Popverse's top stories

• Baldur's Gate 4? Hasbro is confident, even after the departure of Baldur's Gate 3's Larian Studios
• Simon Kinberg on writing X-Men movies, producing Glenn Powell's The Running Man remake, and co-creating Star Wars Rebels [Popversations]
• DC's new Batman writer Matt Fraction declares: "Every Bat-Kid is looking for Bat-Approval from Bat-Dad, who doesn't know what parental approval looks like"

When Daniel was nine years old, a trip to Universal Studios was the most exciting thing in the world.

Today Daniel is 19, and a trip to Universal Studios is once again the most exciting thing in the world. However, this time the excitement has nothing to do with the Minions, Simpsons, or Transformers. It’s all about Five Nights at Freddy’s, which was Daniel’s favorite video game during his formative years.

Halloween Horror Nights is a seasonal event that Universal holds in their Orlando, Singapore, Hollywood and Japan theme parks. The nighttime event features walkthrough haunted houses, scarezones, scare actors, specialty food, and other bits of spooky fun. This year’s event has a Five Nights at Freddy’s haunted house, with real animatronics.

I wanted to check it out and take someone who would appreciate it. I would probably classify myself as a casual FNAF fan. I played the early games a few times over the years, and I saw the movie in theaters. I’m familiar with the characters and have a passing knowledge of the lore.

Daniel is a superfan. When he was nine, he would call me to update me about how each of his shifts as a security guard at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza had gone. Not realizing he was talking about a video game, these phone calls were confusing, but his nine-year-old enthusiasm was infectious.  He watched all the YouTube tributes, went down the theory rabbit hole, and devoured each new game.

At age nineteen, FNAF may not be the most important part of his life anymore, but he’s still a big fan who is excited about the franchise. I figured he would catch stuff in the FNAF Halloween Horror Nights house that I might miss and have a deeper appreciation for the experience.

I wasn’t wrong.

Walking through the Five Nights at Freddy’s house with a superfan

Let me preface this by once again stating that I’m a casual Five Nights at Freddy’s fan and Daniel is a superfan. I have no frame of reference for how deep some of the deep cuts are, and how obscure some of the Easter eggs might be. However, I can make some guesses based on how big his reactions were, and boy, some of them were huge.

From the moment we entered the first room, Daniel lost his mind. Seeing Bonnie, Freddy, and Chica on stage was a religious experience for him (his words, not mine). He wanted to sit down and watch their entire performance, but there were people behind us, so we had to keep moving.

At one point you walk past a security guard station, and that was another moment that Daniel had an emotional reaction to. He explained to me that it wasn’t quite like the station in the first game (the doors aren’t in the right place), but seeing the iconic location recreated in real life had him geeking out. “This is where it all began. This is where I spent my childhood,” he said. I wondered if this is what I looked like when Captain America wielded Thor’s hammer in Avengers: Endgame.

According to Daniel, some of the deepest cuts can be found in the training video, which played in the security office and again as we left the house. He caught a quick reference to Fredbear’s Family Diner, which he tells me was a reference to the original dining chain that later became Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. Daniel also caught some musical cues in the video that he said were important.

Beyond that, he noted a clock (which I missed) that was set to 5:50am. He explained to me that’s one of the scariest parts of the game, because it’s ten minutes before 6:00am when your “night” ends, and the animatronics are more dangerous during this period. Plus, your nerves as a player are higher.

Daniel also noted yellow lighting hitting Freddy during certain parts of the house, which he thinks might be an allusion to Golden Freddy, another animatronic. He also pointed out children’s drawings of Yellow Rabbit on the wall.

To be fair, it was dark, and we had to move quickly, so it was hard to catch everything. That’s one of the reasons Daniel had us go through the house multiple times. “You have comic con. This is my comic con,” he explained to me. As a FNAF superfan, he was home.

The details Universal got wrong (according to one superfan)

FNAF superfans are a lot like comic book fans, which is a frame of reference I can understand. When comic book fans like me see Marvel and DC movies, we’ll get frustrated about the little details they got wrong, even if we’re generally having a good time. This was the case with Daniel. He called the FNAF house at HHN “one of the greatest experiences of my life,” but there were some things that frustrated him.

As you walk through the house, you’re “attacked” by scare actors who are supposed to be the ghosts of the various children killed at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. This frustrated Daniel, who told me that Universal creatives seem to misunderstand the point of the kids in the FNAF franchise. As Daniel explained to me, the ghost kids aren’t the threat, the animatronics are. Yes, the animatronics also attack in the house but having the ghost children also act as villains felt wrong to him.

To be clear, the ghosts possess the animatronics, and they attack you that way, but they’re not supposed to go after you as spirits themselves.

“The spirits are rarely seen in the games themselves, so using them as a threat feels like a cheap way to utilize the human actors. At least put them in oversized costumes or something. This isn’t what the lore is supposed to be,” Daniel said.

He also thought the house took too many cues from the 2023 film and its storyline, rather than using the treasure trove found in the games themselves. Daniel said that while these two factors did bother him, overall, his entire experience was a net positive.

“If we could’ve gone through the house 10 times, I would’ve done it,” Daniel said. “I question some of the choices they made, but otherwise this was a dream come true. This is the stuff I used to dream about when I was in elementary school. Walking through the locations that shaped my childhood was an unforgettable experience, and it shook me to my core.”

Want to know what's coming up next in pop culture? Check out Popverse's guides to:

• Upcoming movies
• Upcoming TV shows
• Upcoming comics
• Upcoming games
• Upcoming fiction books
• Upcoming comic conventions