Spring Bonnie was once the co-star of Fazbear Entertainment alongside Fredbear back when all they had of a chain was Fredbear's Family Diner. They were quickly overtaken in popularity by Freddy and Bonnie.
• Rage Helm: The foam around the helmet has withered to resemble an evil grimace, when the human inside's actual expression is one of abject agony.
• Red Right Hand: One of his most notable features is the missing half of his right ear.
• The Reveal:
  • The fifth night's recording from Phone Guy heavily implies that it was Spring Bonnie, and not Golden Freddy as was previously thought, whom Afton wore as a suit to lure away and murder the Missing Children, thus adding another layer of irony to the final minigame. Speaking of said final minigame, Afton's corpse is revealed to be inside the Springtrap suit.
  • Sister Location gives us an even bigger shocker. The final Custom Night minigame reveals that Springtrap is still alive.
  • And he turns up alive in the true ending of Security Breach, revived in a Pizzaplex recharging station that had been placed in the ruins of the same incinerator he'd been burned to ruins in at the end of Pizzeria Simulator.
• Schmuck Bait: When multiple and simultaneous spring lock failures occurred at one of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza's sister establishments, the springlock suits were decommissioned. When William Afton tried to hide inside Spring Bonnie one last time...
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The Fazbear's Fright crew found him inside a room in the first game's location (one that was not included on the maps programmed into the animatronics, nor visible to the security guard), and brought him over to Fazbear's Fright as one of the attractions. Though the Spring Bonnie animatronic is unable to contain the murderer inside.
• SkeleBot 9000: Much of this animatronic's foam covering is gone, and his metal feet are completely bare. His fixed rictus and missing eyelids evoke a skull.
• Stealth Expert:
  • Unlike the other animatronics, which usually appeared front and center on the camera feeds, Springtrap usually stays in the corners of rooms, making it difficult to notice him on the camera feeds.
  • In Ultimate Custom Night, he tries to enter from the vents but can't be heard in them at all, and only showing a small area of his face when he reaches the mouth of the vent before attacking.

• Those Two Animals: The Golden Freddy minigame revealed that Springtrap (then called Spring Bonnie, according to one of the phone calls) was Golden Freddy's only stage partner at one time.
• Undead Abomination: He is essentially a zombified cyborg. But only does he retain his homicidal tendencies, but he now is strong enough to kill his victims without the use of any type of weapon.
• Undercrank: Had this in the trailers something fierce. The ending implied that these twitches were actually William Afton's death throes as the Spring Bonnie suit sliced and diced him.
• Was Once a Man: A very evil man, at that.
• You Are Already Dead: The moment you see him sprint past your peripheral vision while you're bringing up the monitor or maintenance panel, pray that the clock is close enough to tick to 6 AM. Or don't pray at all, since he has the tendency to attack you the moment you lower the monitor or the ventilation goes down. Same goes if you see him disappear from Vent CAM 14 or 15 (which lead straight to the Office) after you seal them, since that means he's already in your Office, hidden from your view.note You can save yourself if he's looking at you from outside the office, though you need very fast fingers to pull it off. If he peeks at you through the door, play the audio cue at CAM 01, while if he appears behind the windows, play it at CAM 02.

  You may not recognize me at first, but I assure you, it's still me.

• Zombie Gait: Revealed courtesy of Help Wanted. His movement, as opposed to the slow deliberate walk of the other animatronics, is more of a heavy-limbed shamble fitting his corpse-like appearance.

    Scraptrap 

"You may not recognize me at first, but I assure you, it's still me."

"Although for one of you, the darkest pit of Hell has opened to swallow you whole, so don't keep the Devil waiting, old friend."

— Henry Emily / The Cassette Man

• Admiring the Abomination: Does this to the rest of the animatronics. Which makes sense, since he helped make them like this.

  "Fascinating, what they have become..."

