Wanna know if there are

I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THEORIZING

Secret of the Mimic VR will probably be at least 99% a VR recreation of the console version. There is a good chance that it won't have any new content or teasers in it. However, the teasers that Steel Wool have been showing have been indicating that there is at least a chance that this is an in-universe VR simulation. The most recent teaser showing proto-Fredbear being turned into some kind of full body VR suit is particularly intriguing.

Predicting things is always risky because you're going to look dumb if you're wrong. But also, in the real world, predicting things is the primary utility of a theory, so it's necessary to predict things to test if your ideas are right.

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I've never heard a good interpretation of Candy Cadet's story from Ruin that felt satisfying to me. I also think the Candy Cadet stories tend to be more literal than they initially appear. But I think that the teasers for the SOTM VR port may have given a better answer. So let's go point by point to test this and see if we can figure out what the twist of SOTM VR might be.

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"Now I will tell you a story. About a mother and a little boy who lived alone in a cabin in the dark woods."

This is pretty straightforward. F10-N4 conceives of M2 as it's child, and in Moon.exe Sun lives in a cabin in the woods. They're the only two in MCM at the moment.

M1 needs to make sure that Arnold dies in the suit

"There was a monster in the woods, but the mother caught it and kept it locked in the basement."

This is where we come to the contentious part. The monster is Arnold. Maybe it's Fazbear Entertainment more generally, but Arnold is the most current representative of Fazbear. The mother, or more accurately the M1 endoskeleton, catches Arnold in the Clock Out or bad ending. In this post, I had some people tell me that the Mimic's behavior in the bad ending is entirely congruent with its behavior in the rest of the game, but I disagree and hopefully this VR port will answer this question.

This being plugged into the F10-N4 setup suggests that F10 is running the simulation.

M1 then traps Arnold in the basement by stuffing him in the Fredbear suit. It then, as we see in the VR teasers, turns the Fredbear suit into a simulator. This simulator looks very similar to the setup that we see in the Endo Warehouse minigame in Help Wanted 2. M1 has turned the suit that Arnold died in into a machine learning simulation program that shows M2 that even if Arnold had disobeyed F10-N4, he wouldn't have been able to get away. This would ironically mean that the ending that everyone (including me) has believed to be canon is the only one that isn't canon, as we'll get to in a second.

The Endo Warehouse minigame is suspiciously similar to the previous image

The most likely reason for M1 to do this is to show M2 that it's bad to kill people because it makes them sad and scared. Arnold's agony would still be in the suit, we even see the Fredbear suit being energized, or shocked, to keep Arnold's remnant active. So the simulation would be strengthened by Arnold's soul. But M2 takes the opposite lesson from it, and learns to be a more efficient killer.

Sleepy Moon can't be a person or M2, so M1 makes the most sense

"The monster always made scary noises at night, but the mother told the boy not to worry because it could never get out. Then she would sing the boy a lullaby to sleep."

It could be that Arnold did not die immediately, which is kind of a scary thought. We the players are still able to move during the credits of the bad ending after all.

This could also be Candy Cadet backtracking a bit. If the 'monster' is Fazbear more generally, then the Fazbear technicians that have been coming in, including Arnold, have been activating machinery and disturbing MCM, which M2 might be scared by if it perceives every human as a threat. M1 is most likely Sleepy Moon, which spends the whole time singing Brahms Lullaby, or the Cradle Song. It might be doing this as a way to try and soothe M2.

Arnold takes control of the simulation. This room is two elevator rides away from the destroyed theater.

"One day, the monster stopped growling and instead, listened and learned the lullaby."

Arnold's remnant being active in the suit means that every time M2 goes through the simulation of the events of SOTM, Arnold does as well. This is where he learns what's truly the deal with the Mimic , and that the collectibles, which he had noticed before but hadn't thought much of, are the key to stopping it.

Arnold having vague impressions of his future memories

"The next day when the mother went out to find food, the monster sang the lullaby from the basement. The little boy heard the lullaby and opened the door."

I don't know what the 'mother went out to find food' part means, maybe that will get answered in SOTM VR. My suspicion is that M2 destroys the M1 endoskeleton though.

Arnold takes control of the simulator, after having been so heavily integrated into its processes by going through it with M2 over and over again. Arnold realizes what needs to be done. It's possible that he's initially able to influence himself enough to tell himself to disobey "Dispatch," but this doesn't work, forcing Arnold to try something else.

He simulates going to David's room in the Murray house (or possibly the Sleepy Moon basement) and gets the white tiger doll. He then places it in the Security Office for his past self to find. Arnold has been tipped off to the fact that collectibles are more important than he might have otherwise thought, in fact it's possible that the collectibles that the original Arnold saved are still in the system. However, M2 has learned to be a more efficient killer, and some of its programming has also transcended time to affect its past self because of what Arnold did. So the bad ending and the new game+ ending are both canon.

\"The little boy heard the lullaby and opened the door.\"

At the end, M2, in the persona of David, opens the closet door when he hears the bed time story program. David's room is the one place in all of MCM that isn't touched by grief or agony. It's remained pristine, with only happy memories in it, so the agony that normally torments M2 is weakened here, allowing whatever sliver of David's essence that exists within M2 to become active. The "lullaby" in this case isn't literally Brahms Lullaby but rather is the latent love and positive emotions that still exist in MCM all concentrated into the Glitched Permission and bolstered by the M.I.M.I.C. blueprints which detail how technology can be used to bring a dead person back to life.

