Players can get some of the earliest glimpses into the pizzeria’s history through the minigames in each of the main titles. Before being called Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, the first restaurant was called Fredbear’s Family Diner. Two men opened the original restaurant and its several rebrandings as co-owners: William Afton and Henry Emily.

Their restaurant’s concept was to create a special place for children’s birthday parties. While mostly serving pizza and cake, the thing that made this restaurant chain special was their “animatronic” wait staff and entertainment. Originally, they were unable to create animatronics. So, instead, they crafted two spring-lock suits that they or their staff could wear to appear as animatronics or place on a stage to perform. Their names were Springbonnie and Fredbear. The concept for the business did so well that they ended up creating a second location: Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza.

Within this new location, four new animatronics were created and adored. They were Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy. William Afton would use his success and the spring-lock suits to act on his cruel and abusive thoughts toward the children who flocked to his restaurant, specifically the five children at the birthday party that he murdered after luring them into the backrooms with the spring-lock Bonnie suit.

To cover up his sick actions, he made all of the suits fully automated but still hollow enough for children to fit inside. Once they were all automated, he placed the children’s bodies within them to discard the evidence—placing the children’s souls within each of the animatronics. With no bodies or evidence, no charges could be pressed against William Afton. However, the missing children’s case eventually caused the second location to close.

After the closing of the second establishment and Afton’s growing interest in capturing children, William created another sister location, based on his new animatronic, Circus Baby. This location, Circus Baby’s Pizza World, was only owned by Afton but served the same basic concept. Circus Baby was made specifically to draw children to her by acting child-like. She could blow up helium balloons, dispense ice cream, and use her claw to grab children and stuff them inside of her.

Circus Baby was specifically designed for trapping and killing children when she was alone with them in a one-on-one situation. Despite being a despicable man, Afton had a family—two sons and a daughter. He actively kept his children away from animatronics, such as Circus Baby, to keep them safe. However, Circus Baby’s design was too entrancing to his youngest, Elizabeth, and she was consumed by the animatronic. Circus Baby became aware of the soul of Elizabeth inside her. After losing his daughter to his creation, he shut down the sister location immediately.

As players likely noticed, the fourth main title within the series is quite different from previous versions of the game. Instead of playing as a new hire within the facility to work nights and watch after the animatronics, players are a child who is haunted at night by the animatronics. This child is Evan Afton, the youngest son of William Afton.

After losing his only daughter to Circus Baby, William chose to scare his youngest son away from the animatronics using a frequency that would cause his son to hallucinate. During these hallucinations, Evan would believe that the animatronics from the restaurant were within his home and trying to reach his room and eat him.

On top of this, William encouraged his older teenage son, Michael, to bully Evan and regularly scare him with a Foxy mask. However, Michael purely chose to bully Evan out of his malicious intent and ended up bullying Evan inside the diner for his birthday party. He gets his friends to help him do this and pushes Evan into the mouth of an on-stage animatronic to truly scare him. Due to the design of the spring-lock animatronic, Evan’s tears caused the suit to fail and crush him inside the mouth.

The suit had crushed Evan’s head, and after heading to the hospital, he was put into a coma to be stabilized. This would not last, however, and Evan ended up dying in his coma. Despite all the work that William had done to keep Evan from being killed by any of his animatronics, he failed to reign in Michael and inadvertently caused his eventual death. After losing a second child to the animatronics, the original diner closed, and William descended into madness.

William leaves Fazbear Entertainment, and Henry is left to solve all the problems in his stead. As he isn’t the inventor of the animatronics and knows how many issues there are with the spring-lock suits, there are a lot of problems for him to sort out. He hires a full team to work out all of the previous issues and create a new name within Fazbear Entertainment.

This included stocking the old animatronics in a backroom and creating the new and improved “toy” versions of Freddy, Chica, Bonnie, and Foxy. They also added a couple of new animatronics into the mix, like Balloon Boy. As an extra added security feature, Henry gave the animatronics facial recognition systems, specifically meant to spot and remove William if he ever returned. Later, he created the Puppet animatronic to protect his daughter, Charlie, as he was nervous about bringing her to the new establishment, Junior Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria.

After the death of Evan, everything went downhill for William. His wife became unstable and left, while he berated and blamed Michael for Evan’s death. William went back to the closed original Fazbear’s and destroyed the spring-lock suit that had crushed Evan before placing Evan’s body inside the suit to try and put him back together. Upon hearing about the grand opening of a new Fazbear’s, he immediately drove there.

Security stopped him from entering, and he was met by Henry, who heatedly asked him to leave and reminded him that it was his fault that all the children died in the previous restaurant. Angered by this, Afton left, making plans to get his revenge on the co-owner of Fazbear Entertainment. He chooses to go after Henry’s daughter, Charlie.

Afton kept the Puppet animatronic from being able to watch out for Charlie by locking his container. Because it was stuck closed, Charlie ended up being stuck just outside the restaurant long enough for William to take his revenge. The Puppet animatronic was eventually able to break free of his box to try to rescue Charlie, but it was too late, and as the rain was heavy that night, it broke down beside her in the alleyway.

With the loss of Charlie, the Puppet began giving life to the children who were murdered within the pizzeria. However, these reanimated versions didn’t appear in the old animatronics. Instead, they were hosted within the new “toy” versions.

Customers didn’t notice, as the reanimated versions still acted the way they were supposed to during their working hours. The children within the animatronics simply gained a new motive: to find their killer. This is what causes their odd behavior at night, as they are trying to reach the security office to make sure Afton isn’t in the building.

However, the unruly kids that came to play at Fazbear’s repeatedly ripped Mangle apart. After one too many times, Mangle bit the child who was tearing it apart, and the child lost part of their frontal lobe. This caused the company to scrap all of the animatronics, except for the Puppet, to ensure the safety of all children.

After arguing with and murdering his wife, William begins crafting three new animatronics: Playtime Freddy, Playtime Foxy, and Ballora. Ballora is the only completely new design, a ballerina animatronic containing his wife’s body. Together with the original Circus Baby, he had a full staff to create a new location; Circus Baby’s Entertainment & Rentals.

Due to both creators of the