• All There in the Script: The end credits don't even try to hide that he is William Afton. And who may blame them?
• An Arm and a Leg: He lost his left arm after the Fazbear Fright fire, and appears to have sharpened a remaining bone into a weapon.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Of Pizzeria Simulator, alongside his daughter. Scrap Baby seemingly does everything to make him proud, but she was the one that was teased the most and has the last words before the Cassette Man intervienes.
• Canon Discontinuity: Downplayed. Security Breach largely ignores this design, and instead bases "Burntrap" almost entirely on the original look for Springtrap, to the point where the mascot head has reverted back to the FNAF 3 design and the missing arm has returned. While the reason for this is unknown, the fact that Scraptrap's design was almost universally disliked among fans probably had something to do with it. In-universe, the arm could at least be explained as being a replacement seeing as he has parts from a more-advanced Glamrock endoskeleton.
• Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames: The end credits refer to him as William Afton, and not Springtrap. This particular appearance of him is also officially copyrighted under the same name. This is most likely to help quash the theory that it was William's son Michael in the Springtrap suit, and not William himself, as well as to differentiate him from 3-era Springtrap in Ultimate Custom Night. Subverted in Ultimate Custom Night itself, where he is given the moniker "Scraptrap" alongside William Afton.
• Curiosity Killed the Cast: He knows that the pizzeria is a lie, but still can't resist going to it regardless. The Cassette Man was banking on this to lure him into his death trap.
• Death by Genre Savviness: He knows there's something more to the Cassette Man's instructions to salvage him for parts, but decides to play along. It doesn't seem to occur to him that he's being lured into a deathtrap.
• Death or Glory Attack: In Ultimate Custom Night. Stop him, and he'll leave you alone for the rest of the night. Fail, and...
• Dem Bones: The majority of his rotting flesh and muscle is gone, leaving parts of his skeleton exposed, especially his skull. His left arm is also reduced to a single sharp bone, presumably having fallen off in the time between 3 and Pizzeria Simulator.
• Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat: It's implied that he's aware that the pizzeria is a trap, but goes through with it anyways, as the prospects of murdering more children was too good for him to pass up.
• Dragged Off to Hell: Well, not literally, but Cassette Man strongly implies that Hell is where Scraptrap is going once the building and everything within it burns to ashes. And considering he murdered many children, it can only be expected.

  Cassette Man: For most of you, I believe there is peace, and perhaps more, waiting for you after the smoke clears. Although, for one of you, the darkest pit of Hell has opened to swallow you whole. So don't keep the Devil waiting, old friend.

• Failed a Spot Check:
  • Assuming that the protagonist is Michael Afton, Scraptrap somehow missed the fact that he was being salvaged and lured into a trap by his own son. Granted, it's implied that William thought his son was dead and really didn't give a hoot about him regardless, and we also knew to acknowledge the fact that Michael has been zombified, but still...
  • However, one bit of dialogue implies he's aware of the ruse. Despite also expecting an exit.
• Fatal Flaw: Bloodlust. While he's definitely the one animatronic who knows that the pizzeria is not what it seems, he plays along with the mirage anyways simply because he didn't want to miss the opportunity of causing another round of murders. This leads to his glorious defeat, where he gets a vicious Pre-Mortem One-Liner from Cassette Man as the flames consume him in full.
• Genius Bruiser: Like any good animatronic, he's perfectly capable of slaughtering you, but he's also the only one to suspect that there's more to the new pizzeria than anyone's letting on. Too bad for him, that didn't help him survive the inferno any better.
• Guttural Growler: He speaks with a creepy, growling voice. Seeing as Afton spoke more clearly in the opening to Sister Location, it's fair to say that decades trapped in a rotting suit didn't do his vocal cords any good.
• I'm Standing Right Here: Averted in a dark hilarious way. In the true ending, Scrap Baby has a monologue about how she will make her father proud by "doing what [she] was created to do", but Afton doesn't reply, meaning he either didn't hear or he simply didn't wish to interrupt her and ruin the moment.
• Irony: Despite bragging about how he always comes back, in Ultimate Custom Night, if you manage to fend him off once, he will never attempt to attack you again for the rest of the night.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: William Afton died a long ago, is now haunting the suit he died in as Spring/Scraptrap, and has survived a large fire. We hope you beat 3 (and to an extent Sister Location) before playing this game, otherwise
  
