Secret of the Mimic Seems Poised to Bring FNAF’s Biggest Forces Together

Five Nights at Freddy’s appears set to finally reveal the origins of the Mimic, with the developer Steel Wool’s announcement of its next mainline title, Five Nights at Freddy’s: Secret of the Mimic. The announcement marked day six of the eight-day FNAF 10th Anniversary Celebration, during which a new release or special announcement is released every day from August 1 to August 8, 2024. While many fans suspected that Steel Wool would announce a DLC for December 2023’s Help Wanted 2, the studio stunned fans with the reveal of a brand-new title. Not only is the new FNAF title set to deliver the earliest playable events in the franchise’s history, but its announcement trailer included elements referencing some of the lore’s biggest mysteries. Should these elements collide in its narrative, Secret of the Mimic seems poised to bring FNAF’s biggest forces together.

Five Nights at Freddy's most recent entries, RUIN and Help Wanted 2 introduced a host of new elements to the series’ lore. Most significantly, RUIN saw the Mimic, a terrifying animatronic from the Tales of the Pizzaplex novel series, seemingly revealed as the lead antagonist in FNAF’s modern game timeline. The Mimic’s creation was the subject of a short story in Tales’ third entry, Nexie, and its early activity was detailed across a series of epilogues that closed each title in the series. The Mimic seemingly introduced one of the oldest known elements to the game canon, with its creation occurring somewhere in the 1970s. When Help Wanted 2 was released five months later, it dropped another bombshell, an in-game reference to the mysterious Fall Fest of 1970, an event that predates everything else in FNAF’s complicated timeline.

Secret of the Mimic’s Teaser Referenced Some of FNAF’s Biggest Mysteries

Secret of the Mimic’s short reveal trailer packs a ton of punch in a rather simple package. As a film reel rolls into focus, the camera approaches a mysterious wind-up box. Suddenly, its arm starts to move, and a distorted version of My Grandfather’s Clock, the song previously played by the Puppet’s music box in FNAF 2, fills the air. It stops, but nothing pops out. Instead, the lid slowly lifts to reveal the upper face of what appears to be an animatronic clown, who lets out a haunting laugh before the film reel sizzles and ends.

In addition to an overt reference to the Puppet’s music box and the Mimic, Secret of the Mimic's clown-like animatronic brings to light a central theme that fans have long been waiting for. Carnivals, clowns, and festivals have permeated the series, since the lead-up to FNAF: Security Breach. Fazbear Frights featured epilogues in which Circus Baby was set up to become the next major villain of the series. Fury’s Rage, a spin-off released before Security Breach, included references to Baby’s Eleanor iteration. Help Wanted included a host of disturbing carnival and clown drawings from Pizzeria Sim, and Help Wanted 2 introduced Fall Fest 1970, a host of carnival-themed minigames, and new animatronics, including Mystic Hippo and Carnie. With a new clown animatronic, the Puppet’s theme, and the Mimic given association by its reveal trailer, Secret of the Mimic appears set to deliver answers to long-held questions about the series’ earliest events, and context to so much else.

Secret of the Mimic May Reveal the Origins of FNAF’s Major Forces

Secret of the Mimic brings to fruition a story that Steel Wool has long wanted to tell, one set before the FNAF series’ earliest depicted events. Given Help Wanted 2’s Fall Fest 1970 poster, fans may have first believed the game would cover that event. However, thanks to a blink-or-you’ll-miss-it frame of the trailer’s film reel, fans now know that Secret of the Mimic is likely set in 1979. While this would place the title a full nine years apart from the first-known Fall Fest, its story would still mark the earliest events ever depicted.

Given its trailer references and setting, Secret of the Mimic is likely to reveal far more than just the Mimic’s canon origins. Allusions to clown-like animatronics and the Puppet set the stage for the series’ major forces to make an appearance, as each is directly associated with the lore’s most negative and positive figures and forces, respectively. Should the title do so, its narrative could form the backbone for the entire series, providing context to characters, events, and lore details that have plagued the fanbase for nearly a decade. It remains to be seen what the full narrative of Five Nights at Freddy’s: Secret of the Mimic might entail, but fans’ anticipation of its 2025 release couldn’t be higher.

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Five Nights at Freddy's

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Created by

Scott Cawthon

Creation Year

2014

Developer(s)

Scott Games, Mega Cat Studios, Steel Wool Studios, Illumix

Publisher(s)

Scott Games, Clickteam LLC USA, Illumix

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Five Nights at Freddy's is a first-person survival horror and resource management game from Scott Cawthorn that raced to popularity thanks to its creepy animatronic enemies and its array of panic-inducing jumpscares. Bringing life to a cavalcade of well-known characters like Freddy Fazbear, Chica, Foxy, Bonnie, and more, Five Nights at Freddy's has seen immense success, spinoffs, and fan games.

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