Franchise: Five Nights at Freddy's

"Five Nights at Freddy's: Survival Crew" is an upcoming Roblox game made in direct collaboration with Scott Cawthon, himself a fan of Roblox and playing it regularly with his children. However, due to miscommunication between Scott and the game's developer, Metaverse Team Frights, regarding one of the game's skins, a beta version of the game was accidentally released on December 20, 2023. The game was set to private two hours afterwards.

Throughout October 2023, children's entertainment restaurant Chuck E. Cheese held a promotion titled "Five Nights of Fun", coinciding with the release of a movie based on Five Nights at Freddy's, a horror game franchise inspired by Chuck E. Cheese and littered with references to the company's history. The marketing for Five Nights of Fun directly imitates the poster for the Five Nights at Freddy's movie and refers to the purple-furred character Mr. Munch as a "purple guy", referencing the overarching villain of the game series.

Despite the obvious parody, an alleged internal document was posted online at that time by a former employee, who had left Chuck E. Cheese days prior to the promotion coming under scrutiny, informing employees that they should feign ignorance of Five Nights at Freddy's during the promotion if asked by children or their parents. One example of terminology provided is:

Ever since the first game in 2014, fans have debated about the color of Bonnie the Rabbit and Withered Bonnie, as they looked blue in some shots and purple in others. In some games, they were blue, others purple, and sometimes even one of them was blue and the other purple. The merchandise for the rabbits also strengthened the belief in him being purple, with very few pieces of merch being blue. 9 years later, the November 2023 issue of SFX magazine released with a segment about Blumhouse's "Five Nights at Freddy's" film with an interview with lead designer Robert Bennett about making the animatronics. When talking about Bonnie, he confirmed once and for all that he is blue, stating:

Although the 2023 "Five Nights at Freddy's" film is primarily a retelling of the first game, its climax incorporates a secret mini-game cutscene from Five Nights at Freddy's 3 where Spoiler:William Afton is trapped in his "Golden Bonnie" spring lock suit.

The character of Vanessa in the 2023 "Five Nights at Freddy's" film appears to be a composite character with elements of Vanessa the security guard from Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach (with both the name and occupation as an officer), and Spoiler:William Afton's daughter from the games named Elizabeth (as it is revealed in the film that Vanessa is Spoiler:William's daughter).

Throughout the 2023 "Five Nights at Freddy's" film, the character Spoiler:Steve Raglan gives Mike Schmidt advice over the phone about how to look after Freddy Fazbear's Pizza for the night shift, essentially making him the Phone Guy. It's revealed late in the film that Spoiler:Steve Raglan was an alias for the murderer William Afton. His role could be seen as a reference to early theories in the franchise's community where Phone Guy was thought to be the murderer long before Afton was given a name and was only known as the "Purple Guy".

The opening title sequence for the 2023 "Five Nights at Freddy's" film is shown in the same pixelated art style that has been used for the mini-games in the series since Five Nights at Freddy's 2, although they most closely resemble the mini-games from Five Nights at Freddy's 4.

Matthew Patrick (or "MatPat"), a YouTuber known for making a multitude of Five Nights at Freddy's analysis videos throughout the series' history for his series "Game Theory", makes a cameo as a waiter in the 2023 "Five Nights at Freddy's" film. The coffee shop that he works at is named Sparky's (a nod to Sparky the Dog, one of the series' earliest fan-made hoaxes). MatPat's character's name as seen on his name tag is Ness, which, according to series creator Scott Cawthon, is a reference to a 2016 Game Theory video where MatPat theorized that Sans from Undertale was Ness from EarthBound. MatPat's final line in his scene is "but that's just a theory", a portion of his catchphrase used in the majority of his videos.

A pinned comment left by Cawthon on a "Film Theory" video where MatPat goes into further detail on his cameo in the film claimed that the packed theater Cawthon watched the film in "ERUPTED in cheers" when MatPat appeared.

The longest worked-on project in the FNaF franchise is the 2023 movie, having been in production since the first publicly known date of April 2015, seen in an article by Polygon. Since then, the movie went through 9 scrapped scripts, a producer leaving, and several delays in production. The CEO of Blumhouse, Jason Blum, talked about his attempts to get the movie off the ground and his experience working with Scott Cawthon in an interview with IGN saying:

Emese Szigetvári, commonly known as LadyFiszi online, is an artist who used to work on the Five Nights at Freddy's series, providing art for the games and several of the books. However, she has been involved in several controversies since 2019 regarding things such as transphobic comments, writing fanfictions involving pedophilia and sexual assault, grooming allegations, creating art and being a part of groups that glorify Nazism and Fascism, and tracing allegations. Eventually, it got to the point where the official r/fivenightsatfreddys subreddit moderators decided to ban her because of these allegations, drawing even further attention to them. This ultimately led to Scott Cawthon officially firing LadyFiszi from the franchise on February 27, 2023.

The character "El Chip" is an animatronic version of one of Scott Cawthon's older characters Chipper from Chipper & Sons Lumber Co.. In an interview with YouTuber Dawko, Scott was asked "Will Chipper ever return like he said he would?" and Scott answered:

A recurring sound effect gag appearing throughout the series, by bonking Freddy's nose, it will honk.

On February 15th, 2015, Scott Cawthon, Five night's at Freddy's developer, stated on his Steam Greenlight page that he was hacked and that Five Nights at Freddy's 3 was cancelled. He said that someone had released the game for free and provided a link to the game. However, the game is a version of one of Scott's older games, 'There is No Pause Button,' with Freddy's face pasted on the protagonist while the Troll Song Plays in the background.

Scott Cawthon has stated that he got the idea for the game after releasing an unnamed game in which the player is a Beaver which was critically panned by reviewers. A recurring comments was that the beavers in the game looked like "scary animatronic animals".