  you're going to be a little bit lost.
• The Man Behind the Man: Baby is determined to kill more humans and manipulate their souls to follow in the footsteps of her father. Too bad Cassette Man was playing both of them like fiddles.
• Monster Progenitor: Whether directly or indirectly, all of the other animatronics are active because of his own actions, though he didn't become an animatronic himself until long after they were created.
• Sanity Has Advantages: The thing that ends up killing him for good is the fact that the protagonist and the Cassette Man played on his lust for murder to sucker him into walking to his own death. Afton even knows there's something off about the new pizzeria, but is simply so Ax-Crazy that he falls for the ruse anyway.
• Sssssnake Talk: He drags out his s's.
• Stealth Expert: As with his previous appearance, though there are no cameras for him to hide from this time. This is part of his mechanic in the Ultimate Custom Night; he is undetectable until the vent rattles and the lights flash, at which point you have a fraction of a second to stop him. Otherwise, he'll get you.
• Suddenly Voiced: He can speak now, and is voiced by William Afton's voice actor from Sister Location, PJ Heywood.
• You Don't Look Like You: His head doesn't look even remotely similar to his previous one. It's implied that he attempted to repair himself either after suffering damage from the Fazbear's Fright firenote even though the secret ending revealing he survived back in Sister Location used his design from 3, relatively unmarked from the flames or due to degrading over time. He's more than happy to let us know that it's still him, though.

    Glitchtrap 

"I always come back. Let me out."

"It wants to escape. To escape through someone. Someone plugged into this game. That's you now."

— Tape Girl

• Becoming the Mask: The mascot suit clearly appears to be rubbing off William Afton, as the guy waves and dances around cheerfully as if he became the suit's Spring Bonnie persona.
• Black Speech: His dialogue is a garbled mess, similar to the final phone call from the original game. Speeding it up reveals he's saying "Hello. Can you hear me?" using Tape Girl's audio.
• Brain Uploading: How he ended up in the game. Fazbear Entertainment provided the developers with salvaged circuit boards implied to have come from the animatronics and instructed them to scan the data contained within into the game. Somehow, that data included William Afton's soul, likely taken from Scraptrap's charred remains.
• Call-Back: The way Spring Bonnie beckons you from behind the curtains, which upon following him, you suddenly end up taking the place of Freddy Fazbear in the main hub is a clear reference to William Afton's modus operandi of luring children in while dressing up as the character, brutally murdering them, then stuffing their corpses in animatronic costume suits. Then again, all those other times you followed him in the previous games never ended well for you, did they? And given that they are the same person, why would he choose to give up a method that worked all the other times?
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: Like Scraptrap, he's an instance of Afton turned into an animatronic. But while Scraptrap was Obviously Evil to the extreme (being a human corpse welded to the inside of a Killer Robot) and sadistic to its own detriment, Glitchtrap is far more superficially welcoming and is much better at finding ways to avoid unwanted attention.
• Demonic Head Shake: A half-formed Glitchtrap will eventually do this as he gradually gets closer to you in the main hub.
• Digital Abomination: Oh boy, how is he not? While many of the animatronics are ghosts within the machines, he is a ghost in an entire computer network! For starters, he is somehow able to manifest in the game, even though it is completely impossible for such a thing to happen. But unlike every other animatronic in Help Wanted, including his physical counterpart, he never directly attacks the player, not once. But when he does, he doesn't do so in a startling jumpscare, oh no; he slowly reaches out to you and traps you in a digital prison of his own making. And he doesn't appear instantly, but rather he slowly materializes as a dark green silhouette with glowing eyes that gets closer, and closer until he is literally mere inches from your face. And that rabbit suit he is in isn't even implied to be his true form. His true form as implied by the Princess Quest games is a vast dark glitching mass with glowing purple eyes and teeth, rabbit ears, and is covered in screaming faces.
• Evil Sounds Deep: The demonic noises you sometimes hear in the pizzeria menu are actually his voice; if you speed it up, he's saying "Hello? Can you hear me?" He's clearly trying to see if the player can understand him.
• Fully-Embraced Fiend: Whereas his previous animatronic physical forms were a strict case of Body Horror as his existence was perpetual agony, William has now effectively become part of Spring Bonnie, embracing his new identity with glee complete with a Slasher Smile.
• Game of Chicken: In order to defeat him, you need to let him try to possess you, flip a switch while he's doing so; and, just before he seals the deal, hit a button on the back of your monitor once you've started switching bodies with him to hard-reset the game.
• Graceful Loser: Sealing him in the game seemingly for good doesn't seem to provoke any signs of a Villainous Breakdown from him in the slightest. When he peeks from behind the metal door's hatch to look at you, he simply, calmly shushes you before retreating into the shadows behind him, as if he knows full well you can never warn anyone about him without Fazbear Entertainment retaliating against you. He can and eventually will find another way out, and he's more than glad to remind you of that. It's implied in later games is that because we never even trapped him in the game at all - In reality, he is free to haunt Vanessa's game, implying he's entered her head. Or at the very least partially, given how we need the plushie to talk to him.
• Grand Theft Me: His ultimate goal is to possess the unlucky beta tester that finds him, escaping the game and using their body to pick up where he left of.
• Hair-Raising Hare: So hair-raising with his lifeless eyes, deranged grin, and unnaturally-fluid movement in contrast to the animatronics, as well as the small fact that he's William Afton beneath the disguise, that he's often called one of, if not the scariest-looking characters in the whole franchise.
• Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: This incarnation of Bonnie wears a vest along with his usual bowtie, unlike the other accessory-wearing counterparts.
• Jump Scare: Averted. Despite his creepy demeanor, he surprisingly doesn't jumpscare you. Mainly because he has more sinister motives for you, instead.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: It's not entirely certain if Glitchtrap is planning to brainwash the beta tester or trying to possess them.
• No Name Given: Never given a specific name beyond variations of "the Anomaly / corrupted data" in-game, but his model is called "Spring Bonnie Man" in the game's files.
  
