Five Nights at Freddy’s: Vanessa & William Afton relationship explained

❘ Published: 2023-11-15T21:06:00

Elizabeth Lail as Vanessa in Five Nights at Freddy's

Universal Pictures

As fans watch Five Nights at Freddy’s, some wondered what Vanessa’s relationship to William Afton was and how complicated it became. Here’s what you need to know.

Five Nights at Freddy’s movie focuses on a closed-up kid’s entertainment restaurant that was popular in the 80s. A down-on-his-luck Mike (Josh Hutcherson) becomes the new security guard of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. He’s warned not to let anyone in but is unaware of the true horror behind the animatronics.

Taking details from the original game, the movie includes central characters like William Afton. He’s originally the game’s main antagonist and creator of the animatronics. Fans know a lot about the character, but for the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie, a few changes were made to create a more complex horror story.

Not to mention, the movie combined two game characters to create Vanessa Afton. Let’s dive into unraveling the movie’s storyline. Warning: Spoilers ahead!

Mike learns the truth about who Vanessa is in Five Nights at Freddy’s

After starting work at Freddy’s, Mike meets Vanessa, a local cop who often visits while on her route. He soon learns that she knew all along about the haunted animatronics, and revealed she’s William Afton’s daughter.

Vanessa seems like a kind local cop, but she knows too much about Freddy’s than simply having gone there a lot as a kid. When Mike takes his little sister to work one night, she becomes friends with the animatronics and Vanessa comes clean about having known about them. But Mike is suspicious as she knows where a lot of things are, backrooms, and more. When Mike’s little sister Abby (Piper Rubio) is in danger of becoming one of the animatronics, Vanessa has no choice but to tell him the truth.

The reason she refuses to go with him, and knows so much, is because the creator of the animatronics is her father. Vanessa Afton is William Afton’s daughter in Five Nights at Freddy’s. She practically grew up at Freddy’s and knew all about her father’s serial killer ways and having kidnapped the children haunting the animatronics. She shows Mike a photo of her and her father dressed in the yellow bunny suit outside of Freddy’s.

Who is William Afton in Five Nights at Freddy’s? It’s none other than Steve Raglan (Matthew Lillard), the career counselor who gave Mike the security job. As Vanessa explained, the series of child disappearances at Freddy’s is what shut down the place. In return, it would make sense that William would change his name to avoid future problems. Knowing who and what her father was, she often tried to warn the people he hired about Freddy’s, the same way she did to Mike.

Five Nights at Freddy’s makes a few changes from the games

For Vanessa and William Afton, the movie combines two characters from the original games, Elizabeth Afton and Vanessa, the security guard.

Fans of the original games would clearly notice the direction the movie had to go in to create a more sustainable onscreen horror story. William Afton isn’t seen in the games often, much less in human form. In the minigames, he’s a purple color figure – referred to as “Purple Guy” in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 – with a creepy smile. He is at, one point, depicted as tall and lanky and wearing a security guard type of outfit.

The Five Nights at Freddy’s movie took some creative control, having William as a somewhat creepy career counselor who changed his name after the missing children cases. For Vanessa, fans would realize she could be a mix of the video game versions of Elizabeth and Vanessa.

William also has a daughter in the games but appears as a child with red hair wearing a pink shirt and blue skirt. The games portray her as a seemingly innocent child with a connection to the animatronics, especially Circus Baby, which she later possesses. The movie version of Afton’s daughter is not a little girl and somewhat resembles Five Nights at Freddy’s game character Vanessa A. or Vanny.

Vanessa is one of the few human characters in the games with red hair and green eyes. She also happens to be a security guard at Freddy’s. The movie might have made a small nod to the original character by having Vanessa be a police officer. But in the game, Vanessa turns into Vanny, one of William’s inspired serial killers.

There’s already an existing popular theory that Vanessa in the game could possibly be William’s other daughter. It’s based on her last name starting with A and her resemblance to Elizabeth. But will Elizabeth appear on the big screen? Only time will tell.

In an interview with Dexerto, director Emma Tammi explained the connection between Vanessa and William in the movie was creator Scott Cawthorne’s key guidline. “In the original script that I was then working on a re-write of, that was already there and part of the fabric. We knew that that was going to be the story that we were telling. So that was really coming from Scott,” she said.

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