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Before ‘Talking in Your Sleep,’ Five Nights at Freddy’s had a completely different theme song

Blumhouse wasn’t sure if they could get the rights to ‘Talking in Your Sleep’ for the FNAF film, so they used ‘We Bult This City’ as backup

Chica in FNAF movie
Image credit: Universal Pictures

Ever since the 2023 Five Nights at Freddy’s film, the Romantics song ‘Talking in Your Sleep’ has taken on a new meaning. The 1983 rock song is now associated with killer animatronics, thanks to its inclusion in the film. The song was even used at Universal Studios’ walkthrough Five Nights at Freddy’s Halloween Horror Nights experience. Thanks to these killer animatronics, ‘Talking in Your Sleep’ has been reinvented as a horror track, and it’s become the unofficial theme song for the FNAF franchise.

However, the film almost used another song instead. In fact, the animatronic performers rehearsed using a different track.

“The funny thing is, we rehearsed for four weeks, and then we shot for four weeks. The animatronics anyway,” Freddy performer Kevin Foster says during a FNAF spotlight panel at Animate x Nightmare Weekend Richmond 2025. “The whole rehearsal period we were listening to ‘We Built This City.’ That was the temp song because they had not secured whatever song they were looking for at the time.”

In fact, the dance movements the performers were doing were originally created with the Starship song ‘We Built This City’ in mind. When the song was switched, the performers didn’t bother to change their dance.

“We went to set the first day and the song was totally different. But then we got used to that one. For us, we’re so limited [with movements and dancing], it’s like, I’m going to do what I do,” Foster says.

“The day we wrapped on the movie, it was so weird because I got in my car and I turned on the radio, and [‘Talking in Your Sleep’] was playing,” Chica performer Jess Weiss says.

That just goes to show you that it was destiny all along.


Joshua Lapin-Bertone

Joshua Lapin-Bertone: Joshua is a pop culture writer specializing in comic book media. His work has appeared on the official DC Comics website, the DC Universe subscription service, HBO Max promotional videos, the Batman Universe fansite, and more. In between traveling around the country to cover various comic conventions, Joshua resides in Florida where he binges superhero television and reads obscure comics from yesteryear.

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