  Word of God has called him Glitchtrap on social media, and everybody decided to just go with that name from now on.
• Non-Standard Character Design: Glitchtrap's look is a notable departure from Scott Cawthon's typical Chipper-esque design style used for most animatronics. He isn't even one; just an ordinary bunny costume with obvious stitching, a more mask-like face, and smooth, human-like movements to really highlight the fact that he's being worn as a suit by Afton. This marks the first time a human character — or at least something close to it — makes a full physical appearance in the games outside of Retraux minigames, instead of only being present as a disembodied voice, a vague silhouette, or a mummified corpse.
• Purple Is Powerful: Has purple eyes, a purple vest, and a purple bowtie.
• Unseen No More: Outside of his adventure counterpart, 8-bit cutscenes, and a reflection on the screen of a mini-game in Pizzeria Simulator, this is the first time the original, pre-Springtrap Spring Bonnie has physically appeared. Or at least a version of him, as discussed below.
• Sealed Evil in a Six Pack: In order to save the next dev team from him, a team member on the original staff managed to break his code up and scatter it across the game. Then she sealed those pieces of code in audio files (represented by tapes) that she recorded, to let those who find them know why he's there and how to defeat him for real. However, it's implied in the true ending that - instead of permanently deleting him - it's only sealed him in another can for the time being.
• Slasher Smile: Unlike his Springtrap or Scraptrap forms, Glitchtrap doesn't even need to be dilapidated to have an utterly demented-looking grin.
• Spanner in the Works: In all honesty, seeing how he wasn't intended to be in the virtual experience at all, Glitchtrap will probably destroy what remains Fazbear Entertainment's reputation before it can even be rebuilt.
• Tom the Dark Lord: It's implied he's using the alias "Brad" in Special Delivery.
• Virtual Ghost: Glitchtrap is the soul of William Afton in his Spring Bonnie suit. Glitchtrap's capabilities aren't specified; as it could be trying to brainwash the beta tester or if it is actually William Afton trying to escape by possessing a beta tester.
• Xanatos Gambit: In all the endings, he wins to at least some extent. In the bad endings, he successfully possesses your body, using it to escape back into the real world and pick up where he left off, leaving your soul trapped forever inside a Freddy suit within the game's code. In the good ending, he's stopped for the time being, quarantined by a hard reset. Even then, he simply reminds you that he's still alive, eventually will get out some other way, and that you can't warn anyone about him because of the massive cover-up by Fazbear Entertainment. With that, he triumphantly vanishes into the darkness, none the-worse-for-wear. And then it's revealed it was never a good ending in the first place, and he is somehow influencing the Player Character into following his footsteps.
• You Don't Look Like You: There are massive differences between Spring Bonnie's appearance here and what little we'd seen of him beforehand. Speculation has ranged from it being a simple retcon, one of the "replacement suits" mentioned in 3, the original Spring Bonnie suit from Fredbear's Family Diner, an example of what the animatronics would look like in "real life," or that its not based on any actual version of Spring Bonnie but how William Afton imagines himself while wearing the suit.

