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• Five Nights at Freddy's creator Scott Cawthon almost made Foxy an animatronic beaver. A previous flop made him change his mind
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Blumhouse's Five Nights at Freddy's movie almost looked very different. Creator Scott Cawthon nearly went with a completely different design for one of its central characters, originally envisioning Foxy - the pirate-themed, hook-sporting animatronic - as a buck-toothed beaver. So what made Cawthon change his mind? Well, in a strange way, it was the same thing that led Cawthon to creating the FNAF franchise in the first place.

Let us explain. Before Cawthon was known as the creator of one of the most successful horror games in history, he created a family friendly resource management game called Chipper & Sons Lumber Co., which put players in the shoes of a young beaver trying to run his family's titular business. When the game came out, it received a host of poor reviews, with one disappointed player saying that the beavers in the game looked like 'creepy animatronic animals.'

See where this is going? If not, take a look at the screenshot of the game's main chaarcter above and see if you don't notice at least a passing resemblance to one of the characters at Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria.

It was very soon after Chipper & Sons made its debut that Cawthon got to work on what would become Five Nights at Freddy's, at least partially inspired by the above criticism. As he started work on his 'creepy animatronic' game, Cawthon considered hauling over the beaver design that inspired the jab. Speaking to YouTuber Dawko in a 2018 interview, the developer said that the beaver idea came to him as he was wrestling with which animal to make the fourth character in the game, having already established Freddy (a bear), Bonnie (a rabbit), and Chica (a bird).

"The only [character] I really struggled with," said the developer, "was trying to think of the fourth character. You know, who would be on the separate little stage kind of by himself. And I'm trying to remember all the all the options that I was debating between. One of tthe contenders was a fox, obviously, which ended up winning. The other one was a wolf, and the other one was going to be... a beaver."

However, while this is certainly a story about turning failure into success, Cawthon ultimately decided that he didn't want the association with his previous, panned game.

"I decided against that," Cawthon said of the beaver design, "Because I thought that was too on-the-nose from Chipper. But yeah, if I remember correctly, I really think that a beaver character was the front-runner. Until I finally decided against him because of Chipper and then went with fox instead."

Five Nights at Freddy's 2 (sans beaver) comes to theaters December 5. Five Nights at Freddy's: Secret of the Mimic is available on PS5 and Steam now. 

You don't need to beat the game to prepare for the next one—here are all the major new and upcoming games coming our way.