And so the 'monster,' Fazbear, wins, as M1, M2 and F10-N4 are all deactivated and are able to be stored beneath R&D until they can figure out how to properly exploit the Mimic technology, which they're not able to properly do for another 50-ish years until the Pizzaplex era.

This is basically the culmination of all of my ideas about Secret of the Mimic. So if I'm wrong about this, I'm probably wrong about everything. If Secret of the Mimic VR doesn't have any new content, then it wouldn't strictly speaking make me wrong but it would at least make me feel very silly. So we'll wait and see how this goes.

What happened to Murray's Costume Manor right after Secret of The Mimic?

Many of the events in Five Nights At Freddy seem to take place on one single property. The Afton House, FFPS Pizzeria, possibly Sister Location, and Security Breach's Pizzaplex all appear to be in the same spot.

Most people believe this for a couple of reasons:

Near the end of Secret of The Mimic we learn that William Afton and Fazbear Entertainment had taken over all of MCM and own the property.

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To most fans this is obviously connecting the MCM location to Security Breach and the Pizzaplex, which was built on a plot of land that looks quite similar to SOTM's outside.

FNAF fan discovers lamp post

We know from Security Breach: Ruin that the Mimic's lair underneath the Pizzaplex is probably leftovers from the Costume Manor, with similar light fixtures and old costumes from MCM.

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Additionally a cut ending for Ruin had Cassie find an underground Freddy Fazbear's Pizza with Freddy, Bonnie, and Chica on stage, we had no clue why this would have been included in the DLC at one point, but we now know that it was likely a very early form of Secret of The Mimic's Research and Development.

We know that FFPS also takes place in this same spot, but anything before that is a mystery to us currently.

What did Fazbear Entertainment do with the land from 1979 to around 2023???

The JR's Mystery...

At the very end of Secret of The Mimic we learn that David's bedroom is clearly meant to be the same as the Crying Child's room along with the toys we see in FNAF 4.

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This room along side the "Confidential" text log is borderline confirmation the Murray Mansion was taken over by William Afton and his family after the events of SOTM.

The area around the Murray/Afton House looks strikingly similar to the map of Midnight Motorist, being found along a road in the woods with pine trees.

Interestingly if you were to line up the outside of SOTM with Midnight Motorist, with the Afton House where the Murray Mansion is, the Costume Manor would be right where JR's is inside of MM.

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I don't think this was an accident as the outside world in SOTM strongly resembles the setting of Midnight Motorist, a lonely road lined with pine trees.

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This would also mean that JR's later becomes Freddy Fazbear's Pizza Place and then the Mega Pizzaplex.

Possible timeline we're working with

This both clarifies and confuses things regarding what Fazbear Entertainment did with the MCM property.

If MCM is where JR's is the chances of the original Freddy's being built above MCM and later becoming FFPS drops significantly, as in the most common interpretation of Midnight Motorist, the minigame is set immediately after Charlie's murder at Freddy's, and William is speeding back home. If he killed Charlie right before the minigame JR's can't be Freddy Fazbear's Pizza.

MCM later becoming Freddy Fazbear's Pizza feels like it's the narrative Scott wanted to go for with the Proto-Freddy's and the "Confidential" text log, however it might be impossible if JR's really is above MCM.

There's also the issue that William Afton isn't even allowed inside of JR's, which diminishes the likelihood of it being a Fazbear owned locating during the events of Midnight Motorist.

The strongest implication of the minigame is that JR's is just a bar William was prevented from entering by a bouncer because of his drunkeness.

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This then becomes confusing with the timeline I previously showed off. If JR's really isn't owned by Fazbear Entertainment then something currently happens off-screen that causes Fazbear to sell MCM.

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Speculation

At this point the lore is getting kinda fuzzy and it feels like a pretty big plot-hole.

I want to quickly list some potential ideas for what may have become of MCM in between SOTM and FFPS.

Idea 1: Fallfest 83'

Fallfest 83 was an event shown to us in Help Wanted: Curse of Dreadbear. We're currently not sure if the hub world we see is an actual real representation of the event.

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Lining up the Secret of the Mimic map with the Curse of Dreadbear map reveals that they're very likely the same place, with the barn interestingly being where MCM was.

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Could there have been another Fallfest disaster similar to the one that killed Fiona which made Fazbear sell JR's?

Idea 2: Fredbear's Family Diner

The idea of JR's at one point being Fredbear's Family Diner from FNAF 4 has been a fairly common interpretation since FFPS.

This image has been the bane of theorists for years lol

If the idea is that there is only one Afton house throughout the games then this is a likely idea.

This would mean that Fredbear's Family Diner was either moved or had multiple chain locations. Fredbear's Family Diner already lost its status as the first location to Fredbear's Singing Show, so maybe there being multiple diners at least after Secret of The Mimic is within the realm of possibility?

Interesting connection: both MCM and Fredbear's have a playground near by.

Idea 3: JR's the Fazbear location

There's always the possibility that JR's is the Fazbear location opened after MCM burned down, however I feel like this is the least likely option, because of William being banned from entering in Midnight Motorist. There's also the fact that were never given any follow up information about JR's is any later games. If it was a Fazbear property we'd probably at least hear something about it right?

Conclusion

This plot of land has really annoyed me, I'm not totally sure what's up with it. Hopefully we'll learn more in whatever game follows up SOTM.

I'd like to hear your guys' theories about this. It's one of the big mysteries Secret of The Mimic left us with, yet I don't too much discussion around it.

I like it but it does rely heavily on the game version of Into the pit being canon which I'm unsure of.