    Burntrap 

"What is that thing?!"

"He is trying to take control of me... I do not think I can fight it for long."

— Glamrock Freddy

• Ambiguous Situation:
  • Following the "Is Glitchtrap the true William or a copy" debate: Is this the true William we're talking about, who has never died in the fire? Or did Glitchtrap just find a way to get back inside his body?
  • What's more, did Burntrap survive the events of Pizzeria Simulator and was biding his time until now? Or was Vanny actively attempting to repair him so Glitchtrap could return to his old body?
  • How does this guy even exist in the first place!?
• Art Evolution: Afton's skull now looks more realistic, as opposed to how it used to look more cartoonish as Springtrap and Scraptrap. After all, Scott worked alone and didn't have much experience with modeling realistic humans while Security Breach had an entire dev team behind it, so improvements are to be expected.
• Black Eyes of Evil: William often had very creepy but human-like eyes while he was Springtrap and Scraptrap. But here, they are completely blacked out, and he also glowing purple pupils to add to the creep factor.
• Body Horror: The most extensive so far, even worse than Scraptrap. Burntrap has almost all of his outer body scorched away, with what remains clinging to his endoskeleton alongside his charred flesh. The lower half of his animatronic head has been broken off as well, revealing the teeth of William's skull inside.
• Came Back Strong: While he doesn't get the chance to fully revitalize himself, Burntrap immediately displays a frightful ability he never had before: the ability to remotely control multiple animatronics at once, capable of potentially puppeteering all four of the Glamrocks at the same time if he seizes control of Freddy.
• Color Motif: As usual with Afton, it's purple. Just to drive home that it's really him, he emerges from his recharge station in purple smoke, his eyes are purple, and Freddy's vision is tinted purple when he's first hacked.
• Composite Character: While his design is largely based on Springtrap, some elements of Scraptrap are still present. Most noticeably, his left foot is still covered by the rabbit foot Scraptrap had.
• Demonic Possession:
  • He has gained the ability to hijack animatronics remotely, controlling all three of the Shattered Glamrocks as well as trying to seize hold of Freddy by clutching the screen displaying him. Glamrock Freddy will attempt to fight it off, so whatever you do, don't try to hide in him while he's twitching.
  • Given his new nature as a Ghost in the Machine, coupled with the new instance of Glowing Eyes of Doom and his ability to remotely control animatronics, on top of his digitized consciousness within his circuitboard being known how he returned in Help Wanted, it's likely he's doing this to his own body as Glitchtrap this go around.
• Duel Boss: Rather than confront you directly, you and Burntrap see each other through cameras, and it is effectively a simplified version of the classic FNAF gameplay, but with two "security guards" trying to take each other down. Burntrap will attempt to take control of Glamrock Freddy and send the other Glamrock animatronics after Gregory, while Gregory uses the doors, the air vent hatch and hiding to stay alive, while attacking back by setting Burntrap on fire when he tries to control Freddy. The Blob is also a threat, but it's more of an obstacle that must be avoided than an ally to either of them.
• Evil Counterpart: To Gregory and even his own son, Michael. His main forms of attack involve using his powers to mirror functions of a night guard's post, using a camera to keep tabs on Gregory's position, and messing with different electronics to try and fend the kid off before he gets roasted alive again.
• Exit, Pursued by a Bear: After hitting Burntrap with fire enough times, the whole place starts burning down. The massive amalgam of animatronics known as "The Blob" (which, in a literal example, has Funtime Freddy's face) then catches Burntrap before he can escape despite also being hostile to Gregory in both the boss battle and the path leading to it. He then is taken away to God knows where, his fate remaining unknown.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Unlike all previous iterations which showed his own glazed, dead eyes in the suit, this iteration of Afton shows brightly-burning purple pinpricks amidst pitch voids, suggesting he's reuploaded back into his animatronic-encased corpse as opposed to being actually among the living dead any longer.
• Last of His Kind: He is the last remaining animatronic of the olden days, after Pizzeria Simulator saw to it that all the other remnants were purged in fire and the Blob has assimilated any remaining shells or components.
• Scary Skeleton: Large sections of the now heavily-deteriorated Spring Bonnie suit that Afton died in have been destroyed, revealing the charred, rotting cadaver and endoskeleton beneath. Most-prominently, the bottom half of Afton's skull, parts of his spinal column, and one of his fingers are still visible and long-since rotted down to the bones.
• Sinister Surveillance: Gregory and Burntrap watch each other over the cameras during their encounter. While Burntrap sics a trio of animatronics on Gregory, the boy can press buttons that set him on fire.
• Technopath: His time as a Ghost in the Machine has given him the ability to remotely operate animatronics beyond his own suit, and it's strong enough to risk overwhelming Freddy if he's not interrupted.
• True Final Boss: He can only be fought once decommission all three of the main hostile glamrocks and fully upgrade Freddy. Defeating him nets you what is considered the canon ending.
• Uncertain Doom: It's unknown if the Blob killed him or spared him.
• Unexplained Recovery: It was never stated how he got his arm back. Given that he has parts of a Glamrock endoskeleton in his body, it's possible he had repaired himself with the help of Vanny.
• The Unfought: He only appears to sic the other animatronics on you and attempt to control Freddy, but never directly attacks you himself: You can even leave your office to find Burntrap by walking through the corridors, and he will do nothing even when you're right next to him. Though you can attack him by literally torching him when he tries to control Freddy.
• You Don't Look Like You: Despite being burned alive as Scraptrap in the sixth game, he now looks like how he did in the third game: his jaw shape is remarkably different, there's no revealed bones of his skeletal sctruture, and he seems to have regained his left arm at some point.
• Weak to Fire: Though he keeps coming back from being burned at least twice, he still has a weakness to extreme heat. Roasting him does damage as well as interrupting his attempts to control Glamrock Freddy.

Appearances in other media

    Dave Miller 

"The Devil has knocked on my door before, and I turned him away."

Click here to see Springtrap 

Click here to see him in The Fourth Closet 

"Everyone is afraid to die. And you should be more afraid than anyone else, because if there's a Hell, there's a hole at the bottom of it reserved for you."

— Jessica

• Abusive Parents: Unlike his game counterpart (as far as we know, at least), he is abusive towards his daughter Elizabeth, physically abusing her when she tries to show him a drawing she made.
• Adaptational Jerkass:
  • In the games, the (possible) genuine love he had for his daughter, Elizabeth, was his only redeeming quality, as he warned her never to approach Baby (who he knew would kill her) and he sent Micheal to free her after her death (though it's possible he just wanted her alive for his own pragmatic reasons). In the novels, he is outright abusive towards her, hitting her in the face when she tries to show him her graded work from school.
  • On a much smaller scale, the game Afton only killed kids while in the novels, Afton kills both kids and adults (such as the security guard).
• Big Bad: A role he naturally reprises from the games.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Co-founder of two pizzerias, and a serial killer, primarily of children.
• Covered in Scars: His torso is described as "covered in scratches", due to surviving a springlock failure in the past.
• Evil Cripple: In The Fourth Closet, William is heavily injured after getting out of the Spring Bonnie suit and is in a wheelchair.
• Faking the Dead: In The Twisted Ones, William is revealed to have survived the springlock accident from the end of the first book.
• Fat Bastard: He was a hefty lad hiding sadism back during the murders. Not so much when he resurfaces ten years later...
• Freudian Excuse: While we still don't go too much into his personal life, it doesn't appear to be too pleasant. It's implied that he feels empty and bitter, and that he uses the murders to relieve himself of that.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Similarly to the games, he is eventually killed when the Springtrap suit crushes him to death, his preferred method of murder. Unlike the games, however, it wasn't a result of shoving himself into it. Charlotte was the one that undoes the suit with him inside.
• Informed Attribute: We learn that Afton managed the business side of the pizzerias, but we never see him doing any business work nor does he display any skills related to it. The games don't make mention of this and just portray his technical skills.
• Killed Off for Real: He gets thrown into a furnace by the end of The Fourth Closet.
• Lean and Mean: When he resurfaces ten years later. See the picture of him.
• No Name Given: Averted; he's given two. There's William Afton, which is a real name, and Dave Miller, which is most assuredly a fake name for his guard disguise.
• One-Winged Angel: He considers becoming Springtrap to be this.
• That Man Is Dead: He rejects his Dave Miller persona and his real name after becoming Springtrap. And then rejects his Springtrap persona after leaving the suit.

    Adventure Springtrap 

"Cuter in person; still a killer."

• Fun Size: Just look at him!
• Lighter and Softer: Lampshaded in the loading screen. Springtrap is much nicer-looking than Springtrap in the mainline games. Mostly because the Purple Man's body is no longer inside him.
• My Future Self and Me: Alongside the game are also both of Springtrap's past selves; The Spring Bonnie suit that killed Afton, and Afton himself.
• Spikes of Doom: Springtrap's signature skill is Springlocks, which crush an enemy inside the infamously unstable Spring Bonnie hybrid suit.

    Purpleguy 

"I take 10 seconds to draw!"

"Don't confuse me with the actual Purple Guy. I'm just a game sprite."

— Purpleguy

• Gotta Catch Them All: He's unlocked by collecting all the cupcakes in the FNaF 57: Freddy in Space minigame.
• Mean Character, Nice Actor: He's not actually the Purple Guy himself, but just a game sprite that represents him. He's also much friendlier than the real deal, willingly lending his aid to the player when his code is retrieved from FNaF 57: Freddy in Space minigame and even sharing a secret with them regarding another way to access the Halloween Update Backstage.
• One-Hit Kill: His Slasher has a 10% chance to inflict 99999 points of damage. Fitting, since he's (a digital graphic of) a serial killer.
• Stylistic Suck: Lampshaded in his dialogue screen. Even the Crying Child got a 3D model, while he remains a sprite.

    The Man in Room 1280 

"It felt like [Jake] was being mauled and pummeled by a force filled with a never-ending need to inflict pain."

— Narrator

• Adaptational Wimp: He was described as weak during Epilogue 7. Justified, seeing the state he was in.
• Big Bad Wannabe: William was pretending to be stronger than he really was. In reality, his soul was barely clinging onto reality while something far worse, later revealed to be Eleanor, has been helping him.
• Body Horror: When he becomes the Amalgamation. All of the parts it's made out of are not where they should be.
• Canon Character All Along: After tons of implications, Epilogue 6 confirms that he's William. However, whether or not he's the game version of William or a different version is up in the air.
• Dark Lord on Life Support: The years have not been kind to William. This continuity's equalivent of the Pizzeria Simulator fire has left him little more than a burned corpse, kept alive only by Andrew's direct intervention; furthermore, the years of psychically battling Andrew have led to his spirit being severely weakened. Epilogue 7 reveals that the only reason he was able to assemble the Amalgamation was because Eleanor was helping him to do so.
• Disc-One Final Boss: There are eleven books, which equals eleven epilogues. Afton is killed in the seventh one.
• Evil All Along: It's heavily implied that the nurses were actually exactly right about the man: he is indeed pure evil... but the spirit possessing him- while certainly vengeful- isn't actually the source of that evil. Rather, the evil in question comes from the man himself, who has spent years waiting in agony for the chance to escape Andrew's torment. Confirmed in Epilogue 6.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The one who murdered Andrew, the source of all intentions. Except there's a Greatest Scope Villain even worse than Afton: Eleanor.
• Killed Off for Real:
  
  The Puppet seemingly kills him and destroys the amalgamation in Epilogue 7.
• Mechanical Abomination: It's hard to find a more fitting term to describe a fifteen-foot-tall amalgamation of various Fazbear Entertainment products, each part being used in the wrong place, powered by the soul of a long-dead Serial Killer and evil incarnate.
• Mind Hive: The Amalgamation consists of William Afton and Eleanor.
• My Death Is Just the Beginning: After dying, he came back, possessed the Stitchwraith, presumably killed Andrew and/or Jake, created his Amalgamation and then possessed it. Except he died again.
• One-Winged Angel: The Amalgamation is the single strongest and biggest form William had in the entire franchise.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Lasts one main story and two epilogues before the Puppet kills him, this time for good.

"I am still here."